New York’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School failed, and not simply because school parent and famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld says so. Why? The New York City school recently announced its decision to make class attendance optional following the announcement of national election results, whenever that happens.
Writing to their wider community, the school’s leadership announced that because this “may be a high-stakes and emotional time for our community,” students “who feel too emotionally distressed” will be excused from classes, and that psychologists will be on site to provide support for them. Given that students always have the option of being excused from class for health reasons, and the fact that the school always has psychologists on site, this special election-driven communication is a fundamental failure both educationally and ethically — which is especially disturbing given that we are talking about a school, and one founded by the Society for Ethical Culture!
School is fundamentally an educational institution, not a therapeutic one, which seems to be lost on the folks at Fieldston. Prioritizing therapy over learning on a large-scale basis fails to appreciate that. While any good school should have available on-site mental health services, students should not be deprived of their education for the day in order to access those services. Talk about the tail wagging the dog, and in ways that fail to address the urgently needed educational issues that arise in the midst of an incredibly polarizing election.
Classroom attendance is especially vital following the announcement of election results, precisely because emotions will be running high. Schools should be helping students to address the questions of community and citizenship in ways that are more productive than the angry and fearful bilge that will define much of the news cycle and pretty much all of social media, regardless of who wins the election.
School may be the one place these students can come together and seriously consider how we stay one country, especially when about half of us will be pretty upset, regardless of who wins. School will be one of the few places where students can be both comforted and challenged to rise above the fray and remain civilized and civic-minded, even when the results are not what they hoped for.
As Cicero teaches, “The purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present,” not to immerse them in the misery of it. Education should provide the setting, the inspiration, and the tools to do that, and never more so than at moments that threaten students’ ability to do so on their own. However well-intentioned the policy may have been, and I am sure it was, Fieldston’s leadership has abdicated its larger educational mission in favor of a therapeutic one. That is a failure.
And not only does a broadly class-optional policy undermine the school’s educational mission, it betrays its ethical mission as well. Ethics is fundamentally relational. It invites us to see things in larger contexts, invites our greater awareness of others — including those with whom we deeply disagree, and helps us to consider our obligations to them. I am fairly sure that none of that will be happening in the school-sponsored therapy sessions, which will, as therapy should, focus on the patient/client’s personal needs.
Ethics pushes us beyond ourselves, even as the work of therapy — certainly initially — is to invite us into ourselves more deeply. The Ethical Culture movement that created this school boldly asserted a broadly humanist approach that celebrated the wisdom that could be found in multiple religious and intellectual traditions, even when others saw those traditions as incompatible or even in conflict with one another.
Whether the movement got all that right or not, the school founded on that premise should at least nurture that spirit in its students — deepening their ethical awareness, helping them to put things in a wider context, and resisting the very catastrophizing into which the school’s new policy plays. It is precisely at the moments of polarization and panic that ethics can serve us well.
I hope that those who truly are in deep, existential pain over the election results get the help that they need. I also hope that responsible educational institutions resist the impulse to normalize dropping out of the work of community when it is uncomfortable and that they choose instead to help strengthen students’ ability to come together and listen to one another, learn from one another, and remain one community and one nation together. That was the vision on which the Ethical Culture Fieldston School was founded, and it was never more needed than now. There is still time to remember that.
Photo courtesy Adam Fagen
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”