Category: Empathy

A Kind of Certainty: V. Fleeting Uncertainty

Click here to read Pt IV. A Kind of Faith

A Kind of Certainty

V. Fleeting Uncertainty

Like a vast sea of experience is all that we know and learn and encounter every single day. We are but tiny ships bobbing and rolling upon its waves, its currents steering us here and there. How on earth do we discern and decide what we value, what we believe, in order to collaborate with others in meaningful curricular relationships? (One almost prefers they might be waylaid by pirates, or something.) For me, one way to decide is to consider our shared motives, then find incentives to collaborate from there. Notwithstanding the degree to which people are educated, or by whom, everybody has motives.

But we do not all necessarily have a particular destination or a future port-of-call. So the aim for curriculum appears to be that of shaping motives to coincide with the current state of affairs such that, in a broad sense, people can (a) function – a measure of the self-ful[1] – and then (b) contribute – a measure of the selfless. Upon this vast sea, we are not so much bound for any one destination as we are bound to assist each other, each underway to wherever best suits our particular circumstances at that time – yours for you, and mine for me – and let the tangents direct us as they will.

Education, I have come to learn, is learning to have more than a destination or purpose of my own. It is to convoy with others and have faith that they do the same for others and for me, and putting in to decidedly worthwhile ports-of-call on the way. On the way, we chart our courses, but as similar as the ocean might look any given moment, wave after rolling wave, no two moments are ever exactly alike. To that degree, everyone must chart on their own. How intentionally we aid each other, how much or how little we trust, how sincerely we navigate, it is our shared curricula that will determine how effectively we undertake any particular decision we are ever likely to face, alongside whomever we find ourselves. The more we convoy in earnest, the safer we will be. With that kind of support, what is it that would sink us?

One final cautionary note: if and when some finally do make landfall somewhere, with certainty to their decision, we must acknowledge that their perspective will shift dramatically from those others who remain, however more or less certain to remain, out at sea. Not everyone wants to remain out at sea, and such variances our curricula are obliged to accommodate, if not fully comprehend or appreciate. There on that solid shore might be a tighter homogeneous culture that yields a more one-sided – or dogmatic? prejudiced? – communal certainty all its own. On that shore we might find a trade-off that sets the communal trustworthiness of the bobbing convoy against the stable individual footing of landfall. Yet somehow we all must sustain what we share, no matter the differences that may arise between sailor and landlubber – and why?

Because what remains the same amongst us – indeed, that which makes us who and what we are – is what we have in common. Common to all of us is being alive, being a person, being a human being, someone deserving of a basic respect for human dignity. Each of us, all of us, every one of us. We are all people. In this regard, really all that differs between us is where we are, and when. For people to think in any way differently than this about other people is narrow, delusional, perhaps cruel, and flat-out wrong. That may hardly feel a satisfactory closing, maybe even anti-climactic, but who ever said learning was meant to be entertainment?[2] Learning’s the thing wherein we catch the conscience of each other.

Click here for the Bibliography

Click here to read Pt I. An Uncertain Faith

Endnotes

[1] Forgive the invention, “self-ful.” I hesitated to use “selfish,” which tends to connote self-seeking and self-aggrandizing behaviour (in that colloquial sense of “No, you can’t have any of my ice cream”), and taking inspiration from the Bard, I just made up a word of my own. Likewise, I do not use “selfless” in some altruistic way so much as simply to counter “self-ful”; as a pair, I intend them to signify simply the notion of there being, for each of us, an intrinsic “me” and plenty of extrinsic “not me’s.” Further, with my students, I would liken self-fulness to each one’s academic efforts and scholarship, and selflessness to voluntary service and community stewardship of whatever kind. The longer-term idea was teaching students to balance these as required by kairos, by circumstance – an appropriate time for each, and the wisdom to know the difference.

[2] Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a curricular role for those gnarly amphibious surfers, after all.

Hawai'i Summer 2008
Teacher at work: catch a wave to catch the conscience?

Lest We Forget

I am indebted to three of my students – Maddy, Kira, and Shannon – for collaborating to write this essay, which we formally read aloud during a school Remembrance Day ceremony in 2013. As I told them at the time, our planning sessions together were as good as any committee-style work I’ve ever done – everyone thoughtful, respectful, contributing, and focused – and I remain as proud of our group effort today as I was then.

I have only slightly revised our essay, for fluidity, to suit a print-format but have endeavoured to avoid any substantive changes.

One hundred years ago, the Dominion of Canada’s soldiers fought in the Great War. By November 1917, the Canadian Expeditionary Force had been in Europe for over three years, staying one more year and sacrificing their safety and their lives for their country on behalf of the British Empire.

What is sacrifice? Sacrifice is soldiers seeing past terror on the battlefield, placing themselves into vulnerability, and giving themselves on our behalf. Each year on November 11, Remembrance Day in Canada, we recognize our soldiers by wearing a poppy over our hearts. ‘Why’ a poppy is more well-known, yet since its adoption in 1921, ‘how’ the symbolic pin has remained potent is perhaps less well-considered. A century later, in such a different world, the relevance of the poppy as a way of honoring the sacrifice of wartime warrants reflection.

As time passes, the poppy’s symbolism, in and of itself, remains the same. We change – people, culture – and inevitably, as we change, our relationship with the poppy changes, too, however much or little. The poppy, the same symbol, is different for those who feel firsthand the costs of war: so many people separated, harmed, and displaced, so many lives lost.

Pains of loss are felt most intensely when they occur, by those who are closest to the people involved. For those of us with no direct wartime experience, what we feel and know matters, yet it also differs. To activate a more complete appreciation, one meaningful place to which we might turn is poetry.

During World War I, poetry was a common means for those with direct wartime experience to share, and to cope. For the lover in the poem, “To His Love,” by Ivor Gurney, one particular soldier’s death has wiped out his lover’s dreams for a comfortable future. Experiencing the fresh pains of loss, she could not possibly forget her soldier or his sacrifice. The poppy we wear both honours his sacrifice and “[hides] that red wet thing,” her loss. But, because of our distance, our poppy does not hold the same raw pain as it does for her, for those who have so immediately lost their loved ones. So, if our poppies do not hold that same raw pain, why do we continue to wear them?

The poppy stays the same because of the fact that each soldier’s death remains. Again, from “To His Love,” Gurney writes, “You would not know him now…” Generations removed, do we remember who this soldier was? Would we recognize him on the street? No. “But still he died.” We may find it difficult to assess the significance of his death, here in our world, far removed by time and distance. But let us appreciate, let us remember, in that moment of a soldier’s death, how he died: “… with due regard for decent taste.” A soldier dies with dignity, for his own sake, because that is all he has. He is a small blip in the universe. “But still he died,” and that will forever be. And for all who loved him, and for all he loved, we remember.

We continue to honour our soldiers, and the sacrifices of all during wartime, because of the timelessness of that sacrifice, which each one makes. Even now, removed from war, we can find reasons to remember the deaths of soldiers because the memory that remains of each soldier embodies our definition of a hero: ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances and giving themselves, perhaps giving their lives, on our behalf. When we wear their poppies, we let their deaths weigh on our present.

Let their deaths weigh on our present, and let their memories live in their stead.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

From KQED News – How a Chilliwack School Ditched Awards and Assemblies to Refocus on Kids and Learning

What a terrific story from Chilliwack, BC being covered by Linda Flanagan for California’s Bay Area PBS news outlet.

Photograph credit: Flickr/Sarah

Agreed! Excellence is a culture.

Some leaders talk a great game, but no matter the words coming out of their mouths, people respond to the culture they’re part of, and within it, they respond in both overt and subtle ways.

By the way, leaders aren’t limited to those in the head office… leaders are people who take initiative, work to their strengths, and lift others to do the same thing… so pay attention to making your strengths and inspiration constructive instead of deflating or injurious.

If you aren’t getting the results you expected, then reflect and consider what reality people are experiencing and which messages they may be receiving around your place, maybe unintended ones, that might conflict or work against your aims for attitude and behaviour.

It’s a shame when aims and culture contradict. It’s hypocrisy when aims are ignored or undermined by deliberately contradictory culture.

No shame in reflection. Reflection is learning, and learning’s a virtue.

Also agreed! School education should be “looking beyond the short term and thinking more about what kinds of adults they’re trying to develop.” That’s always been my approach.

Post-secondary, career, parenthood, civic involvement… all these and more will come about, and with guidance, let each person find their own way. But the adult human beings making their life decisions need a virtuous, thoughtful, positive foundation, and that’s what school education should always be about.

Click here to read Linda Flanagan’s story.