We Are in the Hope Business
We are raising our children in great and consequential times. Never has so much connection and information been available to us. Of course, we all know that this brings challenges as well as ease.
The challenge I wish to highlight in these words is how to make sure our children remain optimistic and patriotic when the information engine we live with feeds us all a steady diet of negativity and fear.
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My answer: School must be about hope.
In his book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” Jon Meacham (a historian firmly rooted in the American Center), tells us that American history has always involved the see-saw between the ever-present and ever-competing forces of fear and hope.
When the forces of fear (largely fear of loss of something) are ascendant, we are motivated to empower entities like the Klan, the American fascists of the 1930’s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s or white Christian nationalism rising today. Fear brings us to empower the divisive.
When the forces of hope are ascendant, we empower advances toward a more perfect union, like women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and marriage equality. All of this represents movement toward Thomas Jefferson’s promise that “all…are created equal.”
How is this relevant to school?
For American children today, school is the root of community and connection. And at school, culture is everything. All schools need to be in the hope business.
Fear feeds anxiety and produces anger; hope breeds optimism and feelings of well-being.
Fear is about limits; hope is about growth.
Fear casts its eyes warily across the landscape; hope looks forward toward the horizon.
Fear points at others, assigning blame; hope points ahead, working for a common good.
Fear pushes away; hope pulls others closer.
Fear divides; hope unifies.
At school, we are in the hope business.
Our work every day is about the power of possibility – about unlocking the ability to read! To write! To calculate and solve problems, to organize complex material so it makes sense, to communicate, to collaborate.
What an awesome job we have! We touch the future. We humanize.
In schools, our work is about hope. We look forward and envision a better and brighter future, and we work all day, every day, to bring that future to life. At my school, we teach patriotism by learning about how our great system of government can respond to people’s thoughts and concerns by making change happen. We teach the importance of each citizen participating in our democratic system. We have signing ceremonies, celebrations of students registering to vote, to participate in our democracy.
We do such important work.
And our job is perhaps more important today than it’s been in a very long time.
We are in the hope business. We are here to shed the disinfecting light of knowledge and hope into the dark corners of intolerance and fear.
What better job is there to do?
Mark Heller is Head of School at Academy at the Lakes, a PreK3-12th grade independent school that serves 550 students in Land O’Lakes, Florida.
*Presented by Academy at the Lakes | Originally published in the September 2024 issue of Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine.