High Expectations and High Grace

Your brain works best when it has a proper balance of neurotransmitters.  The big three are dopamine (released when exposed to affection stimulation - a loved one, likes on social media, a pet), serotonin (released when you are exposed to light or when you smile or laugh), and norepinephrine (produced in response to appropriate stress levels in order to keep you alert).  There are a few dozen more, however, and right now, most of us do not have a proper balance of them.  Chances are your norepinephrine is at least a little high.  If you haven't been getting touched very much, your oxytocin is likely depleted.  If you haven't been exercising, your endorphin balance is probably a little low.  

We know what happens if you are deficient in each of these, but it may be hard to predict the symptoms you will experience from a combination of deficiencies and excesses.  Some symptoms may physical (muscle tension, headaches, digestive abnormalities).  Others may be emotional (irritability, overreactions to minor stimuli).  Some may even appear to be mental (brain fog, memory lapse, shortened attention span).

As school starts back, you have to be aware that you, your colleagues, and your students have had different experiences during the past several months.  Some of your students may have received more touch than ever as their mothers were home with them all day.  Some of your single colleagues have not been physically touched since March.  Some students may be sensitive to sound than they were last year.  Some teachers may be more irritable than their normal personalities.  You may find yourself unable to remember what you were going to do next, and your students may experience the same.

High Expectations:  It's important to have high standards.  That's still true during a pandemic.  During the final quarter of the school year, my school continued to take attendance and give assessments.  Other schools in my area froze grades and essentially made class attendance optional.  I am not judging those schools because I don't think anyone could have known what the RIGHT thing to do was, but I did make some interesting observations.  Students who continued with some degree of normalcy and whose teachers still had expectations (with grace, which I'll address in a second) fared better emotionally than those whose schools no longer expected anything of them.  I am not an expert in psychology, but I believe the reason for this was that those who still had expectations required of them understood that this crisis was temporary.  Things would still matter in the future, and we were still attempting to prepare them for that future.  Those students who no longer felt like anything mattered were likely to believe there was no future.  One of the things I'm proudest of GRACE Christian School for last year is not panicking our students.  They saw emotion from us, but they never saw panic.  They knew we were sad because we missed them, but seeing us carry on every day was reassuring.  (If you are an expert in psychology and believe I'm wrong, please let me know.  This is just my own musing on my observations.)  This is a year for high expectations.

High Grace:  It is also important to have grace.  While this is always true, I think it is more so now.  With some exceptions, most people have walked around within an expected range of neurotransmitter balance in their daily lives.  That means their actions and emotional responses have been at least somewhat predictable in the past (or at least somewhat simple to understand).  This is not going to be the case this year.  While all of our neurotransmitters will be out of balance, they won't all be out of balance the same way.  Don't be surprised if you have more trouble holding some students' attention while others are unusually hyper-focused.  Some students may need to use the restroom more often than your normal policy allows.  Some may cry more easily than usual while some may show little if any emotional responses.  It is going to be more important than ever that we have compassion for our students, even if we don't understand why they are responding the way they are.  This is a year for high grace.

A word for parents and students:  This is also a time for you to extend grace.  School always involves a million details, but we can usually rely on experience to help make decisions.  This year, there are more details and most of them cannot be done in the same way they have been done in the past.  Your administration has spent all summer planning.  I think, from the outside, it may seem like this is just an issue of space and masks, but there is literally nothing that happens in a school that hasn't been influenced by this.  In the midst of their own neurotransmitter challenges, school leaders have exhausted themselves trying to think of everything they can in order to plan for it.  Whether they are teaching fully online or in a hybrid situation, your teachers are learning to do a thousand things they have never done before.  We are going to drop the ball sometimes.  There may be days when we only get 995 of them right.  We have very high expectations for ourselves, but we need grace from you just as much as you need it from us.  

More Than One Right Way

Think of your top five favorite teachers?  Were they all alike?  I cannot speak for you, but mine were not.  I had great teachers who used many different techniques to accomplish their goals.  Some of my best teachers were strict about deadlines, teaching me about responsibility.  Others were willing to accept things late, teaching me about flexibility.  I had great teachers who engaged us in collaborative efforts, but one of my favorite teachers was a straight-up lecturer.  I was enthralled by him, and I learned a lot as I absorbed every word.  One of my best teachers always affirmed students' thinking, even if they were wrong; but another one of my great teachers was not shy about telling you when you were wrong and needed to think again.  Not all great teachers look the same. 

Even in the midst of COVID-19, the beginning of the school year starts with professional development.  Professional development is great, but it can make you feel terrible.  One of the people near me (who is a fantastic teacher, by the way) said that she always feels guilty when she sits in a seminar because she thinks they are telling her that what she currently does is wrong.  It isn't.  I work with fabulous teachers, and their approach to education is fabulous.  I'm not saying we can't all learn ways to improve, but great teachers shouldn't feel like they have to turn everything they are doing upside down in order to fit in box that holds the current educational fad.  

Here's the thing.  There's a lot of science behind what we do.  You can see a myriad of my own blog posts regarding things I've learned from Learning and the Brain conferences to see that there is a ton of science that can inform our technique.  There is, however, also a lot of art to our craft.  Just like a painter can understand the chemistry of paint, but mix it different ways to get the hues they want in their painting, we can apply the same brain science in a myriad of ways to accomplish learning in our classrooms.  One of the most interesting speakers at last year's Learning and the Brain conference made a great analogy.  He said the experiments we carry out in education research are like plants in a greenhouse.  We have very controlled conditions, so we can test one specific variable (because that's what a good scientific experiment is).  The conclusions we draw are based on those very narrowly drawn parameters.  Applying those techniques in your classroom, he said, is like growing plants in your yard.  You no longer have control over the conditions, and there are many variables involved that will influence the outcome of your technique.  That means you can't just adopt wholesale a technique based on the idea that "studies say" this works well.   You have to adapt techniques to your context.  It would be crazy to think that some techniques wouldn't work differently in a rural area than in an urban one.  I know some techniques that do NOT work in public school work beautifully in a Christian school because there is a different expectation of worldview.  Kids who have suffered trauma will respond differently to some words than those who have not experienced trauma.  As a science teacher who is interested in brain research, I have to resist the idea that there is a magic pill that will work with every brain.

I know there are some procedures in the world that can only be done in one right way.  I assume there is only one right way to land a 747, and that all other ways are dangerous.  Brain surgery, I imagine, doesn't have a lot of room for the individual expression of the surgeon.  Teaching is not restrictive in that way.  You might be a teacher who strongly believes in a student-led classroom and get your students to learn a lot, but you might also be a teacher who knows that their expertise is valuable to your students and that they don't know what they don't know and teach your students a lot as well.  There is not ONE right way to teach a class, and every other way is wrong.  There are at least a dozen right ways to teach the same content, so don't feel guilty if the one you have chosen doesn't fit the seminar you are sitting in.  That may just be another one of the right ways.

You don't have to be the same as the teacher across the hall to be a great teacher.  Good teachers don't fit in a box, so stop trying to make yourself fit in one.

Change Begets Change

If you spend much time around education, you'll hear it.  "Education hasn't changed in 200 years," someone says, and people nod.  I roll my eyes.  Some of you reading this have said it, and yes, I rolled my eyes at you so hard I nearly sprained a socket.  It's an easy line to say, and all you have to do to get people to believe it is show two pictures of kids sitting in desks.  The problem is that image is silent and stationary and doesn't show what is really happening in the classroom.  All that image really proves is that humans still sit in chairs and need horizontal surfaces to write on.  Education has changed dramatically in the two decades I have been doing it.  If you brought a teacher from 200 years ago into 2020 (even before the pandemic), they would not recognize what school now is.

Expertise in Classrooms

Two hundred years ago, you had the same teacher no matter what grade you were in.  She read a lot, but she had no specific training in any one subject.  She taught you reading, writing, math, and science with no specific training in any one of them.  Now, your science teacher has a science-related degree and is required to engage in professional learning in both their subject area and pedagogy.  You may have the same teacher a couple of times (if you are in a private school), but you don't have the same teacher from kindergarten until graduation, which is what was happening two centuries ago.  It started to slowly change at the beginning of the 20th century, when cultural values shifted from the idea of Renaissance men to that of specialization.  People stopped being simultaneously farmer and architect and musician and philosopher and started being a farmer or an architect or a musician.  Teaching changed because culture changed.

Lab Science

In spite of the fact that all it did was send a beeping radio signal, the launch of Sputnik in 1957 changed a lot of things here on earth.  In the midst of the cold war, scared people increased the construction of bomb shelters, worried that it might be taking pictures of them from above, and of course, propelled us to the moon.  It also changed the teaching of science in America.  Seeing the need for engineers, schools were asked to identify those with aptitude early, and science instructions took a major turn.  Lab experiments were no longer the domain of university courses only.  High schools began building labs, and hands-on activities became valued.  Teaching science changed because culture changed.

Collaboration

In the early 90s, there was a survey of business owners, asking what they looked for in a potential employee.  In the top five of those answers was the ability to collaborate on projects.  Schools began to implement cooperative learning programs, in which each member of a group of four was given a role, like the recorder or the one we made fun of in my math classes, the encourager ("Go girl, multiply those numbers.").  It was a little clumsy at the start, but as we have grown to value collaboration, we've gotten better at it, and students are better able to identify what their contribution should be. Social values changed, so education changed with it.

Choice

Parenting changes with each generation.  In just my lifetime, there has been a pronounced difference from parents telling their child that the teacher is the authority and you should respect them whether you feel respectful or not to parents telling their child that the teacher works for us, and I will meet with them to make sure they understand you.  I'm not complaining because some of those changes have been positive, but if it it has changed this much in my 44 years, imagine how much it has changed in the last 200 years and the impact that has had on education.  One of the most recent is that of choice.  Parenting books and websites started advising parents to get behavior "buy-in" from their kids by giving them choices.  That training led kids to expect choice in a lot of areas, and teachers like the idea of "buy-in" as well, so we now incorporate as much choice as possible into our lessons, allowing students to choose from a menu of books and then allow them to display their understanding in a variety of ways.  The change in parenting values led to a change in pedagogy.

Shifts in Discipline

The changes in parenting also led to massive changes in discipline.  I never got spanked at school, but my brother did.  Corporal punishment has, of course, been eliminated from schools, but that is not the only change.  Detention and suspension still exist, but they are far rarer than they once were.  We are more likely to have reasonable conversations about feelings with students.  Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing.  I'd much prefer a heart change to compliance-based behavior modification.  What I am saying is that the change in societal values and parenting techniques led to a change in schools as well.

Brain Science Based Pedagogy

The invention of the MRI and the fMRI changed everything.  Many myths we had about the brain (use only 10%, logical left vs creative right) were debunked.  It has taken a long time, but we are now in a position to apply the information coming out of that research to pedagogy.  I have attended two Learning and the Brain Conferences, but they have been doing this work for 20 years.  When we started learning what stimulates dendrite growth, we could use less trial and error and more confidence in our knowledge while lesson planning.  Change in science and technology brought about change in education.

Use of Technology

Speaking of technology, what impact has that had on your classroom?  It's been quite a bit in mine.  From the ability to communicate with absent students to quickly googling the answers to questions.  From 3D printing projects to twitter chats and blogs.  From online editing tools, like Grammarly and TurnItIn.  From out of class resources like Crash Course and Khan Academy to in class communication like Socrative and Flip Grid, my students in 2020 (even before the pandemic) had a MUCH different classroom experience than my students in 1999, when there was an internet, but using it meant reserving time in the computer lab.  Technology has changed rapidly, and we have taken advantage of those changes for our students.  We haven't even talked about how well-positioned some schools were to move their instruction online (I know they all weren't and that there was a digital divide, but imagine if the pandemic had happened in 1990 instead of 2020).  Changes in technology always scare people and lead to changes in instruction. 

Projects that are both Socially and Academically Minded

Because of internet access, there has been a lot of focus on expanding projects from knowledge-based to social-minded.  Almost all school projects now have some aspect that includes either a creative or social component, usually both.  Things like the famous 20% time projects were not possible when my career began, but we are now using students' interests in and knowledge of the wider world to have them think about their interconnectedness.  This was made possible by changes in technology and widespread because of changes in societal values.

"Relationships are Everything"

Teachers on Twitter use the statement "relationships are everything" a lot.  They aren't everything, but we have found they are critical to everything else in education.  Those changes in discipline and choice and buy-in that I mentioned earlier are helped enormously by students and teachers building a level of trust with each other.  The aggregate of society's changes in values led to a big change in education.  We spend far more time during the first days of school doing relationship building (and I maintain that's why online instruction worked well last year.  We'd had three quarters of knowing each other and trusting each other and knowing each other's voices before we went virtual.  That made all the difference.  

Discussion

Look into a classroom today, and you will see discussion.  Teachers asking prompting questions to students who may answer out loud or sometimes online or in writing.  Two hundred years ago, teachers did not discuss things.  Children sat silently until called on, and that was to elicit a specific answer to a specific question.  It was not to ask kids what they think or to relate learning to their experience.  If they spoke out of turn, they might be hit with a ruler or asked to stay inside while others played.  Kids now have a voice in the classroom.  While it as different levels in different classrooms, it is far more than it once was because we now value their thoughts in a way we didn't in the time of "children should be seen and not heard."

I could go on, but this post is already longer than I meant for it to be.  My intent isn't just to list the ways education has changed, but to show why.  Changes in the world, whether those changes be in values or technology or knowledge, lead to changes in education.  Here comes another one.  We are going to figure out the hybrid thing because COVID-19 will require it of us.  One day, having a student who is at home sick join us online won't seem like a big deal.  It'll just be part of the normal course of school because we figured it out when we had to.  Those tweets with hand clap emojis saying that we cannot do this will seem silly in hindsight because we will have figured it out.  

Change in the world begets change in education.  Most of the time, the changes are gradual.  This one isn't.  Get ready to adapt.  It's what we do.  It's what we've always done.

What Won't Change

Pardon a little science teaching.  It's late July, so it's been a while since I got to explain any science.  Homeostasis is an important part of being a living thing.  Living things can only handle so much change, so there are regulatory mechanisms in place to keep things from getting out of control.  For example, when you eat too much sugar, your pancreas releases insulin to keep your blood sugar level within an acceptable range.  When your temperature gets too high, you sweat.  The evaporation process requires energy, which it takes from your body's heat.  Too cold?  The muscle contractions that come from shivering convert kinetic energy into thermal energy.  God's design for living things is structured to limit the amount of change we experience.

And yet, here I am - a teacher in 2020.  Because of COVID-19, it feels as though our lives are nothing but change.  This week, my mom and I went to my classroom to figure out how to set everything up with spaced desks and traffic flow that doesn't jam and where my streaming technology should sit so those who are joining us from home will have the best experience.  She would ask crazy questions like, "Where does this go?" and my answer was, "I don't know yet."    The closer we get to the opening of school, the more on edge my nerves are.  I'm not scared of the virus itself.  For whatever reason, that's never been the kind of thing I fear because that's a risk management issue.  What's making me edgy is the amount of change.  I was talking to someone yesterday about all of this, and I said, "It's like my 21 years of experience are irrelevant this year."  Now, I know in my head that's not true, but it is the way it feels.

One of the things I did while setting up last week was to hang photos of my physics teacher and my physical science teacher (the two subjects I teach) behind my desk.  These two men were phenomenal teachers, and having them behind me, looking over my shoulder, has always been a source of encouragement.  As I hung their photos this year, it was a reminder that there were some things that were not changing.  What I learned from these two men still matters.

School starts in two weeks, and I am going to spend them focused on the things that won't change.  I obviously will have to implement changes and learn about new policies and procedures and plan for how to check in on my at-home students, but my emotional energy will be spent on the things that won't change.  Here's the start of the list.

God is faithful and trustworthy

Since the beginning of the stay at home orders in March, I have sent about 200 cards, mostly to students.  In them, I have written the sentence "God is faithful and trustworthy."  Whether or not we understand our circumstances, we know we can trust Him.  When it feels like everything is changing, we know He is faithful.  That will not change.

Teachers will be there for their students

While the savior mentality some teachers have is toxic, the truth is that students need their teachers to be there for them, to listen to them, to understand them, to know them, value them, and love them.  Whether a student is suffering from normal social angst or the fear of a virus, the need is the same.  If you were equipped before, you are equipped now.  

Grace will be needed

Grace is important in every classroom.  It always has been.  In a room filled with human beings, there are going to be human foibles, mistakes, and sins.  Occasions will arise that will require repentance, apologies, and forgiveness.  As we sit in classrooms with a heightened level of anxiety, that is going to increase, but it is not new.  

I know how to teach science.

When we first went into the virtual learning environment, I kept reminding my colleagues that we know how to teach.  The logistics are different.  We have to figure out the tech.  There are some things we do not yet know how to do, but we haven't forgotten how to teach.  I still know how to explain science in a way middle school students can understand.  If you teach English, you know how to teach your students to write.  If you teach math, you still know how to break down mathematical thinking into steps.  Whether it is virtual or in-person, synchronous or asynchronous, collaborative or distanced, you know how to teach.  Your methods will change, but you still know how to teach.  

By focusing our emotional energy on those things that are not changing, we can establish an emotional equivalent of your body's buffers that maintain homeostasis.  I'd love to add to this list.  What's staying constant in your world?

Just For Two

As a yearbook photographer, I am accustomed to documenting great experiences.  From homecoming dances to sports, I have been privileged to record some of the happiest and most meaningful school events.  As an RFK camp photographer, I recognize the meaning of sending kids home with a record of their positive memories. This weekend, I documented an amazing experience.  It was amazing, not because of its large scope, but because of its small scope.  Twenty masked adults came together to create a camp experience for TWO campers.  

This Week's RFK Staff

For those who are not regular readers of this blog, let me back up and explain RFK.  Royal Family Kids, Inc. is an international organization that provides summer camp for abused and neglected children using volunteers that have been trained to meet their needs and create life-changing moments and positive memories.  Normally, this is a five day overnight camp.  Adults arrive on Sunday and transform a basic campground into a vibrant and welcoming place for kids literally overnight.  With bright and happy cabins, a pretty elaborate theatrical stage, a beautifully decorated dining hall, a highly productive woodworking station, and, of course, a fully outfitted pool, nearly 40 kids arrive on a bus to be welcomed by an enthusiastic group of adults that are thrilled to see them.  That enthusiasm is maintained until we say goodbye to them on Friday.

As with all things, COVID-19 prevented us from having anything resembling normal camp.  Our directors tried to create a plan, but there was just no way to make it work with proper distance, and I cannot imagine masks all day outside for five days in mid-July.  Most camps sent kids gifts and notes, calling it "camp in a box," but our directors wanted more for our kids.  They wanted them to have social interaction during this isolating time.  So, they created a "camp experience" for three hours on three Saturdays, allowing campers' parents to choose which location worked for them (as our kids are spread out all over Eastern NC).  The first week, we had 22 kids signed up, but by the time the event came, we were down to 13 due to symptoms or exposure.  Those 13 had a ball, building a wooden crate, hydro dipping cups, playing field games, singing camp songs, learning Romans 8:39, and receiving medals and birthday gifts.  

This week, we were supposed to have 6 kids, but by Thursday, we had heard from four who couldn't come.  We put on the exact same camp experience for them that we had for the 13 last week.  There were 22 people at this event, only two of which were our campers.

I don't know if those two boys went home yesterday saying, "Twenty adults loved me enough to put on the camp just for me."  I hope, in 2030, when we are all looking back on this time, that might be an insight they have.  I hope the photo album they will receive in a few weeks will send that message to them every day.

It's been a few weeks since this education blog was actually about education, so let me make a connection.  School will be starting again in just under a month.  Depending on where you live, some schools will be fully online while others will open partially in person.  Either way, students are going to look to their teachers for tone.  They are going to see us do hard things, whether that is trying to figure out how to form relationships online at the beginning of the school year with kids you've never met or figuring out how to teach your in-person class while also involving those you are streaming to at home.  They are going to watch us work harder than we have ever worked before to do things in ways we have never done them before.  We are going to model learning in ways we could have never imagined before this year.  What I hope they feel from all of that is, "Wow, these people care about me enough to work this hard."  I hope they will recognize how much education matters.  I hope, when they are looking back on this time as adults many years from now, they will say to their children, "You have no idea how much teachers love their students.  I experienced it in 2020."  

USPS - America's Second Best Idea

I'm taking a break from writing about current news, and I'm not quite ready to write about education again just yet, so this is a weird meandering train of thought for this blog.  It won't be connected to any of the things I normally write about.  It's just a conversation I've been having with myself while out walking.  To be fair, you are reading a blog called "On the Rabbit Trail," so you should expect this occasionally.  So, here is the rabbit trail I have been on this week.

Filmmaker Ken Burns rightly called the National Park System "America's Best Idea."  I completely agree.  I love our country's national parks on a level that might not be normal.    It got me wondering about what America's second best idea might be.  It's bound to be something mundane because it can't compare to the glory of the National Parks system, so you might question my choice (which is fine because these are just my musings anyway), but here it is.  America's second best idea is the United States Postal Service.

It's easy to criticize the post office.  The lines are long.  The people behind the counter are often not friendly.  And of course, in the 1990s, the phrase "going postal" had some pretty terrible connotations.  People also like to use the price of stamps as an indicator that we are being ripped off.  After all, we can all remember when the price of stamps was less than it is now.  A first-class stamp was 13 cents the year I was born, but my first memory of the price of a stamp was when I was 9, and it went from 20 to 22 cents.  They are now 55 cents.  (In a minute, I'm going to make a case for how good a deal that is.)  You may or may not love your mail carrier, so I get why they are an easy target.  When you interact with something every single day, you are going to grow accustomed to it doing things normally, and the errors and flaws will really stand out.

But let's talk about some facts and history.  The postal service dates all the way back to 1775, with Ben Franklin at its head, but since America was not yet a country, it wasn't an official department until 1792.  While we think of it as part of the federal government, it was made an independent agency in 1970 and was required to self-fund, so they don't get any of your tax dollars, and 2006, they were required to prepay health benefits and retirees and had their pricing capped by Congress, a double blow to their budget, which had to that point been mostly balanced.  The USPS employs over half a million people, who have been deemed essential during the pandemic, especially as most of us are doing more online ordering than ever before.  They are exposed to and trusted with more people's stuff than almost any other profession.  In small towns, the post office is a community gathering place, and your mailman is likely a friend or neighbor.  They are obligated to deliver the mail to the remotest of areas, places FedEx, Amazon, and UPS often won't deliver to because it is so unprofitable; so the mail service takes it the rest of the way.  They deliver over a billion prescriptions, many of which are temperature and time-sensitive and must be handled carefully.  This service we mostly ignore and sometimes gripe about is obviously more important than we realize and can't just be replaced by email as has been suggested by some short-sighted people.  Later today, I will be sending a couple of hundred photos to be printed, and they will be delivered to me by mail.  These physical products cannot be sent to me in an email.

During the quarantine, I need to walk outside every day, both for exercise and for mental health and vitamin D.  On school days, I needed a destination that wasn't terribly far and where I wouldn't have to interact with people closely; so I chose the post office.  I wrote notes to my students each day during my office hours and then walked to the post office (a 20-minute walk from my house), where I could simply put the letters in the slot and be back out the door before it had even closed.  Those walks were important to me, but if I were a person who couldn't get to the post office, there is a box in front of my house that is visited by a postal worker six days a week.  I only have to go as far as the end of my driveway to get these letters picked up and sent all over the country.  

As promised, I want to explain why the 55 cent stamp we complain about is the best deal around.  If the postal service didn't exist, and I wanted to get a birthday card, valentine, or letter to someone, I would have to seek out someone who might be willing to take it from my hands to the recipient.  If the recipient was relatively close, I might be able to accomplish that with the goodwill of one friend who was willing to do me a favor.  Let's say, however, I wanted to get it to someone in California.  I might be able to string together favors from friends and friends of friends (or I might not).  For sure, I wouldn't be able to say to someone, "If I give you 55 cents, will you come to pick this card up from my house and deliver it to my friend's house in California in a few days?"  You aren't going to get that deal from anyone other than the USPS.  When the price of gas goes up, they have to drive the same number of miles.  When cold and flu season arrives (to say nothing of the pandemic), they still have to put their hands in the box of every person on their route, handling items that have been licked by strangers.  As Newman so succinctly told Jerry on Seinfeld, "The mail never stops."  Their work is important and goes unnoticed when they are doing it well.  Don't let their ubiquity make them anonymous to you.

Thanks for reading.  Now, go buy some stamps.

Acknowledging Contradiction This July 4th

I was just on Twitter, where someone pointed out that CNN had two different takes on Mt. Rushmore.  Apparently, when President Obama visited it, they said the artwork of the monument was "majestic" and "quite a sight," but when President Trump visited, they pointed out that it included two slave owners.  Of course, his point was that CNN is hypocritically changing its coverage based on whether or not they like the President.  Setting aside how easy it would be to find similar examples in reverse from FOX, I'd like to make a different point.  Both of those stories are true, and it represents America in a nutshell.

If you have never been to Mt. Rushmore, it is hard to express how impressive it is.  When you learn how the faces were made using dynamite inserted into holes, drilled by men hanging from ropes, it is even more spectacular.  Mt. Rushmore is also an image of four flawed human beings who led flawed administrations who were elected by flawed people built on land stolen from Native Americans.  There's no use in arguing the point that two of these men were slaveholders because we know that they were, even if they were a bit conflicted about it.  The other two men had complicated racial issues as well (Teddy Roosevelt's comments about Native Americans are cringe-worthy, and Lincoln cared more about keeping the country together than he cared about the slaves.  Look farther in history, and you will find the same contradictions; we praise LBJ for signing the Civil Rights Act into law, but he regularly used the N-word and openly stated that he wouldn't allow women to be astronauts because then he would have to allow black men to be astronauts as well.  We don't have a leader that hasn't made a problematic statement.  

Why is this true?  The country was founded by human beings.  Our constitution was written by human beings.  The judges who have interpreted our laws are human beings.  And here's the thing with human beings.  We are defined by two things, the image of God and the Fall.  We will live with them both until Jesus returns.  All humans, even the horrible ones, carry the image of their Creator.  This is how we know that there is no such thing as an inferior race or a superior one.  All members of all races are image-bearers.  It's why I can't celebrate the execution of a person, even if I think it was just; I just can't be excited that an image-bearer is lost.  Humans were also corrupted by the Fall.  Adam and Eve's sin wasn't a victimless crime.  From Eve's first bite of the fruit until now, the fall has caused depravity in all of us.  No matter how nice a person is or what heroic things he or she may do, we are all sinners.  All of the lies, racism, adultery, hate, and crime in the history of mankind are the result of the Fall, and none of us can escape that.  It's why we need a savior.  America reflects both greatness and sinfulness because it is a reflection of the humans that founded her and those that continue to form her.  

This July 4th, we cannot recognize only one side of our nature.  We cannot celebrate the genius of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration without also acknowledging his sin.  We cannot celebrate the good the military has done in the world without also acknowledging horrors that have been committed by some of our men and women in uniform.  We cannot sing how America is beautiful "from sea to shining sea" without recognizing that we fill this land because we broke promises to the Native Americans who lived here.  This nation is neither all bad nor all good.  Because it is filled with image-bearers who are corrupted by the Fall, it is a nation filled with messy contradiction.  Knowing that doesn't make you un-American.  There may be nothing more American than criticizing our leaders, given that this is what the Declaration was doing in the first place.  Acknowledging the flaws in something we love doesn't mean we love it less.  It makes our love real rather than blindly idealistic.

Is America great or is America seriously flawed?  Yes.