Righting Wrongs

            “I was wrong.”

            We don’t hear that statement very often. At least not that directly. Sometimes it comes veiled in a superficial or automatic apology, or supplemented by rationalization. Even those brave enough to say it often give a shrug of the shoulders, faces red with embarrassment. So when we hear someone say this with a genuine ownership, it jars us. We’re taken aback, disarmed in whatever may have been the disagreement. We forgive the other person. We even develop greater respect for her or him. “I was wrong” is a powerful statement.

            So why do we have such problems with being wrong and accepting it?

            I recently started reading Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. I’m not far into it—perhaps 25%. It’s a fascinating book, a wonderful mix of far-reaching epistemology and cultural history with wonderful current references and humor. It’s also a slow book in the best sense: I find myself stopping rather frequently because I have to rethink some ideas I’ve held as the answers to this question. This post will synthesize some of Schulz‘s general points and my own, as they are aligning in some key ways.

            Human beings like to be right. It seems part of our DNA. From little kids raising their hands and shouting, “Ooh! I know!” to politicians filibustering on Capitol Hill, we want people to know that we know. I want you to read this blog and believe I have some secret understanding you might be able to grasp. Such is the human ego’s hunger for fulfillment. Conversely, there is the human fear of rejection—not just for being wrong, but even for disagreeing with the norm. Comfort comes with being right; we feel affirmed as part of a community of believers. If we were unable to live with the confidence that we are right about most things, we would become paralyzed with doubt, like a modern Hamlet questioning our own existence and unable to act.

            Too much certainty clearly produces problems. Few of us like a know-it-all, particularly one who might rub it in our faces. Smugness and arrogance hold little appeal. At worst, certainty becomes zealotry. Schulz illustrates how this leads to a purely binary view of the world, with something being either right or wrong. Taken to an extreme, this zealotry becomes the sort of fanaticism associated with Nazis or the Taliban. “Rightness” then takes on moral overtones and fuels the imperative to wipe out “wrongness.”

            While the above is dramatic, in our daily lives this can have severe consequences. My favorite line from Schulz’s book thus far: “…certainty is lethal to two of our most redeeming and humane qualities, imagination and empathy” (Note Loc 2644, Kindle edition). Imagination—as reflected in human creativity in every sense--is perhaps the most vital quality behind human progress. Without it, we would see no possibility other than that which has been “known.” To use Sir Ken Robinson’s quip in making this point, “Without human creativity, you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Largely because you wouldn’t have a bed to get out of.” As for humans having less empathy, aren’t our relationships already complicated enough?

            We also like to be right because our educational systems stress that more than anything else. Curricula have long been structured around content, and mastery is measured by the percentage of items answered “correctly.” Standardized tests are accepted as signs of intelligence and knowledge. (A relevant aside: I remember even as a child looking at multiple choice and true-false items and thinking, “Well, sometimes, but what about..?”) Essay writing is often reduced to following a formula, yet the five-paragraph essay seldom appears outside school. We have moved far from the roots of the genre, the very name of which denotes an attempt to understand.

            Therein lies the real challenge that schools have to embrace. We have to help young people realize that they don’t know, but that they believe. And that that’s okay. We don’t want cynicism or nihilism, but we should nurture healthy skepticism. We can foster the attitude that power does not come from pure knowledge. Instead, power comes from knowing what and how to question. It’s all about the ongoing struggle to understand. To move closer to possibly being right, we first must be able to say, “I was wrong.”

           

Polishing Up on The Golden Rule

            At least on paper, the Golden Rule is wonderfully simple: Treat others as you would like them to treat you. I’ve been thinking about this maxim quite a bit lately, mainly because we have been working through The Sermon on the Mount in our daily chapel services. Many cultures throughout history have had some version of the Golden Rule, all grouped under the philosophical construct called The Ethic of Reciprocity. It’s a clear enough directive, and it should be easy to follow. That’s why teachers so often invoke some variation of it when creating their classroom culture. Of course, human nature interferes with the execution. And that’s why, as is usually the case with any of Jesus’ teaching (even if this sermon is more direct than most, at least on the surface), some key points remain unsaid.

            The grammatical structure of the rule puts the onus on the subject. You. As Tom Peters points out, “The thing about the Golden Rule is, the first move is yours.” In every encounter you can set the tone; you can determine the level of discourse. You can attempt to make every encounter as positive as possible in the circumstances.

            Achieving this necessitates an addition to the Golden Rule. It has to be more than treating others as you would like to be treated. Think about how you would like to be treated if you were the other person in that particular situation. Otherwise, it verges on narcissism. Mastering the Golden Rule requires empathy.

            Schools have ever-expanding curricula to deliver, each program being vital to a young person’s holistic development. We’re demanding that kids achieve more at younger ages. At the same time, we must not forget that education must remain a human—and, I hope, humane—endeavor. Otherwise, we risk creating a generation who, to use one of my wife’s favorite sayings, may make straight As and flunk life.

           

Skidding Out

            Last Saturday, having been cooped up four days because of a freak ice storm in Dallas, I ventured to the grocery store. The street from my neighborhood to the main thoroughfare is entirely shaded, so it remained a solid sheet of ice. As I waited to turn onto it, a woman drove by—talking on her phone. My daughter and I made some appropriately disparaging comments about the woman’s intelligence, and I made sure to keep an even larger distance behind her car. Sure enough, as the woman approached the intersection, she hit the brakes too late and too hard. She skidded into the road and narrowly missed being broadsided.

            The next day in the “Community Opinions” section, The Dallas Morning News had a point-counterpoint section entitled “Driven to distraction?” Elizabeth Suggs argues that one should “embrace the clutter that Facebook and other luxuries bring to your life.” Towards the end she writes,

...We’ve turned a lot of weird little ‘wants’ into ‘needs’ in modern society.

            Take me, for example. While writing this column, I have checked my e-mail no less than 15 times. I’ve checked Facebook twice. I’ve listened to my iTunes on shuffle nonstop.

            So when you read this column, if it seems scatter-brained, blame it on my media. But don’t blame me. I have to partake in these daily luxuries. They’re just as essential to me as my daily coffee and my TiVo queue. (Full column)

Contrast this to how Brynne Sissom begins her column:

As an author, I have been seeking better means to a better experience of writing and as a human being, a life better-lived. I found part of an answer when I read a review last autumn of Jonathan Franzen’s book, Freedom. The review’s photographs of his very bare writing room moved me. It was empty of books and research paperwork. It appeared that little or nothing was on the wall. You could liken his writing room to a cell, except that it was plenty big enough to walk around in. His computer wasn’t connected to the Internet. (Full column)

Sissom goes on to explain how much better life has been—professionally and personally—since she disconnected.

            I’ve written about this before, in a post entitled “To Screen or not to Screen.” My final point in the column had to do with the development of an inner self. These two columns have prompted me to explore that idea a bit further.

            Granted, both Suggs and Sissom represent the extremes in connectivity. The former is hyper-connected; the latter, non-connected. I don’t really see either as the issue. What strikes me as truly worrisome is that both cede personal control and ultimate responsibility. For example, Suggs is the author of the piece but we’re not not to blame her if the piece seems scatterbrained? I’d like to think I were missing some sarcasm. Sissom reminds me of Seth Godin’s refrain that people find all kinds of reasons “not to ship.”

            It’s become all too easy for us to deify technology and ascribe it superpowers. But ultimately it’s just a tool, and how it’s used is a human decision. A pen can form the characters of a love letter or hate mail. The printing press has mass produced religious works, political tracts of every persuasion, and smut. On just about any issue, we blame media so easily that I think we forget that we can make up our own minds. This mindset also ignores the fact that media caters to our desires. It reminds me of along-in-office politicians who slam governmental gridlock as the reason things don’t done.

            In any arena, how we act is up to us. We decide how we want to harness the power of technology. We can use it for great growth and communal knowledge, or we can watch hours of silly videos and check inane tweets the second they pop up. It’s about exercising our own self-discipline, depth, and integrity. (If you want some great suggestions on how to do so, read this.)

            We also have to make sure we’re teaching our children this larger lesson. Education can’t just be about content or skills. It’s not about how to use technology. It’s not about behaving in a connected and/or virtual community. Education has to be about learning how to live a meaningful, purposeful life in any circumstances. Forgot that, and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see kids skidding dangerously on some ice.

On Educational Fomentation

            For the past ten years or so, educational revolutionaries have relied on what seems an obvious truth: “The Internet changes everything!” For the ten years before that, technology in general.

            It really hasn’t, at least not in some very fundamental ways. That’s where most of these reformers miss the point in how to bring about what is desirable transformation. So to any educational reformers who happen to be reading, consider this free, friendly advice.

Rethink the attitude.

            Many reformers become revolutionary zealots who tend to process issues in binary code: Teachers who do this or that are great; those who don’t must be trained (like dogs) and adapt or be fired. They present points with a smugness that implies they pity anyone who just can’t get it. When pushed, they express disbelief that someone might not see this as clearly as they do. Also, people don’t particularly like dramatic change, particularly when told it’s necessary because they are doing things wrong. However, they often embrace a larger compelling purpose. Towards that end, encouragement trumps disparagement. Instead of daring people to leap off cliffs, help them take small steps. Recently Doug Johnson wrote about just this idea on his Blue Skunk Bog.

Rethink the logic.

            The usual argument goes this way: The world is changing in accelerating fashion; we have no way to know what the next few years will bring, let alone the next few decades. No question...but then the logic disintegrates. The reformer will invoke trends and futurists, proceeding to tell us what people will need in that unpredictable future.

           

Rethink the basic argument.

            Yes, digital technology has destabilized human culture. But the skills that reformers stress have long been basic facets of humanity. Indeed, they have been crucial to our very humanness.

·         Critical Thinking Skills. Weren’t these at the heart of Plato’s Dialogues? Wasn’t Jesus prompting these in his enigmatic preaching? John Dewey believed his practical philosophy of education should lead to social reform, a process that necessitates critical thinking. Art Costa has been writing about Habits of Mind—mental qualities necessary for critical thinking—since at least the early 1990s.

·         Creativity. Artistic and Intellectual. From at least the earliest cave paintings, people have used art to express the story of humanity. Our ability to use language is tied to our conception of tools, a merging of both types of creativity. The inventions that have sparked historical change—writing, clock, printing press, steam engine, microprocessor—are dramatic examples of how creativity has driven human progress.

·         Information Gathering. From the Royal Library in Ancient Alexandria to the U.S. Library of Congress, from the Capitoline Museums to the Smithsonian, we have a long history of creating glorious edifices to house and organize our collective knowledge. We do this because of our innate desire to learn. Nothing seems more natural than small children asking endless questions about everything they encounter.

·         Social Connectivity. The salons of Europe, coffeehouses of the 1950s and 1960s, the marketplaces of Ancient Greece and Modern Africa, neighbors chatting over the fence—we are social creatures interested in each other.

·         Collaborations. Early humans began to gather force when they gathered in small packs, and then we quickly developed societies for the common good. The Manhattan Project brought together many of the world’s greatest minds to end World War II more quickly. American’s Founding Fathers collaborated to create a governmental system generally resistant to the constant turmoil of others.

Rethink the Nature of Revolution.

            Are these skills likely to be even more vital in the future? No doubt. They are now essential rather than merely desirable. But as suggested above, the Internet has not changed their role in human progress. It has changed how much more easily people can exercise them. They now have tools and access which harness some of humans’ most desirable traits. Once people have experienced that power, they don’t want to give it up. Real revolution happens when the people rise.

            I’m not suggesting our students are ready to revolt in a way that changes schools drastically. (At least not yet.) I’m urging that we all rethink the essential argument. It’s not about some paradigmatic shift in the course of history. Instead, the call to action should focus on empowering students in ways that allow them to participate meaningfully in the long arc of human history.

On Your Mark! Get Set!...

                Henry David Thoreau explains towards the beginning of Walden,

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise [sic] resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Why did Thoreau begin his little experiment? He had a pretty wide streak of civil disobedience running through him, but he wasn’t anti-social. In fact, while he craved solitude, he also welcomed many visitors to his humble pond-side abode. The reason was quite simple. His friend Ellery Channing told Thoreau  that to fulfill his intellectual potential, he should build himself a remote hut where he could concentrate. It seems that the hectic pace of life in bustling Concord, Mass, had become too distracting for Master Thoreau.

                Imagine if he were suddenly transported to America 2011. I suspect old Hank would understand quickly why we’re sponsoring a screening of Race to Nowhere.

                I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’ve heard about it for quite a while. As I’ve stated directly and suggested many times in this blog and elsewhere, I’m very worried about the demands placed on kids and the pressure they feel to achieve. I’ve explained it as a non-virtuous circle:

To twist another idea from the business world, I fear that top schools have gotten caught up in a non-virtuous circle. You may know that in the concept of the virtuous circle, certain aspects of an organization are plotted on a circle as they affect each other. The circle generates momentum, like a flywheel. The organization grows stronger.

                In the non-virtuous circle, however, the effects are deleterious. Here’s how that happens. Independent schools want to fulfill their missions, so they try to do more. Parents want to see a return on their investments in those schools. So schools try to do more. Parents want their kids to have advantages, so they do more outside of school. More leads to more leads to more leads to... (http://tokeepthingswhole.blogspot.com/2010/12/lessons-from-break.html )

Rationally, we know this is happening and that it’s not ideal. But—I speak as both educator and parent—emotions (mainly fear, I suspect) and current realities keep us from breaking that cycle. The discussions after the film should prove fascinating and, I hope, empowering.

                The film’s title evokes two metaphors people like to use when talking about rearing children, education, self-discovery, life. Both are clichés, but clichés become such because they ring with some essential truth we all can grasp. The first: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Definitely. Besides appreciating the typical idea behind this, I also like it because so many people train for a marathon not as a race but as a personal challenge. The second: the idea of a journey.

                It prompts me to remember a book that I had not thought about for many years: William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. On old-fashioned road maps, the interstates that we hurtle along are marked in red. Blue highways are the roads which have been supplanted by the interstates and throughways. They meander along the natural terrain rather than slice through it. Suddenly they enter small towns which struggle to remain isolated. Newly divorced and having lost his teaching job, Heat Moon outfitted a van and set off to explore America via only blue highways. In offbeat places he encounters even more offbeat characters. Of course, Heat Moon also has many personal revelations about himself and human nature:

What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.

...

Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.

It’s reminiscent of that innocent time when a bug on the sidewalk or interesting cloud would launch a spectrum of musing. Significantly, while Heat Moon has a rough plan for his journey—to circle America—he remains open to various detours, switchbacks, and random jags. He learns to trust in a mix of instinct and serendipity, to revel in wherever the road may lead. As one reviewer noted, “It's a contention of Heat Moon's—believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he's going to get—that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and remake him.” Over time it becomes the slow process of self-discovery.

                Heat Moon has a bravado and courage about venturing into these unknown places. This grows throughout his travels, and he becomes particularly fond of his slowed pace across the blue highways. Indeed, the only times he seems at all jolted occur when he is somehow forced back onto interstates.

                I imagine that, while he was traversing the United States, Heat Moon realized the same idea penned by Thoreau in his little cabin, from which he seldom ventured more than a mile:

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Otherwise, life really does become a race to nowhere.