Finding Educational Purpose in the Age of Pandemic

 

Sounds like a book title, doesn't it? Finding Educational Purpose in the Age of Pandemic. Talk about pretense, ambition.

The last year has certainly been a challenging one in America.  From pandemics to contested elections to street choirs singing of justice, the immediacy of our frailty as people and a people is on full display.  Behaviors and services that were taken for granted are lamented by many. Full bellies, clean water and warm beds are tenuous at best for far too many children in the richest nation on earth. The loneliness of death has never been more pronounced. 

At the risk sounding overdramatic, it's a time when there should be as many existential crises as there are people. 

Certainly in the world of education, if we aren't asking ourselves why then we aren't performing our vocation sincerely. Even during a "normal" year, we should be asking that question more than any other. If we aren't reflecting on why, we will always be stuck in what. And what is a static cognitive condition, which, if it remains isolated from why, is devoid of human dynamics. It's a holding place in which we wait passively for some unseen hand to move us or our conditions. 

It's an uneven dance floor, cracked and pocked, lacking music and the movement of dancers. It's a dance, distinguished by the anxiety of personal risk and somber gesticulations. It's the movement that focuses on getting from one place on the floor to another. It's lifeless, passionless and uncelebratory, because there's nothing to celebrate, just something to do. If we stay in what, we might be moving, but the party never starts.

This year, it feels like we've spent a lot of time and energy rethinking and refiguring what. Not that we haven't kept an unsteady eye on why, but our options for what have been so radically upended by the conditions of our current living situations-social distancing, community spread, political fear, economic recession-that the imminence of the ever changing what to do has preempted the cognitive space and physical vitality so important for why.  

Below is a list of what dominated questions I see around me. They don't all start with "what" but they focus energy on personal and systemic mechanism rather than motivation.

1. What precautions do I(we) take to limit virus spread?
2. Under what conditions do I(we) go back to full time school?
3. What learning objectives do I(we) add or abandon in these new conditions?
4. What do I(we) do to raise student test scores?
5. What do I(we) do to get students to complete more work?
6. What do I(we) do to get students to complete work on time?
7. What do I(we) offer students for whom it is unsafe to return to school?
8. What do I(we) do to support students and the community during this difficult time?
9. What can I(we) do to increase rigor?

        And the list goes on and on.

What I first notice is the pressing nature of these questions. They raise relevant, immediate and compelling concerns. 

Further review, however, reveals the defining dynamic of these questions is the emphasis on the asker. Answering a question formulated on what assumes purpose comes from the subject of the question. In other words, the question provides the subject of the answer, and it is I. 

I take precautions, I return to full time school, I add these objectives, and so forth.

Now, more than ever, we need to ask why because asking why shifts our focus from ourselves to others. The question reorients us toward service, compassion, and community. It helps us to enlarge ourselves rather than stagnate in individualism. Reformatting our questions makes our what matter because it positions us in relation to the narrative of a people act for a reason rather than because of one. Observe.

1. Why do I(we) take precautions to limit virus spread?
2. Why do I(we) go back to full time school?
3. Why do I(we) add or abandon learning objectives in these new conditions?
4. Why do I(we) raise student test scores?
5. Why do I(we) get students to complete more work?
6. Why do I(we) get students to complete work on time?
7. Why do I(we) offer students opportunity if it is unsafe to return to school?
8. Why do I(we) support students and the community during this difficult time?
9. Why do I(we) want to increase rigor?

While these questions do not require the asker to move outside themselves, they spur the asker toward an answer larger than themselves.  They encourage the asker to find meaning in motion within a context of other real lived experiences. 

Asking why helps us step out onto that pocked dance floor that left us anxious, trying to avoid the catastrophe of personal injury. It helps us step up with a renewed sense of hope because we are not alone.
Others want to dance, too, not just move. We are not the only ones risking injury for the sake of the dance. And why else would one dance but to choose to dance because we have a reason.