THE SECRET TO WHY WE'RE NOT MOVING

The US Census Bureau just reported another record. This time a half-century record low in the number of Americans who are moving. Only 35 million of us changed residences last year, the lowest tally since 1962....!

Now I happen to remember 1962. It was a lovely year, before the tragedy of Dallas, the quagmire of Vietnam, and the street protests. Doris Day movies still sold, and music by Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee still had trans-generational appeal. And, on a personal note, the students in my US History classes were still proud to be Americans and America was still proud of them.

With that sort of easy national ethos, why move? Things generally seemed to be perfectly nice right where we were!

But of course nothing -- nice or nasty -- ever stays the same. The sixties soon changed. Crises mounted, angers flared, even the nice kids in my classes began asking angry questions about their country. Anger, of course, is a secondary emotion so you have to ask what's triggering it? For those of us who were there trying to mollify it, the best explanation is: Doubt. Something I assume Chicago's new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan understands very well.

There's a striking parallel between American then and America now .Youth in both periods begin doubting many of those things they once took (or were taught to take) for granted. The government, police and military. Churches, parents, oh yes and US History teachers. Suddenly it wasn't -- and isn't now -- as easy to pitch America to your high school students. Students who are watching their parents lose their jobs and their pensions, banks and stockbrokers lose their credibility, leaders and heroes lose their shine. Doubts like these make anyone angry. And should.

Now I have no way of testing my modest hypothesis. After all, people aren't moving as much today for many many different reasons. However, there is something running through classrooms today very symptomatic of the sixties: Doubts-driven angers that must surely suck up some of the air of confidence that usually motivates families to move around.

US History teachers who've been around for both these decades-of-doubt have an institutional instinct for this sort of thing. We can feel the dangers that doubt and anger can mean for our classrooms. And for Secretary Duncan 's reform agenda. However, we can't fundamentally alter this dynamic. Neither can Duncan. The one man best equipped for this is the President himself.

His steady, pragmatic confidence in our country can help ease the doubts and thereby ease the angers. So far he strikes most US History teachers as beginning to do that. If so, I predict it will be a lot easier for us to start teaching upbeat American history again, and for our kids' families to start moving up and on again.