Tag: lesson

A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders.

Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip.

The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.

Our trip was not going to be a typical rushed tour of monuments, but a highly selective, long-anticipated capstone experience. Our plans included intensive interaction with government leaders at the Naval Academy and the Pentagon, discussions at the State Department and a leadership panel with senators and congressmembers. Our students hoped to explore potential careers and even practice their Spanish and Mandarin skills at the Mexican and Chinese embassies.

The students not only missed out on the opportunity to connect with these leaders and make important connections for college and career, they learned what happens when leadership and diplomacy fail — a harsh reminder that we need to teach these skills, and the principles that support them, in our schools.

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

Senior members of the military know that the DIME framework — diplomatic, informational, military and economic — should guide and support strategic objectives, particularly on the international stage. My own time in the Corps taught me the essential role of honesty and trust in conversations, negotiations and diplomacy. In civic life, this approach preserves democracy, yet the government shutdown demonstrates what happens when the mission shifts from solving problems to scoring points.

Our elected leaders were tasked with a mission, and the continued shutdown shows a breakdown in key aspects of governance and public service. That’s the real teachable moment of this shutdown. Democracy works when leaders can disagree without disengaging; when they can argue, compromise and keep doors open. If our future leaders can’t practice those skills, shutdowns will become less an exception and more a way of governing.

Students from ILTexas, a charter network serving over 26,000 students across the state, got a lesson in failed diplomacy after the government shutdown forced cancellation of their long-planned trip to the nation’s capital. Credit: Courtesy International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools

With opposing points of view, communication is essential. Bridging language is invaluable. As the adage goes, talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. Speak in his own language, that goes to his heart. That is why, starting in kindergarten, we teach every student in our charter school network English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

Some of our graduates will become teachers, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Others will pursue careers in public service or navigate our democracy on the international stage. All will enter a world more fractured than the one I stepped into as a Marine.

While our leaders struggle to find common ground, studies show that nationally, only 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and fewer than 20 percent of American students study a foreign language. My students are exceptions, preparing to lead in three languages and through servant leadership, a philosophy that turns a position of power into a daily practice of responsibility and care for others.

Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it

While my students represent our ILTexas schools, they also know they are carrying something larger: the hopes of their families, communities and even their teenage peers across the country. Some hope to utilize their multilingual skills, motivated by a desire to help the international community. Others want to be a part of the next generation of diplomats and policy thinkers who are ready to face modern challenges head-on.

To help them, we build good habits into the school day. Silent hallways instill respect for others. Language instruction builds empathy and an international perspective. Community service requirements (60 hours per high school student) and projects, as well as dedicated leadership courses and optional participation in our Marine Corps JROTC program give students regular chances to practice purpose over privilege.

Educators should prepare young people for the challenges they will inherit, whether in Washington, in our communities or on the world stage. But schools can’t carry this responsibility alone. Students are watching all of us. It’s our duty to show them a better way.

We owe our young people more than simply a good education. We owe them a society in which they can see these civic lessons modeled by their elected leaders, and a path to put them into practice.

Eddie Conger is the founder and superintendent of International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network serving more than 26,000 students across the state, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps major.

Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

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October 21, 2025
A history lesson on Europe for Donald Trump

“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it.” So said U.S. President Donald Trump in February. He repeats this assertion whenever U.S.-European relations are a topic of debate.

Trump voiced his distorted view of the EU in his first term in office and picked it up again in the first three months of his second term, which began on January 20 and featured the start of a U.S. tariff war which up-ended international trade and shook an alliance dating back to the end of World War II.

What or who gave the U.S. president the idea that the EU was “formed to screw” the United States is something of a mystery. If he were a student in a history class, his professor would give him an F.

Trump’s claim does injustice to an institution that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 in recognition for having, over six decades, “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” as the Nobel committee put it.

So, here is a brief guide to the creation of the EU, now the world’s largest trading bloc with a combined population of 448 million people, and the events that preceded its formal creation in 1952.

Next time you talk to Trump, feel free to brief him on it.

Staving off war

With Germans still clearing the ruins of the world war Adolf Hitler had started in 1939, far-sighted statesmen began thinking of ways to prevent a repeat of a conflict that killed 85 million people.

The foundation of what became a 28-country bloc lay in the reconciliation between France and Germany.

In his speech announcing the Nobel Prize, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, singled out then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman for presenting a plan to form a coal and steel community with Germany despite the long animosity between the two nations; in the space of 70 years, France and Germany had waged three wars against each other. That was in May 1950.

As the Nobel chairman put it, the Schuman plan “laid the very foundation for European integration.”

He added: “The reconciliation between Germany and France is probably the most dramatic example in history to show that war and conflict can be turned so rapidly into peace and cooperation.”

From enemies into partners

In years of negotiations, the coal and steel community, known as Montanunion in Germany, grew from two — France and Germany — to six with the addition of Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The union was formalized with a treaty in Paris in 1951 and came into existence a year later.

The coal and steel community was the first step on a long road towards European integration. It was encouraged by the United States through a comprehensive and costly programme to rebuild war-shattered Europe.

Known as the Marshall Plan, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the programme provided $12 billion (the equivalent of more than $150 billion today) for the rebuilding of Western Europe. It was part of President Harry Truman’s policy of boosting democratic and capitalist economies in the devastated region.

From the six-nation beginning, the process of European integration steadily gained momentum through successive treaties and expansions. Milestones included the creation of the European Economic Community and European Atomic Energy Community.

In 1986, the Single European Act paved the way to an internal market without trade barriers, an aim achieved in 1992. Seven years later, integration tightened with the adoption of a common currency, the Euro. Used by 20 of the 27 member states, it accounts for about 20% of all international transactions.

Brexiting out

One nation that held out against the Euro was the United Kingdom. It would later withdraw from the EU entirely after the 2016 “Brexit” referendum led by politicians who claimed that rules made by the EU could infringe on British sovereignty.

Many economists at the time described Brexit as a self-inflicted wound and opinion polls now show that the majority of Britons regret having left the union.

In decades of often arduous, detail-driven negotiations on European integration, including visa-free movement from one country to the other, no U.S. president ever saw the EU as a “foe” bent on “screwing” America. That is, until Donald Trump first won office in 2017 and then again in 2024.

What bothers him is a trade imbalance; the EU sells more to the United States than the other way around; he has been particularly vocal about German cars imported into the United States.

Early in his first term, the Wall Street Journal quoted him as complaining that “when you walk down Fifth Avenue (in New York), everybody has a Mercedes-Benz parked in front of his house. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not many, maybe none, you don’t see anything at all over there. It’s a one-way street.”

This appears to be one of the reasons why Trump imposed a 25% tariff, or import duty, on foreign cars when he declared a global tariff war on April 2.

His tariff decisions, implemented by Executive Order rather than legislation, caused deep dismay around the world and upended not only trade relations but also cast doubt on the durability of what is usually termed the rules-based international order.

That refers to the rules and alliances set up, and long promoted by the United States. For a concise assessment of the state of this system, listen to the highest-ranking official of the European Union: “The West as we knew it no longer exists.”

So said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission, the main executive body of the EU. Its top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, a former Prime Minister of Estonia, was even blunter: “The free world needs a new leader.”

Questions to consider:

1. Why was the European Union formed in the first place?

2. How can trade serve to keep the peace?

3. In what ways do nations benefit by partnering with other countries?

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May 12, 2025
Law professor challenges university after campus ‘shooting’ hypothetical changed in lesson plan

Those concerned that law schools are shying away from teaching some areas of law to avoid controversy just got more reasons to worry, this time courtesy of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and its absurd treatment of law professor Kenneth Lawson.

Lawson, an accomplished faculty member at UH, used a simple hypothetical to teach the idea of “transferred intent,” a legal concept invoked when a defendant intends to harm one person, but ends up harming a second person instead. As is common in law school, Lawson offered a hypothetical to convey this idea: Imagine if a dean at his institution tried to shoot another dean, missed, and hit Lawson instead.

Here’s a screenshot from part of his lesson:

Those who have been to law school will understand that using campus figures to illustrate hypotheticals is not at all unusual, and is intended to add a bit of levity and grounding to what can be pretty esoteric topics.

But when an anonymous student filed a complaint, calling the hypothetical “extremely disturbing” and citing the context of some shootings near the university’s campus, administrators summoned Lawson to a meeting near the end of last semester. Though they acknowledged he had not violated any university policy, they nevertheless mandated that he remove the thought experiment from a posted video of the class — or they would change it for him.

The ability of administrators to forcibly alter course materials is positively ripe for abuse.

Lawson hadn’t thought twice about including the example, and had been using the example for years, not simply because it wasn’t unusual but because the protections of academic freedom give faculty wide latitude in determining how to approach controversial or potentially difficult material. When Lawson refused to alter the video of his presentation, given that he had not violated any policy, and using the hypothetical was well within his academic freedom rights, administrators just went on the school’s online curriculum system, where faculty submit presentations, to make the changes themselves.

Remember: these changes were being made because, supposedly, some found a hypothetical of campus figures being shot to be disturbing. So this is what the administration came up with.

You will note that there is still a campus figure on that slide, and it’s the person who was (hypothetically) shot: Professor Lawson. Only the deans have been removed. It seems that at UH, some hypothetical victims are more equal than others.

There’s no denying that this is silly, and many will be tempted to chalk it up as just more campus craziness. But there’s a disturbing wrinkle here, which is that the ability of administrators to forcibly alter course materials is positively ripe for abuse. The university’s administrators have granted themselves unilateral authority to interfere with faculty teaching decisions, despite the fact that UH is a public institution bound by the First Amendment, which views academic freedom, which protects that right, as a “special concern.” If administrators can “memory hole” bits and pieces of curricula they don’t like, even when it violates no rule, where does it stop?

UH still has an opportunity to do the right thing. It’s easy, too — all it has to do is step back and let faculty teach, and save the video editing for film class.

FIRE wrote the university on Dec. 13, urging it to reverse course and restore Lawson’s original hypothetical. The university responded in early January, declining to substantively engage with our concerns or detail specific issues with our argument. Lawson, and all UH students, deserve better. As our second letter states:

FIRE’s concerns are only amplified by the fact that this alleged capitulation to sensitivity is occurring in a law school. To receive a proper education in the law, students will inevitably encounter difficult topics like sexual assault, homicide, physical assault, domestic violence, and may be faced in school and in their careers with descriptions of personal injuries far more graphic than those in Lawson’s hypothetical. Where do UH administrators draw the line regarding their interference in faculty instruction if they feel free to operate under a nebulous standard of protecting students from “disturbing and harmful” material?

Lawson has submitted a grievance about the situation, so UH still has an opportunity to do the right thing. It’s easy, too — all it has to do is step back and let faculty teach, and save the video editing for film class.

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January 23, 2025