This morning, on the day of our final presidential election debate, I walked to the Meetinghouse with first graders for Meeting for Worship. In the gentle air of an Indian summer week, we saw the blaze of the first maple tree to burst into its fall colors, vividly singular among all the trees in the graveyard.
The children, who variously skipped and lollygagged along the path, formed a neat and quieted line before making the turn toward the Meetinghouse at the end of the path. They entered our 320-year-old meeting room in silence, with sunlight streaming in, the mellow wood of the benches glowing and the scent of the aged room signaling a different way of being in the world for the next 30 minutes.
Out of the silence, children spoke of the Monarch butterflies the first graders had tended to and released over the last few weeks, of the miracle of transformation in the chrysalis that had happened mysteriously out of sight, kindling imagination and speculation about how it had occurred. Their teacher spoke of children in a Texas school she had read about watching migrating butterflies “like an orange river in the sky.” The reflections on the butterflies led to other reflections like lessons second graders shared from their experience of gently holding and tagging small birds the day before to final thoughts from a fourth grader about gratitude for the abundance in our lives that can be too easily be taken for granted.
Meeting for Worship this morning drew our youngest students into a space of reverie, of opening to a wider lens of thinking about the world and their place in it. This enlarged view of who we are, of what is important, of how to know the world from the deep resources of inner life and from carefully exploring and reading the miraculous natural world around us, is what we cultivate as the spiritual dimension of Friends education for students of all ages. This larger view of the world encourages us to see each other differently, to come to know strengths from which we can never be separated and to imagine a world oriented toward things of highest value.
Which brings me back to the election. Who among us has not been preoccupied by the storm of media, the emotionally charged and bitter campaign that has come to dominate so much of our consciousness, our daily reading and news watching?
Asked often in the past few weeks what is the role of our Friends school in this time of election, I’ve given it a lot of thought. I know that it starts by reminding us of this larger view, the spiritual breadth that is far more vast than the momentary strife and far more true to the goodness of the world we live in and the dignity of the daily lives of most of our citizens and of their hopes. We are fortunate to be grounded in a deeper sense of reality, not to avoid the critical issues and conflicts that are indeed real and urgent, but to be better able to engage with them.
But another vital dimension of our response to the political world is simply to be an outstanding academic school. While it is tempting to think of various pathways of activism at this time, which would be deeply gratifying to some and disenfranchising to others, our approach to the world around us as an academic community is to teach children the many ways in which to explore and come to know the world through the academic disciplines that so importantly complement the spiritual depth we cultivate.
The search for intellectual honesty is at the heart of this academic discipline. In the literature we teach, we have myriad windows into the human condition that provide rich discussion as prompted by the novels, poems and prose that we read together. We learn from history and social science the patterns of civilizations, of conflicts, of accomplishments and their roots in human decision-making and political movements. The sciences show us the mechanisms of life and the universe and teach an empirical way of making knowledge that fuels both our advances and our expanding sense of wonder. All together, we learn to learn: how to think critically, examine what we know and the assumptions we hold, to use skilled collaborative inquiry to make more complete our understanding of everything from enduring conflicts in the Middle East to how to respond as a community to a disciplinary incident. In all of these ways of building knowledge and skills, we build confidence, too, in our ability to actually know and act effectively, which is so missing in our larger discourse.
In this time of bitter electoral strife, we are paying careful attention to our students and how they are making sense of the world they are experiencing. Our job as teachers is not to proselytize our own views (though we try to personally model for students the thoughtful deliberation and engagement we aspire to) but rather to respect the ways in which children are growing into their own sense of identity, principle and, for some, activism.
In Lower School, teachers are paying attention to the fears that sometimes surface as a result of the election and the conversations they are hearing as well as to the budding political viewpoints our older fourth graders are willing to try out with each other. Teachers here gently moderate where needed, reassure, sometimes re-direct and try to create a safe space for daily learning.
In the Middle School, the focus has been on civics this year more so than on the specific issues of the election so as to build critical understanding of our democracy and their role as citizens. Knowing that Middle School students can struggle mightily with the social ramifications of their political views, teachers are skillfully helping to mediate the spontaneous conversations that arise, modeling thoughtful, civil engagement.
And in the Upper School, ardent students are engaged in Drew Benfer’s Campaigns and Consequences class, discussions are taking place in our clubs and affinity groups and thoughtful reflections have been offered in Meeting for Worship.
In all, we are seeing a level of civility, respect, restraint and earnest exploration that we wish all of us were seeing in the campaigns themselves.
So our response to the election season is to be a Friends school inspired in its educational vision, its power to ground, to grow and to empower students. My morning with the Lower School at the Meetinghouse was refreshing to me and all who were there, perfect for the morning of the final debate.
Best,
Rich Nourie
Head of School
