This morning, on the chilly, damp, misty, pre-dawn streets, I
started getting
into the groove, to go inside myself, to put on my game face, as I begin to
prepare for my
workshop on creating a motivating classroom for the Lilly Conference on
Collegiate
Teaching next week at Miami University. That getting into the mood also took
me back to
the surgery that expunged my cancer. I'm not sure what took me back there.
Maybe it's
the fact that the fifth anniversary, that magic five years of being cancer
free, is
approaching. Anyway, my hospital stay was in some respects a tale of two
nurses: witches
and angels. On one hand there were a couple of Nurse Ratcheds, the cold and
indifferent
witches. They were good with the equipment, but not good with people. These
professional
harpies kept me at a distance. They didn't talk to me. They parked their
brooms and
entered my room as muted, expressionless, animated hypodermic needles. They
treated me
coldly as a "case" rather than warmly as a "person." They whipped through
their tasks
with a kind of disconnection. At times, they were stern, almost gruff. If I
had let
them, they would have been depressing, demoralizing, and dehumanizing. I'm not
sure I
would use the words "kindness" and "dignity" to describe their treatment. They
had been
assigned to care for me, but they didn't act in a caring way as if they cared.
If their
behavior wasn't toxic, it wasn't comforting; and, it certainly wasn't
therapeutic. Then,
there were the angelic nurses. Ah, the angels. I could have sworn they had
halos and
wings. They understand that their mission was not simply to care for my
post-surgical
recovery; it as to care for my overall well-being. They understood that they
were at
their best when they treated the whole me, when they both helped me feel better
and get
better. Their treatment wasn't confined to a silent, matter-of-fact, sullen
change of
IVs, or checking my catheter, or taking my temperature. The angels were good
with the
equipment, but they were also good with people. They uplifted my spirits with
simple acts
of human decency: a caring word, a smile, a kind word, a soft touch, a
compassionate
expression, an engaging conversation, an assuring tone. They not only cared,
they acted
caringly by conveying with their eyes, mouths, faces, and bodies that they
truly cared.
In many respect, each is a product of what has been made into a
heavy weight
title bout in our educational system. In one corner, champion of the world, in
purple
trunks, are numbers, precision, information, technical know-how, and
objectivity. In the
other corner, the challenger, in white trunks, are empathy, compassion,
kindness, and
caring. And yet, it is a slug fest that need not be, that need not be. The
competition
between the two should be replaced by a cooperation because it's not really a
competitive
boxing match between either/or. It's not a matter of concern for one detracts
from
concern for the others. It's a matter of a collaborative "and" of all these
critical
skills. Each in their own way is vital. I wonder how many academics outside of
psychology and business have read, really read, much less applied the lessons
of Daniel
Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Primal Leadership (with
Richard
Boyatzis and Annie McKee), as well as Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Resonant
Leadership, Ed Deci's Why We Do What We Do and Gregory Berns' Iconoclast.
Based on
studies of the brain, they talk of our capacity and need to be empathic, to
manage our
emotions, and to connect with others as key ingredients of sustained purpose,
meaning,
achievement, sense of satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, and happiness in
both our
personal and professional lives. That includes the classroom as well.
Read about what's going on at the Stanford School of Business, at
MIT, at
Harvard Medical School, and other institutions, and you'll see that technical
skills,
critical thinking skills, and people and social skills are not antagonists. To
the
contrary, they're comrades in arms. The real enemy of education is a one
dimension focus
of far too many academics. Education's enemy is almost sole concentration on
information
transmission and on the development of technical skills and on what's called
"critical
thinking" skills at the expense of grounding students in the actual practice of
working
with and relating to others. Higher education's enemy are those credentialing
boards,
those pervading, high-stakes standardized exams for entering college or a
profession that
don't approach measuring the social and emotional skills needed to separate the
witches
from the angels.
That being the case, it's a matter of academics realizing that not
only are
they in the "people business," but every profession, every job, for which they
train
students is a "people business." It's a matter of finding ways to intimately
merge the
training of both technical skills and thought skills with the development of
both
emotional and social skills. It's a matter of inseparably meshing both the
teaching and
learning of what I called long ago: know, think, do, and feel. We need a
partnership of
intellectual strength with emotional and social strength; we need to nurture
the "whole
person;" we need to graduate the person who has the information and thought
skills at her
or his finger tips, who is mindful, aware, kind, caring, compassionate,
empathic, willing
to take risks, courageous to take initiative, capable of deciding without
guarantees,
resourceful, flexible, adaptable, fearless, sustainable, respectful, moral and
ethical,
trustworthy, trusting, able to relate to others, supportive and encouraging of
others, be
able to see and listen without judgment.
It can be done. It's just not quick, easy, or neat, and takes lots
of
practice. No, education's enemy is lack of concern for cultivating
inter-personal and
intra-personal savvy, of realizing that communication skills and people
skills--feeling
skills if you will-are just as important as information and thought skills,
that educating
the heart as well as the mind are critical for unlocking the love of learning, a
fearlessness to change and grow, which are, in turn, so essential for
meaningful and
purposeful success and achievement in all professional, social, and personal
walks of life
in this rapidly ever-changing world..
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
(229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__/\ \/\
/ \/ \_ \/ /
\/ /\/ \
/\
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\
\_/__\
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" -
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