The Conservative Soldier

I received an email containing a “true story” about an Arkansas high school teacher who went above and beyond to make a point to her students without using a textbook, a chalkboard or a stern lecture.

Turns out the true story is true. It has been vetted by a credible web site called snopes.com, and there is YouTube video of a Mike Huckabee speech in March 2007 in which he tells the story of a teacher named Martha Cothren. It is unlikely the mainstream media would have let Huckabee slide if he’d shared the story based only on urban legend.

What Martha Cothren did was courageous — removing all of the desks from her classroom to deliver a nuanced message. But the school district superintendent and principal who approved her request deserve credit, too. The world is overpopulated these days by spineless, p.c. police among the ranks of teachers and school administrators. Everything is potentially offensive, so the Christmas Concert becomes the December Sing, and Good Friday becomes a Special Holiday, on the school calendar.

I know of which I speak. The aforementioned examples appear on my daughter’s grade school calendar.

So one can only imagine the debate in most school districts about whether it is a good idea to open students’ eyes to the sacrifices made by America’s military servicemen and women, and to make them stop and think about how that sacrifice affords them the life they lead, a life of a prosperity, health and education.

I suspect there are quite a few school districts in which Ms. Cothren’s idea would have been flatly rejected on the chance that one or two extremist parents might object to children being encouraged to respect our nation’s “warmongering, torturing military”.

Here’s the story in its entirety:

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten.

On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.

When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

Looking around, confused, they asked, “Ms.! Cothren, where’re our desks?”

She replied, “You can’t have a desk until you tell me what you have done to earn the right to sit at a desk.”

They thought, “Well, maybe it’s our grades.”

“No,” she said.

Maybe it’s our behavior.” She told them, “No, it’s not even your behavior.

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom.

Martha Cothren said, “Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.”

At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall.

By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.

Martha said, “You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.”