Insignificant

Jan 29, 2008

The past few weeks have been spent teaching my students about the history of the Women’s Rights Movement. During class, I always show Iron Jawed Angels – a film about the Suffrage Movement and Alice Paul. Each time I’ve seen the movie, I cry a little at the end – not because I’m sad, but because of the just amazingly poignant nature of the moment. Women struggled for 72 years to gain the right to vote – many of the women who started the movement never saw its completion. Alice Paul was willing to die for her cause…

…which brings me to my point. I feel like my generation – myself included – is horribly apathetic. We just don’t really *care* about the world around us. Americans barely vote, barely protest and rarely get active in their communities. Today, most of my students don’t even know what Roe v. Wade is and they can’t tell me why it would be important that South Dakota banned abortion. What’s worse is that they still can’t tell me this information after I teach it… after they study it. It’s like it goes in one ear and out the other.

What’s wrong with the world today? Where are the Alice Pauls of the world?

“In oranges and women, courage is often mistaken for insanity.”