Not Knowing

I want to share with you this meditation from the National Association of Episcopal Schools

Not Knowing

The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., Executive Director

One of the pleasurable activities our staff has experienced, during this our 50th anniversary year as an association, has been going through past NAES publications, seeing their relevance for today as well as—as is less the case—reflections of a particular period and time. One such article that caught my eye was an interview Peter Sipple did with David Elkind thirty years ago.* As you may recall, Elkind, professor of child psychology at Tufts University, wrote not only timely but prophetic books such as The Hurried Child and All Grown Up and Nowhere to Go.

Elkind was among the first observers to highlight just how fast we expect children to grow up. In his interview with Peter Sipple (as well as in his books), he spoke of the “patchwork self” that young people develop in our culture, a self that is oriented toward external expectations and norms as opposed to one that is integrated and based in the belief that one can be an agent in the world and have an impact on it. The development of a patchwork self, he explained, issues in a lot of passivity, a belief that one either has no choices or is completely vulnerable to chance. Life is a mystery, Elkind observed, and patchwork selves do not deal easily with mystery. 

Fastforward thirty years, to Dave Eggers’ chilling novel, The Circle, which tells the story of Mae Holland, a young adult who goes to work for the world’s most powerful internet company. Gradually, Mae is ushered into a world that seems to take care of her every need, not to mention seeks to address the greatest needs of the world. Throughout the novel, Mae is gripped by a fear of not knowing, and the total transparency the company seeks in the world today is designed so that there will be “no more not knowing.” She buys into the goal of the company completely, regarding “not knowing” as unnecessary and an antiquated phenomenon, something that will be eliminated with the sheer passing of time—and progress!

Elkind seems to have been prophetic—a patchwork self is drawn to a world where there are no unknowns, and may well live in fear of unknowns. Here is where Episcopal (and Montessori) schools have such a great opportunity, indeed advantage. We have the capacity to help young people deal with the unknowns of life, to embrace mystery as one of the great joys of life as opposed to an obstacle to be overcome. As much as we are attuned to the activity and virtues of knowledge, so, too, we embrace the activity of not knowing, something young people need to be prepared to encounter.

*See, Peter Sipple, “Interview with David Elkind,” NAES Journal (Spring 1984), 29-33.