By Larry Efird

Considering Election Day is only weeks away, I can’t help but think about my former students and their participation in this election cycle. Now on the “other side of retirement,” I often think of conversations I would be having in the classroom regarding current events about this time. I hope I instilled in all my students a love of  lifelong learning but also a desire to be a vital part of their country in whatever they choose to do with their lives. 

I also think about lessons I’d still like to teach. I guess it’s true that you can take the teacher out of the classroom but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher. If I were still in that arena, I’d like to have the following conversation with them: 

Recently, I attended a conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. It was entitled, “A Test of Faith: A Summit to Defend Democracy.” I would love to share with you everything I learned but I know that would be asking too much of you. But if you could indulge me one last time, I think I could convey a healthy perspective about the need for your participation in democracy through an intriguing poem that I came across this past year. 

I must confess that I didn’t know about the following author when you were in my class. I’m sure that comes as a surprise to some of you who thought there wasn’t a novel or a poem I had never read — or taught. Well, now you know the truth! The following one was written by Arthur Hugh Clough, a British poet (1819—1861). It’s worth a look. Although not focusing on a specific war or  battle, his  graphic metaphor of a battlefield struggle would be appropriate for any election year. It also reiterates much of what I learned in Washington, just without all of the details and statistics. 

If positive, long-lasting change can occur, your participation in this election is imperative. I know how honest you can be with your worldview, and your maturity has always amazed me. Thank you for challenging me in the classroom with your questions and your insights. You have an uncanny way of exposing hypocrisy and keeping your critical thinking fresh in a world where political thinking has grown stale. Your country needs you to be a part of finding solutions to the struggles we face. Please do not give up on the American dream or on your own dreams, because they are linked together. If you succeed, you will be helping your country. If your country succeeds, it will be helping you. 

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

  The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

  And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

  It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

  And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

  Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

     Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

  When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

  But westward, look, the land is bright.

As always, one quick reading of a poem will not do you much good, so I hope you will read it through at least several times to get a fuller understanding. But I did make a few notes for you after I had read it  myself so I hope that helps.

Struggles are real but they don’t have to be for nothing. The opposition is also real but that doesn’t mean things will always remain the same. 

All things hoped for may not come to be but all things feared may not come to pass either. Join with your peers if you want to make a difference. You all need each other.

Fatigue and despair toward an important goal will undoubtedly set in at some point. Don’t ever give up, because a rising flood of support may ultimately carry your cause to victory.

Keep a wide focus when looking for encouragement. You may just find it when you open your eyes and look in a different direction. 

But most importantly, remember that your vote  will help  to ensure “the land is bright.”  Your generation is America’s best hope for that to happen.

Larry Efird, a former Kannapolis school employee, now lives in Durham.