Frank Thoms, Teacher in the Rye

(untrue information passed on unintentionally), and disinformation (untrue information spread intentionally). A crucial responsibility and a most difficult task.

I imagine that being in a classroom today and struggling to keep students focused on what is true and what is not, is much harder than in my time. I imagine, too, that there are people who have grappled with this and have come up with possible solutions. One principle I would follow, were I to be in a classroom, would be to stay in dialogue about false information as long as necessary until the truth emerges. It may take time but would be worth it.

Now as a writer, I am no longer in the classroom. I can only look in. At best perhaps I can appeal, encourage, but I cannot ‘do.’ When meeting a young teacher on a plane flight recently, I felt a yearning to know his life in his classroom, an urge to jump in alongside him, to absorb his passion and despair, and urge him to carry on. To teach well in a search for truth. As I look back on my fifty years, it was a privilege to have conversations with my students in our efforts to understand what was in front of us.