Words to enhance Thanksgiving dinner

The Thanksgiving dinner table.

MIKE FINK

As we gather for a family Thanksgiving in our nation's capital, D.C. it seems apt to praise our birthright. I wish our public schools would put more emphasis on grammar school courses in civics. Rhode Island has led the way in strengthening civics education through requirements and new initiatives, including a 2021 law mandating civics proficiency for all public high school graduates that began with the class of 2023, but it is pretty patchy throughout the nation. I have good memories of my civics classes, sitting at those desks with little built-in inkwells!

Exercises in the cursive shaping of letters, that were once standard, would also be a welcome chance to revive handwriting as an art form. Handwriting remains valuable today for cognitive benefits, creativity, and personal connection, even in a digital world. It enhances memory, learning, and motor skills more effectively than typing, and a handwritten note or document conveys greater thoughtfulness and effort. I get letters from many of my former students and cherish them!

 I also find value in watching some – not all – of the movies of yore that I used to praise for their thoughtful, bold, daring criticism of our American history. Anybody remember "Bright Leaf" starring Lauren Bacall and Gary Cooper? Brilliantly and forcefully, it indicts the mass production of cigarettes and goes so far as to criticize capitalism itself! The camera does the work of interpretation with energetic depth.

I do so miss civics and its invitation to explore our concept of patriotism and to invite us not to merely accept American democracy as a given, but to question articulately each chapter of our growth as a society and an economy, to "crit" that growth where necessary through debate, reflection and listening to one another with open hearts and minds. Thanksgiving could create productive conversation about our values, not merely to judge us but to guide us. Any chance of thoughtful words to enhance the dinners and to review both the year behind us and what looms ahead?

MIKE FINK (mfink33@aol.com) is a professor emeritus at the Rhode Island School of Design.