Friday, April 24, 2009
A Simple Challenge
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This week I've been talking with my freshmen students about the discipline of "Simplicity," which IMO is one of the hardest concepts to grasp. We are so brainwashed in a culture of purchase+consume+work = identity that talking about a life and mindset outside of material possessions is like describing a forest to fish.
Another teacher helped come up with the idea for a unique project (see pictures throughout): A collage of items that represent money and possessions. Each student brought in 4 items, attached them to the wall, and then we painted over it the words, "What's UR Dream?" Then I tried to challenge students to dream bigger, imagine a different story, another way to live and die - and they wrote that "new dream" overtop of the collage.
I readily admit that I did not communicate the idea of a new dream, a new story very well. It was challenging for a few reasons:
1) I've been thinking about the whole idea of getting out of the typical American mindset for a few years, and so I have new ideas, new dreams, new visions right at the front of my thinking. Whereas, I would guess this may be one of the first times the students have heard someone challenge them to live more simply.
2) The daily grind of high school encourages students to think less and less - they have learned how to "get by" and anything that confronts them in a really challenging way is just seen as more work. It's tough for both teachers and students to move beyond the B&W questions/answers formula, and begin to explore, to imagine and create together. It's a lot more messy (as was all the painting in this project) and not every student "gets it." But perhaps it has more significance?
3) Modern evangelicalism doesn't know how to dream outside of the inherited American formula. In fact, I would argue that evangelicalism is actually hostile toward bigger and better dreams of world peace, universal health care, equal rights and justice for everyone, and environmental sustainability. This is a deeply disturbing irony to me, that many Christians I know would say equal rights and life for everyone should not be our dream, because some are sinners and deserve to be punished? We have strayed far from the simple words of John 3:16 ("God loved the WORLD")
4) Talking about simplicity is SO CONVICTING > as soon as I start to talk about possessions, wealth, obsessions with trends, etc. I realize that I am so much caught up in this mess as well. Ugh....
I'm sure there are many more reasons why I felt like I was talking to a brick wall the past few days - it's spring, my teaching is confusing, I wasn't very prepared, and perhaps students were understanding and agreeing more but just weren't jumping out of their seats and praising my revolutionary ideas (why don't they every do that?!?) But I did read a few words from Brian McLaren's book "Everything Must Change," because he says it so much better than I could.
"Can the suicide machine really be stopped? Can the earth really be liberated from the destructive framing story that drives it? Is Jesus' healing and transforming framing story really powerful enough to save the world? The simple answer is that nobody knows... Changing the wind would mean changing public opinion, which requires changing the values that guide people individually and as groups, which in turn requires changing the vision of what is both possible and desirable, which ultimately means changing our framing story. In other words, changing the wind means doubting, rejecting, and defecting from our old framing stories, and instead, discovering and adopting - in a word, believing- a new framing story.... So we must realize this: The suicidal framing story that dominates our world today has no power except the power we give it by believing it. Similarly, believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do."
I hope, at some level, that is what I am really doing as a teacher - helping students to draw a new framing story - to believe something beyond the hopeless and never-ending cycle of wealth acquisition. The challenge though is what McLaren refers to, the "doubting, rejecting and defecting" from the false and damaging story. I have to do it first, and then somehow call students out into a new, different, exciting, challenging world.
I think we made some progress this week though - see the white words written overtop of the black and red -those are the new dreams, the bigger dreams, that the students came up with on their own. In a lot of ways, I am hopeful and excited that I am seeing things change.
This week I've been talking with my freshmen students about the discipline of "Simplicity," which IMO is one of the hardest concepts to grasp. We are so brainwashed in a culture of purchase+consume+work = identity that talking about a life and mindset outside of material possessions is like describing a forest to fish.
Another teacher helped come up with the idea for a unique project (see pictures throughout): A collage of items that represent money and possessions. Each student brought in 4 items, attached them to the wall, and then we painted over it the words, "What's UR Dream?" Then I tried to challenge students to dream bigger, imagine a different story, another way to live and die - and they wrote that "new dream" overtop of the collage.
I readily admit that I did not communicate the idea of a new dream, a new story very well. It was challenging for a few reasons:1) I've been thinking about the whole idea of getting out of the typical American mindset for a few years, and so I have new ideas, new dreams, new visions right at the front of my thinking. Whereas, I would guess this may be one of the first times the students have heard someone challenge them to live more simply.
2) The daily grind of high school encourages students to think less and less - they have learned how to "get by" and anything that confronts them in a really challenging way is just seen as more work. It's tough for both teachers and students to move beyond the B&W questions/answers formula, and begin to explore, to imagine and create together. It's a lot more messy (as was all the painting in this project) and not every student "gets it." But perhaps it has more significance?
3) Modern evangelicalism doesn't know how to dream outside of the inherited American formula. In fact, I would argue that evangelicalism is actually hostile toward bigger and better dreams of world peace, universal health care, equal rights and justice for everyone, and environmental sustainability. This is a deeply disturbing irony to me, that many Christians I know would say equal rights and life for everyone should not be our dream, because some are sinners and deserve to be punished? We have strayed far from the simple words of John 3:16 ("God loved the WORLD")
4) Talking about simplicity is SO CONVICTING > as soon as I start to talk about possessions, wealth, obsessions with trends, etc. I realize that I am so much caught up in this mess as well. Ugh....
I'm sure there are many more reasons why I felt like I was talking to a brick wall the past few days - it's spring, my teaching is confusing, I wasn't very prepared, and perhaps students were understanding and agreeing more but just weren't jumping out of their seats and praising my revolutionary ideas (why don't they every do that?!?) But I did read a few words from Brian McLaren's book "Everything Must Change," because he says it so much better than I could.
"Can the suicide machine really be stopped? Can the earth really be liberated from the destructive framing story that drives it? Is Jesus' healing and transforming framing story really powerful enough to save the world? The simple answer is that nobody knows... Changing the wind would mean changing public opinion, which requires changing the values that guide people individually and as groups, which in turn requires changing the vision of what is both possible and desirable, which ultimately means changing our framing story. In other words, changing the wind means doubting, rejecting, and defecting from our old framing stories, and instead, discovering and adopting - in a word, believing- a new framing story.... So we must realize this: The suicidal framing story that dominates our world today has no power except the power we give it by believing it. Similarly, believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do."
I hope, at some level, that is what I am really doing as a teacher - helping students to draw a new framing story - to believe something beyond the hopeless and never-ending cycle of wealth acquisition. The challenge though is what McLaren refers to, the "doubting, rejecting and defecting" from the false and damaging story. I have to do it first, and then somehow call students out into a new, different, exciting, challenging world.
I think we made some progress this week though - see the white words written overtop of the black and red -those are the new dreams, the bigger dreams, that the students came up with on their own. In a lot of ways, I am hopeful and excited that I am seeing things change.
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