Good INFLUENCE

TEACHING THE WISDOM OF ADULTHOODBy DANIEL R. HEISCHMAN

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2009 Daniel R. Heischman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2363-0

Contents

Chapter One

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GROWN-UPS GONE?

Living and Fostering the Grown-Up Life

There is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying, than true adulthood. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory.

— Toni Morrison Commencement Address at Wellesley College (May 2004)

A dignified adult life, with its heights and depths, protected by wisely kept secrets, once attracted children in such a way that they wanted to become adults. Now they see incoherent emptiness and chaos.

— Robert Bly in The Sibling Society

FOR A NUMBER of years I served as the division head of an independent boys' high school in Washington, D.C., and among the many tasks I undertook was the routine but difficult notification of parents that their son had been either suspended or put on probation, due to a disciplinary problem or an issue of academic integrity In solemn tones, and frequently over the telephone, I would preface the news by saying, "I have some bad news for you," and in most cases the parent already knew that something might be up. After sharing the news of the decision, I came to expect the invariable first question from the parent at the other end of the telephone: "Will this go on my son's record?"

In most cases, I was able to assure the parent that the school did not, as a policy, list disciplinary actions on the academic transcript that would be sent off to colleges. Moreover, with the passage of time and a clean record from that day forward, the official letter of probation or suspension would be removed from the student's file. It was comforting news to the parent still dealing with the shock and disappointment of this setback. However, as many times as I was able to reassure the parent, that initial question never failed to unsettle me: Was this, I would wonder, where we should begin? Is this where we should be focusing our care for the boy? Rather than ask about how his or her child was doing, or consider the lessons that might be learned from the whole experience, the parent went directly to the consequences. Would this be seen by the college admissions people? Would this hurt his future job prospects? Would seeing this on his record prejudice a future teacher against him? Somehow the internal life of the young man was taking a back seat to his external promotion in the world.

That particular type of telephone conversation, however, although common, was less frequent than another. With great regularity parents would call me to express their concern about how their son was doing in a particular class, on an athletic team, or with a group of friends: How come our son is not doing better in math class, and why did we not know about this before now? Why isn't our son getting more playing time on the soccer team? Why does teacher X not like him (as reflected in the poor grade he received on his recent paper)? Did I know what a bad influence one of their son's friends was having on him? In some cases, all the parent wanted me to do was listen; in other situations, there was a clear expectation that I should do something. After all, I was the one supposedly with the power to change things! In most cases, I would respond that I would be willing to pursue the problem, but I did need to tell the boy, or his teacher, or his coach, about our conversation. Suddenly things would take a very different turn; often the parent would say, "My son would be furious to know that I had called you!"

It is a familiar situation for many educators. In essence, parents wanted me to take action without their being implicated, largely for the reason that the child would be upset with mom or dad. Once again, the external factors— particularly the possibility that a son might be unhappy with the interference of his mother or father, that this would make him resent the parent—took precedence over how the boy was faring, and ignored the fact that emotional, moral, and spiritual growth often comes as a result of someone doing something to us or for us that we may not like them doing.

As I heard these concerns expressed with increasing frequency, I found myself wondering, "What does this say about us, as adults, in our contemporary world?" With a premium placed on the external affirmation and advancement of our children, along with the desire for our children to "like us," I began to conclude that there were some seismic shifts taking place in how we adults perceived ourselves as adults. We all seek to understand how our lives, and the lives of the young people we nurture, are being perceived by the external world; likewise, we all wish to experience respect and regard from the generation below us.

However, adulthood—particularly as it relates to the guidance of our children and students—is less about what we need than what they need. While parents may need to be popular with their child, the child needs parents to stand their ground. While parents may need to see the child always happy, the child needs to encounter experiences where disappointment and setback help her to learn and grow. While a parent may need to be perceived as youthful in appearance and temperament, a child needs that parent to be an adult.

There are many signs in our culture that our fundamental understanding of adulthood is changing. Whether it be the postponement of adulthood or the growing eagerness of adults to look younger and younger, we are clearly in the midst of a cultural shift that is changing the notion of full adulthood. Many of the traditional and principal indicators of adulthood—leaving home, getting a job, finding a spouse or partner—are increasingly being deferred. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in how we nurture the young. The love and care that young people feel from their parents and teachers is clearly abundant; the degree to which young people are listened to by their elders today is doubtlessly unparalleled. Yet there is simply too much of what we do, as adults, that is about getting our own needs met—whether it be the need to look and act young, or the need to live through our children—as opposed to looking out for the long-term good of those for whom we are caring.

This deficit in our understanding of what it means to be an adult stems from two principal assumptions about parent and child, student and teacher, the young and the old. First, our primary duty as adults is to care for our children in a particular manner, namely, to set our eyes on the long-range goal of raising and nurturing children, and that is to see that they become healthy, contributing, and independent people. Some of the ways in which we relate to young people in our contemporary culture, however, work against this goal. If we completely shield them from painful experiences, or create a web of constant dependency upon us as parents or teachers, we thwart the ultimate purposes for which we work with or raise children in the first place. As Robert Evans observes, "The ultimate point of parenting [and, I would add, teaching] is not to have children like us all of the time, but to have them be like us when they are raising their own children." Frightening as that may sound, given that they may end up like us or that ultimately we must let them go to be adults in this world, our duty as true adults is to make that happen as best as we possibly can.

Second, caring and responsible guidance of young people depends upon understanding what they not only need, but are actively searching for in their growing-up years. It has, of course, to do with love, nurture, and warmth, with the development of self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment (with what we are fond of referring to as our children "experiencing success"). It must also involve something that our contemporary culture is less likely to understand or figure into the equation: the internal development of the young soul, and what images and influences feed into that soul. Likewise, as the following story shows us, it has to do with seeing beneath the surface of comments, actions, and moods that may deter us from being attentive to the growth and flourishing of that soul.

One Monday morning, I received a call from a father of one of our finest students who was troubled by a conversation he had had with his son over the weekend. As I had come to know Monday mornings as the "mop up" time for dealing with the fallout from the weekend parties, or the reporting of parent complaints about teachers or coaches, I was prepared as always for a long agenda of telephone conversations. This was a conversation, however, that stood out, both for its uniqueness and the depth to which it alluded.

Silas, the son in question, was a highly capable student, as were so many students in the high school where I was the principal. His academic performance was all the more notable because he had to balance his academic work with a demanding fencing schedule. Nationally ranked, Silas traveled a great deal to participate in fencing tournaments throughout the country and beyond, necessitating frequent absences from school. His ability not only to stay abreast of his academic commitments but to excel in them, given all that he had to juggle, was truly remarkable. I joined his parents in being tremendously proud of all that he had done, not to mention how he was also able to maintain a personable, responsive, and generous temperament through it all.

I could tell by the sound of his voice that Silas's father was rocked to the core by a remark his son made, which came out of the blue as they sat at the table for Sunday evening dinner. "I am wondering what I am really good at," he told his parents. Stunned by this announcement, his parents rushed to his defense: "What do you mean, what you are good at?" asked his mother. "Just look at all you do: you are a superb fencer, with a bright future ahead of you in college; you rank near the top of your class at school, you have lots of friends. You're good at a lot of things."

"I don't know," he replied. "I just wish I knew what I was good at."

Silas's parents had given him every opportunity he could possibly desire. They were attentive to him without smothering him. While they supported him by arranging travel plans for his busy schedule and worked closely with the school in arranging for him to complete work ahead of time or get back to schedule when he returned from a tournament, I did not find them to be the stereotypical "parents behind the star," pushing and advocating for their child while living their lives through their offspring's accomplishments. These were busy, interesting people in their own right, and they had regularly reminded Silas that it was his decision to continue with fencing; at any point, should he decide to give it up, they would be supportive of his decision.

Still, these competent and engaging parents were shaken by their son's observation. A question like that should not fit into the framework of a young man's life so filled with distinguished accomplishments. I found myself identifying deeply with the father as he asked me, "What could possibly bring on a comment like that?"

I responded, as I often did, by saying that it was likely there was some other question Silas was asking. Teenagers, particularly teenage boys, have a way of expressing their deepest longings and fears through symbolic actions and observations. Probably Silas was asking a more gut-level question about his identity through the mode that he knew best, performance. Like so many of the highly capable and sophisticated students in that school, it was easy to assume that, by virtue of his successful accomplishments and overall satisfaction with life, Silas was no longer a teenager, with all of the accompanying teenage doubts and questions. Given his ability to manage so many tasks in his life so successfully and given the articulate manner in which he could express himself, how easy it would be to assume that he might be beyond the adolescent struggle for a sense of self, a sense of soul.

"What am I really good at?" Like other questions that adolescents can ask, it is one that can go masquerading, these days, as something about external affirmation or a sense of self-worth. Its roots, I would contend, go much deeper, and challenge all of us to consider the fundamental needs not only of the young but of all human beings. No matter how sophisticated and accomplished our children or students can be, their inner life still needs to be nurtured and developed. They are still very much "works in progress" when it comes to a sense of self and understanding of the source and depth of the questions they ask of us. The understanding of that need, particularly in the young, and our response to it as adults is crucial to our fundamental understanding of our children and students. Call it the soul, call it identity, the center I am referring to has to do with what we can identify and claim about ourselves over and above what we do or how we are perceived. It is the inner core apart from performance, prestige, and praise—all things my highly adept students basked in during their high school careers. With admiring parents doting upon them, college coaches in hot pursuit of many of them, and distinguished academic records clearly reflecting their "gifted" status, it was so easy for many of these students, not to mention their parents and teachers, to ignore that dynamic, to sidestep the matter of the inner core. After all, with the external world telling them so much about who they were, why have need of what the inner self may be telling, or asking?

Another student, Simon, was struggling as a student. He found himself on and off academic probation during the first two years of high school. A warm, athletic, and jovial young man, Simon found the workload at this school a real struggle, and in spite of accommodations given to him by virtue of his diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, he was finding some of the requirements-math and language, most particularly—to be daunting.

Going into his junior year—the year so many regard as the "make it or break it" year for entrance into a good college—Simon had embarked upon it with real resolve. When he had reported to me that he was planning to make "all As" that year, I cautioned him to scale down his expectations, so as not to be disappointed. By mid-semester, he was floundering, and his parents were increasingly alarmed that Simon was not making the most of this crucial year. They requested, and we arranged, a conference with all of his teachers.

Joining us for that meeting were his tutors in math and Spanish, as well as his psychiatrist. With five teachers, two parents, three members of his "support team," and yours truly, it was quite an assemblage of adults, all sitting around in a circle, all of them talking about Simon. He was in attendance at this meeting, although he clearly was daunted by the turnout. What young person would not be, when all of the significant adults in your life had gathered in one room to talk about you, "the problem"?

Talk about him we did. Teachers pointed out his deficiencies, tutors asked questions about the level and nature of the homework he was receiving. That, in turn, made some of the teachers defensive. The psychiatrist sat quietly. Simon's father spoke at length about how he wanted Simon to experience some success this year, raising the issue of waiving some of the graduation requirements that stood in his way, and his mother's chief concern was Simon's self-esteem.

As the meeting went on, I felt increasingly impatient, as it seemed that we were talking too much about Simon and hardly enough with him. Moreover, not one of us had asked him either how he felt about all of this or what his opinion might be. At one point, I turned to him and said, "Simon, if I were in your shoes I would be pretty intimidated by this gathering, and I am wondering how you are reacting to all of this." Some of the adults in the room seemed strangely startled by my question, while others reacted as if it was a stroke of profundity. Simon smiled, I suspect in part because someone had, at least, noticed him. However, he did not have much to say. Father prodded him to speak up on his own behalf, but Simon's comments were short and clipped, confined to the occasional, "I don't know," or, "I guess so."

Toward the end of the meeting, I asked, as I routinely do in such problem situations, if this was the right school for Simon. Perhaps he would find more success and the demands more manageable at a less pressurized environment. Simon was quick to say how much he loved the school. Moreover, his parents would not entertain the possibility of leaving the school. "It is his home," they replied, yet I wondered if it was less a matter of being his home than the most powerful launching pad for the successful future they envisioned for their son.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Good INFLUENCEby DANIEL R. HEISCHMAN Copyright © 2009 by Daniel R. Heischman. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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