On Elephants and School
“Oh how they cling and wrangle, some who claim/ For preacher and monk the honored name!/ For, quarreling, each to his view they cling./ Such folk see only one side of a thing.”
School’ is a big idea. It’s such a big idea, in fact, that we can barely see it except in pieces. Like the proverbial elephant pawed by blind monks—each of whom tells the king with fearless confidence that what he grasps is the actual elephant—we’re often grasping blindly at fragments and declaring omniscience.
“It’s a pillar!” proclaims one after grabbing the elephant’s leg.
“No, it’s a plow!” says another, clinging to its trunk.
“You’re mad—it’s a brush!” declares the tail-grabbing monk.
Like the monks, we think we’ve got the elephant. We’re confident we have a handle on the true purpose and best form of school. But given the educational results we’re currently seeing, we might more honestly admit that we’re tugging on elephant tails and declaring certainty when humility—and perhaps silence—would serve us better.
‘School’ occupies a strange and powerful space among our most taken-for-granted social constructs. Like ‘money,’ ‘marriage,’ or ‘democracy,’ the reality of school is not given by nature but constructed. Learning is, of course, a natural function. But there is nothing in the natural world that instructs us to round up our children, sit them in four-walled spaces beside their like-aged peers, and attempt to teach them the entire world. The very idea of school must be constantly maintained and reaffirmed in order to persist. It must be practiced. More often than not, we enact an inherited design of school without awareness. We unconsciously help that design persist—even as we forget its original purpose.
This is a very Dōgen-esque problem. Dōgen Zenji, in Genjōkōan, reminds us that to mistake the form of something for its essence is delusion. “To study the self is to forget the self,” he writes—meaning that in our attempts to cling to fixed notions of identity or design, we lose the capacity to actually see what's unfolding in real time. Likewise, when we hold too tightly to what school is supposed to be, we lose touch with what it is actually doing—right now, in this moment, with these children.
School suffers from the curse of familiarity. Because nearly every person in the modern world has attended school, we tend to see it as a given. We’ve all sat in buildings called “schools,” in rooms called “classrooms,” in front of credentialed adults called “teachers,” surrounded by peers called “classmates,” and have likely assumed a mostly unstated collective purpose: to learn. But because the experience is so familiar, we rarely examine it. We assume that what we experienced is what school is—and likely what it should be. The outward forms are highly visible; the underlying design—its purpose and animating assumptions—is much harder to see.
Two decades ago, I was lucky enough to hear a speech by former superintendent, education reformer, and social justice activist Dr. Howard Fuller. In his address to a group of charter school teachers and leaders, he said something to this effect (paraphrased here, and likely altered by memory):
“We need to be clear about our purpose as separate from our method. All across the country I see schools that obsess over method, but forget their purpose. They are attached to particular ways of doing things, never questioning the ‘whys’ behind their ‘whats.’ They feud about curriculum, schedules, charter versus traditional models—never asking why the school exists in the first place. We need to be very clear about our purpose. Methods may evolve, but purpose must persist.”
That Dr. Fuller is a smart fellow. So let’s question some of the purported purposes of school.
On Learning.
Many school districts proudly proclaim slogans about learning. I recall the mantra in one Louisiana district: “All of us can learn.” Another declared, more insistently: “All of us will learn.” But such proclamations have always struck me as oddly self-evident. To say the purpose of school is to “learn” is to say the purpose of school is to be human. Can students not learn? And yet these slogans beg the more substantive question: learn what? What does life require our children to know, to do, and to be? Given that, what do we aspire for them to learn—and whose responsibility is it to teach them?
On College. Today, it’s rare to find a school that doesn’t position “college preparation” at the center of its mission. KIPP, my professional home for 14 years, until recently expressed its mission to “develop the knowledge, skills, character, and habits needed to succeed in college and the competitive world beyond.” Uncommon Schools, another prominent network, declares: “We believe a bachelor’s degree should be within reach for every young person in this nation.”
College may be a worthy aim—especially for students from low-income communities historically excluded from such opportunities. But let’s be honest: declaring college as the purpose of school feels oddly recursive. Is the purpose of school... more school? For what is college a proxy? Is it an accurate or sufficient one? What are the unintended consequences of an entire K–12 system built around preparing students for expensive credentialing? Are we simply gripping the elephant’s trunk and confidently declaring it a plow?
On Workplace Readiness.KIPP’s old mission, like many others, implies preparation for the “competitive world” of work. Preparing students for jobs is considered a given. But should it be? What vision of work informs that aspiration—and how does class, race, and geography shape that vision? How do we prepare students for careers that don’t yet exist, in a world of automation, globalization, and rapid change? Preparing students to skillfully participate in the economy is certainly part of education—but what’s the rest of it?
These are not rhetorical questions. I’m not here to declare any particular aim “wrong.” I’m here to wonder aloud: Are our aims clear-sighted—or are they just the parts of the elephant we’ve been trained to grab?
Dōgen reminds us that when we “see forms and hear sounds,” we must take care not to “see and hear them in the usual way.” He writes, “Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness.” To see school clearly, we must step beyond inherited images and see it not merely with our conditioned minds, but with the eyes of practice. That means dropping what we think we know, and meeting the design—and the people inside it—as if for the first time.
This is what Suzuki Roshi called “beginner’s mind”: a willingness to see the familiar with freshness, without being trapped by certainty. In Zen, beginner’s mind isn’t a sign of naiveté—it’s a sign of freedom. It’s what allows us to meet the elephant without naming it too quickly, to sit with its mystery a little longer before we presume to lead it anywhere.
If we are to design and lead schools that prepare young people to live choice-filled lives, to upend persistent inequities, and to serve as stewards of democracy, we will need awareness-lit schools. We will need educators who can see clearly how their institutions frame the purpose of school—and who are brave enough to ask whether that purpose serves the humans in their care. We will need teachers with the humility to admit what they cannot yet see, and the courage to imagine what might be possible.
There’s more elephant pawing to come.
NOTES
For those who want a little background on the concept of social constructs, try here. And if you really want to knock your socks off, pick-up The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger. It's badass.
REFLECTION
What, in your mind, is the purpose of school? How does your teaching practice reflect that sense of purpose? Where is it misaligned?
Where in your practice might you have subsituted 'methods'for 'purpose'?
Why do your students think that they go to school? When did you last ask them? How might you articulate and invest your students in a shared, energizing and humanizing purpose?
