MARY ANN WOLF: What gives Dr. Dudley Flood pause and hope
Tuesday, March 29, 2022 -- Dr. Dudley Flood: "Everybody cares. Everybody has acted. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has input. And I do believe everybody has a wish that education would be forthcoming for all the people. I'm not sure I've seen that before at the volume that I now see it."
Posted — UpdatedAnd then Dr. Lee Grier was the young man who I met when he was struggling to determine what he wanted to do with his life. And I suggested to him that one thing he ought to do is to see if he could motivate other people to think the way he was thinking. He felt out of place. Because he was projecting that everybody ought to get a good education. And being white, he didn't know whether he had an audience for that or not — this was back in the 1960s. And I encouraged him to say what you feel and what you think.
And I suggested to him that people won't always remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. So put your personhood into what you're doing. Don't worry so much about your words — put your personhood in it.
One of these students was from childhood, and one was from adulthood, and each of which had the same set of personality traits. And that is they believed in what they were doing. And they needed a boost. Because what they were doing is so unique and peculiar for that time, that place that they weren't always sure it would be accepted well.
So what I've come to conclude from those two and other students, is that one of the things education has to do beyond the curriculum, is that people need to become acquainted with themselves at great depths. And they need to realize that the first evaluation of personhood is yours. You decide. And when you've decided that, then convention says that's who you are and that's what you are. Let other people determine whether they see that in you or not— but don't ever not see that in yourself.
So in each of these young people, Lee Stith having been the son of a farmer from eastern North Carolina and never having had the perspective of what was possible for a young black kid, and Lee Grier who had worked several years and felt he hadn’t achieved what he thought he was imagined to do — one ingredient which they had in common was they had a personhood that they weren't giving. They were giving knowledge, they were giving strategies, but they weren't giving themselves.
I've concluded that the greatest element of teaching should be to be able to give oneself — and I learned that through them, and others, too.
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