It didn’t register on the Richter scale, but earlier this month the planet trembled slightly upon learning that yet another orthodoxy by which we stay healthy and live responsibly has proven suspect. A growing number of us have flossed our teeth ever since a New Orleans dentist introduced the practice in 1815, and today we spend $2 billion annually on dental floss. Now, however, we’ve learned that the benefits of faithful flossing, plus all the virtue that accompanies it, may be an illusion. The wisdom and sincerity of our dental hygienists notwithstanding, no accumulation of hard, scientific data proves flossing saves our teeth and gums.
The foundations of the cosmos rattled and shook again this week when an elementary school teacher in Texas informed her students’ parents that she would no longer require homework. Her new policy went viral on social media, and teachers around the country not only voiced support but joined the no-homework movement. School children work hard enough, they declared. Family and creative play time, along with an early bedtime, benefit young learners far more than evening hours spent drilling, memorizing, and filling out worksheet.
One can almost hear a generational gasp at such news. Can we also have symphonies without rehearsals? Successful athletic teams that never practice? Still, many parents will rejoice. Policing the successful completion of homework that looms continually over equally weary, recalcitrant parents and children has turned many a home into a nightly battleground that leaves all combatants wounded and resentful. Some may also welcome an end to the not so subtle humiliation that comes somewhere around fifth grade, when the kind of math children must master proves unintelligible to parents educated in the 20th century.
A second groundbreaking, if not earth-moving, educational experiment began this week in Texas. For the first time, students, faculty, and staff who wish to carry concealed firearms may do so legally anywhere on college and university campuses. The more heavily armed, the safer we are, even in dorms and classrooms, believe the state’s legislators and the judges who have upheld their laws. To folks like me who have spent their adult lives in college classrooms, this, too, feels like a defilement of something sacred.
Many at the University of Texas in Austin who have misgivings about the new law conspired to bring their own “weapons” to campus this week. Students carrying unconcealed sex toys of various kinds sought to make the point that the symbols of manhood they brandish have as much power as guns to keep the campus safe from violence. Most likely, we’ll soon enough have data by which to determine whether guns or plastic genitalia bring more mayhem and heartache to campus, and whether either can stop a massacre in progress.
All experimenting aside, bigger visions and renewed hopes abound in this season when school buses emerge from their summer cocoons and children fill classrooms with their bodies, minds, hormones, and boundless curiosity. First-graders and first-year high school and college students along with their parents find themselves in a bigger, more complex world. New teachers stand with hearts pounding before an array of expectant faces, and the lucky ones will find their way by learning to fall in love with other people’s children. Even the veterans get a new start. (Where else but in school does that happen?) Anything seems possible, and mostly it is.
Slow down when you pass a school this week, not just to avoid a ticket, but to remember and give thanks for what goes on there.
Keep flossing, too. Even if it doesn’t make you virtuous, it can’t hurt.
Fred Niedner is a senior research professor and associate director of the Institute of Liturgical Studies at Valparaiso University.
