Among the many fascinating and enlightening presentations I heard last week in Chicago at the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS) Heads of School Conference was an inspiring address by Eboo Patel, Founder and President of Interfaith Youth Core. Patel’s speech focused on how we can teach children to live in a religiously diverse and pluralistic society, where people of different faiths meaningfully engage with one another, rather than the current way of talking or sometimes, unfortunately, yelling at each other.
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| Eboo Patel |
Patel began by explaining some trends that now characterize our world. He quoted from sociologist Peter Berger who stated that “modernity pluralizes,” and that in our world today, our identities are matters of choice rather than fate. We can choose today whom we want to be rather than merely being defined by our parents or our grandparents. Consequently, some institutions, like houses of worship, in today’s world have lost their “taken-for-granted” status and are now voluntary organizations that people believe they can either choose or leave. Patel also explained that more than ever “all that is solid melts into air,” and we have lost what once seemed certain.
As a result of these changes, people have more choice in the ways in which they define themselves, and the battles over identity are thus more intense than in the past. (Coincidentally, we discussed this same issue on a global scale in my International Relations class as we read the noted writer and pundit Fareed Zakaria’s book, The Post-American World. Zakaria explains the counterintuitive notion that in a more globalized world, local identities can actually increase rather than decrease as a result of the spread of economic prosperity and the proliferation of social media.)
So, how do we as educators and parents help our children learn to live in an uncertain world where identity can be so fluid and changing? First of all, Patel challenged us to see the conflicts over identity today as educational opportunities rather than administrative headaches. We should teach children that our world’s struggles over access and rights fit into a glorious American history of different groups fighting for and gaining equality rather than as something new or aberrant.
In addition, Patel encouraged us to help young women and men see the complexity of historical figures. So often, we tend to idolize and simplify the heroines and heroes of earlier struggles; in the process, we not only deprive these figures of their multi-faceted humanity but also discourage children from ever seeing themselves as participants in an ongoing and meaningful struggle for equality for all. We need to “complicate” our children’s views of historical figures, so they can truly appreciate them.
We also must engage students by teaching them difficult case studies in which, as Patel noted, well-intentioned people of strong and good faith fought over complex topics that defy easy explanation. In this way, our students can learn to respect people with whom they disagree and honor the passion and commitment of others with different viewpoints.
Patel closed his remarks by quoting the first and final stanza from a William Stafford poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other.” I have included the first and last stanzas here for your enjoyment:
“If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star…
...For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep,
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear; the darkness around us is deep.”
Rather than being a speech of doom and gloom, Patel encouraged and energized all of us in the room to be active in the education of our students as members of a wonderful religiously diverse and pluralistic society. In these times of inflammatory rhetoric, there may be few things more important and more meaningful that we can do.
