Thank you. Hi, and welcome back to Tell Me What
Happened, the podcast that features folks from
all walks of life telling us one story from their
childhood and how that event impacted who they
are today. I'm your host, Jay Rehack, and like
you, I've had my share of childhood experiences
that impacted who I am today. But I'd like to
think that everything that happened to me has
helped make me a better person. Tell Me What
Happened is sponsored by Sideline Ink Publishing.
Publishers of quality books, including Susan
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All right. Well, today I have as my guest, a
good friend of mine, Bill Ayers, distinguished
professor of education at the University of Illinois.
He has written extensively about social justice,
democracy, and teaching as an essentially intellectual,
ethical, and political enterprise. His books
include About Becoming a Teacher, Teaching Toward
Freedom, and To Teach. He also writes the podcast
Under the Tree, a seminar on freedom. Welcome,
Bill. Nice to see you, Jay. Bill, are you ready
to tell your story? I am. All right, Bill, I'm
going to get out of the way. At the end, I'm
going to ask you just one question. How do you
think that story and that event impacted who
you are today? But take it away, Bill. I'm the
middle child of five in my birth family. I learned
to play up with the big kids. And I learned to
play down with the littles. I learned to get
along with everyone, as well as to get to the
dinner table early and to eat fast. Optional
chewing became a way of life for me. It still
is. I was born near the end of World War II.
I grew up in suburban Chicago in a time of peak
everything, peak oil, peak prosperity, peak conformity.
And I had the sweetest mom in the world. Her
personal motto perfectly fitted the tone. and
temperament of her circumstances and her times,
it'll be fine. She said it no matter what happens,
it'll be fine. I remember coming home bleeding
one day because I'd run into a tree on my bicycle,
knees bruised, elbows bleeding, and mom took
one look at me and said it'll be fine. And of
course she cleaned it up and it was fine. She
had a status of a kind of clairvoyant, you know.
She always said it'll be fine, it always was
fine. That was her wellspring and principal channel,
but she had many, many brooks and streams. For
example, everyone in our family remembers that
her mom was on the beach one day and a tick was
burrowing in through her calf. And she looked
at the tick and she said, that is really interesting.
And we all howled with laughter. Interesting.
The tick is eating you. What are you talking
about? But that was mom. And any time anything
came up from that day on, anything despicable
or odious or unpleasant, the family motto was,
that's interesting, like a tick bite, because
that was mom's way. Her excessive joy, unbounded
optimism, her generosity and good cheer, her
surplus happiness was both a gift and a bit of
a curse. She was the captain of her ship and
the captain of mine as well when I was a kid.
And it was a ship of high expectations for the
good, a confidence to act in happiness for ourselves
and for the world. So I was born on a ship of
hope, in a world of privilege, a ship of fools
and a sea of carelessness. Whatever I would become,
whatever we'd make of ourselves, we'd launch
from that certain happy deck. I loved war movies.
As I said, it was the end of World War II. And
I was in love with John Wayne, Montgomery Cliff,
Henry Fonda. I just thought these were the greatest
things in the world. I was at the Glenn Theater
every Saturday afternoon and the movie swallowed
me. And they kind of poured into our games in
the street. We played war games every night.
Every summer we would race up and down the neighborhood,
war games, different crews, different tribes.
But one summer morning when I was about 10, at
an age when war play was beginning to fade as
a preoccupation, the calm and quiet of my neighborhood
was shattered by the sounds of sirens. Ambulances
and fire trucks rushed up the street, converging
on the house right across from ours. And I ran
barefoot with my brothers and my sister to see
what was happening. Kids from everywhere crowded
the lawn, and we were thrilled to have serious
-looking cops tell us, stay back. I was giddy,
I was excited and happy, joking in rough housing
with my friends, and I was gripped by a fresh,
tingling feeling of the expectant scene. Within
moments, a surge of firefighters spilled through
the front door, hosting a stretcher with a bloody
body flung upon it. It was Jimmy, a kid just
eight years older than me. And I'd known him,
and he'd blown his brains out with a handgun.
I got sick. Jimmy, I found out later, didn't
want to go to Korea. He felt like a misfit. Plus,
he was high -strung, I was told, and must have
been temporarily insane. I realized then that
there was the world beyond our green lawns and
our neatly trimmed hedges. And that's my story.
Man, man, that makes me cry to think about that
poor kid. I think about you too, even you and
your family at the, you know, a little guy joking
around and all of a sudden it turns serious on
you, but that must have been some traumatic moment
for you there, Bill. Staggering, staggering.
And suddenly the real world pressed in in a way
that was completely unexpected. Well, I know
you for many years, as you know, you and I go
back a long way because we're both educators
and I actually knew you before you knew me, which
is to say you're sort of famous in a way because
of your anti -war activism. I don't want to jump
on the impact of Jimmy's death on you, but as
an outside observer, I can't help but think that
your kid's death may have turned you. I don't
want to speak for you. I'll let you tell me how
you think it's impacted your life. Well, I would
say there's two things, Jay, and one is that
war wasn't funny anymore. that what seemed heroic
and manly from the movies suddenly seemed hollow
and frightening. And so that's one impact for
sure. But the other is that realizing that there's
a world beyond your narcissism, beyond your scope,
beyond the suburbs, beyond America, to realize
that there's something bigger. And that's become
a a lifelong quest of mine is to, and I say it
to my students all the time, we have to spend
our time trying to open our eyes, not once where
we see everything and then we're all completely
clear. No, you have to open your eyes every day
anew, and you have to find new perspectives,
new angles of regard, and you have to kind of
act on what the known demands of you. I would
not, I was living I was kind of with my mother,
sleeping the deep, deep American sleep of denial.
And when you wake up from that, it can be quite
shocking, but also important to your own humanity.
Yeah, I guess that is interesting. As you said,
I am thinking of the contrast of your mother
saying, it'll be fine. It's like, yeah, but also
there's a lot of stuff out there that maybe we
can do something about. Maybe. I don't know.
I don't know. but this is a good example where
Jimmy's coming out on a stretcher and there's
no it'll be fine for Jimmy it will not be fine
nor for his mother and you know that was the
end and and it was something so amazing to me
and eight years later I was at the University
of Michigan and I was blinking my eyes open and
I saw a world on fire and I felt like I had to
act on that world and that has been the defining
I guess a defining feature of my conscious life
is wanting to open my eyes and see what's underneath
the neatly trimmed hedges and so on. And that's
really beautifully put, Bill. I mean, I'll tell
you, like I said, I've known you for a thousand
years. I know you've been teaching at the U of
I for a million years and helping young teachers
try to get... I think to that understanding that
it's a big world out there and we got to try
to give everybody a chance to see it and everybody
a chance to live with eyes wide open and not
necessarily in a false sense of security. And
at the same time, you don't want to have people
walking around in despair either. Well, I mean,
I think that there's two things really, Jay,
and you and I have talked about this forever.
But one is exemplified in your teaching, which
is you have to have one eye. aimed at your children,
at your students. You have to see them as fully
as you can see them, not as little bits of deficit,
not as little labels, but you have to see them
as the full human beings they are. That's one
eye. The other eye has to be looking to a world
that could be and maybe should be. And that's
the whole idea of expanding your horizons, getting
out of your narcissistic zone, and trying to
see with empathy and generosity a big, big world
that's dynamic and ever -changing. But it's the
two things because you have to see the kid and
you have to see the kid fully and in scale, you
know. So you go from the smallest of tiny details
to the largest concentric circles of meaning
and history and culture. It's an exciting profession,
isn't it? It really is and I've been blessed
to be in it for a while. Me too. Loved every
minute of it. I think I tried my best every minute
of it. Before we get on the air, we were talking
about your son, who is actually, I don't know
if he's in elementary school or high school teacher.
No, he's a middle school math teacher in Oakland,
California. And he's a lifer. He's been at it
for 15 years. And he's going to stay at it. But
he's that teacher that the kids want to crowd
into his room at lunchtime. And they want to
hang out with them after school. He's that teacher.
If I say to him, Malik, you're a great teacher.
He says, Pops, don't say that. I'm a guy who
tries to show up every day and do a decent job.
I said, that is greatness in teaching. That is
greatness. You know, you don't have to be Jaime
Escalante or some movie star. You do the work.
Amen to that man. I'm glad I'm glad that you
were professor for all those years telling these
teachers the same thing on these wannabe teachers
or perspective teachers the same thing because
Because I think I did get into the business thinking
so I was gonna solve everybody's problem and
that really isn't how it worked You just do the
best you can do The astonishing thing Jay, you
know, I think I think you and you and I, and
the folks we know who we admire as teachers,
we have a personality flaw. And the personality
flaw is we don't need much feedback to keep going.
I can have one student come back to me. I can
have one student come back to me and said, you
know, you made a difference in my life. And I
always say, was it a positive difference? And
if they say yes, That'll keep me going for another
five years. I don't need much. I don't need much.
Amen to that. I think that's exactly right. I've
definitely been blessed to have those occasional
moments where somebody says something nice. And
then it's like, OK, I got the engine, the gasoline
to keep going for a while. Exactly. But if you
go into it, I always ask teachers. Are you in
this to get rich or famous? And they laugh at
me. I say, good. I don't have to start at the
very beginning. But you're not going to get rich.
You're not going to get famous by being a teacher.
But you're going to find yourself doing ethical
work day in and day out on the ground, real life
ethics. And that's different than becoming lawyer
reading the warranties on toaster ovens or whatever
lawyers do. You don't get the recognition, but
you get the joy. Yeah. Yeah, I had a lifetime
of it. I've enjoyed every minute of it. I've
been blessed every minute of it, even though
at the time, every once in a while I do look
around and I say, did I do the right thing for
my family or whatever? Could I have done better
for them in another way? But personally, I couldn't
have done any better than I did. Well, it is
better for them. You raised two tremendous...
girls, you have these two young women who have
all the right perspectives on their own lives
and on trying to make their way in the world
that'll make a difference. What could be better
than that? And they saw in you somebody who was
doing moral, ethical work, intellectual work,
very few professions you can say, I get up every
morning. I have to think my way into what I'm
doing and I have to do the right thing day in
and day out in a world of complexity where the
right thing isn't obvious always. That's beautifully
said. Well, I'm going to leave it at that, Bill.
Your kind words, I'm going to leave it at that.
Thank you for being on the show. Say happy to
do it and go forth and do good. Thank you, my
brother. I appreciate that. Talk to you soon.
Talk to you soon. All right. Well, that's my
show. I'd like to thank my friend, mentor, Professor
Bill Ayers, man I've known for many years, who
is an author, of course, but he also has a podcast
called Under the Tree, a seminar on freedom.
And he's had some incredible guests. I've gone
through it, and you should check it out if you
get a chance. I'd also like to thank our sponsors,
Sidelining Publishing, publishers of quality
books, and laughsaver .com. Visit laughsaver
.com and record your laughter. We'll keep it
for you now and forever. It's free. That's laughsaver
.com. So I'm going to end this show a little
differently. In honor of our friends in Ukraine,
and the folks in Russia as well. I'm going to
end this show with Susan Salador's classic, I've
Got Peace in My Fingers, hoping it all gets resolved
soon. So until next time, this is Jay Rehak asking
you all to please stay safe out there and try
not to hurt anybody. I've got peace, peace, peace
in my fingers. Watch what I can do. I've got
peace. Piece, piece in my fingers I'm gonna shake
hands with you I've got piece, piece, piece in
my fingers Watch what I can do I've got piece,
piece, piece in my fingers I'm gonna shake hands
with you I've got words, words, words in my head.
Watch what I can do. I've got words, words, words
in my head. I'm gonna talk things over with you.
I've got words, words, words in my head. Watch
what I can do. I've got words, words, words in
my head. I'm gonna talk things over with you.
I've got love. Love, love in my heart Watch what
I can do I've got love, love, love in my heart
I'm gonna give some to you I've got love, love,
love in my heart Watch what I can do I've got
love, love, love in my heart I'm gonna give some
to you I've got peace, peace, peace in my fingers.
Words, words, words in my head. I've got love,
love, love in my heart. I'm gonna give song to
you.