While sitting through my son’s recent graduation from elementary school I could not help but feel I was at a religious ceremony. Those who led the ceremony did not describe to parents any concrete academic skills that students had learned in the classroom; there was nothing about reading, writing, math, or science. Instead, the whole affair was shrouded in a cultish (and shallow) worship of being kind.
When I spoke to my own ninth grade students about the graduation, one who was also present said that the ceremony seemed like “religion without a soul.” I told him that he was correct, adding that he might want to explore Aldous Huxley’s concept of “Christianity without tears” from the author’s classic 1932 novel Brave New World.
With political vitriol and social media venom dominating much of young people’s existence, kindness is needed now more than ever. But it is unlikely that students will become kinder by lapping up the shallow dogma of the kindness cultists who too often exhibit the worst characteristics of Freud’s “devouring mother.” Instead of engaging with the Judeo-Christian and ancient Greek roots of individual and societal kindness, kindness cultists feed students a steady diet of social-emotional soma. Just as Huxley’s Mustapha Mond gave the citizens of Brave New World soma to replace the sacrifice, suffering and pain that is a prerequisite to religious ecstasy, modern educators are likely to use virtue signaling as a replacement for actually being kind.
But as NYU professor and best-selling author Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, we must help young people gain access to the wisdom of the ancients if we want them to develop into caring and kind adults. Unfortunately, attempts to work the teachings of the Greek philosophers or Christ into a modern classroom would certainly face resistance from secular progressive educators who promote kindness, caring and human rights but, sadly, don’t connect students to the Judeo-Christian and ancient Greek roots of those noble concepts.
Today’s educators are more likely to focus on the perceived racism and gender inequality in ancient Greece and Rome than the teachings of Socrates, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, or Aristotle’s seminal work on ethics and the search for the highest good. Of course, any approach that wished to incorporate the works of these philosophers would be long and arduous, requiring teachers and students to have the necessary vocabulary, grammar, and reading skills, plus the historical understanding, to put the ancients’ teachings into proper context. Consequently, many educators have chosen the simple path of forcing children to draw smiley faces on sticky notes or engage in contrived and rehearsed virtue signaling rather than the rigorous and uncertain path of genuine inquiry into the human condition.
Those who have worked in education over the past 20 years have certainly noticed the exchange of the practical grammar, vocabulary, writing, and math skills needed to reflect on the human condition for a nebulous and meaningless focus on kindness. Of course, anybody who would be against campaigns like “Kindness Week” and activities encouraging students to write notes of affirmation to classmates would be rightly classified as an ogre. And, in fact, such activities could be extremely useful in helping students learn about what it means to be a responsible and caring adult. However, by trying to teach kindness rather than impart the skills needed to understand the world and students’ place in it, educators are embarking on a mission that has very little chance of succeeding. Just as Jefferson quipped that one could not be both ignorant and free, we might say that it’s impossible for students to be both ignorant of the human condition and kind.
What’s more, the kindness cultists approach of enforcing a simplistic and shallow caring on students may have the opposite effect. For example, two years ago during our school’s kindness campaign, one of my students raised her hand and asked the essential question that any discussion of kindness should start with: Why be kind? Such a question demands that educators develop discussions about the sanctity of life and universal human dignity firstly, and most effectively, argued for in the New Testament. When educators simply tell students to be kind or, worse, punish them for not living up to some ill-defined standard of kindness, they are engaging in dogmatic indoctrination rather than education.
Unfortunately, the cult of kindness, like any cult, reserves its most vile opprobrium for those who dare stray from the acceptable dogma. As a teacher who has tried to integrate the religious teachings and thinkers indicated above into lessons designed to help students confront the Herculean task of being kind, I have faced pushback from administrators unwilling (or unable) to comprehend the value of helping students unearth the religious and philosophical roots of kindness.
An example that highlights this unwillingness was when I was summoned to a discussion with an administrator because I had called some of my eighth-grade students “idiots,” a word, the administrator reminded me, that was not kind.
The administrator went on to describe me as an “outlier,” somebody who was successful in the classroom despite using old and outdated methods. I was told that education was moving down a different path than the one I treaded. When I asked, “Which path?” the administrator said one that was more kind. I disagreed and responded that people like the administrator might be moving down a new path, but that authentic education was still treading down the path the Greeks blazed.
At the end of my son’s elementary school graduation students sang a song about changing the world with “our own two hands.” This is a great and noble thing to teach young people, and the audience was obviously thrilled and inspired by this public display of kindness. I, however, could not help but be saddened by the song, for encouraging students to change the world without imparting to them the skills needed to understand human nature seemed deviously disingenuous.
Perhaps I should have simply repressed my sadness and clapped and smiled, in essence swallowed the modern-day kindness cult soma. Instead, I immediately began designing more lessons that would introduce students to Plato, Aristotle, and the Sermon on the Mount.
Dana E. Abizaid is a freelance contributor to The Daily Caller and has taught in university and high school classrooms for over 20 years.
image, Pixabay license.
Comments are closed.