Teaching Americans How to Think
When James Matthew Sawatzki decided he had taught Americans how to think for about four decades now, retirement was his intuitive choice. He has always taught people how to think. The distinction has always been important to him. In an era of politics based on steel masterpieces of outrage, slogans, and bitter certainties masquerading as the truth, Sawatzki is one of a few people who have built a career and now a second act of twisting the idea of democracy around to show people with understanding how the whole circus really operates.
Jay Sawatzki is the author of Fixing America: Essays on Domestic and Foreign Policy, published in January 2024, a book that does not flatter its readers but respects them. It assumes curiosity. It demands attention. It asks Americans to look beneath the surface of political talking points and examine the deeper structures that shape policy failures, social division, and civic paralysis. It has been well received by readers and earned a number of critical endorsements, the most notable being that of Noam Chomsky, who simply called it “an interesting work” – as well as academic commendations for its clarity and provocation.
Growing Up Inside History
But the book is inseparable from the man who wrote it, a retired public school teacher from the Pacific Northwest who has lived through some of the most turbulent decades of American history. Sawatzki was himself born into a stable and supportive household, something he has long recognized as an advantage. He grew up in a home where ideas mattered, discussion was encouraged, and national events filtered into daily life through conversation and the evening news.
He came of age during a period marked by sweeping cultural and political change: the Beat Generation, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Woodstock, and the reverberations of the late 1960s and early 1970s. These shifts in the social fabric left a deep impression on him. “I watched the Vietnam War from the safety of a split-level house,” he would later tell his students, the privilege of that observation not escaping him at the time.
Lessons from the Classroom
The school itself can bear the seeds of growth; in his professional career spanning thirty-eight years, Sawatzki taught humanities, history, literature, and political thought. He confessed that his interdisciplinary training had to be so. Nobody can see the isolated idea in its full power, claimed Sawatzki.
One of the moments that still characterizes for him the potential of America came from witnessing what happens when opportunity finally meets ability. A young woman enrolled in special education classes would always finish her work early and spend the remainder of the class period in the library. One day, she encountered college-level reading material being studied by advanced students in Sawatzki’s class. She approached him with a photocopied page and asked a simple question: Why don’t I get to study this? Within days, she was enrolled in his class. She later rose through professional ranks to hold a senior leadership role in state education.
In another instance, a student teaching about a modern artist endeavored to recreate one of Laurie Anderson’s experimental musical instruments and lead a wide-ranging discussion about music itself. Sawatzki remained quiet. He did not need to intervene. That student today also holds a senior leadership role within state education.
These experiences reaffirmed what he already believed: talent is broadly distributed; opportunity is not.
When Education Meets Civic Action
Five years into teaching, Sawatzki came to realize that educators perform a form of blue-collar labor compared with professions such as nursing or policing, rather than existing within the sheltered confines of the academy. High school teachers receive no sabbaticals, but they do develop stamina. He loved the work, but knew he would need to leave the profession before bitterness crept in. “For everything there is a season,” he said. His first love was writing, and retirement finally allowed him to return to it.
Politics followed Sawatzki into the classroom long before it became fashionable for educators to engage publicly. Before education policy debates became mainstream, he had already advocated for charter schools. He ran political campaigns, assisted local efforts connected to a historic U.S. Senate race in the early 1990s, and worked as a citizen lobbyist and party chair. His professional role, however, remained constant: teaching ninth-grade honors students not only how government works, but how to engage with it.
One of the most transformative elements of his teaching involved students researching pending legislation for an entire year. They wrote white papers, prepared three-minute speeches and thirty-second elevator pitches, then rose before dawn to board buses to the state capitol, where they presented their arguments directly to legislators. For many, the experience was eye-opening. They learned that meaningful change was inconsistent and slow. It was a form of participatory democracy that demanded far more than holding opinions.
Writing Fixing America
Those experiences shaped Fixing America. The book was written out of frustration, not cynicism. At a Washington Education Association convention, Sawatzki once proposed expanding school choice and educator empowerment, only to be met with jeers so loud he could not formally present his ideas. Copies of his proposal were thrown into the air. When parliamentary procedure finally forced the assembly to consider it, a deeper truth emerged: despite the appearance of broad representation, the body was dominated by a single ideological bloc.
The lesson was not partisan but structural. Institutions often claim to represent diverse constituencies while serving narrow interests. Addressing root problems threatens careers; confronting symptoms is easier.
Chapter 5 of Fixing America, titled “The Powerless: Of Witch Hunts, Red Scares, Richard Hofstadter, UFOs, and Marjorie Taylor Greene,” explores conspiracy thinking in American history. Distrust has always played a role in American politics, from early colonial fears to the McCarthy era and beyond. When understanding collapses, fear rushes in to fill the void.
Hope Without Illusion
Dense with history and moral urgency, Sawatzki’s work often requires extensive context to support a single paragraph. He does not simplify for easy consumption but clarifies complexity to empower readers. His tone is critical without being nihilistic. Faith in human potential underpins his optimism.
Though sometimes buried beneath analysis, his central aim is to counter the creeping pessimism that suggests America is beyond repair. Media incentives and political self-interest often reward maximum conflict, while social media amplifies grievance. Yet the political center, he believes, is more fragile and more reachable – than commonly assumed.
The Argument Continues
Sawatzki’s rhetoric has been compared to that of thinkers such as Chomsky, Krugman, and Reich. He does not object to the comparison, but resists being elevated alongside them. He sees himself not as a distinguished academic or literary stylist, but as a translator – someone who extracts complex ideas and presents them accessibly to those willing to engage.
Now residing in Portugal, he works primarily at night due to the time difference with the United States. Retirement has not slowed him. Alongside ongoing political writing, he has completed drafts of a future work chronicling his early experiences abroad.
For Sawatzki, success is not measured in royalties, but in impact: conversations sparked, classrooms engaged, citizens activated.
The essential takeaway from Fixing America? Hope comes first, followed closely by responsibility and action. “Grit yourself up,” he says. “Lend a hand. Set to work.”
For readers willing to engage seriously with democracy’s challenges, Fixing America is not a prescription. It is an invitation.
Book Link
https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-America-Essays-Domestic-Foreign/dp/1958877506
Author Website
https://jamessawatzki.com/
Author Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-aGdamM7eI
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sawatzki-a8642982/
