This was a lecture I gave to my learners (students) in a tragically underprivileged school in New Mexico:
It often feels as if our current circumstances are set in stone. When you go hungry at night, or when you find your father drunk each and every day when you come home from school, or when it appears the only neighbors you have are pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers- it seems as if the oppression you experience will never change. The number of institutions- those human-created groups that people control and influence without anybody really being in control- the sheer number of them that seem to rule over your life overwhelm you and lead you to believe a change in your circumstances is all but impossible. When we give up on change, we call this fatalism. Ism meaning the belief in, and fatal coming to us from the Greek concept of the fates…beings who essentially go around messing with us in order to derive pleasure from us pain.
This fatalism is really the easy way out. Really, it’s a pretty lazy way to go. It says, “I’d rather not try and continue to suffer.” Change is difficult, I must admit. Most humans will not be horrible to each other; most human beings will not be saints. The natural state of being human usually means being what my Junior year Humanities teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, called a “mugwump.” It’s a type of bird with its mug on one side of the fence, and its wump on the other. In other words, not taking a position or a side on things is our (unfortunately) natural way of doing business as women and men. It is easier to say, “Well, if we wait long enough, things will change,” or “I’d rather not get involved.” Getting involved or pushing to see something come into reality requires taking a risk.
Our society has essentially removed our capacity to take risk with how it educates its youth in the school system. Mistakes, inevitable in life and vital for learning, are frowned upon in our schools. Think of it. Though we are told it is a mark of averageness, a “C” is looked upon as a bad grade by most students. That’s getting something exactly right 7 out of 10 times. I play salsa and jazz music. I would estimate the number of times I’ve been satisfied with a performance out of the tens of thousands of times I’ve performed is 7 to 10!!! I would love to perform perfectly 70% of the time. Think about this really hard: how many actions in your life to you perform exactly right 70% of the time- especially those that you don’t find that important. Add on top of this the fact that there are 20-40 kids in each class and EVERYONE is supposed to learn the same way, at the same pace, all the time getting at least 7 out of every 10 questions exactly right on a consistent basis. It is no wonder people fear failure. The way the expectations are set up are insane.
I am not saying we should lower our expectations. I am saying we should redefine what we consider important in education. Right now, you express your learning primarily through the written word. You digest your learning via absorption-through-reading. We focus almost completely on literacy. And while literacy is very important for communication over space and time, what is ignored in our current teaching is creativity. I would argue that creativity is at least as important as literacy if not more important. Albert Einstein spoke to the fact that imagination was equally or more important than intelligence in his discoveries about the quantum world.
We must all take a risk and be creative at all costs...