Clean Slates or Bitter Pills?
The ring of the lunch bell added a descant to the din of shuffling feet, slamming lockers, and adolescent shouts, squeals and laughs. Hurrying back from the cafeteria I joined the herd of seventh graders en route to our next class. But on this January day so long ago, things felt different. Today we would meet our new teacher, a mid-year fill-in for the young woman who had left to start her family. Oblivious to whatever she was now facing, we could only fixate on the uncertainty that her sudden absence had created. Who will be our teacher, and what will he or she be like? Will things get easier or are we about to enter some ordeal which will separate us into sheep and goats before the judgment seat?
Shoulder to shoulder outside the classroom, we suddenly became aware of the eerie silence that now fell over us like a blanket. When the stillness reached deafening proportions, the door slowly opened, pulled by an unseen hand waiting within. With catlike tread—or with the enthusiasm of prisoners en route to the gallows—-we stepped quietly, cautiously into the room in which our fate, or our doom, was about to be revealed. Quietly finding our seats, we gulped a bit as we faced the terrors of the unknown. Truth be told, we had worn out our first teacher—her pregnancy a convenient refu from our smart-alecky, uncooperative attitudes. For me the change in teachers was a mixed blessing. I wasn’t at all in love with seventh-grade math, moving me as it did from the comforts of arithmetic to the abstractions of pre-algebra. So many “Xs and Ys” to solve with formulas I needed to memorize. I just wasn’t getting it, and, like a number of the other boys, I compensated by being a bit of a class clown, earning me at least one trip into the hall to think it over. So as I anticipated this mid-year change in teachers, I was not altogether sure what to expect. Would things get easier or was this the beginning of the end for me?
Eyes up and hands folded on our desks, our attention rested on the smallish man standing in the corner. Younger than most subs, his thick black hair and somewhat muscular build suggested he might not be as easy a mark as the typical, gray-haired fill-ins given this thankless assignment. With arms folded across his white, neck-tied shirt, he eyed us with a non-nonsense look, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. After a few awkward moments of silence, he walked toward a bucket of water on the floor, lifted it onto the desk, and reaching for a sponge, saturated it with liquid that he squeezed out in his tightly clenched fist. Turning his back on us, and with deliberate Zen-like concentration, he wiped away every math problem and chalk mark that remained from the last class.
And then he turned to face the captive and baffled audience of thirteen year-olds he had inherited. With a stare that seemed to bore into each of us who sat before him in dreaded anticipation, he spoke for the first time:
“Whatever you have done before today in this class…whether it has been good or terrible, you start fresh with me. Today you have a clean slate, and I expect each of you to do your best in learning math, applying yourself, and giving me the very best effort you’ve got.”
Succinct, visual, and oh, so powerful, his introductory salvo won-over at least one young boy who took him at his word and never looked back.
Call it what you will--a second chance, forgiveness, redemption—it was as compelling and lasting a lesson as I’ve ever been taught. But it wasn’t a gift. None of my first semester grades were purged, curved or inflated to look respectable. And nothing moving forward would be easier for me, or reward me for just showing up. I had to change my approach and work hard if I wanted to overcome my lost semester. But with this new opportunity to start over, I took stock of my attitude and redoubled my work habit. Most of all I rediscovered something I had lost: hope. Now I had a fair and reasonable chance to make up for my previous lapses in attention and effort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more brilliant and successful approach to substitute teaching than that shown to me by this teacher whose name I’ve long forgotten but whose impact on me has only grown through the years.
This week our president is making good on his long-promised plan to suspend or waive some or most of the indebtedness that so many people are carrying as a result of loans they’ve taken out to pay for college. What will this entail? According to Penn-Wharton budget projections, forgiveness of up to $10,000 for those with incomes under $125,000/year would cost the American taxpayer over $300 billion next year, and an additional $30 billion spread out over the next ten years. At first glance this appears to be a good idea: humane, compassionate, and intended to be helpful to Americans struggling to keep up. But forgiveness of monies owed is a far different thing than wiping a slate clean for floundering teens in a math class. Ours was an offer affecting us and us alone—a chance to either change our ways or suffer the consequences. Mr. Biden’s proposals appear to be a present with no strings attached, one which will saddle an already over-burdened tax-paying public.
It remains to be seen whether this president, or any president, has the constitutional right to declare financial amnesty on such a scale. Politically this is a most controversial step to take in a heavily inflated, recession-hampered economy already carrying a national debt that is twice as much as our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and larger than any other country on the planet. Since we are already well past that tipping point where bankruptcy and default threaten the continued viability of our nation, adding more debt seems foolhardy. If that weren’t enough, blanket forgiveness of college debt raises several moral issues that can’t be dismissed by the stroke of a presidential pen. Is it right to mandate that 143 million income tax paying Americans (representing 43% of our total population) pick up the tab for the 45 million who have incurred debt in pursuit of elective educational advancement? Shouldn’t this burden be borne—or at least shared—-by those institutions whose costs and loan programs have helped turn aspiring students into decades-long debtors? Since tuitions have risen 33% in the past two decades, and lending institutions charge their borrowers much more in interest than they pay out to their depositors, it would seem right that they accept their civic duty in helping ease the debt load of their “customers”.
I can only imagine what kind of signal this will send to both lenders and those who will need to borrow in the coming years. Will tuition and loan contracts have any meaning in a climate where they can be cancelled from on high? Will we incentivize more people to overextend themselves, counting on some political magic wand to absolve them of their debts? And if we clean the slate for so many now complaining of the $1.7 trillion in college debt they owe, what does that say, not only to taxpayers but to the millions of citizens who either paid off their college obligations or chose to forego college in following other employment and career paths? Too bad for you? Tough luck, sucker? That’s quite a bitter pill to swallow for the more than 60% of Americans who never went to college or incurred deficits that they will now be asked to cover for those who did. And it sticks in the craw of the millions of students, and their families, who worked before, during and after college to pay the debts they incurred, but paid off over many years.
What is motivating such a proposal at this time? Is it enlightened compassion for the less fortunate? Perhaps to a degree. Or is it a give-away, a bribe if you will, that politicians often use to garner votes and contributions from those who will most benefit from their largess in redistributing other people’s wealth? The skeptic in me has no trouble smelling an ingenuous motive at work here. Furthermore I find it ironic that we have recently adopted several political initiatives, from sanctuary cities to debt forgiveness, that offer asylum for those fleeing their countries, the law, or their financial obligations—all derived from a Bible which we otherwise disdain. Why do these scriptural prescriptions find favor with us, when others, like capital punishment, slavery and polygamy, are so repugnant to us? Such picking and choosing of what seems expedient in today’s climate of shifting political values is hardly a testament to the nobility of our convictions or the integrity of our character.
Most religions, Christianity in particular, lift up a theology of Grace in conceiving the will and way of God. Whether commanded to forgive those who have offended us, perhaps even 490 times, or restoring the fortunes of debtors in sabbatical and jubilee restitutions of property, people of faith are urged to consider the needs of the other as much as, if not more so, than their own. Yet those offers of grace and pardon are always followed by the understanding that to those whom much is given, much is expected in return. Should college debts be forgiven with no strings attached, it will only serve to swell the already bloated portion of our population who are essentially wards of a government that has made them its dependents. Just as damaging, it will further cripple an economy that has been limping since COVID, while embittering those who have worked hard and sacrificed to make good on their obligations.
There is a truism here that, I fear, all of us have and will continue to witness: Grace that is given with no expectations attached and no responsibilities implied in return, is neither amazing, nor enduring. While it assuredly is the prerogative of God to offer, in our self-interested hands, it comes across as just plain cheap.
