Forest Lessons, No 5

An anarch's chronicle of public education.

You want to help them all. But you can’t, so you wait. But for what?

This week we discussed Constantine I and his rise to power, conversion to Christianity, and founding of that great old city of Constantinople. This marks an interesting moment in my professional experimentation. I began the year knowing my students couldn’t well study other cultures without understanding at least a little about their own. This really isn’t shocking to anyone with a brain, I’m sure, but for myself I’m working out for the first time how to do something about it. Hence my focus on the classic subjects of Greece, Rome, Christianity, and the foundations of both the English and Latin speaking worlds. Worlds that would eventually make their way across the Atlantic Ocean to America, the world both my students and I find ourselves in.

To put it another way, the Ohioan son of Pilgrims is endlessly amused he stands on land that once belonged to Spain. This observation has lead me to ask fellow students and teachers about their family histories. Unsurprisingly, most haven’t learned their pasts like I have but one question definitely hooks them.

“Forget about when your family came to the United States. When did they land in America? My family has been here since 1638. Will you find out when yours got here?”

When someone finally gets back to me on it I’ll let you know, but until that time I believe the question itself has virtue. Part of my class is showing how cultures change and evolve over time and place. Florida is a hodgepodge of people from this place and that and I’ve got to conclude in a few hundred years our descendants will synthesize something from that. Therefore in the present, it’s useful to think about.

At the end of the day, that’s the only real goal in my classroom. Did you think today? Doesn’t matter what, doesn’t matter how well, but did you exercise the gray matter in your skull? Did your mind sing yet?

Myth may be the quintessential way to make that happen. This week, where the personality of Constantine blends and blurs the sacred and mundane, I can see my student’s progress. At some stage, I got into a discussion about performance, grades, and how I approach “less academic” pupils such as themselves. I always indulge a peek behind the curtain, because it’s important the curious are rewarded with knowledge of how the world really works.

This is where Tokugawa walks out of the luminary into the night bar of my mind and slaps Constantine on the back (what do they drink, I wonder?). I tell the story of the stubborn bird. If you’re unfamiliar, it goes roughly like this:

There is a bird that won’t sing. The great shoguns of Japan decide this simply won’t do. Oda Nobunaga, the great military leader, goes first. He threatens the bird, detailing the conquest he plans should the bird refuse. It does. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the great diplomat, is next. Despite his considerable powers of persuasion the bird is unmoved by his oratory. Last but not least is Tokugawa Ieyasu. He pulls up a chair, sits down, and simply says:

“I’ll wait.”

After a time, the bird sings. I explain to my students with a question, “If birds sing, what do students do?”

“Learn?”

“Exactly.”

Like I wrote at the outset, one wants to help them all. But you can’t, so you wait. It might take seconds, it might take decades, but make that great mistake and pray for patience.

You want to sing someday, don’t you?

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Thanks for reading! Forest Lessons is a regular feature of The Partisan. It’s a chronicle of my week to week teaching experience in rural Florida. Everything at The Partisan will always be free, but if you’d like to support my work you can do so via the button.

Thanks in advance for your patronage. Kindly share my work as well? Public education is a mess. I’m not solving that, but I can inspire a few students to do something great with their lives. Maybe you too?