Returning to Dr. King a Half-Century Later
Fifty years ago this week, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he told a crowd the night before. “I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land.”
"In 2018, the year King would have turned 89, we as a country continue to fall far short of Civil Rights leaders’ expectations for the future."
With death threats piling up, King knew that America would not reach that “Promised Land” during his lifetime, but in 2018, the year King would have turned 89, we as a country continue to fall far short of Civil Rights leaders’ expectations for the future.
Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric represents a fierce backlash against the gains that Obama’s election seemingly represented for the African-American community; in what has been dubbed the "Age of Mass Incarceration", one in three black men will go to prison in their life. The shooting of unarmed 22-year-old Stephon Clark last month in Sacramento is another reminder that police brutality is alive and well in America.
When it comes to race relations here on campus, Exeter has failed to live up to its reputation as the leader in progressive secondary education. Over a century and a half after Exeter began accepting black students as one of the first boarding schools to do so, students of color report daily experiences with racism, while an inability to retain faculty of color further suggests that we are a community not quite as welcoming and inclusive as we aspire to be.
King understood that those who claim to be exceptional must live up to that promise. “All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper,” he said on the eve of his death. “If I lived in a totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech... Somewhere I read that the greatness of American is the right to protest for right.”
Today, we need to work to make sure that Exeter is true to what John Phillips and Edward Harkness wrote on paper, and what Principal MacFarlane conveys in her emails to the Academy community. Because somewhere in the haze of our orientations to this special school, we have all heard of youth from every quarter, and we have all heard of goodness and usefulness to mankind. And we have all heard that the Harkness table is a place where all voices are heard, and understanding leads to compromise.
Being at Exeter comes with great expectations. That doesn’t just include the expectation to be an exceptional student in class or a caring dorm faculty. As nearly every assembly speaker reminds us, and as King would tell us, the responsibility of an exceptional education is to use what we have learned once we leave this place.
Since the creation of the deed of gift, Exeter has sought to better understand this relationship between knowledge and usefulness to mankind. Recently, our understanding of this has undergone a transformation. No longer will acquisition of knowledge by traditional methods inevitably lead to contributions to society later on.
Our school claims to be dedicated to the belief that engaging with current issues is essential for a responsible American citizen. However, Latin recitations and analytical essays on their own will not provide the education necessary for students to develop into favorable citizens in America today.
Unfortunately, Exeter has yet to master this transition from solely traditional classroom learning to a combination of theoretical and practical curricula. The second half of this combination is largely carried out through an “invisible curriculum,” a yearlong course that the entire community takes—composed of assemblies, MLK Day, Climate Action Day and various other featured discussions of current events in dorms and advisee groups. This programming, along with student affinity groups and clubs like Student Council and The Exonian, is meant to educate students on the problems facing America today.
Despite its supposed benefits, this “invisible curriculum” has serious flaws. Firstly, the teaching body is left out of the planning process, with members of the MLK Committee and Assembly Committee making all of the decisions. Perhaps more fundamental, however, is the problem of how this “invisible curriculum” is taught.
Instead of being centered around discussions and student-focused learning, this programming (excluding some of the optional Latin Study lunches and evening talks) is often lecture-style and offers few opportunities for productive dialogue. Exonians are simply not wired to learn this way, and I commonly witness many of my peers barely attentive as speakers take the Assembly Hall stage. Furthermore, a large contingent of the student body decides not to show up at all.
If there is one enduring message that we should take from King’s life, it is that complacency is dangerous, and so are false promises and inaction. Exeter’s efforts to educate its students on real world issues is a step in the right direction, but we need to rework our “invisible curriculum” so that it lives up to the promise of our school’s founding. In recent years, we have created a campus that is conscious of racism and injustice, but largely unequipped to discuss and address these issues.
Fifty years after Dr. King’s death, we can begin this reworking by turning to King himself. More specifically, his life and work should become more central to the History 430 readings, so that he can be understood not only as an activist and a reverend, but also a great political thinker. His words are just as important today as when he spoke and wrote them. By following King’s example, we can all go to assembly and MLK Day having done the reading, well-equipped to live up to our promise as a school.