I was once a 6th grade student. And then I became a 6th grade teacher. I learned something about freedom from each experience.

The Decorah City council passed Ordinance 1257 on Friday, August 21, 2020. The ordinance began with 17 WHEREAS’ listing a variety of justifications that lead to a NOW, THEREFORE, followed by these words: “All persons present within the city of Decorah shall wear a face covering that covers their nose and mouth when inside a business building or public space…”

When I was a kid, I would occasionally day dream about how great it would be to live alone on a deserted island. That’s before I saw Walt Disney’s 1960 movie Swiss Family Robinson after which I still wanted to live by myself, but worried about pirates messing up my island.

THE STUDENT

I remember the first time I had that fantasy. It was in 6th grade and my teacher was Sister Mary Robert Cecile. Sister demanded detailed work. She made us put JMJ – Jesus, Mary & Joseph, – at the top of every homework assignment page. No JMJ there would be the words “do it again, Paul.” Two pages of homework every night, with proper headings, and the JMJ.

Beaten down with days of “do this” and “do that” something must have happened on the last day of 6th grade because Sister kept me after school. I hear that Sacred Heart School in Davenport is no longer there, replaced by a parking lot. But I am still standing at the window in the 6th grade classroom on the second floor alone with Sister Robert Cecile watching Bus #2 slowly move through the playground not to return until August.

I thought “Mom, dad and Sister Robert Cecile will never stop telling me what to do.” So they won’t be on my pirate-free island and I will be able to drink as much orange Hi-C as I want, never, ever have to eat peas, and no homework. My biggest problem was other people. If I could get rid of other people, I would be free.

Mom, dad, and Sister Robert Cecile are dead. But there are still plenty of people telling me what to do, including the Decorah City Council. Instead of Sister Robert Cecile telling me to put “JMJ” on the top of my homework, the Decorah City Council demands that I wear a mask. If freedom means “being able to act without constraints,” I am less free today than I was on Thursday, August 20, the day before the mask ordinance.

The ‘6th grade kid part of me’ still resents any demand made upon me by other people. Its bad enough when family and friends limit my options but when it is government coercing me to pay taxes or my bank requiring a minimal number of checking account transactions, the deserted island image creeps back into my consciousness. But the adult part of me who spend 46 years in front of classrooms now shoulders aside that 6th grade kid.

THE TEACHER

My first classroom was a 6th grade class in 1972 at St. John’s Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa. I started on December 1 and replacing a teacher driven into early retirement by a teeming class of 40 students. The principal who hired me was looking for someone to bring order to this class. I am guessing she did not talk to Sister Robert Cecile.

Up to that point in my life, I had never really thought about order or even given much consideration to how a group of individuals is molded into a functioning community. I had been a part of groups all my life – family, parish, neighborhood gangs, Cub Scouts, and 6th grade – but only from the perspective of me, the individual. Now that I was in charge of one of these groups, another 6th grade, I had to think hard about how to make this group work. I faced Steve, especially Steve D., but also Greg, Beth and Kathy none of whom wanted to be told what to do.

I quit every night during that long first year. Steve D. especially drove me crazy. Not only did he do whatever he wanted during school, after school from across the street he would give me the finger. The game changer was a conversation I had after school one Friday with Sister Mary Ellen Schulte who taught Math and controlled the classroom across from mine. “How do you do it,” I asked? “No secret,” she said. “You have to show them that you love them and then you have to firmly tell them what they can and cannot do. And by firmly I mean you must start out hard and then you can loosen up. You cannot go the other direction.”

I put Sister Helen’s ideas into action over the semester and slowly but surely my 40 students began to become a community of learners. It was not easy but I began to get through even to Steve D. I took no crap from him but he knew I liked him. I saw more than a little of me in Steve D.

I began to develop a teaching philosophy that emphasized firmness, clarity, and compassion. I wanted students to know exactly what I expected – firmness and clarity worked in tandem to establish an orderly learning environment – and that I cared about them as individuals, the work of compassion.

MY TWO 6TH GRADES

I imagine being back in my 6th grade classroom on that last day of class. I look at that little boy and understand the island fantasy built upon a genuine yearning to decide what is best for me. But then I turn my gaze to Sister Mary Robert Cecile, erasing the blackboard and putting her desk in order. She knew Paul’s freedom to do what he wanted limits not only the freedom of others but also his own future freedom.

I see the Decorah Mask Mandate ordinance as a civic version of Sister Robert Cecile or me explaining to our 6th grade classes why members of the class have to act in a certain way for the benefit of others in the class and for their own benefit.

None of us want to wear a mask. None of us want government or a private business to tell is we have to wear a mask. But there are members of our Decorah, Iowa and American communities dying of COVID.

Death ends life on earth and thus is the ultimate unfreedom.