Those of you who have read A.A. Milne’s 1928 children’s book The House at Pooh Corner, which our wonderful Lower School librarians, Thomas Buffington and Nicole Liebman, loaned to me earlier this week, might recall that “Chapter Seven: In Which Tigger Is Unbounced” begins rather uncharitably. “Tigger’s getting so bouncy nowadays,” complains Rabbit, “that it’s time we taught him a lesson.” Ignoring Pooh’s and Piglet’s misgivings, Rabbit reasons that “if we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad just for five minutes, we shall have done a good deed.” Rabbit’s plan? “We take Tigger somewhere he’s never been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him again, and—mark my words—he’ll be a different Tigger altogether.” When Piglet asks where, exactly, they should lose Tigger, Rabbit replies, “We’ll take him to the North Pole.”
Predictably, and perhaps deservedly, the plan goes awry. Piglet, Pooh, and Rabbit, in attempting to lose Tigger, manage only to lose themselves when a fog sets in, and matters are not helped by Pooh’s poor sense of direction. (“Pooh knew that when you had decided which paw was the right, then the other one was the left,” Milne writes, “but he never could remember how to begin.”) Tigger bounces obliviously ahead of the group, runs into Kanga and Roo, gathers fir cones, plays a game, has dinner, and generally forgets about his three friends in the forest until Christopher Robin guesses they are lost and mounts a rescue expedition. (“It’s a funny thing about Tiggers,” says Tigger in an aside to Roo, “how Tiggers never get lost.”) Meanwhile Piglet, wandering in circles in the mist, has become distraught.
“Pooh!” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
Eventually, of course, Christopher Robin and Tigger find their friends (“Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you,” cried Rabbit), and the adventure draws to a close.
Ernest Howard Shepard (British, 1879–1976) 1928, Pen and ink, © The Shepard Trust, Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Last week, and again this week, in the Hundred Acre Wood that is our increasingly unstable world, many members of our MICDS community, too, have felt lost in a fog of grief, uncertainty, and unease, and deliberations about how best to provide reassurance and guidance through it have preoccupied my time and attention. Deliberation, however, and reflection in advance of action are out of step with the prevailing expectations of instantaneity and outrage that characterize our media-saturated contemporary culture. Writing in the New York Times on Tuesday, Elizabeth Spiers, who maintains high social-media and news-media profiles, described her recent online encounters with “people I don’t know demanding that I make a public statement about what’s happening in the Middle East,” remarking that “both the right and the left seemed to attribute my silence to depraved indifference to human suffering, though they were divided on which humans were suffering.” She elaborated:
There’s a facile version of taking a stand on social media that generates righteous back patting but reduces complex issues to a simple yes or no. Taking simplistic stands can also lead to twisting words. Concern for Palestinians is portrayed as support for Hamas or hatred toward Israel or Jews in general. Anger about Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israeli citizens—or any mention of antisemitism—is portrayed as denigrating the dignity of all Palestinian lives. This kind of thinking is deeply unserious and further fuels hostilities, warping nuanced positions into extremism and mistaking tweet-length expressions of outrage for brave action in the face of atrocity.
The word “performance” does not feature in Spiers’ critique, but I would contend that it is implicit. Acquiescing to expectations of speech or action without sufficiently considering or understanding the matters they address is inarguably performative; acquiescing to curry favor with an audience is cynically so. The opening scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear reveals its title character preparing to devolve his riches and authority on his three daughters and demanding that they declare their affection for him in turn. “Since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state—which of you,” he asks, “shall we say doth love us most?” His oldest, Goneril, is transparently obsequious. “A love that makes breath poor,” she effuses, “and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much I love you.” Regan, Lear’s second daughter, tries to out-flatter the flatterer: “I find she names my very deed of love, only she comes too short: that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys.”
Lear’s third daughter, however, refuses to perform. “What shall Cordelia do?” she asks herself, then answers, “Love, and be silent.” Her father presses her (“Nothing will come of nothing”), but she will not gush merely to placate him. “I am sure my love’s more richer than my tongue,” Cordelia says. “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond. You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I return those duties back as are right fit, obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say they love you all?” Lear is outraged. He rewards his dishonest daughters for their dishonesty, disowns his honest one for her honesty, and thus sets the action of the tragedy—which many regard as Shakespeare’s greatest dramatic work—in motion.
In fairness to those members of our community who have appealed to me to denounce the horrific violence in Israel and Gaza—who want to be sure of MICDS in the present fog of grief, uncertainty, and unease—I acknowledge that the imperative in our Mission Statement “to stand for what is good and right” compels us to action in the face of human suffering. The context in which it appears, however, is essential to understanding its application: “The next generation must include those who think critically and resolve to stand for what is good and right.” MICDS stands for what is good and right not per se but indirectly, by teaching our students—the next generation—to do so in the course of teaching them to think critically. Our institution “stands” facing not outward but inward, speaking not with passionate declarations but with compassionate questions, and focusing on the intellectual and moral formation of the children and adolescents we serve.
This inward focus was manifest at Tuesday’s Upper School assembly when Carla Federman and Changa Bey, our exceptional Jewish Student Union and Muslim Student Association faculty advisors, respectively, attested to their personal connection across faith traditions. (“Our children are friends, and we have been in each other’s homes.”) They urged our students to accept the complexity of the region’s history and “lean into the gray” to comprehend it (and resist, as Spiers puts it, reducing complicated issues “to a simple yes or no,” taking “simplistic stands,” indulging in “unserious” thinking, or mistaking “tweet-length expressions of outrage” for bravery). “Now more than ever,” said Ms. Federman, paraphrasing our Mission, “we need to think critically, to stand for what is good and right, to understand the challenges of this world, and embrace all its people with compassion.“ (It was a happy accident that only one day earlier, the Harbison Lecture on artificial intelligence had demonstrated to Upper School students a moving interactive “conversation” with a holographic rendering of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter created from recordings of his thoughts and recollections. “I do not hate,” said Gutter in reply to a question about antisemites and Holocaust deniers. “Hatred only begets more hatred.”)
While considerations respecting developmental appropriateness play a greater role in our Middle and Lower School responses to the unfolding crisis, these divisions are hardly sitting still. Our fantastic Head of Middle School, Jen Schuckman, is nuancing her message to students by grade level. She asks our fifth- and sixth-grade students, “Have you made someone’s day better? Has someone made your day better?” and adds for the contemplation of the latter group, “You may be hearing about lots of concerning events in the news, and you might be seeing adults worrying. How can we support our community, our friends, and our classmates?” To our seventh- and eighth-grade students she says, “In history, you have been learning about many conflicts around the world. They can be complex and scary. We need to take care of our school, our family, and our friends. Have you been part of a situation where something was uncomfortable, and you weren’t sure how to respond? How can we help you be more sure of yourself?” She also repeats her questions of our younger Middle School students: “Have you made someone’s day better? Has someone made your day better?”
In yesterday’s Beasley assembly, Susie McGaughey (our wonderful Lower and Middle School Counselor) and Katy Nichols (our equally wonderful Lower School Music Teacher) introduced and then emphasized in a song from the St. Louis Mosaic Project the definition and importance of assertiveness. “When you’re passive / You shrink back / And use a weak voice. / When you’re aggressive / You spread poison / And try to force a choice. / Assertive is the answer. / It’s strong without being mean. / Stop the poison! Spread peace! / Come on, let’s sing!” All of our Beasley students and teachers sang along, and several fourth graders followed up with skits to demonstrate the importance of assertiveness in our day-to-day interactions with one another.
There is always more work to be done in schools, and I expect that the world will continue to confront ours with conflict and suffering in the days, weeks, and even months ahead. Few people living in June 1914 would have predicted that the assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian anarchist in Sarajevo would precipitate 46 declarations of war and unprecedented global devastation and loss of life over the four years that followed. I do not know whether we are similarly imperiled today by events precipitating from the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, but any number of developing phenomena should give us pause: resurgent anti-Israeli sentiments in neighboring Arab states; emboldened Hezbollah militants on Israel’s northern border; saber-rattling by Iran; aircraft carrier deployments by the United States to the eastern Mediterranean; distraction of international attention from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine; the potential for opportunistic aggression by China against Taiwan; accelerating antisemitism and Islamophobia worldwide; and, of course, persistent political dysfunction in our federal government, where the speakership of the House of Representatives has remained vacant for 18 days and counting.
To whatever the future holds, our response at MICDS requires that we remember the example of Piglet and Pooh in their own fog. Hand in hand with the students we serve—hoof in paw—we must be, and will be, sure of each other. I ask for your patience and even forgiveness as our faculty, staff, and administration find our way forward through this mist of grief, uncertainty, and unease. I acknowledge that last Friday’s email from our exceptional Director of Student Support, Sheila Powell-Walker, might have arrived a few days sooner than it did to comfort families. I am accountable for its delay, not she, just as I am ultimately accountable for all decisions, and indecisions, at the School. Especially through moments of difficulty and pain—and many families in our community are indeed hurting and grieving at this time—I would appeal to our current parents and guardians for faith in the good hearts of the faculty and staff to whom you have entrusted the care of your children. The right words in the right moment are not always obvious, but our purpose and Mission at MICDS invariably are. Like Shakespeare’s Cordelia, our love’s more richer than our tongue.
Always reason, always compassion, always courage. My best wishes to you all for the weekend ahead.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist is House at Pooh Corner, a Kenny Loggins song first recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their 1970 album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy. Loggins wrote it when he was only 17 years old. “I was going on graduation in high school,” he recalled in a 2014 interview, “and for some reason, I was thinking about that last chapter in The House at Pooh Corner. It was the first book I ever read. The last chapter is where Christopher Robin is leaving the Hundred Acre Wood, and he’s telling everybody goodbye. I felt like that was akin to what I was going through in high school. Some part of me knew that I was leaving my childhood behind.” (Apple Music / Spotify)