Martha Cothren is a social studies teacher at the
Robinson High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Back
in September of 2005, on the first day of school,
Martha Cothren did something that I'll never forget.
Martha, on the first day of school, with permission
of the school superintendent, the principal, and the
building supervisor, took all of the desks out of
the classroom.
When the kids walked into first period, there were
no desks. They looked around and said, "Ms. Cothren,
where are our desks?"
She said, "You can't have a
desk until you tell me how you earn them."
They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."
"No," she said.
"Maybe it's our behavior."
And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."
Second period, same thing. Third period. By early
afternoon television news crews had gathered in
Ms. Cothren's class to find out about this crazy teacher
who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The
last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class.
They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides
of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has
really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this
classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell you."
Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom
and opened it, and as she did, 27 U.S. veterans, wearing
their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying
a school desk. They placed those school desks in rows, and
then they stood along the wall. By the time they had finished
placing those desks, those kids for the first time, I think,
perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.
Martha said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys
did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to
you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and
good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that
desk, and don't ever forget it."
Sometimes we forget that the freedoms we have are freedoms
not because of celebrities. The freedoms are because of ordinary
people who did extraordinary things, who loved this country more
than life itself, and who not only earned a school desk for a kid
at the Robinson High School in Little Rock, but who earned a seat
for you and me to enjoy this great land we call home, this
wonderful nation that we'd better love enough to protect and
preserve with the kind of conservative, solid values and principles
that made us a great nation.
VETERANS RETURN DESKS
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp
