Angels, Apes and Itchy Shirts

We have some thousand new students this year – and they have been finding their feet. I’ve been watching them, from kindergarten to high school – serious in their intent when they’re focused, then breaking a moment later into hoots of laughter with their friends. These early days are mostly about the ordinary things – getting to know a new campus, finding a friend to sit with at lunch, beginning to feel a sense of belonging. It is on this foundation (sometimes overlooked) that our mission begins with these students: to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.

That notion of force may seem to jar with an education which seeks to create self-directed people who can make wise choices – and indeed with notions of peace. But even the most obvious notions of peace can require force to maintain, as any Ukrainian or peacekeeper would know. Nor is this a modern idea. One of the most memorable lines in the Bible has Jesus saying he comes to bring not peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34), and Gandhi, too, once said – writing on Indian independence – that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, he would advise violence. We are hardly in the situations these figures faced, but the search for peace may not always be about hugs and being nice.

I wonder what the place is for force as a means to a noble end. I am inclined to think that it means helping students see the value of certain beliefs so that they are prepared to act even when it is uncomfortable, even when it comes at a cost, and even when they need to be forceful – perhaps very forceful indeed.

There’s an old Sufi saying – the wolf knows something that the sheep can never know – which may have some bearing here. It seems to align with William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep, which laments what he sees as the docile, obedient, placid graduates produced from some national education systems. Deresiewicz may or may not be right, but the picture he paints is scary. And so the proverb poses an interesting question: What does the wolf know?

The positive approach is that the wolf knows, far better than the sheep, that compliance can be deadly. The wolf knows a freedom of thought and action that the sheep can never know, and can change things in ways the sheep never could. The wolf is not afraid to use force when needed, in a judicious way. The negative approach may be very similar, with a critical difference: the wolf may also desire to use force in narrow self-interest. So – if you’ll pardon my mixed metaphors – being a wolf can be a double-edged sword, and not every wolf is a kindly one.

Of course, the line between judicious force and self-serving force is exactly what each generation has to work out for itself, and perhaps that’s the point. That’s why so much of what we do is about creating conditions for students to form their own views, test them against principle and evidence, and revise them in light of what they find. That’s how we develop adults with the moral and practical agency the world needs.

The education we offer needs to produce kindly wolves with the knowledge and moral disposition to pursue the UWCSEA mission for peace and sustainability throughout their lives.

Children, of course, have other priorities.

I attended an under-9s boys football tournament, some years ago, supporting one of our teams. These are high energy events, as you can imagine, with hundreds of small boys charging around in semi-controlled fashion; a triumph of enthusiasm and innocence. Our long-suffering Coach never flags during the four matches that each team plays, and constantly shouts what are, to me, cryptic messages like ‘Clear your lines boys, clear your lines!’

In this particular tournament, our team had lost 8-0, 6-0 and 2-0; in the fourth match it was 0-0 with 3 minutes to go, and standing beside Coach, I noted he was quite agitated, as the ball had passed, for the first time, and only momentarily, into the opponents’ half. Amidst the ‘square ball, square ball, lads!’ calls, one boy on our team ran up to Coach on the sidelines, saying ‘Coach! Coach!’ Coach glanced away from the scrum (rugby and football being strikingly similar for this age group) and said, urgently, ‘Yes, son, what is it?’. The boy looked up, dreamily paused to admire the elegant curve of the wing of a bird high above the pitch, and the glint of sun in its eye, and then, pointing to his stomach said, in a slow and rather faraway voice ‘My shirt is a bit itchy here’.

I walked away rapidly, biting my fist to stop myself laughing, and so regrettably did not catch Coach’s comment, but I can confirm that it was concise and guttural. I was later told that the young man in question brings the same focus and commitment to his Tae-Kwon Do.

The human condition is one where, in Terry Pratchett’s memorable phrase, the falling angel meets the rising ape. Nowhere is this truer than in schools, because the child learning to be a kindly wolf is also the angel with an itchy shirt.

We thank you for sharing your children with us in the crucial years.