As a schoolteacher for more than 35 years, I found it important to keep a key principle in mind at all times, and the principle is this:
How much — or how little — a student achieves is directly proportional to a teacher’s trust in their ability to master difficult lessons. Students will usually live up to — or down to — your expectations of them.
Buoyed by your trust in them, students will usually reach a level of achievement far higher than even they imagined they could reach. But if they sense that you have low expectations of them, they will almost always fall to those low levels, and often even lower.
Because kids are not clouds, wind, or rain, which are stubbornly impervious to your expectations. Clouds, wind, and rain do not care what you expect the weather to be tomorrow morning. Weather will be whatever it will be, regardless of how much you expect it to be something else.
But kids? Kids care what you think of them, whether they admit it or not. Adult expectations have more power to shape kids — for better or for worse — than you might believe. And it’s a power that extends well past childhood as well.
That’s why I was shocked last week when I learned that Lindsey Graham, a senator for 20 years who is highly respected by some Republicans, expected that “there literally will be riots in the street” if the DOJ moves forward by prosecuting former President Donald Trump for illegally removing and concealing classified White House documents in his private, unsecured Mar-a-Lago residence.
Graham later tried to walk back his expectation of riots, saying: “I reject violence. I’m not calling for violence. Violence is not the answer….”
It might have helped clarify his intent if he had stopped there. But no, he went on to say: “…but I’m just telling you.”
In other words, violence is what Graham expects of Trump minions. He expects no higher behavior of them. And if they live down to his expectations, he would lay the blame on the Department of Justice, which expects more civil behavior of true American citizens.
We have seen what happens when respected leaders hold low expectations of the citizens they lead. Consider what happened after Steve Bannon said on his January 5, 2020, podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s gonna be moving. It’s gonna be quick.”
And we all know what happened the next day on January 6, a day that will live in infamy.
Bannon would tell you that he was nothing more than a weatherman, reading the signs in the sky. But Bannon is no weatherman, and people are not rain, wind, or sunshine.
No, people are human, and humans live up to — or down to — expectations of them.
Now, you might argue that my key principle of the importance of expectations only applies to children. Because children, after all, grow up to be adults, and adults are not children any more.
But watching delusional adults playing dress-up while storming the Capitol, wearing horns and furry vests and face paint, or Halloween-worthy soldier costumes, it’s hard to believe that all grownups were raised to adulthood according to somebody’s highest expectations of them.
Despite the shameful debacle that happened on January 6, due in large part because of some shameless leaders’ expectations of the rioters, Lindsay Graham still holds low expectations of American citizens. He expects them to take to the streets in violence, and if it happens he will declare himself a visionary instead of an instigator and enabler.
For me, I expect better of my fellow citizens, and of our leaders who influence their highest or lowest behavior with their rhetoric.
If the American statement “no man is above the law” has any truth to it, the DOJ must move forward and bring to trial any and every person involved in illegally removing top secret files from the White House to an unsecured private residence. I hold that high expectation of our Justice system, and I trust that you do, too.
When those trials come to an end, I will honor any verdict — guilty or innocent — without taking to the streets in violence. I expect my fellow American citizens to do the same, and I trust that you do, too. And the more of us who hold those expectations of each other, the more likely that riots can be averted.
The more we hold our elected officials to high expectations in their actions and speech, the more we demand that they hold high expectations for our words and actions, the more peaceful our society will become.
We have lived through violent riots in America, and although all were horrific, we have survived them. I am old enough to remember the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago, and the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated. We survived that, as well as the direct assault upon our nation’s capital—and now, fittingly, some 900 of the insurrectionists are facing imprisonment, heavy fines, and loss of jobs and other opportunities they squandered with their reckless behavior, proof that America still works, because we expect nothing less of her.
Those riots were fearful — all riots are — but fear of rioting is no excuse for failing to do the right thing.
If there are violent riots over the DOJ’s doing its sworn duty to uphold the law, talking heads like Bannon and Graham will declare themselves “weathermen” reading the signs, but that would be a lie. No, by their words they reveal themselves to be instigators and enablers of the self-fulfilling prophecies they aim to engender with their reckless, irresponsible rhetoric.
I expect better of them than reckless rhetoric.
I expect better of my fellow Americans than petulant riots.
I trust that you do too.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
