Winning or Growing

Two newspaper articles struck me this week as illustrations of the lack of respect in our society (Cerebino; Pitts, Palm Beach Post), rather than an acknowledgement of tremendous opportunities to teach respect in the face of values differences. One article described a situation in which students expressed the very strong religious opinion that the earthquake in Haiti was God’s punishment for the Haitian people’s pact with the devil. Their teacher, a non-Christian, called their perspective “a bunch of fairy-tale nonsense.” The conflict escalated into other teachers spraying “holy water” on the first teacher, who, in turn, filed a bullying complaint. It further escalated when a community preacher joined the fray with his lawyers to support the students and the holy water sprayers.

In the second article, some Mexican-American teenagers celebrated Cinco de Mayo by wearing the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag; and their principal called the shirts “incendiary” (because emotions are running high about public policies related to illegal immigration), and asked them to remove the shirts or turn them inside out.

In each case, people with power who disagreed with an expressed opinion tried to force their opinion on those with lesser power. And when they did so, they were met with an attempt to take back power in response. The power approaches were the attempt of one side of a values dispute to “win” over the other, to say, “You are wrong, and I have more power, so I get to say that you are wrong and keep your perspective from being heard or valued.” And this approach means, generally, that the person(s) with the most power win, even if their perspectives harm others. Clearly, women and people of color’s experiences illustrate the damage that can be done to those without power if their perspectives are not heard and honored.

Is winning always best when there is a dispute? Doesn’t winning always imply that there is a loser who will want to fight back? Might such power approaches actually create dangerous escalation? What might be an alternative approach?

But just as important as these questions is asking ourselves, didn’t these teachers and principals miss tremendous opportunities for teaching their students about character and about making difficult ethical decisions, based on critical thinking, rather than on merely following the crowd? Didn’t they miss the chance to help the students to learn how to respect others, even when they find themselves in a conflict? Didn’t they miss a phenomenal chance to help their students to develop into independent thinkers, instead of merely followers of the loudest or most popular speaker? Isn’t this what we want for our children—to develop into people with the capacity to make quality decisions in the face of difficult circumstances, so that they won’t get sucked into following a dangerous and destructive leader or crowd?

It takes a great deal of respect to really listen and understand another’s perspective. And we have to be open to the fact that if we really listen, we might actually learn something and, in turn, change in some way. The teens in each of these situations might have been able to face the developmental challenges posed by such conflicts with the help of older, wiser souls capable of shepherding them through an experience of carefully weighing differing perspectives, of considering what to do about these differing perspectives, of using the conflict to become clearer on the higher values or virtues that we ought to aspire to, and on what to do when these higher values conflict.

For instance, what might have happened in the Haitian earthquake situation if the teacher, instead of using his power to insist that the students were wrong, respected the students enough to try to understand their perspective. He might have asked, “How did you come to believe this?” And if they said, “Our pastor told us,” the teacher might further have asked, “And what do you think about your pastor’s opinion?” or “How have you decided that your pastor is right?” He could pursue the questioning with a spirit of trying to understand their perspective, while at the same time asking them to develop the skills necessary for carefully weighing what they hear against some internal standard, and further, to decide what that standard might actually be.

The teacher might also have shown respect for other students’ opinions by asking about other class members’ perspectives; and he could have pursued the same line of inquiry with respect to their alternative perspectives. Further, after demonstrating respect, concern for all of the students’ perspectives, and a commitment to developing the students’ commitments to a set of higher values or standards, the teacher could ask students to research the issue and to hold a respectful debate during the next class. And he might have upped the stakes by indicating that people’s lives (or their grades) might depend on the diligence with which they researched the issues, the ways that they conducted the debate, and their abilities to find a solution to the conflict that did not conflict with the higher values that they were committing to.

The teacher might even have asked the students to grade themselves on the results of the debate, asking them to evaluate their feelings, the degree to which they stayed respectful of others with different perspectives, the degree to which they were able to contribute to possible solutions to the differences, and the higher values that they were willing to commit to in order to determine whether to live with the differences, create a better solution than either of the perspectives, or eliminate one perspective because of the damage it was doing to other people. Because, after all, some perspectives are far too dangerous to far too many people to support merely because they are different. In fact, believing that Haitian people should not be helped, should be left to starve and die because of their beliefs or choices, might very well be one of these dangerous perspectives. Immigration policies that result in hatred or discrimination against people of color would also be dangerous.

The students might, as a class or school, have talked openly about what they learned about conflict, values, and respect during such a process; or about how participating in the process changed them. The teacher might have evaluated their ability to be respectful, to think carefully about the issues and perspectives, and to commit to and demonstrate higher principles.

As Mr. Pitts pointed out, the students might then have learned the very valuable lesson that “reasonable people reason their way through disagreements,” that it might be important for people to be able to express their opinions, but it is just as important to give others the chance to do the same. Some of those opinions will lead to needed changes and improvements in our society, and some opinions will lead to actions that harm our society. Students of all ages need to learn how to carefully evaluate these opinions for themselves, rather than merely following along with the most charismatic or well-marketed or well-funded opinion stater. But, of course, that would require teachers and principals (and the rest of us) to be reasonable and to have developed enough them(our)selves to see the value in going through such a process. Perhaps we are not always there yet – as the newspaper examples illustrated.