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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Dear Members of the Sidwell Friends School Community:

The human mind is wonderful and mysterious. It is organized to make sense of experience. It is designed to enhance our chances of survival. It is embedded with instincts to propel our genes into the future.

So the news from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, is an account of a mind gone horribly off course. And we are left trying to make sense, seek safety, and above all protect our children. Like schools everywhere, at Sidwell Friends we are engaged in reviewing and revising our own preparations and precautions against harm from an intruder. The safety of the children is our first priority here, and in the new year we will invite parents to a meeting at School, to hear from administrators about our emergency plans and to share questions, concerns, and suggestions.

In the aftermath of this terrible event, teachers and students here are continuing their eager preparations for the holiday break and for first-semester exams. Life goes on, as it must, but not without some deep thinking about big questions. So I share the following general reflections.

We are engaged in education, which in simplistic terms is the way knowledge and skills are transferred from one generation to the next. But at times of rapid social, technological, and environmental change, the teaching generation must simultaneously be a learning generation. At times like these, in other words, we teachers and parents must all be constantly learning, adapting, growing in our understanding and in our strategies for living.

As educators, we know that this growth proceeds not in a straight line, but in a spiral. It entails doubt, contradiction, and ambiguity. Last month Yale Provost Peter Salovey was named President-elect of that university. As a professor of psychology and at Yale, he received acclaim two decades ago for his research on the importance of emotional intelligence. In an address to the freshman class in 2005, as Dean of Yale College, he made the following observation:

An educated person has the ability to appreciate, learn from, and embrace contradiction, even when we might prefer closure. To perceive and tolerate ambiguity is a necessary precondition for advanced reasoning, whether about texts, visual objects, laboratory findings, or observations about the world around us, or public policy.

In response to the event last Friday at Sandy Hook School, we are faced with contradiction and ambiguity: this is our tragedy... and this is not our tragedy.

This is our tragedy because parents and teachers everywhere mourn the senseless loss of student life, at school, by the hand-the gun-of a violent intruder. Our President spoke for us when he said, "Newtown, you are not alone."

At the same time, this is not our tragedy. Every year there are members of our community-of any school community-who are grieving for the loss of beloved family members. We share in their grief, and we support one another in returning to optimism and hope. These are our losses, deeply felt but kept in balance with the joys of life by the geometry of community scale. When the news media beam daily reports of violence and death into our homes and into our consciousness, that balance is easily lost.

George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, saw in a vision ...an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And this is the season when, for millennia, people have honored the first glimmers of lengthening day with celebrations of light and love.

I am working with the Parents Association leadership on scheduling a presentation and discussion on emergency preparedness at Sidwell Friends. In the meantime, we wish for one and all the warmth and the joy of the season-and yes, we will hold our children close.

Yours in peace,

Tom Farquhar
Head of School