Summer Reading
Summer is a glorious time to read those bestsellers that piqued our interest during the year, but that we never got around to reading. This summer after reading TransAtlantic (Colum McCann), All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr), and Norwegian by Night (Derek B. Miller), it dawned on me that a theme was starting to emerge. And when I started reading A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson), it was there again: all of the characters in these books were striving to make sense of war and its legacy.
When I shared this observation with my husband, Barry, and
mentioned I might want to blog about it, he said, “What does war have to do
with education?” That question stopped me in my tracks. It struck me that it
had everything to do with education, yet I could not immediately say how and why. The connection did appear tenuous. The culture of schools, curriculum, and educational practices reflect the beliefs, values,
history, and culture of a society at large…whether it be antebellum America, 20th
century Europe, Nazi Germany, Northern Ireland, Korea, Vietnam, or the Balkans.
Can education even make a dent in changing a culture? 
Colum McCann’s novel begins with Jack Alcock and Arthur
Brown’s harrowing transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in
1919. They fly their WWI Vimy for a variety of reasons, but the one that
intrigued me the most was this one: they wanted to “knock the war out of the plane.” And this led me to see yet another another theme: in each novel, after each war as the survivors cobble their lives together, they hope that their suffering will end suffering
for others. Don’t we all remember that WWI
was supposed to be the war to end all wars?
Yet, the cycle continues. Is war inevitable? After reading Norwegian by Night, I was fascinated by Derek
B. Miller’s bio and went a-Googling (is that a word?). He is the director of
The Policy Lab and a senior fellow with the United Nations Institute for
Disarmament Research. In an interview on Book Bites, Miller was asked this
question: “Can we ever get over wars and more important should we?” Miller’s
clear-eyed and honest response was
I do believe conflicts are endemic
to social interaction and conflicts continue to occur. I also think that there
is much progress to be made in better managing and resolving conflicts. I feel
confident in saying that states have not invested in building the tools
necessary to engage the world’s plurality of cultural systems in ways that are
informed by our differences. I believe real progress towards more peaceful
co-existence will be the reward for relevant efforts in this regard. Just
consider the expertise, budgets, systems, and scholarship that have gone into
winning war. And now compare that to what we’ve invested to avert, manage, or
recover from war.
So, my answer to Barry’s question is that even though
educators cannot stop the cycle of warfare, we can help our students learn
how to manage and resolve conflicts.
Maybe we can even craft and tell exciting and engaging stories about how
strong and smart men and women have resolved conflicts and avoided war.
One of the stories in McCann’s novel is about George
Mitchell (yes, Maine’s George Mitchell) and how he brokered the peace in
Ireland. McCann writes about Mitchell:
It is as if, in a myth, he has visited an empty grain silo. In the beginning he stood at the bottom in the resounding dark. Several figures gathered at the very top of the silo. They peered down, shared their eyes, began to drop their pieces of grain upon him: words. A small rain at first. Full of vanity and history and rancor. Clattering in the emptiness. He stood and let it sound metallic around him, until it began to pour, and the grain took on a different sound, and he had to reach up and keep knocking the words aside just to get a little space to breathe. Dust and chaff in the air all around him. From their very own fields. They were pouring down their winnowed bitterness, and in his silence he just kept thrashing, spluttering, pushing the words away. A refusal to drown. What nobody noticed, not even himself, was that the grain kept rising with it, and the sounds grew different, word upon word, falling around him, building beneath him. And now—at the top of the silo—he has clawed himself up and dusted himself off and he stands there equal with the pourers who are astounded by the language that lies below them. They glance at each other. Three ways down from the silo. They can fall into the grain and drown, they can jump off the edge and abandon it, or they can learn to sow it very slowly at their feet.
Words. Yes, educators use words. As we start a new school
year, I hope that we will continue to use those words to help our students learn how to resolve conflicts and make the world a
better place for themselves, their children, and for generations to come.
