the willingness.
"There is no character flaw in ignorance. The character flaw is the willingness to remain ignorant."
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My mother and I had a conversation today about our students. She teaches high school, I teach college, and we both at times feel we are losing the battle against apathy, laziness, and a lack of intellectual curiosity. I knew I would face this when I signed my first teaching contract in September, but in my mind it was simply ignorance, a tragic character flaw. What my mother revealed to me in one simple statement is that ignorance isn't what makes a student - or anyone - tragically flawed. The tragic flaw is the willingness to remain ignorant, the refusal to change.
My concept of ignorance has always been directly associated with people who are racist, uneducated, irrational, intolerant, extremist in any way (leftist, rightist, elitist, supremacist...). I don't think my associations are unique: hyper-educated New Englanders pick on the "ignorance" of the Deep South; liberals despise the "ignorance" of conservative republicans; religious fanatics are belligerent about the "ignorance" of those who continue to seek or question; people on both sides of same-sex marriage debate hurl insults at the "ignorance" on the other side.
I, too, have used the label of ignorance for those I deemed tragically flawed - proponents of slavery, enabling parents, abusive spouses, anyone who argues that reading Twilight counts as reading.
But my mother is on to something, as she usually is, and I am learning something from her, as I usually do. If ignorance is, as defined by Webster, "a lack of knowledge, education, or awareness," then there is space for knowledge, education, and awareness. A lack of something means there is room, space, emptiness - in other words, the enormous potential for completion, for wholeness. How can potential be tragic? The tragedy would really be the opposite: a lack of space for knowledge, education, or awareness.
What my mother and I are discovering through unfinished assignments, apathetic responses to questions, and unexplained absences is a lack of space to grow. These students know very little - but what's worse than the fact that they know very little is their willingness to continue knowing very little. Their very willingness to remain as-is seals the opening to the great caverns of their minds. Our minds - how wondrous and mysterious that we continue to retain! Each of us is born knowing nothing but the scent of our mother. And then we learn to walk. And then to read. And then to analyze, criticize, protest, defend. And then we learn to change our minds - or, rather, our minds change. Our minds stretch with us, accommodating the newness around us. A look back at even the last year shows me that I was, in a way, ignorant about some things. But my lack of knowledge, education, or awareness simply acted as a catalyst for new growth. The lack - the space - cried out to be filled, and through various curious pursuits and endeavors, I have displaced the lack. And, beautifully mysterious as it is, the mind's curiosity is regenerative. It satiates the craving of the lack, and then expands, creating a new lack, a new space, a new raw potential that almost glistens in its infantile naiveté. The growth of the potential transforms ignorance into understanding, and the willingness to grow shines as the most redemptive of characteristics.
I now believe that it is neither knowledge nor the lack of knowledge that makes one tragic or redemptive - it is the willingness, either to remain or to blossom.
My hope for the willingness to blossom is for myself, but also for my students, my leaders, my family, my world. My hope is for a future where the scent of blossoming overtakes the stench of decay, where ignorance is defined as, "the potential for knowledge, education, and awareness," and where we grow in faith, hope, and love simply because we are willing.
My mother and I had a conversation today about our students. She teaches high school, I teach college, and we both at times feel we are losing the battle against apathy, laziness, and a lack of intellectual curiosity. I knew I would face this when I signed my first teaching contract in September, but in my mind it was simply ignorance, a tragic character flaw. What my mother revealed to me in one simple statement is that ignorance isn't what makes a student - or anyone - tragically flawed. The tragic flaw is the willingness to remain ignorant, the refusal to change.
My concept of ignorance has always been directly associated with people who are racist, uneducated, irrational, intolerant, extremist in any way (leftist, rightist, elitist, supremacist...). I don't think my associations are unique: hyper-educated New Englanders pick on the "ignorance" of the Deep South; liberals despise the "ignorance" of conservative republicans; religious fanatics are belligerent about the "ignorance" of those who continue to seek or question; people on both sides of same-sex marriage debate hurl insults at the "ignorance" on the other side.
I, too, have used the label of ignorance for those I deemed tragically flawed - proponents of slavery, enabling parents, abusive spouses, anyone who argues that reading Twilight counts as reading.
But my mother is on to something, as she usually is, and I am learning something from her, as I usually do. If ignorance is, as defined by Webster, "a lack of knowledge, education, or awareness," then there is space for knowledge, education, and awareness. A lack of something means there is room, space, emptiness - in other words, the enormous potential for completion, for wholeness. How can potential be tragic? The tragedy would really be the opposite: a lack of space for knowledge, education, or awareness.
What my mother and I are discovering through unfinished assignments, apathetic responses to questions, and unexplained absences is a lack of space to grow. These students know very little - but what's worse than the fact that they know very little is their willingness to continue knowing very little. Their very willingness to remain as-is seals the opening to the great caverns of their minds. Our minds - how wondrous and mysterious that we continue to retain! Each of us is born knowing nothing but the scent of our mother. And then we learn to walk. And then to read. And then to analyze, criticize, protest, defend. And then we learn to change our minds - or, rather, our minds change. Our minds stretch with us, accommodating the newness around us. A look back at even the last year shows me that I was, in a way, ignorant about some things. But my lack of knowledge, education, or awareness simply acted as a catalyst for new growth. The lack - the space - cried out to be filled, and through various curious pursuits and endeavors, I have displaced the lack. And, beautifully mysterious as it is, the mind's curiosity is regenerative. It satiates the craving of the lack, and then expands, creating a new lack, a new space, a new raw potential that almost glistens in its infantile naiveté. The growth of the potential transforms ignorance into understanding, and the willingness to grow shines as the most redemptive of characteristics.
I now believe that it is neither knowledge nor the lack of knowledge that makes one tragic or redemptive - it is the willingness, either to remain or to blossom.
My hope for the willingness to blossom is for myself, but also for my students, my leaders, my family, my world. My hope is for a future where the scent of blossoming overtakes the stench of decay, where ignorance is defined as, "the potential for knowledge, education, and awareness," and where we grow in faith, hope, and love simply because we are willing.