We may have gone to the dogs

I recall an incident for which a young boy, 13 years old was recommended for expulsion. In Dominica once one is expelled, this is it. Unlike here in the US one can apply to a new school district. We do not have this option. The education tribunal having adjudicated this boy's case concluded that the he would not be expelled and recommended counselling given some of the coping difficulties he had including his coming to terms with the condition of a father who was recently paralyzed from the waist down. Leaving the father to attend school 13 miles away became a huge burden fr that boy. According to his parents "the paralysis changed their son." No one in the school had inquired to find an explanation for the boy's behavior and they were furious about the Tribunal's decision. We brought in a lawyer-former teacher and high school principal to meet with the staff. During that meeting he made a statement that has remained with me. He said "The law exist and is invoked when and where relationships fail and its purpose is first and foremost to restore these relationships."

I have since reflected on the merit and truism of that revelation and I have come to realize that impatience, indifference, intolerance and reluctance to acknowledge a child's presence in the classroom are probably the biggest hindrances to building relationships. To think that we are now using dogs to teach prisoners how to forge relations has something to say about our failure as a society to inculcate in man of our young this basic component of civility. To think we have to use animals to teach and reteach these men and women how to build bonds is a reflection of how our education systems - formal, informal and non-formal have failed. We have reduced relations to familial ties and therefor are tentative in forging links to the emotions of other people children placed so trustingly in our care.

We are more than teachers. We are the curators of the next generation. The continued presence of civility rest on us and while we can instruct the rudiments of maths and language, we cannot teach relationship because it is forged. It is a connection and therefore it is created. It begins first with the teacher and with seeing each child as a person, a citizen. As each child reciprocates, he learns how to care and appreciate himself and others, and how to forge links with them. He begins to sees himself as others. When that child errs, he learns how to deal with the erring through our dealing with his erring. He learns his attitude toward others through our attitude towards him. He learns to be compassionate through our compassion. He becomes part of the society as we incorporate him into ours. A child in our class in a small human being for whom we are responsible in part to make a big one, a mature one, a developed one. Among human beings this is a shared responsibility and as teachers we cannot abdicate our part in this process or place blame on parents. We reponsible for them while they are in our care, hence we are accountable for what happens to them there.

The parents role is to ensure that they have all the accoutrements for school; that they are fed; clothed but during the time they are in our presence it is our responsibility to make ensure they can live among their peers. Because parenting is mostly home-based they are taught how to live among among their family and neighbors - relations. Once they leave those confines for school, those school roles becomes societal, community-based, that is why they occupy school spaces with their peers as they will at work, in the hospital, in the community, neighborhoods, on the bus, in the park and where ever else people from different walks of life gather - shared spaces and it takes community relations to share these amicably.

Teachers have to do more that teach. They must be. They must be the things they want their children to be and if they are not they must become. They must forge relations with children in a way that they feel related to without indignity. Again the law have severely hampered the process and again it is because it sought to address those few broken relationships but in doing so, fear became an issue for the well intentioned. Because that law is free of passion and compassion, good teachers have set limits on buiding these relations, severely handicapping the social and relational development of succeeding generations. Those handicaps are now being repaired in some case by dogs. Literally, we may have gone to the dogs. Have we become so dysfunctional that we have to turn to animals to build human relations? As that approach becomes popular, I want to commend those who are making the effort to repair the breach but I think we need to learn how to prevent things not fix them. It costs less. In the meantime, we need to give teachers the permission and space to build dignified relations with their children. The future and civility of our society rests on these relations.