I don't have an answer to either, but maybe here's a start: on Thursday, I told my students that none of us, as yet, had any answers about this election. I made each class spend five minutes writing down every question they could think of on index cards. At the end of the day, I had a towering stack of cards, one that defied any attempt to contain its abundance: rubber bands, paper clips, and folders were all useless and I ended up putting the cards loose in my backpack.About a third of the questions were repeats, wondering how Donald Trump was elected. Most of my students are from Brooklyn, have rarely left Brooklyn; they do not know a world where so many would vote for Trump. Their incredulity rings clear in their questions -- why? how? What will happen now?
Other questions, though, get deeper. My students are smart, perceptive, naive, funny and afraid. Some questions dig deeply into policy and politics; others reveal vast, cavernous fears. A sampling, presented without further comment:
