In a note to his fellow conspirators on New Year’s Eve 1943, Bonhoeffer wrote: “The ultimate question for a responsible person to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.”
Miguel has been writing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately. I’d never heard of Bonhoeffer, but from reading Miguel’s posts about principled resistance, I understand that Bonhoeffer was a socially conscious religious activist. Bonhoeffer was hanged in a Nazi prison camp one week before the end of the War in Europe in 1945 for his participation in a protestant resistance movement. A witness to his execution described him as “entirely submissive to the will of God.” Bonhoeffer’s political activity is controversial. His execution was a consequence of his participation in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler despite his profession of Christian faith. The incongruousness of his ethical stance has been hard for many people to reconcile.
It was interesting that today I ran across a reference to Bonhoeffer when reading about the IRA convention, where Marian Wright Edelman was the keynote speaker. In her keynote Edelman said that
according to the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children. In the United States, Edelman said, we flunk that test every day.
Edelman established the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that is dedicated to ensuring that all children are provided with the material, intellectual, and spiritual nurturing they deserve to pass successfully into adulthood. The CDF’s political agenda is expressed in The Leave No Child Behind Movement which, among other things, adresses the need for health insurance, nutrition programs, and access to preschool and early learning opportunities for all children.
According to the IRA report on her keynote address:
Edelman ended her talk with an anecdote about Sojourner Truth, the antislavery and women’s rights advocate whom Edelman called her role model. One white man heckled her once, saying her efforts meant no more to him than a flea bite. “The Lord willing,” she replied, “I’ll keep you scratching.” Edelman told the conferees to be just as persistent—”I hope that you will commit to being a flea,” she said, “for justice for children.”
Work for justice. Commit to fleadom.
How will the coming generation, or the next, live? The mystery of teaching, for me, is in the wonder of never knowing. It’s hard work. I’m guided by faith and commitment to teaching as a spiritual path. I grow from it because I’m called on to be a better person than I want to be every day, every moment.
Whose world are we building? I imagine several possibilities, and I’m having a hard time continuing without a clear answer.
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This is the question that haunts us all, but most especially, those of us in administration. And, if it doesn’t, are we beyond redemption?
“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds.” writes Bonhoeffer, ” We have been drenched by many storms. We have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense… Are we still of any use?”
How many fleas must be crushed before change takes place? How can we continue to reconcile the lie of what we permit in K-12 schools with the injustices our children must overcome daily?
Arguing for technology seems so pointless…yet, today, one of my team stood at my door. She shared the excitement of a student crafting a digital story, even though it took the child 10 times to get it “right.” The excitement is spreading from classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher, school to school. But, in the quiet offices at Central Office, the State Rotunda (Texas), the Nation’s Capital, what decisions are being made, what pretenses being kept, what evil deeds are being witnessed?
It is time for teachers to throw off their fear, to fight back. Fleadom…insignificance…may be our only defense. As Gandhi said, “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Fleadom is important…it can restore our integrity.
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog/archives/2006/04/entry_1395.htm
Thank you for sharing such a powerful message, Doug!
Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog
Thanks, Miguel. I wouldn’t have heard of Bonhoeffer without your blog posts. I like your idea of using technology and “staying small” to do things that might make a difference.
I like the Gandhi quote, too. Insignificance is underrated.
You’re both correct. It is only through small efforts that we can effect change. No one person is capable of more, and no more is needed. The power of fleadom is in numbers. Set an example worth emulating, and the numbers will eventually see you. I’m doing my best to make sure more people find out about you two. In that vein, please send me contributions for next weeks Carnival of Education. It needs more balance, and more of its readers need to see your wisdom. Send them to me at hogeb@uhd.edu. I’ll make sure you’re heard. Thanks.
Wow, thanks for the inspiring post and comments, guys! No, no, that’s just a bit of dust in my eyes…
“Teaching as a spiritual path:” what a great phrase, Doug. We’ve got to realize that this is not primarily a job, a career, or even a profession. It’s a spiritual path.
Let’s be realistic, folks: we will not create social justice, we will not save all the kids, and we may not even be remembered. We sure ain’t gonna get rich. We’ll stay up ‘till 1:00 AM crafting that amazing, interactive, discovery-based lesson that Makes Learning Fun, and have it explode in our faces the next day. I’ll be honest, at the end of some days I’ve just put my head on my desk at sobbed (yeah, I’m an emotional guy…).
It’s easy to forget that that people—kids, administrators, parents—only change when they’re ready. We simply can’t make it happen. They change themselves, we help. So when we define our success through people’s reactions (to put it another way, when we adopt a maladaptive extrinsic locus of control), we’ve no choice but to despair. And I’ve seen too many teachers—noble, idealistic teachers—who have.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argues that we must accept this lack of potency as a product of the inherent absurdity and futility of life. I disagree. Our struggle is not futile. We can’t change others—but we can change ourselves. We can choose compassion and truth every day. We can achieve success of the soul.
Sixties radicals asked: “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” We became teachers because we are passionate about being on the right side of that dichotomy. We decide every day, every moment, whether to keep our eyes on that prize. It’s not about anything but that. A spiritual path.
The neat thing I’ve noticed is that as I begin to focus on my own choices, on causes rather than effects, I’ve often started to see the effects as well, reminding me of Lao Tze’s wu wei, “action though non-action.”
“Choose you this day whom you will serve,” Joshua asks the Israelites on the threshold of the promised land. I think it’s keeping that choice before us that gives us the energy to make ‘em “keep scratching.” That and summer vacations (just another month…).
Isn’t Bonhoeffer credited with the quote that goes something like, “And when they came for me, there was no one else left to speak for me?” That’s the last line in the quote, I believe.
Sorry, I had Bonhoeffer mixed up with Niemoller!
I’m learning a lot from these comments. Thanks, all.
Nani, I found a link to Niemoller’s poem, First they came…
I couldn’t help it, I wrote some more:
Fleadom–The Human Sojourn
Thanks folks,
Miguel Guhlin
Doug, I enjoyed your message so much. It’s a great starting point for wonderful discussions, as Miguel has demonstrated. I wrote about it in my blog entry on May 6 as well. Sign me up for the flea brigade!
The questions you end with are powerful. I also ask them myself, but you know what? I feel lucky to be in the position to have some inluence, even though it’s slight, on the answers. – Mark
Mark, thanks for jumping in on this. As to the value of surrounding ourselves with like-minded colleagues, Brad’s observation that “the power of fleadom is in numbers” hits that point squarely. Blogging, teaching, and caring enough to make the effort to build something that might benefit others is what I once referred to as virtuous circles in education. We’re making them now-little by little. The scratching will come, eventually.
Wow! Mark just pointed out your blog. I wrote almost the same thing (not anywhere near as coherent
in my blog just the other day! Here’s to fleadom!
Janice
Our numbers increase! The internet is an efficient host.
I salute your courage, Doug. It takes courage to stay true to one’s own inner voice and integrity. Thanks for putting this out, and making me pause and reconsider. I go back and forth: sometimes being pre-occupied with the big picture, usually after reading people like Freire, Augusto Boal, Ivan Illich, or John Taylor Gatto (I wonder what you make of him? He spent years teaching kids who must be fairly close to the ages you teach, I think); sometimes dumping that in favour of nuts and bolts stuff like crafting activities and worksheets without which the “big picture” stuff can’t get expressed. I haven’t read any of the stuff you mention here, but I will. Gatto is the lens through which I read this post, but I’m not sure that puts me on the same page, yet. If you’ve read Gatto, please comment.
Just to add my two bits regarding the “spiritual journey”, it was reading Gatto that woke me up to one reason why I’m a teacher. Gatto wrote that whatever he was doing, the ultimate objective was always John Taylor Gatto: to discover himself, to make himself a complete person. Reading him made me snap back like an elastic band, back to an intense interest in my students, and a strong desire to get to know them better, and by so doing be a better teacher.
We who are older can see with our wise eyes just what a mess humans have made of this beautiful planet and of each other, yet if you keep looking at that side only it will eventually kill you. There is much to be sad about, that is undeniable, but also much to be glad about, and in the end, each day, each minute, we have the choice of which we focus on.
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