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School is supposed to teach you new skills, challenge what you think, and prepare you for the road ahead. Church is supposed to immerse you in a community of supporters, advocate for a specific faith-based worldview, and help you make sense of what it all means. Which one are you at? Are you sure? I’ve killed my share of grandmothers. Not intentionally, of course, but such is the life of a teacher. Every time we give a test or assign a paper, we doom a legion of the elderly to untimely, unfortunate deaths. I think the saddest part about the tales of woe students bring me is how transparent and unnecessary they are. The reality is that they aren’t ready. That’s fine. It’s not a crime to need a bit more time to being a project together. So ask for more time. Be honest about it. Tell your teacher or boss that you didn’t quite get to the end of the road on this particular project. Just do us both a favor and spare me the story. It is perplexing, at first, that the people most likely to benefit from social equity programs are the least likely to take advantage of those programs. Why would someone who goes to a failing school, for instance, ignore the opportunities made available via transferring? Sadly, people who need help don’t seek out the resources others want to offer them. They appear to be satisfied with the opportunities they have. So it’s not enough to proclaim to the world that you are ready to help. If you want to help people, you’ve got to bring resources directly to them. You have to go to the places they live and work to make the case that you can improve their lives. And you have to do this again and again and again. Change, for anyone, is hard. We can’t expect people who are barely getting by to educate themselves about the opportunities they are missing out on. If they had the time, energy, and human capital needed to get that education on their own, they wouldn’t need any help at all. The Dark Ages aren’t over. We carry them with us in the worst part of out souls, ready to let them loose on the world when we are frightened, scared, and alone. All too often we forget that we are no different than all the humans who came before us. We weren’t born smarter or less superstitious. We learned to see the world differently because we were taught to see the world differently by the institutions that trained us. Schools are fortresses of human capital that stand against a sea of emotion and ignorance. They inoculate those who attend them against their own worst instincts and help them carry light into the world. They help each and every one of us stand upon the shoulders of giants. The people who want to tear down schools (and the teachers who fill them) are not ignorant of the role of such institutions. In fact, they know all too well what great schools can do. I get it. You care about the world and the people in it. You would give much to make sure that those who have too little get enough. But that’s no excuse to be soft in your methods or weak in your analysis. Real problems demand real solutions, especially when you are talking about changing people’s lives. If you’re really serious about developing those real solutions, go and find organizations and mentors who can give you the tools you need. Look outside your field, even in the for profit sector. Just don’t lose your focus. Don’t let the people that can train you to affect real change convince you that such change isn’t worth it. Too many brilliant minds have already been turned into investment bankers for you to give up now. There’s no room in hard hearts and no edge to soft minds. Find your way with that in mind. Your brain is broken up into two parts: a bucket and a bear. We talk as if educational problems were just a matter of “better bucket filling.” If only we could get students to remember more of the facts we throw a them, they would do better on the standardized tests we make them take! This is completely backward. The problem with our schools and training programs is that they are too good at filling our buckets. Our bears remain completely uninvolved…and new problems go completely unsolved. Students with hibernating bears and filled buckets don’t know how to tackle a problem they haven’t seen before. Our world, filled with an ever-increasing number of new connections, challenging opportunities, and unique conflicts, cannot be understood by buckets. The issues are too new. The history we learn on Monday is rewritten on Tuesday and must be further reexamined on Wednesday. Pretending that anything remains static is silly. We need bears. Lots and lots and lots of bears. We need them to go out and rip open the problems that really plague us. We need them to take chances, fail more than occasionally, and amaze us with solutions that push the boundaries of the possible. Stop hibernating. Start training. And stop worrying about your bucket. It’s got a hole anyway, remember? A machine is built of interchangeable parts and people. A team is made up of unique and powerful personalities. A machine is expensive to build, but cheap to maintain. A team is cheap to assemble, but expensive to keep together. A machine works every time you turn it on. A team works when it wants to work on the projects it thinks matter. A machine can move a mountain by cutting it up into tiny pieces. A team can move a mountain in ways you can’t imagine on your own. Which one are you building? |
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Copyright © 2012 Mark Truman - All Rights Reserved |
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