I recall many years ago, as a school chaplain, a time when I met with a parent during the days leading up to Christmas vacation. The parent had a son in the Lower School, and he recently came home with one of those blockbuster questions that only children seem to be able to ask:
“Mommy, am I Jewish or Christian?”
The boy was the son of a Jewish father and Christian mother, although neither parent practiced their faith. At school, there had been many observances and much talk about the upcoming religious holidays, specifically Chanukah and Christmas, all of which had obviously prompted the young boy to think about his own roots. His subsequent question at home caught his parents completely off guard.
While the parent initially questioned why the school would have so much emphasis on religious holidays, thereby prompting their son’s question and its ensuing parental discomfort, as we talked further it was clear that the parents had never talked about religion—including their own backgrounds as well as the place of religious identity in their family’s life—with their son. The matter had been put on hold, a much more comfortable option for them given the complexity of their differences. This left a big vacuum. The boy’s question reverberated throughout that vacuum, leaving the couple at a loss for how to respond.
Experience has taught me that this particular time of the year—filled as it is with seasonal religious observances—can trigger children asking unprepared parents deep religious questions, or leave some parents wondering why and how their child now comes home happily singing songs of the season! Since that particular conversation took place, there has been much progress in our understanding of interfaith marriages, as well as blended families. All of this, however, is part of something larger that I have come to know: what we don’t talk about says as much about us as what we do talk about, especially when it comes to our conversations with children.
Frequently, a child’s question comes before we have talked with them about the subject behind their question. It leaves us feeling unprepared, as well as wondering, “What do I say?” We are left catching a glimpse of a couple of very important realities:
Seeing precedes talking. It is fascinating to me, in the current debate on Critical Race Theory and the place of discussions on race in the classroom, that parents rising in opposition to school initiatives focus primarily on the didactic. It is what our schools are teaching that seems to be the urgent question, what is being imparted in the classroom. The situation is portrayed as if a highly politicized curriculum is being foisted upon innocent, unsuspecting, and unprepared students.
Absent from these arguments is any attention to what students are actually seeing, or have already seen, of racial dynamics in their schools and in their community. What goes unspoken does not mean it has gone unseen. Most students have witnessed overt or covert instances of bias, preference, or marginalization based on race; they have come to collect experiences of and to know something of the racial culture of their school and community. In our recent ECE leadership day, Jessy Molina spoke of how conversations with young children about race are not alien to their experience, as they have already witnessed the place of racial difference in their lives. The questions are already there, even if unarticulated. Our conversations, be it on race or other matters, build upon what has already been seen.
While curricular matters play a significant role in whatever a school undertakes, there is much more about the larger culture that students see and absorb relative to the issue at hand. Indeed, when students of color speak about instances of subtle or not so subtle bias in school, there are as many, if not more, recollections of experiences outside the classroom as inside. Add to that what students have seen on social media, and it is rare that any topic introduced for discussion in school, from whatever venue, is without precedent in what students have seen or heard in their experiences.
Whether it is that blockbuster question posed to parents, or a topic the school introduces, discussion builds upon what students have already seen, and what they have encountered already. Life has a way of presenting itself to us before taking the form of talking about it. Students take in much—that is their vocation as students—and they have already been witnesses to the impact of the very issues we adults wonder how to raise with them or may wish to avoid altogether.
Talking should precede crisis. We live so much of life in the reactive mode, responding to situations as they are presented to us. Much of the time we are taken by surprise, leaving us feeling unprepared, struggling to figure out the best mode of addressing what has been thrown into our lap. This is completely understandable, given how much comes at us and challenges us. “There is always something,” we find ourselves concluding, and it is impossible to be fully prepared for the panoply of problems that come our way. One likes to think about being proactive and anticipatory, yet, as one former school head put it, “There is so much that potentially could go wrong on any given day in the life of a school, who can be ready for it?” As with school, so with life.
It is important for all of us who work in and with schools to be thinking about the potential crises that could come our way—the issues that can tear at the social fabric of a school community, the disruptions in school equilibrium, and the questions “out there” that could one day soon come calling “in here.” A wise school community is one in which people ask, “What are the things we are not talking about, and should?” or “What do we need to talk about before it becomes real to us here in the school?”
For many years now, schools have been advised to talk in advance, from the board level on down, about the school’s response to the experiences of transgender students or members of the community who may be in transition. It is not an easy topic to address ahead of time, given the political furor that surrounds the issue or by virtue of what may seem, at the time, to be the hypothetical nature of the issue. How could that issue, some wonder, ever possibly become one for our school? Indeed, for many, issues do not become real until they become alive and immanent within our very own environs. Intentional conversation about this or any topic, particularly those of the variety that the school community feels more comfortable tabling than presently addressing, helps prepare the community for what will be its inevitable arrival. It is common wisdom among school administrators that it is much more advantageous to have initial conversations with parents prior to any problem situations their child might have. It is better to do the “getting to know you” prior to, as opposed to in the very midst of, an emerging crisis. So, too, with the matters that schools need to be ready to work with in the years ahead.
There is, of course, so much to talk about, so many matters that may bear upon the wellbeing of a school community. As school culture is as much a matter of the unspoken as the spoken—indeed much of the power and stability of a school culture rests upon the unspoken—and that is the nature of culture as the school’s immune system. Bringing to the table what needs to be talked about is an important way to have a positive impact on that school culture. To be sure, in many cases the task will still be demanding and difficult.
E.F. Benson once observed that it is far more difficult to be honest with ourselves than to be honest with other people. When we risk being defined more by what we don’t talk about, rather than what we do talk about, we sell ourselves and our communities short.
Two realities can help us face up to the task. First, we have seen much already of what needs to be addressed. This is not new territory, at least on the experiential level. Secondly, the very activity of addressing helps shape our response—a more mature response at that—whenever an issue comes calling for real.
The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D. is Executive Director for the National Association of Episcopal Schools.