I thought I knew what freedom meant.
At age 21, I had carte blanche in the adult world: I could vote, drink and drive wherever I wanted. I landed the first full-time job I applied for, as a teacher in the field in which I majored. And the first woman I fell in love with said yes when I asked her to marry me. We got our own little garden apartment with thick shag carpeting that I raked every Saturday morning while watching Handsome Jimmy Valiant, my favorite wrestler, vamp on TV. Getting a loan for a brand new 1974 ruby red Impala with a black vinyl top was even easy, requiring only my promise as an American citizen to repay. And as soon as we could save enough for a down payment, we scored a mortgage for our first house. Weekends, I batted cleanup and played catcher for the Renegades which would win our local league’s softball championship in 1976. The same year, Carolina Sportsman magazine paid me $50 for my first publication, a fishing story.
That summer, when we pulled up in our shiny Chevy onto the back lawn of my pal’s house for a Fourth of July barbecue, Orville greeted us with a handshake and a couple of cold Stroh’s.
“Happy Fourth,” I said.
“Greatest country there is,” said Orv.
His words gave me pause. But he was right. I was 24 years old and sitting on top of the world. Or, to be exact, behind home plate. Young, optimistic, unsinkable, I enjoyed a happy, uncomplicated life. As years passed, there was little that changed my mind about the freedom I enjoyed in the greatest country on Earth.
But I was not totally naïve. I understood that many of my African-American high school students were not possessed of similar privilege and freedom. Legally, yes. But pragmatically, no. They weren’t all free of hunger or free from fear for their very lives when walking to school. Their “legal” freedom did not have the same power as mine. They could not earn as much or even realistically aspire to seize the same opportunities as inmates of prison-like neighborhoods, where they were handcuffed by institutionalized inequality and its historical inertia.
But with the idealism of youth, I saw even this as a problem whose solution was inevitable. Education was the key for the handcuffs. The flawed city school system, notwithstanding, this great country had empowered my union comrades and me to effect change.
Later, at age 40, I wanted change for myself. No problem. From my vantage point on top of the world, I spied a job opening for a college teaching position, and I went and got it. I was given more money, my own office and my own educator’s expense account. And the students shook my hand and called me professor.
Best of all, in this second phase of my career, I was given more freedom to explore, to experiment and to create. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy had written, “The heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” I felt I was living Kennedy’s concept in the land of liberty and justice.
But when I turned 50, that freedom was jeopardized. By me!
With the college’s encouragement, I had created several courses for online learning. Technology was changing the way the world communicated and did business, so we extended it to education. But my students did not seem to achieve as well. Lack of face-to-face seminars and human interaction diminished the usual gains in writing and critical thinking skills, particularly for those struggling. What was worse, online courses increased the incidence of identity fraud, of pupils gaming the system and of plagiarism.
I wrote an essay about online education’s shortcomings, which a newspaper agreed to print. But then I had second thoughts about its publication and called the opinion page editor to stop the presses. I worried that the school administrators would be displeased, that they might fire me or demote me or make my life miserable if I publicly criticized a program that saved them huge sums of money. Having been spoiled with all my freedoms, I feared I might lose them if I went public.
“Withdraw your story?” asked the editor. “Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”
Her question was like a drink tossed in my face. She eventually persuaded me to publish the essay. And there were few if any repercussions.
But I did learn an important lesson: All those early years, when I enjoyed the freedoms that our ancestors sacrificed and even died for, I never really had to take any risks. I had sat back on the receiving end, riding the current. A single question from someone I’d never met on the other end of a phone line made me finally realize what July Fourth is all about: not the freedoms we passively enjoy but the freedoms we must defend by fostering and practicing them, no matter the consequences and no matter the cost.
David McGrath of Hayward is an emeritus professor of English for the College of DuPage in Illinois. He also is the author of “The Territory,” a story collection. Contact him at prof mcgrath2004@yahoo.com .
