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The Ethical Imperative for Educators to Represent a Cause or Movement Greater than the Self“If not your dream alone, whose dream is it?”
As educators we do not represent simply our own personal interests. We represent the interests of the vast majority. We represent the dreams, doubts, and needs of all families and communities of our respective nations. Furthermore, educators represent the ethics of peace, solidarity, and life.
We each have a voice. It is within us. Many of us fear using our voice. Voice is not simply the verbalization of ideas or opinions. The concept is much broader. Voice expresses one’s identity. It develops and projects itself in many ways: through writing, through conduct and behavior, through social and cultural choices, through dreams and desires, and even through seemingly irrelevant matters as dress, decorum, and habits.
Identity is the concept we use for the process of becoming one’s self. An individual does not self-define nor self-discover. The concept of “self” implies the concept of “others,” just as the “I” only makes since if there is a “we.” One becomes conscious of his or her self within and through community. Whenever a judgement or comparison occurs, and they do and must occur continuously, in a moment-to-moment motion, one draws perceptions that immediately connect to one’s previous mental patterns. Liberation cannot exist without oppression. The world consists of human systems and relations based on oppression. However, the conduct of liberation has also developed within the world. The only way to see and interpret oppression is to either implicitly or explicitly glimpse liberation.
When we become conscious of our connection to others we identify with their interests; that is, in our thinking and behaving we connect to others based on our perception of our respective interests. Seeing a connection with others does not mean simply seeing something in common, it can also mean seeing a threat of danger presented by the other’s behavior or thinking. It is with and among others where we develop our voice. We develop the language of the group(s) we are born into, and we develop the other forms of mental and emotional development characteristic of the group(s).
When we are working, circled up, or in an organized function it is relatively easy to present ourselves, physically, intellectually and emotionally as interconnected with specific communities, movements, and ideas. When we are not physically doing the same work it can be more difficult. Part of this is fear, fear of rejection, and fear of conflict and the responsibility to promote and defend the ethics and values of our communities, movements, and ideas. Part of it, however, can also be our own individual capacity to perceive ourselves in community. The dominant economic and social structure demands, through its purpose, formation, and operation, that individuals function as autonomous beings, disconnected in every meaningful way. Lack of economic, political, and social/cultural consciousness is the hallmark of a narrow and dim consciousness. Such unconsciousness serves the interests of extreme wealth, and it functions as an opposition force to the interests, needs, and dreams of the vast majority. To teach and learn it is fundamental to develop the conduct capable of raising consciousness.
Paulo Freire says, “No one leaves his or her world without being transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in time and misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence, possibly now forgotten by the one who said it. A word for so long a time attempted and never spoken, always stifled in inhibition, in the fear of being rejected- which as it implies a lack of confidence in ourselves, also means refusal to risk.” “Courage,” Dr. King teaches, “is the ability to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations.” One must risk the possibility of being and becoming identified. To not announce nor reveal one’s inclusion in a community or a historical process or movement might make good sense if someone else was to be put in grave danger by your announcement or revealing; but otherwise such a failure is most certainly an act of cowardice. That is, Dr. King announces, it would be “a submissive surrender to circumstance.”
To struggle successfully against racism, poverty and violence, Freire also says “it is necessary that theweakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. . . We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.”
It is not my voice alone, nor your voice, but the voice of those who announce hope and justice. Langston Hughes put this notion into a poem:
FREEDOM’S PLOWLangston Hughes
When a man starts out with nothing,When a man starts out with his handsEmpty, but clean,When a man starts out to build a world,He starts first with himselfAnd the faith that is in his heart—The strength there,The will there to build.
First in the heart is the dream.Then the mind starts seeking the way.His eyes look out on the world,On the great wooded world,On the rich soil of the world,On the rivers of the world.
The eyes see there materials for building,See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.The hand seeks other hands to help,A community of hands to help—Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,But a community dream.Not my dream alone, but our dream.No my world alone,But your world and my worldBelonging to all the hands who build.
“Freedom’s Plow” by Langston HughesFrom SELECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHESCopyright © 1994Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
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