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“an assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot.”
Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash
In St. John Henry Newman’s famous work, The Idea of a University, the fundamental nature of any educational institution is defined as, “an assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot.” 1 Newman then goes on to ask, if those conditions are not met then, “How can there be any school at all?”
It is, presumably, in the very nature of an educational institution that it be located in a specific place and that it brings different types of people together in that place—the “one spot.”
The notion of “one spot” has certainly taken on added importance over the past two years. As our schools went virtual, then hybrid, the need for locating students and teachers in one, specific place became all the more apparent and important. The need was noticed through its very absence. What’s more, when coming together resumed over the past months, we felt not only considerable jubilation over the act of reuniting physically, but we also came to understand better all that we had missed in being isolated from each other. Such realization makes whatever retreats we need to make due to the Omicron variant, even if they be temporary, all the more agonizing and disappointing. We have also learned, as evidence mounts that the pandemic and its accompanying distancing and hibernation have extracted a toll on our students’ emotional wellbeing, the need for “one spot” is not only a luxury but a necessity. We are the less for existing apart from one another. The power and value of being in “one spot,” as a way of doing school, is clearly evident, even rediscovered.
Being in one place, however, is only part of the equation that Newman described. There needs to be, along with location, an intentional assemblage of different people in that spot, an “assemblage of strangers” as he put it. That is both a sociological reality and an educational necessity. In that respect, however, we now find ourselves, in schools, occupying a rather lonely place in our society.
In his book, The Vanishing Neighbor, Brown University scholar Marc Dunkelman draws upon the work begun by Robert Putnam in his earlier book, Bowling Alone. Putnam had identified the significant diminishing, in contemporary society, of those groups and places where people from different backgrounds and walks of life could assemble—anything from Elks Clubs to PTA groups. These were the places where we could encounter strangers, as Newman put it, in a protected and intentional environment, meeting for the sake of a larger activity.
Dunkelman characterized our affiliations with others in terms of three rings—the inner ring of family, the outer ring of grouping around interests or causes (many of them online and temporary) and what he refers to as the “middle ring,” those places where we come together to seek connection with those less familiar to us. As he observes, “What limited time and energy Americans have today is devoted to our most intimate relationships and a set of much more one-dimensional connections (the outer ring). Along the way, the middle rings have become the missing rings.”
This results not only in the absence of familiarity with strangers in our lives, but the absence of a confidence in the goodwill of the stranger.
School is by its nature one of those middle rings, a place where we intermingle with difference. For many of our families today, school stands alone as the one existing, operative middle ring in their lives. Little wonder, then, that families approach school with intense expectations, along with fears. As much as some may wish that this middle ring institution would reflect more of the like-mindedness of the other two rings in their lives, it is, as Newman reminds us, in the very DNA of school to be a place where there is difference. The fact that our schools have become, particularly over this past year, battlegrounds for the culture wars is a bold reflection of just how few middle ring environments exist in our society today, as well as how unfamiliar we all are with the nature of these places when we enter into them. For many of us, we are amateurs at dealing with middle ring places, and suspicion can easily accompany unfamiliarity.
I was reminded of what bell hooks, who died this past December, wrote about the nature of the classroom in her book, Teaching to Transgress. She envisioned the classroom as a sphere of possibility, where students hear other voices from those whose memories, families, religions, languages, and cultures are different from their own. Here is where students have the opportunity of learning about a larger world. At the same time, along with promise comes risk. As she put it, the classroom could be a potential “danger zone,” by its very nature. If some students are marginalized or unheard, or those who deem themselves “in the know” commerce only with others perceived to be “in the know”—what she referred to as “the magic circle”—the classroom ceases to be a place of potential. Psychic isolation from those who are different from us, as with physical isolation, runs the risk of harming the educational process.
What bell hooks describes as the immensely difficult role of the teacher in cultivating a classroom environment full of promise is amplified in what I see as the increasingly complex challenge of leading a school today, particularly in the absence of other similar middle ring institutions. School leaders are tasked with two vitally important challenges: to hold together not only the need to bring different people together, but teaching the community what this means. This comes through personal example as well as reminding all of the very mission of the school. The “one spot” becomes the place where we encounter those with whom we are not familiar, but also the locale where all learn—including parents—what it means to be in this singularly unique place, how to interact with others there, how not to get our own way there all of the time. That becomes all the more difficult when the “one spot” model is not reflected in other areas of our lives.
As Dunkelman admitted, middle ring relationships can be a real headache. They take a great deal of time to nurture and develop, particularly in the absence of other institutions that mirror their very nature. Little wonder, then, that one of the most common observations I have heard from school people—be they active in a school, retired, or working in consultation with schools—over the past two years has been, “I am glad I am not a school head right now.” That is both an acknowledgement of the challenge which leading a school involves these days, but also a tribute to what it takes to be a school leader today. They are saying, in part, “I am not sure I have what it takes to be doing the work that school heads must do today.”
What it takes is to be present—to be present through modelling, teaching, and welcoming strangers, all in this one spot. It takes being convinced that this is an enterprise both worth preserving, in a culture void of middle ring institutions, as well as building for the future, all for the sake of the greater good in the years ahead. In that regard, few other “one spots” hold the promise that school does.
The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D. is Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools.
- I am grateful to the Very Rev. Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, for reminding me of Newman’s definition in a recent article he wrote for the fall 2021 issue of Berkeley at Yale.