The following is an adaptation of a speech given in honor of my eighth-grade students on Moving Up Day at The Post Oak School in Houston, Texas.
IIn the gut-wrenching experience that is the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, visitors are invited to walk through a life-size lunch counter scene, complete with statues poised in positions of the famous nonviolent protests of the early 1960s. A giant projection of these protests plays on a loop behind the counter, teaching (or reminding) viewers how the Civil Rights movement was won: simple nonviolent act after simple nonviolent act.
In one of many scenes, young African-American adults sit at the counter where they are not welcome, listening to the shouts of staff and patrons alike. The expertly-trained and practiced protesters sit quietly while they are mocked, cursed, have food thrown at them, and are often beaten by those who are threatened by their simple, quiet, seated posture and infuriated by their non-responsiveness.
Their self-discipline is unbelievable; their calm demeanor is exquisite, exposing their oppressors for exactly what they are: savage, desperate, bigoted, violent.
It is foolish to think that the activists at the lunch counter were not burning with anger. Those who stood up to oppression, who refused to comply with hatred, but would not return violence with violence, spent years learning and practicing, making mistakes, trying again. To not lash out when we are wronged; it is a great internal and external struggle.
There is absolutely nothing passive about the activists at the lunch counter. Many nonviolence teachers and activist leaders, from Gandhi to MLK to others, are fond of saying that when they are looking for nonviolent activists, they would much rather recruit an angry person with boundless energy than a passive person. Anger can be redirected; rage is energy that can be channeled for great good.
As someone who works with energetic, hormonal, brilliant, moody adolescents every day, this gives me great comfort.
TThe young people I teach are at one of the most significant developmental crossroads of their lives. They are not children; they are not adults. Their bodies tell them they are strong and able, that they need more space than a small classroom. Their minds are pleased to wander outside our walls and down the streets of our city into worlds with different values, different religions, strange customs. Their hearts are full beyond their understanding — engaging community service with new depths of compassion, admiring their peers with new heights of attachment. They are growing up and out from us, as they should.
Of course, they are also a mess much of the time. They sneak ice cream out of the freezer on the same day that they write incredible reflections on peace and conflict. Those new depths of compassion, completely authentic, are also peppered with periods of utter indifference.
And so we’ve come to the end of another year of the great balance: the balance between independence and guidance, between individual initiative and unreliability.
On the days they take leadership and reach new levels of insight, we practice noninterference and give them room to keep going. On days they falter, we redirect and remind them of the goal. Maria Montessori so wisely said of adolescents: “It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows, than as if he has less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.” So ends another year of cheering on these creatures who are neither babes nor adults, but who alternately, unpredictably, remind us of both.
In light of this hormonal, rebellious, unpredictable person, very few would ask the adolescent, “How should your school be run?” Still fewer might publish the conclusions. And even fewer still might actually take the conclusions seriously and use them to steer future learning.
But the learning theory at my school is that doing just that is the best curriculum of all.
This year, the middle school students published an article on Medium. After reading a series of essays by two famous educators asking the question, “What is School?,” our adolescents collaborated to publish a response. Believing that their perspective was valuable, they reflected on their own school experience, their beliefs about a quality education, and the ideas of experts in the field. They pursued this project with determination, with passion. They had somehow come to believe that their opinions, even on the nature of their very education, were crucial to the discourse.
This shouldn’t shock you. Independence leads to strong social relationships and orientation to community improvement. Leading students to the very edges of their ability, in a safe and nurturing community, breeds confidence, daring, and risk.
This summer we move to an entirely new campus; 8th graders will move up to Post Oak High School. In the midst of these shifts, I offer you their own words from the Medium article:
“Nothing we acquire in school is relevant forever. History is continually rewritten. There are always going to be new discoveries that rapidly change the entire world of science. The only constant is change.”
This year, the students glimpsed cutting-edge medicine at the Texas Medical Center, they grasped the complex water system of Houston, and they practiced utmost self-care in nutrition and exercise. They journeyed from the Grand Canyon to Washington, DC to seek the bounds of nature and government. They increased their understanding of becoming citizens of the school, their city, this nation, the world.
All this, and they still are challenged by how to manage their bodies, their personal bubbles, their technology, their emotions. They are bursting with energy, looking for places to channel it. At times they need significant redirection; at other times we sit back and marvel at their brilliance. And so we come to the end of another year of the Great Balance.
The channeling of that boundless energy is exactly what the nonviolent champions were after. The great activists for peace in human history (and the present) are taking righteous energy and fueling movements for change in the world.
Behold the inner world of your daughters and sons. They are in a world of change, strife, conflict, and they are learning how to sit quietly, think fiercely, and make the calculated change they want to see. They are learning, through endless rounds of trial and error, of testing and retesting, to be autonomous, contented, passionate citizens. Not always poetic, but consistently epic.
Rising 8th graders, take what you can from this year. Go into tomorrow with quiet pride, with the independence you’ve made for yourself, with the compassion you’ve learned and discovered within you. Go and sit where you choose, making the world of your loved ones, your enemies, and your wider world ever better.
I invite us to close with the words of one of the students responding to a recent trip to Washington, DC:
“Have you ever dreamed of having a memorial built for you one day after you leave this earthly abode? Forever engraved in stone, your legacy is sealed. Some wonder whether it is better to be notorious than not be known at all. To have no legacy. To have no impact: you were just there. To be of significance to the world is an opportunity that few have. History honors those who have been through conflict and come out with peace. We have all dreamed of it at some time in our lives. The difference is that some act on the dream. Failure and the prospect of failure, I believe, are equally intimidating. The difference is that some do not let it get in the way.”
