Drum Major Instinct

Thursday, January 22, 2009

This week has flown by in an instant...but what a historic time to be experiencing! Monday was a celebration of what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King's 80th birthday this year. To have Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States just a day after this celebration is beyond my belief. I don't want to get all preachy but it's just really been a wonderful time to be in education and around students the past three days. Students that do not grasp the enormity of what they are witnessing.

My favorite of Dr. King's speeches and sermons is one that's called the "Drum Major Instinct". It's not as well known as "I have a dream" or "Letters from Birmingham Jail"...but it has a message that is just as important today as it did 40-plus years ago. It's about the idea that we all want to be out front and lead the parade, like a drum major. We want praise and attention. We want the nice car and the big house, regardless of whether we can afford it. We get so caught up in these desires that we end up pushing others down. Instead of giving into this instinct and letting it wreak havoc we must instead recognize that those who are greatest among us are our "servants". In that is a lesson that we can all be great, if we all would serve.

This fits in with President Obama's inaugral address where he says "Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

Here's a wordle that I created using the text from the sermon. I show this in my class as we read this as an essay to discuss our role in society and the role of education. It's a fun creative way to capture the ideas. I think it's fitting to post it today.


You can read the "Drum Major Instinct" here and listen to audio excerpts. There's also a neat flash intro on the King Center website

We must be a part of the solution...otherwise we're a part of the problem.