nervously diving into unfamiliar waters

For a non-techie like me, this new blog world is a little daunting. But I am excited by the opportunity to share my views in a public forum, despite the implicit vanity of that interest.
First, a short background: I am the Associate Dean of Business at a community college in California, after teaching and practicing Business Law for over twenty years. I am the first-born son of Mexican immigrants, husband of a third-grade teacher, father of three college students and one high school student. I assume that all of these facts shape my view of the world to some extent.
Just to get all of the traditional biases on the table, I am a political independent, somewhat conservative on economic policy and somewhat liberal on social policy. I named my blog DeanView because most of the opinions I plan to share have to do with education. I hope to run a college someday, and put some of these views into place.
Just to get my feet wet, I'll start with a relatively safe topic: civility. I believe that our society has become increasingly unwilling, and perhaps unable, to engage in civil discourse, and that a primary objective of our high schools and colleges should be to reverse this trend and teach our students to embrace and learn the art of civility. You know what I mean: on any day of the week you can turn your radio or television set to a channel featuring a strident host who villifies anyone with a differing political viewpoint. You can find such hosts on either end of the political spectrum, and their vitriol is poisoning our great democratic experiment. The abandonment of civil disourse is exactly how societies fragment into violent factions, as we have seen over and over again in the history of this planet. Both sides seem to believe that the other will go away if they just push hard enough. My experience is just the opposite: there seems to be an equal and opposite reaction to every political gain either side realizes, and perhaps that is as it should be in a pluralistic democracy. Which is not to say that I don't have strong political opinions of my own, but that we need to find a way to live with each other even when we disagree vehemently.
Our high schools and colleges are the best place to model and teach civility, not simply as a fundamental virtue, but as a means to ensure our survival as a democratic republic. This lesson is more important, I think, than all of the other subjects we require our students to take, and I would build it right into the curriculum at any school I led.
I have much more to say on this subject, but my wife says that if I make this blog too long, no one will read it, so I will save more for another day...