The Bill Ayers Problem

A reflective statement by a Museum of Education patron describing a “personal reconciliation” with “the Bill Ayers Problem.”

by Candace Thompson (September 3, 2008)

There is wonder here too. Bill knows it, tastes it, and (always) shares the wealth. I find no need to reconcile this scrappy intellectual soul man with the once-upon-a-time terrorist whose shadow now reportedly darkens the presidential doorway of Barak Obama’s historic run. Rather, I run to the spaces his life opens up that challenge, confront, transgress, teach. I am thrilled when my students have tackled his book, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, with enthusiasm, skepticism, and their own red blooded ideas. I tell them what he is about from radical then to activist now. Many bristle, their worlds cued by a Pavlovian stream of 9/11 terror and the with-us-or-against us isms of a cowboy administration. He’s a killer they shout, and they offer their reasons why he should not be read, why he should not be taught, why he’s wrong. I hear their objections. They are valid. But I do not allow them the ease of this superficial dismissal. I challenge them to enter into the space they now eschew—the clouded, angry spaces where footing is less sure and different eyes are asked to see. They commence to do battle in this gray zone where they realize the answers are not so plain and the truth has many names.

Yes, they come kicking and screaming, and yes, some decide not to come at all, but those who do, come because Bill makes it just too juicy to pass up. They are drawn to the honest, complex stories of communities, teachers, children, and students like and unlike themselves. They begin to open to the notion that maybe the institutions and policies we so mightily revere, have deep, ugly cracks that only deep love and a hungry heart can ever hope to fill. They come because in their own imperfect wanderings through this in-between they begin to sense that perhaps a man who has traveled so many roads, whose life is drawn by both bruising harm and insurgent beauty just might have something important to share. I tell them that I hope their futures as teachers will take them often to this space. This in-between is, I think, the only place where they might glimpse their students, and themselves whole against the sky and find a way to fashion a better world. Bill’s flawed and fruitful life teaches me that. No bullshit, no regrets. All heart.

to return to The Bill Ayers Problem
to return to personal reconciliations