Learning Is Not Possible Without Mistakes: Being Wrong

No one likes to be wrong. Mistakes are not our goal. However, without mistakes, without being wrong, we don’t grow. Learning is a messy business and mistakes are a critical part of the process.

I was introduced to this video though a magnificent blog post by a teacher from Colorado. She uses this video after the election as a way to open students to the process of disagreeing, listening, and being open to change.

Take a look:

Fox Renews Surprise Hit Trumpfoolery for Second Season

Fox Network announced early on Wednesday that they are renewing the surprisingly popular sitcom Trumpfoolery for a second season.

The show features a hapless billionaire and reality TV star who accidently wanders onto the set of a presidential debate and suddenly finds himself a primary candidate and hilarity ensues.

Throughout the first season, candidate Donald's misadventures included mistaking a KKK leader for a respected public figure, getting in an online argument with a beauty queen, being accused of sexual misconduct, problems with taxes, and insulting just about every person he met. The season ended with our hero having second thoughts and trying to sabotage his own campaign only to find that he appealed to the voting public even more than his highly qualified opponent. In a shocking and side-splitting finale, our poor rich blunderer is swept into office!

The second season will feature such antics as getting lost in Washington DC, a son bringing home a new girlfriend who turns out to be a Russian agent, nominating an old friend for the Supreme Court who turns out to be very different than expected, taking away millions of people’s healthcare, and nearly starting a nuclear war! We’ll get a visit from a wacky gay cousin and meet a secret neighbor we see only over the top of a wall. The season will build to an outrageous and uproarious finale as Donald fires everyone and tries to navigate the presidency on his own! The producers of the show say the second season will even be produced without a laugh track.

Rumor has it that Fox is trying to contract for seasons three and four but there are some legal obstacles in the way.

Two Voting Visions from Rabbi Wine

Today, I took my Kol Hadash Confirmation Class to the Unitarian church as part of our study of comparative religion. The service focused on voting our values. The similarities and connections between their principles and those of Humanistic Judaism became highly apparent when a reading was a quotation from one of the founders of Humanistic Judaism, Rabbi Sherwin Wine.

The selection from Rabbi Wine, although spoken at an Independence Day celebration in 1985, is as relevant and powerful before the election of 2016 as it was in the early years of the Regan presidency:

“There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.”

As vote on Tuesday, and consider our choices on the ballot, it is imperative that we keep the two visions that Rabbi Wine described in mind. Are we truly voting our values and vision? Are we voting out of fear? Are we voting for hope or hate? Are we voting for the reason, freedom, diversity, science, and dignity?

The Myth of Independence

When we are driving on the highway, we see ourselves as free agents. Our actions are individual and separate, affecting only us. When someone cuts us off, we are angry. When lights prevent us from entering the highway as soon as we can, we are frustrated because we cannot get to our destinations as quickly as possible.  We are upset with the driver who sneaks into a lane at the last minute. We speed along the highway and curse those who get in our way.

The truth is, if we let everyone merge, drove at a consistent speed, and obeyed the lights that regulate on-ramps, we’d have far less traffic. If we didn’t talk on our phones in the car, we’d all move more quickly. Counter-intuitively, everyone would get to their destinations more quickly if we thought about other people, too.

Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt put it well, “The individual driver cannot often understand the larger traffic system.” 

In other words, if we stopped thinking about ourselves only and acted in a way that helped everyone, we  all would benefit. Our independence is an illusion. We are part of an enormous interconnected network. We stubbornly cling to the fact that we have a right to make our own choices, and we do, but are we making the right choices?

When we are sick, we call our doctors and ask for antibiotics. Even though some doctors refuse to prescribe antibiotics in circumstances that do not warrant them, many people can find ways to get these drugs anyway. The result of this overuse of antibiotics (and their use in food animals as well) may eventually mean that these drugs are useless to all of us. According to the Mayo Clinic, Antibiotic Stewardship is similar to the highway situation; if I only think about myself and do what I want without thinking about my relationship to the greater system, everyone is hurt.

We need to stop thinking that we are independent and realize that our actions have a greater impact. We are, in fact, interdependent. Unless one is a hermit on an island, one’s actions are part of an ever-changing and highly complex system.

Here’s one more metaphor: When studying family dynamics, I was introduced to the work of Virginia Satir, who compared the relationships in a family system to a mobile that hangs above a baby’s crib. Pull any dangling piece of the mobile and the entire mobile changes. Remove or add a piece and the mobile must find a new equilibrium. Imagine that mobile writ large with millions of pieces.

I am a teacher. It is easy to think that, when I close my classroom door, my decisions affect only my students. Most teachers know that this is far from the case. Students come into class bringing their knowledge, relationships, and feelings from experiences in and out of the school. NPR recently reported how domestic violence “hurts not only the kids who witness the violence but also their classmates.” The climate of a school has a profound influence on every person in the building. Like the highway, schools and classrooms are interdependent systems.

We live in a global economy. Our neighbors’ choices affect the neighborhood. What one passenger brings on a plane could hurt everyone else on it. Uninsured motorists or hospital patients raise the cost of insurance for everyone! Of course, we have freedom of choice and speech, but is it still not okay to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. 

We are not alone. We are not independent. We are part of a highly complex and interdependent system that is beyond our ability to visualize. There are very few victimless crimes or repercussionless choices. In each of our daily lives, we are throwing rocks into the water and creating unfathomable ripples!

The old rationalization of “but I am only one person, what does it matter” may have been what many British people were thinking during the Brexit referendum. Now they must face up to a problematic and painful exit from the European Union that will affect the entire world. Their votes counted, even if they didn’t cast them!

Asking how our choices will affect the world around us is not just an act of humility. Moving beyond our selfish solipsism is an act of adult responsibility. Realizing that our everyday decisions affect more than one person is critical to the wellbeing of all of us.

Homecoming Ghosts: The October 13th Crash Ten Years Later

I see ghosts in the halls of my high school. Most of the time, they are ghosts of the living. I look down the hall and say, “there’s Sarah!” And then I remember that Sarah graduated.  She is at college or medical school or married and living in Los Angeles. That isn’t Sarah at all, but a student who reminds me of her. I turn a corner and remember how Kevin made me laugh as he imitated a teacher’s walk down the hallway. Several times a day, I am reminded of students from two or twelve or twenty-five years ago. They may have graduated, but they are still with me.

Some will never come home. There is an area in the front of the school with plaques dedicated to students who have died. I pass it several times a day and, each time, I mourn them. Sometimes, if it has been a particularly difficult day, I avoid that hall.

Most of my time, of course, is devoted to the students in front of me. My memories are fleeting, but my classes are not. I silently wish for my students what I wish for my own two children. Even after my students have left my classroom, our school, and moved away from our community, I want to remind them that they matter: that I remember them, and I am waiting for them to come home and tell their stories. I don’t tell them that I will probably “see” them in the hall anyway.

Ten years ago, on homecoming weekend, a car carrying several students sped past my home. A roaring engine awakened me briefly. The kids had been to a party, left, and were returning. They were intoxicated and collided with a tree at high speed. The driver and the young man sitting behind him were killed.

I go past the site of this crash daily. There is no plaque or memorial. The sign used to say, “Dead End.” Now it reads, “No Outlet.”

Taking a different route or changing the sign doesn’t change the past. There was a great deal of blaming and finger pointing after the crash. Lawsuits, criminal charges, and media coverage diverted our attention for a while. New parent groups were created. New legislation was passed that held parents more accountable for parties in their homes.

Then everyone moved on. Too many other young people died in the intervening years, some shortly after and some only a few weeks ago. Some due to the awful randomness of medical misfortune, others as a result of drugs and alcohol.

They haunt me.

A recent survey suggests that we are making some progress in the prevention and treatment of teenage substance abuse. I am eager to believe that such surveys give us useful, albeit incomplete, information. We need to act on that information.  

What has changed in the ten years since two boys died at the end of my street?  What must we do differently after students die from overdoses, are killed in parking lots, take their own lives, or die suspiciously?

Almost thirty years ago, it was funny when Julie Brown sang that the homecoming queen’s got a gun. The song is grotesque in a post-Columbine world. It is more that not funny; it feels horribly prophetic and wrong.

Seven years ago, I wrote that I was remembering but not surrendering. Times change, but the legacy of that horrible homecoming continues to haunt me. I remember students who struggled and succeeded. I remember students who graduated hoping for success later. Many found it. Some come home and talk about their journeys. The kids who never got a chance to grow up are still with me in the halls of our high school.

Some I can only hold in my heart and memories. They join my classes. I see them in the halls. They remind me that the important lessons go far beyond reading, writing, and preparing for college. They urge me to reach out to every student and make sure they know how much they mean to all of us: to do whatever I can to make sure that every child comes home.