Boy, did I have to run for my fire extinguisher to douse the searing flames that jumped out from a message I recently received. “….Emotions have no place in the classroom. My task is to be totally objective, to be devoted to my discipline, to solely disseminate information, and to develop thinking skills. I am a professor, not a teacher. Nothing more. Nothing less. I will not coddle anyone who doesn’t wish to acquire a mastery of the subject. I care about students, but if they aren’t up to it, if they don’t do what I want, I don’t see where it should be my concern.” Then, in a final flicker, this professor summed up his response to my last few reflections on the role of awe in our lives in general and in the classroom specifically, “Such foolishness.!!”
The beginning of my answer was in six parts. First, I said, “If you are turned off by such words as ’soul,’ ’spirit,’ ‘heart,’ ‘hope,’ ‘faith,’ and ‘love,’ feeling that feeling has no place in academia, getting emotional about incorporating emotion in the teaching and learning processes, substitute them with the more acceptable word, ‘brain.’ After all, I have been talking about integrated functions in the brain that are being discovered and described by what is called ‘brain-based research.’ But, when you do, understand two things. First, as Rabbi Abraham Herschel said, ‘Words create worlds,’ yours and theirs. What you say and how you say it matters. And, second, understand that academia, like the whole of society, is inside something of a cage. It has traditionally and errantly elevated the intellect to the levels of higher order of human wisdom while divorcing it from ‘emotion’ that was dismissed and denigrated to the depths of a lower, neanthderthal-like, brutish order. Yet, modern studies reveal that our brain functions as an integrated whole; it isn’t physically divided into separately operating cognitive and emotive compartments or that it functions in a way on one side, the objective side, totally separated from and uninfluenced by from the other, the subjective emotional side, or visa versa.”
Second, I said, “Everyone in that class is alive. Things are happening in front of us, not in our lecture notes. So many of us have the greatest disdain for so many students for a minimum number of reasons that closes us to the students. It’s a barrier to unconditional and non-judgmental connection and commitment, for being supportive and encouraging sources of courage, hope, faith, and love. The primary test of what we do is how we behave towards the so-called average or poor student, that student who needs us the most. It is easy to “care about” the good or honors students. It’s like asking a physician to care only for the healthy. But, the caring for the ‘lesser student’ is the true judgment of who we are and what we do. Isn’t it our task to help the supposed ‘don’t belong’ belong, to assist the ‘don’t know hows’ to learn how? For me, awe doesn’t allow me to get smug by focusing on what I’m doing right at that moment with those particular students. But, they are changing day by day and term by term. So, I have to ask myself, everyday and every week and every month: What haven’t I done? What do I have to do? What do I have to differently? What can I do better? Take care, we should be concerned unconditionally for the needs of each and every student. We should believe in and have faith in and have hope for each student, if for no other reason, then we do not know what potential lies beneath the surface waiting to be tapped. Callous indifference, bred by selective conditional and judgmental ‘caring,’ and by ‘it’s always been done this way’ habits, that has diminished empathy and compassion, is one of the greatest threats to education.”
The third part of my reply was: “What I am sharing is not foolish, and certainly not useless. Again, it’s the current science. So, to repeat what I’ve said in my previous reflection, all the researchers looking into the power of ‘awe,’ whom I have mentioned, have concluded that being ‘awe-full,’ when the rubber of awe hits the road, when putting the pedals of faith and hope and love to the metal, helps you to be able to see the mighty oak in that supposedly insignificance acorn. If we know that in the ordinary acorn are the beginnings of the extraordinary oak, why can’t we see that in each supposedly unimportant average or poor student are the potential beginnings of importance? Awe tends, in the words of Keltner, ‘to increase people’s feeling of connectedness and willingness to help others.’
Fourth, I said, “Keltner and Piff found that when people experience ‘awe-full,’ they tend to cooperate more, share more, and sacrificed more for others who will then achieve more. And, if achievement is truly your goal for the students, you should be interested, intensely interested, in the stimulating and inspiring power of “awe-full.” I have found that when you truly care for each student, when a student feels she or he is cared about, you’re never off the hook. You can’t help but bring water to an arid attitude; you can’t help but feel responsible for helping to mend a weakened spirit. And, so, I share how awe gave me so much more room to move about than that allowed by the constrictions imposed generality, stereotype, and label; it revealed the vast complexity in each student that is left out by these dehumanizing and overly simplistic images which misinform and misleads us. It is ‘awe-full,’ not ‘awful,’ which cuts through that opaque image of the herd and reveals that each person at any given time is singular, exclusive, precious, and sacred with her or his unique, and often untapped, potential.”
Fifth, “In their research, Keltner and Haidt found that awe—in my words—shatters ceilings, glass or otherwise. The positive emotions in ‘awe-full’ such as admiration towards others, in turn, heightens self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-respect. And, they can change lives in significant and permanent ways for everyone. Don’t I know that! And, isn’t that what education is all about?”
And, finally, “Now I don’t just talk out of the scientific research. I also talk out of personal experience. They both tell me that the term is too short, but, to quote one of my favorite passages from the Talmud, ‘The day is long, and the work is great, and we’re not commanded to finish the work, but neither are we allowed to desist from it.’ In the spirit of those words, I don’t despair. I know every word counts; every act is important; every thought has power; every feeling is significant. I mean I know I have a part to play in a meaningful story that is greater than myself. Again, to paraphrase Rabbi Herschel, I have spirit, a mind, a heart; I use them. I have questions; I ask them. I have challenges; I offer them. I have learned things; I teach them. I do things; I share them. I don’t have set prescriptions; I don’t have specific how-to manuals; I don’t have sure-fire recipes; and, I don’t have guarantees. I do have is a set of applicable and directing principles.”
Enough for now. More on the rest of my response later.
Louis