I am trying to win an argument with President Trump for the souls of my students

In June 2015, when Donald J. Trump descended an escalator to a crowd of paid worshipers and made the bizarre assertion that Mexico sends people to the United States and that they are “rapists,” I faced a teaching dilemma. I have always tried to remain an impartial arbiter of politics and culture and push students to do the hard work of drawing their own conclusions based on logic and evidence. But this was different.

For nearly half my students, those words were a slandering of their parents and grandparents and themselves, and I found it necessary to let them know that as far as I was concerned, they were as welcome in this country as anyone else. We are a nation of laws and immigration laws are among them, but we also have a Declaration of Independence that says “all men are created equal." 

This man’s discourse has forced me, during his presidency, to abandon a fundamental element of good teaching practice, at least temporarily. It is disappointing but not surprising. Intellectual and moral whiplash seems to be President Trump’s calling card.

I still try for objectivity with students where possible. For example, while Trump’s public statements provide seemingly endless examples of logical fallacies, he need not be singled out since there is no shortage of logic-contorting politicians.

My students aim to ignore Trump 

Trump, however, is peerless when it comes to the rhetorical derangements — the petty insults, the whining self-pity, the threats — he spews from his mouth and his Twitter account. He is not the first ill-tempered or foul-mouthed leader with a bully’s penchant for vulgarity and cruelty in private, and one could argue that outing the outrages is more honest. But as an educator, as someone who tries to encourage young people to be civil and respectful, in a community where disrespect gets people killed, I am concerned about the accumulating effect on students of seeing and hearing someone of such high office stooping so low.

Most of my students tell me they try to ignore the president — his rhetoric, his outbursts, his policies. Consequently, they end up ignoring politics in general. I have always tried to convince students that understanding the world is the first step toward making it a better place. But for many of my students, living on Planet Trump has encouraged ignorance as the only reliable alternative to outrage and despair.

Not that there is any real escaping Trump’s bratty invective. I think it manages to seep into their consciousness, even as they try to ignore it, and influences and informs their view of the world. They can’t make themselves forget that Trump wants them and their families banished from this country. That, according to him, even people of color born in the United States should “go back” where they came from. And that he has referred to those places as “s------- countries.” 

But it goes deeper than that. Adolescence is a tumultuous time for pretty much everyone. Many students exist in a continual state of crisis. It's particularly true for those whose lives are shaded by poverty, violence and abuse. They look to adults for stability and guidance. Those who’ve witnessed or absorbed enough cruelty and destructiveness start to believe that the world is a hateful place, and that no one can be trusted. They adapt in ways that can ultimately marginalize them as adults.

It’s important that teachers and other adults in their lives — along with parents, if they have them and they are able — present an alternative vision of the world built on respect, trust and the value of hard work and community. I have often told discouraged new teachers not to give in to the persistent cynicism of students. They are battering us with what is battering them. They are asking us to help make it stop. It is not, to say the least, helpful to have a president behave in a manner flagrantly cynical and uncompromisingly self-serving.

Repetition is what makes it work:Trump won't stop his racially charged rhetoric.

It's one thing for me to try to convince students that love and justice and personal fulfillment are possible, and that by believing in those things and in the value of hard work, they can do great things. But how strong is my case if the man whose position epitomizes success is, through the vengeance of his language, telling everyone that the opposite is true?

I am trying to win an argument with the president of the United States for the souls of young people. I and a lot of other educators and parents and other mentors. We are determined to win that argument. And I'm not confident we will always prevail.

Adults like Trump destabilize kids 

The president says never apologize, and lives up to that credo pretty much all the time. But for my students, humility and self-reflection are survival skills. The president’s apologists say that when you punch him, he punches back — some say twice as hard (his wife once said 10 times as hard). But in many instances, if my students “punch back,” verbally or physically, the consequences can be profound.

The president uses thug terminology to refer to people with the courage to expose corruption and threatens people who are a threat to his power. My students have always understood the thug ethos and vocabulary all too well. It is a dark cloud under which many of them and their families live. But not until now has a president openly endorsed it.

It is destabilizing for kids to see anyone in any position of authority exhibit such pettiness, cruelty, immaturity, lack of discipline and narcissism. They may themselves indulge in such undisciplined thinking and behavior, but they desperately need adults to show them the way. Even if they’ve never read "Lord of the Flies," kids seem to understand that the future of humanity depends on them and their generation growing up into reasonable adults.

I am an idealist — as I believe every teacher should be — but I don’t expect President Trump to temper his rhetoric or reform his ethos. What we can do is help young people put things in perspective. Remind them that a president is not a supreme ruler, and that politics and government are complex mechanisms inhabited by flawed people.

Here's how I teach across race:I'm a white teacher with a classroom of minority students.

Trump’s tweets and other public statements are opportunities to understand the power of words, the art and sometimes deceptiveness of rhetoric, and to develop their critical reasoning skills so they can see through the deceptions of Trump or anyone else. The role of the teacher should always be to get students to understand and critique, so that they can move in the world in a conscious and enlightened way.

Recently, a student of mine remarkably linked Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" to Trump. Not because of any cold bloodedness on the part of Trump, but because the innovation of the nonfiction novel ultimately led to so-called reality TV, which made Trump famous enough to become president.

I think my students have gained a deeper and more complex understanding of a lot of things as the result of the ugly rhetoric of the president. I just hope they haven't lost all respect for me and you and the rest of the adult population for elevating the man and his debasements.

Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, most recently "Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher" and, on audio, "Now's the Time" (narrated by Kim Fields). Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss