Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

My son is recovering well from his surgery.  I'm not recovering as well.  I didn't expect that going to a children's hospital would move me so much emotionally.  I keep thinking of a four year old boy who was wearing a helmet, pushing a walker and falling to the ground.  Or the girl who was missing her left leg and who was totally bald from her treatments.  Or there was that boy who looked about two years old and whose face was so badly burned that he was covered in bandages. My mind wanders to the kids at our school, the ones we call "special" but hide away in a segregated classroom while students wander around calling anything uncool "retarded." 

I think about all of this and it overwhelms me.  On one level, I can accept it logically.  It's a cursed world and, due to my theological beliefs, I don't think we are meant for this life, but for a better one.  Yet, there is that lingering part of me that is crushed by all of it.  I begin to ask: Why does this happen?  Why is the world like this?  Why would a loving God, who has the power to change things, let this happen?  I know that there are answers, very logical ones.  Yet, these are the questions that come from the depths of me. 

So what does this have to with school?  My point is that there is no safe place for questions.  School is based upon the idea of filling a student up with knowledge.  There is no space for questions, for mystery, for pondering the hard questions of life, knowing that trite answers will not suffice.  Yet, I have caught glimpses of these questions from my own students.  I wish, however, that there was a safe place to ask hard questions and have one's voice heard.

I'm not sure there is an easy answer to all of this.  Perhaps it can occur in a language arts class during journaling time.  I doubt it, though.  It seems too dangerous for school and, as long as we are governed by the idea of safety, dangerous questions will remain unasked.