Mother’s Day and Other Great Ideas Okay, I’ll admit my guilt once again to seeking support from Google. The recent celebration of Mother’s Day got me wondering just how long it’s been since a holiday was declared to honor mothers. Festivals honoring mothers date to ancient times. How many of us know that it was Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia, whose mother had organized women’s groups to promote friendship and health, originated Mother’s Day. On May 12, 1907, she held a memorial service at her late mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia. Within five years virtually every state was observing the day, and in 1914 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday. Although Ms. Jarvis had promoted the wearing of a white carnation as a tribute to one’s mother, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. Over time, the day was expanded to include others, such as grandmothers and aunts, who played mothering roles. What had originally been primarily a day of honor became associated with the sending of cards and the giving of gifts, however, and, in protest against its commercialization, Ms. Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday she had brought into being.
If you’re wondering why I chose this as the topic of one of my last columns of the 2022-23 school year, the answer is pretty simple … there is a similarity between celebrating those who nurture as a mother and those who do so as a teacher. Whether a child is born to you or placed in your classroom to challenge and keep safe, there are parallels. Moms and teachers want you to do your best.
I’m a teacher. As a teacher, I think it is important to seek the information that lies underneath the surface. As an educational administrator, I also think about all the ideas (great or otherwise) that get twisted and upended as others begin to distort from their original purposes. For example, consider the topic of educational choice. I am the first to support that every family has the right to make an informed choice about where to educate their child. What I do not agree with is that the dollars that taxpayers vote to support their public schools should be accessible to institutions (for profit or otherwise) that somehow limit or revoke entry to every child. It was Thomas Jefferson (thanks again, Google) who proposed in 1779, in “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” a system of public education. As they created our new nation, Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues were quite deliberate in their expectations for its citizens to have access to learning.
I wish I could talk now with Mr. Jefferson to learn if he, like Anna Jarvis, would struggle with how the politics of the day seek to fundamentally change his premise that only educated citizens could make the American experiment in self-government succeed. All of my research reveals that the proposal was for a system of broad, free, public education. I would enjoy talking with the other founding fathers (and mothers) to gain their insights on this and so many other topics.
In the meantime, I will continue to do my small part to educate young and lifelong learners to never lose their curiosity; to always explore all aspects of an idea, and to always celebrate the wisdom of my mother, mother-in-law and wife.
