Emissaries of the Gods

On a recent episode of Teacher Tom's Podcast, parent educator Maggie Dent tells the story of sheltering from a storm under a tree with one of her grandchildren. In this small, dim place the toddler went immediately to work, exploring the confines with all his senses, investigating "fronds," testing them, lining them up, picking them apart. As educators, we recognize this as curiosity-driven learning, but in Maggie's telling of the story we find that much of the learning, perhaps most of it, is her own.

At one point or another, anyone who has spent time with young children has realized that "our children are our greatest teachers." In preparing to write this post, I sought out a source for this quote, but it's been said or written or thought so many times by so many people in so many eras in so many cultures, that I've concluded that it's universal wisdom, even if it's easily forgotten in the rush and crush of day-to-day life.

In her strange and beautiful novel Briefing for a Decent into Hell, Doris Lessing, creates a mythology in which all of us are sent to Earth as emissaries of the gods, sent to fix what ails humanity, to teach, to inspire, and to bring our species back into harmony with the universe. Tragically, in her myth, we've created a world in which these emissaries, babies, are inconvenient to most of us most of the time: they don't sleep when we want them to sleep; they are loud when we want them to be quiet; they are energetic, active, and into everything; they ask too many questions, take risks, and generally behave in ways that are very unlike what we expect from our fellow humans. As one of the novel's characters says to a lecture hall of adults concerned with education, "Everybody in this room believes, without knowing it, or perhaps without formulating it, or at least behaves as if he believes -- that children up to the age of seven or eight are of a different species from ourselves."

In Lessing's myth, "society," instead of listening to these emissaries of the gods, does everything in it's power to shape them into proper humans, ones who sleep the proper amount and at the proper times; who control their energy, ask fewer question, and learn to value caution over courage. 

But this audience of parents and educators is more enlightened than that. "We see children as creatures about to be trapped and corrupted by what trapped and corrupted ourselves. We speak of them, treat them, as if it were possible to make happen events which are almost unimaginable. We speak of them as beings who could grow up into a race together superior to ourselves. And this feeling is in everyone. It is why the field of education is always so bitter and embattled, and why no one ever, in any country, is satisfied with what is offered to children . . . "

I certainly see myself in this and I know that many of you who read here at least sometimes feel this bitterness and embattlement. None of us is entirely, or even mostly, satisfied with what is offered to children.

"For it should be enough to teach the young of a species to survive, to approximate the skills of its elders, to acquire current technical skills. Yet every generation seems to give out a bellow of anguish at some point, as if it had been betrayed, sold out, sold short."

I know I've bellowed, especially as a young teen, the age at which traditional cultures around the world have considered their children to be officially adults with all the rights and responsibilities. Our daughter, like most Jewish children, became a "woman" when she had her bat mitzvah at 12, yet few of us really believe that any longer. Yet this is a crucial moment, in the spirit of Lessing's myth, one that was understood by the ancients, but almost entirely forgotten today: this is exactly when we ought to most devotedly listen to our children, learn from them, but instead we rant about "kids these days," even punishing them as they struggle to convey the message they were sent to deliver. It's a message that we crave, yet also fear. No wonder they feel betrayed, no wonder they become surly and rebellious: they are still, on the cusp of adulthood, striving desperately to fulfill their purpose as emissaries. 

And let's be honest, we know they're right, yet we feel helpless because we ourselves have long ago been forced to abandon the mission for which we were sent.

"Every generation dreams of something better for its young, every generation greets the emergence of its young into adulthood with a profound and secret disappointment, even if these children are in every way paragons from society's point of view. This is due to the strong but unacknowledged belief that something better than oneself is possible."

I believe this. Something better than myself is possible. Maybe you believe this as well.

"Who has not at least once looked into a young child's eyes and seen the criticism there, a hostility, the sullen knowledgeable look of a prisoner? This happens very young, before the young child is forced to become like the parents, before its own individuality is covered over by what the parents say he is. Their 'this is right, that is wrong, see things my way.'"

But we know that something better than oneself is possible. We know this because when we do what Maggie did with her grandson, when we get down on our knees with young children, not as instructors, but as students, even as disciples, and acknowledge them as the emissaries of the gods that they are, that is when we find ourselves finally in harmony with the universe, fully immersed in "fronds."

"Education means only this -- that the lively alert fearless curiosity of children must be fed, must be kept alive. That is education."

It's their fearless curiosity that frightens us, not you and me perhaps, but the larger us. We worry that without our adult wisdom and control the children cannot survive, but at a less conscious level, we are terrified that what they have been sent here to teach us will reveal that all we've accomplished, despite our so-called wisdom, is survival. 

Leonard Cohen sang, "It doesn't matter how you worship, as long as you're down on your knees." When we fall to our knees with young children, under trees or sky, with no agenda but to listen with our whole selves, we are finally in a place to receive the message from these emissaries of the gods. And to be reminded that we are likewise emissaries and it's never too late to deliver the message of harmony with which we are also entrusted.

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Listening to children like this is how we begin to really trust them, to understand that while they may have not been sent here by "the gods," their fearless curiosity is central to how they, and we, must engage with life itself. And there will be risk-taking! In my 6-week course Teacher Tom's Risky Play, we will take a deep-dive into what means to trust children, to stand back, and explore what tools we need to keep children safe while also setting them free to be the "emissaries" the world needs. This course is about us as adults as much as the children. We will begin registration for the 2024 cohort for this course in the coming days. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here.

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