On Teaching Humanity

To Teach Too

We each are being taught. Explicit with a need to change is that one better be better; implicit might be that one is not good enough, just as one is. Hence kindergarten, and junior, and senior grades. The crucible of the classroom, however kindly the teacher, makes much of being yet more. And we do each grow to see, despite our relative homogeneity of class-age, that we are indeed ‘individual’.

Amber is always alert. Billy remains a bully. Carissa chatters away. Damon deliberates too much. Elsie is often, mentally, elsewhere. Frank is frequently, simply rude. Graham truly struggles with his health. Heather is too shy. Ian is far too intense. Jack has attention deficit disorder. Karla prevaricates. Liam is, well, frustratingly phlegmatic. Melanie perpetually mutters; speak clearly! Noah could be first in class, if only he’d…. Opal is almost always late. Penelope pops up, unexpectedly, almost everywhere. Quintin is too quiet; what’s he really thinking? Rachel is too raunch…. er, far too provocative. Sam, sadly, is a loner. Tom is hurtfully temperamental. Ursula, a left-brained absolutist, stays too exacting. Virginia prefers more frequent evaluations. Wesley ‘needs’ every period to go to the washroom. Xavier always arrives, looks about, and then skips out. Yvette uncaringly distracts others. Zoe strives to be first at everything.

And teachers persevere. Alphabets of students annually changes their names. A class becomes a cornucopia of souls co-mingle in concentrated lessons, ready or not to evolve. So too for society. Historically obfuscated, life’s curriculum is about the advancement of the collective human condition. Everything around us, teaches.

Mediocrity seems an ugly word. Yet it’s but a delineation of the average energy of the average attempt to fulfill the average challenge. We each do what we do at most tasks on a generally average basis. Striving for excellence, beyond that of being average, is to elevate one of us into First Place, and thereby to set the standard for the others, in second, and third, and so forth. By comparison in every endeavour, in sport, in achievement, in talent, and in living itself we apportion ourselves, unavoidably.

The bell curve of society, at large, slowly shifts. It shifts perhaps as imperceptibly as that illustration of the Little Prince’s python; all chock full of the proverbial elephant in the room. Still, within the bell curve, our individual progress moves too. The best can get better. The slow can appear slower. The bulk of humanity, in the median, can re-establish a new mediocrity. For our teachers, it matters much that we make the fullest use of our own potential as we progress in the evolution of society to be considerate, compassionate, and caring for All.

Yet pigeonholing, and labelling, can create not only a sense of being limited by a ‘group,’ but also curtailed in one’s own individuality. As such, since we each become an ageing student on a continuum past a school-grouped graduation, it still matters, surely, each for each, that life strives to evolve into yet more!