From the Counsellor (1990s)
The other afternoon I was standing out the front of the school after classes. There is so much one can see and appreciate at a time like this. I saw vividly the students running or hastening to get off the grounds. They were not particularly sad looking- in fact it was the opposite for them. Their laughter, their sense of fun and their buoyancy all came to the fore. They were setting off into the sunset. Their eyes were in the direction of home
Their day in the classroom had ended. What had each of them learnt? How constructive had their day been? The questions kept rolling as I thought about the implications of their day. And there were the teachers some of who were at the entrance as well. They had worked their long hours and yet their day was still not completed.
While that picture may seem so uncomplicated and natural there is a complexity about it. That is because there is a contradiction in the lives of those students as they leave the portals of the college. What they need to discover is that such contradiction can be a creative force within their lives. Our western thought has outlawed contradiction as the presence of the impossible. It was that great philosopher Hegel who acknowledged contradiction as the complex force of growth which disowns linear progress. For it is in the experience of turbulence and conflict of inner conversation that brings an integrity of transfiguration and hence transformation into life. We now have a demand for truth that goes beyond just replacing systems or images. There is now that demand for an ethic of authenticity.
What are the contradictions our sons and our students faced as they leave now for the day? What is it that they take home with them? We continually tell them that in the philosophy of our college they are the free children of a loving and compassionate God. Yet hasn’t their day been controlled by bells, alarms,commands and prohibitions?
Our sons have been taught that in their study of literature they are called to creative expression but they know that if they follow that path too closely and wonder too far from the proscribed texts and rhetoric in their essays then they fail. There is no room for genuine rhetoric. Gut pragmatism and at times expediency must prevail.
They are told that sport calls them to play but they are claimed by rules and to disobey is to incur a penalty. Where is their freedom? Any call to diversity is prohibited. So often those who look, speak or seek difference are jeered and bullied by their peers. There seems no freedom there. Our college, any college for that matter is a microcosm of the wider world in which they will take their place sooner rather than later. Each of our sons has qualities or presences in their heart which can be awkward and negative. What they need to learn is to exercise kindness towards them. They are called to be as it were a loving parent to their delinquent qualities. Once they achieve this that same kindness and gentleness will come through in the love they share with others.
I know that what I have said may seem too negative. But there is a strength in confronting the negative in life. When we do we have a total exposure to truthfulness. The negative does not tell lies for it has nothing to lie about. It was the poet Rilke who once said that difficulty is one of the greatest friends of the soul. How true that is. It is only when we bring the same hospitality to meet the negative as we do to what is joyful and pleasurable that we can become enriched as persons.
Before evening was fully out I came back to those steps where I had shared that moment of release with the students. It was getting dark and the stars were beginning to emerge.
They were those points of contradiction that the clear daylight denies. It was then that I realized we need the darkness for darkness reveals its own beauty. For it is the planets that make their journey in darkness not daylight. They do not swim in the daylight.
Synopsis
In our teaching we are working with the development of an idea. Awareness is the realization of this. We move from a position of general principles to the contingent realities that will help and not hinder our quest as educators to enhance the life and hence the opportunities of our students. The education system we work in is to serve our students and to give them options as to how to humanise their lives. The teacher is the communicator of hope. The student is educated as a person and not as an object. In this way they develop the ability to think for themselves. They become conscious of their creative power.
We show them how to stand on their own piece of ground where they will be able to people the world with their own heroes. The more we foster this the more they will learn to refine the wealth from within and the more contented, creative and productive they will become.
