Dear Editor,
I am glad to read that the State Board of Education is reconsidering its array of anti-discrimination rules. The purpose of these, in my view, is not well served by a lot of recent thinking and policymaking.
To me, the overall purpose that schools should keep to is the nurturing of a community of trust, creativity and productivity, one that builds upon and supports mutual respect and responsibility. A long list of language rules and granularly perfectionistic policies derived from negative expectations and exacting ideals, however, will not inspire and encourage the trust and relationship needed in school communities.
It is possible to develop an approach for a respectful, inclusive and trustworthy environment in schools, but not by negatively conceived expectations and means. Instead of aiming for anti-discrimination via “perfect” language, behavior and policies that are excessive if not practically impossible, why not look to positive, attainable goals of more interaction, collaboration and exploration, both for connection and learning, among all members of the school community?
Work on the substrate of good relationship rather than the details of its outer forms — that is my suggestion for success. Honesty, freedom, appreciation and trustworthiness serve the ends of a fair and respectful school community better than granular control, conformity and punishment can.
Instead of formulating ideals and attempting to design the exact path to them, which ends up being impossible as well as harmful, encourage people to connect in honest, trustworthy and respectful ways, Perfection is a fool’s aim, I think, and leads to alienation, distrust, dishonesty, excessive costs and lawsuits.
I wish that the goals of schools were expressed as general positive aims and that their means were more open and flexible for teachers and everyone to apply.
We need to wisely accommodate and weave in the positive diversity and contributions of human beings in the school enterprise, not just see people in terms of “identity” categories which the school intends to reorder. “Identity” categories aren’t real, whole identities, of cours;, they are just limited social categories, the same ones, mostly, which have been used all along for ranking, discrimination and stereotyping. These can’t be turned around to good use either by reranking and hedging them with many additional rules and punishments.
True identity is also made up of individual uniqueness and common humanity.
I hope my thoughts will strike a chord and add to your reconsideration. Ends, however seemingly moral, do not justify any means to try to achieve them. Instead, the means throughout should reflect the good ends one hopes for. I hope that school laws and policies will be adjusted to improve the trustworthiness and true strength of its school communities.
Idealism operationalized in too exacting, negative and punitive ways quickly gets off the track and heads off to other unideal destinations. We gave up beating children years ago; let’s give up beating the schools’ adult community and leaders too.
Cecelia Blair,
Windsor
