One of the reasons I like working with high schoolers in the English classroom is that they are beginning to figure out their world view. Indeed, they are only at the front end of this process. Sometimes it can seem as though this is a tumultuous process: parents who were once paragons are now fallible; friends that seemed destined to last forever fray; a faith that has been simple becomes complex as we meet people with no faith or a different faith who have good hearts even though they don't believe in God the same way we do.
This week I read an article in the New Yorker called "Are we really so modern?"
Today, the article posits, we like to think that we live in ways unimaginably different from our predecessors. True, concedes the journalist, but so did our predecessors live in ways inconceivable to their predecessors. This continuation of generations who considered themselves modernists goes back to those who could legitimately claim to have leapt ahead in human understanding from those who came before them: the thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Isn't that wild to think about? Imagine being one of the minds during these centuries who was charged with rethinking everything about the way life was structured, and what it meant?
What structures would we like to see rethought today? If we could suddenly have several central ideas of our age proven wrong by science, what would you like them to be?
Today was the first day of the high school youth group. I picked up bagels and Swiss Miss on the way to meeting, and after Meeting for Worship, I went with six high school students, three boys and three girls, to Virginia Cottage on Earlham's campus.
First of all, my key didn't work. I knew I should have checked it before the hour of need. I decided to try a few other doors with the same key, though my heart of hearts knew that my mind of minds needed to be coming up with a contingency plan. I was on the patio looking into the kitchen where I wanted to badly to be, and I tried what has gotten me into my own home many times this summer when I've locked myself out: opening the window. It was unlocked, and didn't have those burglar latches that my house does, so we climbed on in and set about our meeting.
We toasted, spread, and chatted around a small table (I think spaces that are slightly too small for the group in question are essential for real fellowship, whether over scripture or dinner).
After a period of talking, during which everyone had a chance to share about what had been on their mind that week, we looked at the Palladium Item Sunday paper. I asked them to look at sections and to see what was going on in our world. They reported the headlines of their section, and we distilled some of the topics on our society's mind, among them the following:
The appropriate punishment for criminals
Local employers' difficulty filling job openings
College students trying to improve their image within a community
9/11 memories and grief and fear
Politicians' words on abortion
An airstrike in Syria
Presidential candidates' opinions on education reform
We talked about the slew of issues facing our society, and how, in order to be a good citizen, we need to have thought carefully about a lot of topics. I said we would be able to think about and talk about these kinds of topics when we got together each week. I also said we would pick our own issues to try to make a difference on. We would be able to organize our own fundraisers, lobby our own issues, start our own dialogues.
I've never led a group like this before, so I'm feeling out the temperature of the group as we go, and trying not to be too serious about it and cut out the fun, as I am prone to do. I have to remember that, unlike when they're in English class, these students are not required by law to be in a youth group. It has to be something they want to return to each week. Maybe, if I can present it as a place where we can dismantle the modes of thinking that hold our society back from progress, they'll be as excited to take part in our philosophical experiment as the thinkers of the 18 and 1900s were.
Copernicus told us the Earth revolved around the sun. Are there equivalently thought-altering realizations that should rock our world today?
1. "Women are things for us to look at" must be replaced with "Women are."
I am amazed how many images of women my students see every day. The other day at the beginning of a video watched in a biology class, students watched a 30-second ad for H&M during which a long, thin model climbed, bare legged and bare armed, over oversized blocks, advertising scanty denim, flawless skin and straight, blond hair. I thought, "Is anyone in the room questioning our need to watch something like this before we learn the difference between biotic and abiotic?" A reorientation of our view of women as objects would fundamentally shift the way we see half of the population. To me, it represents an almost unfathomable shift in perspective.
2. "People who don't look like me are less human than I am" must be replaced by "All people are."
The white tendency to privilege the dignity and lives of other white skinned people holds our society back from progress. This tendency is deeply engrained in human nature, but I wish science would somehow prove that we are equally worthy of freedom and respect. Again, the ways in which this would change our ways of relating to one another are hard to imagine now.
3. "Money is the most important thing," must be replaced with "Value is not something that we can measure in units, like flour."
Our desire to measure progress and our own worth, things that cannot be quantified, lead us to use money as a benchmark for any good. Until the profit motive becomes less powerful than the desire to produce real, human value (goodness), our economy will continue to shorten our future. Until we embrace a more reasonable understanding of what is worth working for, we will short-change much of the population, and exploit another great swath of it.
4. "Faith is weak" must be replaced with "Faith is essential".
Faith is not the way of weakness. Believing in what you cannot see, but have a deep sense of, is not something to be laughed at and brushed off. Those who have faith have something to hold onto when the things we can see, or can measure, crumble. Until we understand that we are not the most powerful players, we will continue practicing an arrogant belief that we are the captains of history, directors of the universe, instead of recognizing that we are the products of history, mere moving pieces in the functioning of a large and grand universe.
This week I read an article in the New Yorker called "Are we really so modern?"
Today, the article posits, we like to think that we live in ways unimaginably different from our predecessors. True, concedes the journalist, but so did our predecessors live in ways inconceivable to their predecessors. This continuation of generations who considered themselves modernists goes back to those who could legitimately claim to have leapt ahead in human understanding from those who came before them: the thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Isn't that wild to think about? Imagine being one of the minds during these centuries who was charged with rethinking everything about the way life was structured, and what it meant?
What structures would we like to see rethought today? If we could suddenly have several central ideas of our age proven wrong by science, what would you like them to be?
Today was the first day of the high school youth group. I picked up bagels and Swiss Miss on the way to meeting, and after Meeting for Worship, I went with six high school students, three boys and three girls, to Virginia Cottage on Earlham's campus.
First of all, my key didn't work. I knew I should have checked it before the hour of need. I decided to try a few other doors with the same key, though my heart of hearts knew that my mind of minds needed to be coming up with a contingency plan. I was on the patio looking into the kitchen where I wanted to badly to be, and I tried what has gotten me into my own home many times this summer when I've locked myself out: opening the window. It was unlocked, and didn't have those burglar latches that my house does, so we climbed on in and set about our meeting.We toasted, spread, and chatted around a small table (I think spaces that are slightly too small for the group in question are essential for real fellowship, whether over scripture or dinner).
After a period of talking, during which everyone had a chance to share about what had been on their mind that week, we looked at the Palladium Item Sunday paper. I asked them to look at sections and to see what was going on in our world. They reported the headlines of their section, and we distilled some of the topics on our society's mind, among them the following:
The appropriate punishment for criminals
Local employers' difficulty filling job openings
College students trying to improve their image within a community
9/11 memories and grief and fear
Politicians' words on abortion
An airstrike in Syria
Presidential candidates' opinions on education reform
We talked about the slew of issues facing our society, and how, in order to be a good citizen, we need to have thought carefully about a lot of topics. I said we would be able to think about and talk about these kinds of topics when we got together each week. I also said we would pick our own issues to try to make a difference on. We would be able to organize our own fundraisers, lobby our own issues, start our own dialogues.
Copernicus told us the Earth revolved around the sun. Are there equivalently thought-altering realizations that should rock our world today?
1. "Women are things for us to look at" must be replaced with "Women are."
I am amazed how many images of women my students see every day. The other day at the beginning of a video watched in a biology class, students watched a 30-second ad for H&M during which a long, thin model climbed, bare legged and bare armed, over oversized blocks, advertising scanty denim, flawless skin and straight, blond hair. I thought, "Is anyone in the room questioning our need to watch something like this before we learn the difference between biotic and abiotic?" A reorientation of our view of women as objects would fundamentally shift the way we see half of the population. To me, it represents an almost unfathomable shift in perspective.
2. "People who don't look like me are less human than I am" must be replaced by "All people are."
The white tendency to privilege the dignity and lives of other white skinned people holds our society back from progress. This tendency is deeply engrained in human nature, but I wish science would somehow prove that we are equally worthy of freedom and respect. Again, the ways in which this would change our ways of relating to one another are hard to imagine now.
3. "Money is the most important thing," must be replaced with "Value is not something that we can measure in units, like flour."
Our desire to measure progress and our own worth, things that cannot be quantified, lead us to use money as a benchmark for any good. Until the profit motive becomes less powerful than the desire to produce real, human value (goodness), our economy will continue to shorten our future. Until we embrace a more reasonable understanding of what is worth working for, we will short-change much of the population, and exploit another great swath of it.
4. "Faith is weak" must be replaced with "Faith is essential".
Faith is not the way of weakness. Believing in what you cannot see, but have a deep sense of, is not something to be laughed at and brushed off. Those who have faith have something to hold onto when the things we can see, or can measure, crumble. Until we understand that we are not the most powerful players, we will continue practicing an arrogant belief that we are the captains of history, directors of the universe, instead of recognizing that we are the products of history, mere moving pieces in the functioning of a large and grand universe.
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