David Griffin, English Faculty Awards Celebration Speech 6-6-17 Welcome everyone, and a particular welcome to the Class of 2017 I ve been thinking about your class. Although you might be under the impression that as students you are supposed to learn from me, your teacher and advisor and coach, the reality is that my job as teacher and advisor and coach is to help you learn from yourselves, so I offer not advice, per se, but some reflections on what I see in your class. Your legacy, I think, is in your class s journey to solidarity even as you have defined and defended your own deeply held individual beliefs. I offer you Exhibit A: Spirit Week. I had the privilege of serving as a judge of Spirit Week 2015. Your class aspired to embody solidarity in your cheer in order to surpass the formidable performances of the other classes. You cheered hard. And then you heard our verdict: you had tied. And not for first. Or second. Four classes had competed. You were not pleased, though, to your credit, pretty much unanimous in your displeasure. Fast forward to Spirit Week 2016. You worked harder still to come together as a class to demonstrate your cohesiveness. You wanted to win. But you also stepped back from the competition and recognized the underlying purpose of Spirit Week: solidarity solidarity not only with your classmates but also with the rest of the community here at Winsor. And so you incorporated that sentiment of solidarity, symbolized by the roses you handed out to your advisors, into your cheer. Thank you. I offer Exhibit B: Homeroom 1
In December, at the height of tensions over admissions, it is easy to perceive the college process in terms of competition your own competition against others rather than in terms of a shared challenge. But as a class, you came together in a homeroom that Ms. Ryan described in an email to the senior advisor team as rather extraordinary. You all echoed Ms. Ryan s assessment that you had stuck together and supported one another throughout the entire process. My understanding is that you created a compliment circle and spent the entire 40-minute period recognizing each other, showing your appreciation for one another, giving each other compliments. I offer Exhibit C: Conflict in Advisory & in the English Classroom First, a shout-out to the Griffindor advisor group. Here s how our little group of six is emblematic of the class as a whole. On the surface, advisor time was not always illustrative of solidarity. Here s a hypothetical situation: Emma asks Priya about crew. Priya responds with a touch of sarcasm and of self-deprecation. Isabel makes a link to The Doors and then to an issue in the news. Alexa wonders how we went from crew to the Doors to the news, and while she s wondering, Olivia jumps in to play devil s advocate. Isabel takes the bait and makes a passionate plea. Saphia builds on Isabel s point to emphasize what Saphia sees as most important about it. A debate has begun. It begins to seem contentious. Then it is contentious. But along the way, each side makes subtle concessions. (Concessions are not easy to make). The group does not come to consensus. The group departs for third period. Now, that might seem like an odd anecdote to speak about solidarity. But it s part of the reality of the class and of any group. You did not and do not agree all the time, nor should you. What I appreciate is your ability and willingness to disagree passionately and to listen to each other and to come back together for more such debates. In class, you might not have agreed about Briony s construction of a worldview in Atonement, but you were always excited to debate in order to understand another perspective and in order to reveal another perspective to 2
your peers. In the process, though it may have looked like you were creating divides we who believe Briony is justified in her anger vs. they who believe she is just being annoying really you were seeking, through argument, a broader vocabulary with which to construct a shared world and thus a sense of we we who want to understand Briony. That is the story I will associate with your class, the story of a group with diverse and disparate individual beliefs, ambitions, experiences, and worldviews who created a sense of solidarity through argument and empathy. Now that you ve already ACHIEVED such solidarity, you re done, right? J I m sorry to remind you that you are now heading off to join new communities in which you will have to forge such solidarity anew. So, as you begin that process again, it might help to examine what makes achieving solidarity so difficult in the first place. For help, I turn to the book Contingency, irony, and solidarity by the philosopher Richard Rorty. I promise to completely mangle his meaning. In the title, you will notice the word contingency. We need to define it. It relates to this idea: the way each of us views the world is constructed, not received. Your life experiences, your particular, contingent history much of it totally arbitrary and random has shaped the way you see the world. And every other person has a different construction than you have, even those closest to you. Our individual worldviews, our individual truths, our individual facts, then, can come into conflict with each other. That s right: on a philosophical level, each of us has our own set of alternative facts. Alternative facts are the only reality. Let s pause here for a moment because we re getting philosophical, and this is a graduation speech from an English teacher, so I should probably just read the most cliché and ubiquitous poem I can find, right? Yeah? Great. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost 3
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Okay. So we did that. Now, what were we talking about? Contingency. Right. And constructed worldviews. So let me tell you about how I ve constructed an understanding of this poem over time. When I was in 5 th grade, my class had to create an anthology of poetry that included works we had read along with our own writing, all united by a theme. My best friend included The Road Not Taken and called his anthology All the Difference. He. Was. A. Genius. I didn t get what he meant, but the title was evocative and provocative and probably just plain vocative, if that was a thing. I guessed the poem s ending meant that the speaker of the poem had taken the road less traveled and that making that tough choice had 4
made a huge difference in his life. More importantly, I concluded that there was all the difference in the world between my friend s super-insightful collection and mine, a bunch of poems about winter because it was, ummm, winter. My friend had taken the road less traveled, the road of Genius. In 8 th grade, I came to read the poem a bit differently by NOT skipping the majority of the text. I noticed that the path the speaker takes has only PERHAPS the better claim to the speaker s attention. And even that perhaps is then undone, for the passing there/ Had worn them REALLY about the SAME. Both that morning equally lay. Equally! This was a decision between two EQUALLY good choices. This speaker seemed to be pretty savvy. Knowing how way leads on to way, the speaker doubted he would return. And then something interesting happens in the poem. The speaker flashes forward, into the future. I shall be telling this with a sigh, the speaker explains. What kind of sigh? And that s when the final lines clicked into place for me. A sigh of nostalgia. A sigh with which the speaker could rewrite the facts of his past in order to make himself the hero who chose the lonelier, tougher road: I took the one less traveled by/ And that has made all the difference. The end was ironic, I realized. The choice between the two roads made all the difference between two EQUAL things, the difference between, say, 5 and 5. 5-5=0. His choice made ZERO difference. I returned to the poem again and again in later years. I remember seeing the poem on a poster in a friend s college dorm. I suspected that she saw the poem as inspirational, a narrative of the heroic choice made by the speaker, when really it all amounted to NOTHING in the end. But something got me thinking. Though the poem did speak to the way we are inclined to rewrite our histories to make ourselves the heroes, that ending actually did NOT make the choice inconsequential. The choice between the two roads DID, of course, make a difference. The roads might have APPEARED equal, but they were equal is some specific, subjective ways. That appearance of equality was subject to bias and prejudice and an incomplete perspective just as the speaker s memory was bound to be. The roads led in different directions, after all. There was certainly SOME difference in the journey, and that is why the speaker frames the poem as The Road NOT Taken. To know the difference his choice made, he would have to know the OTHER path, something he cannot know because of the CONTINGENCY of his 5
history, his experience. It DID make all the difference. I realized my 5 th grade friend really was a genius his title captured ALL OF THAT! Maybe the speaker of the poem doubted he would ever come back, but poetry is made for return. You will encounter the same poem every time you return to it, yet every time you return it will be different. That paradox is rather unsettling. My reading of this poem suggests one cannot agree with one s own SELF on a set of facts, on reality, on meaning, much less someone else. I had three understandings of the poem at three different times. The speaker in the poem does, too. Past Speaker has an impression that maybe one road could use a little love. Present Speaker says the roads were equal. Future Speaker says one road was less traveled than the other. If he can t agree with himself and I can t agree with myself, how can he and I possibly communicate with each other, or with you? What if my facts are alternative facts? How do we create solidarity when we have different facts? And there it is. THAT is why solidarity is so hard. Solidarity means bridging the gap between your worldview and mine. We see the world differently both literally and metaphorically. You may have taken one path while I took the other, and there s all the difference between those paths. One question that follows is how to build solidarity when the divides in our world, in our country, in our schools, and among our family and friends are deep and real and important. As Zadie Smith suggests in White Teeth, there is no neutral territory, and it will not suffice to flip a coin like Archie does. Choices must be made. YOU must make choices. As you head off to engage with new communities outside of Winsor, you will have to make a lot of choices. College campuses are in the news frequently right now. There are protests on a lot of the campuses you ll be going to. There are protests against those protests. There will be themed parties and visitor lectures that you might attend or avoid, protest or defend. Or ignore. Each of those actions even inaction is a choice. Each of those choices will 6
contribute to the construction of your community. Again, there in no neutral ground. So how can you go off and create the kind of solidarity you did here at Winsor? And what exactly do I mean by solidarity? Solidarity, according to Rorty again, is the building of a broader definition of we. How? By expanding our vocabularies literally the way we speak and thus the way we think such that our vocabularies account for new and broader perspectives. By seeking to identify as specifically as possible with others, we broaden the meaning of we and build solidarity in our community, just as you all have done here at Winsor. You may have distinct religious beliefs and convictions, but you founded SPARQ to ignite dialogue across such boundaries. You may identify differently in terms of gender and sexuality, but you shared your own perspectives and truly listened to each other in SPECTRUM s model dialogue for the community. You found ways to expand our definitions of we. And I may have joked about alternative facts being a reality, but we have worked hard as a society to build a common vocabulary, a common set of assumptions, such that all Americans all democratic citizens, perhaps can share a common set of what we call facts and thus a fundamental worldview. From that shared worldview we derive a sense of communal identity, a sense of solidarity. As we construct that shared worldview, we must remain committed, in Rorty s words, to keeping our ears open for hints about how [our language] might be expanded or revised. Such balance requires both conviction and humility. Understanding the contingency of our knowledge does not help us choose a path; it only makes us properly humble about the story we tell about the path we ve taken. But key to solidarity is exactly such humility. Such humility allows us, encourages us, to examine our stories, our unconscious attitudes, and our most deeply held beliefs. Not to abandon them, but to examine them. To listen, really listen, to what others think and believe. Yesterday, the Griffindor advisor group got together and laughed and enjoyed each other s company. We argued a little and imagined the 7
communities we will inhabit next year, the roads we might take. We thought about the forks in the road that we re likely to encounter. We talked through our choices together. We listened to each other. And together, we determined to get Emma Pan elected President. Of her college class. One step at a time folks. My advisor group built solidarity as it leaned into conflict these past three years such that they were excited to come back together one last time to hear each other s perspectives. Your class built its sense of solidarity through empathy, and you helped build a sense of community in the school. So what I m asking you to do as you head off to college campuses and jobs and, more importantly, to the task of civic engagement, is simple: keep doing what you have done here at Winsor in the classroom, on the soccer field, in advisory and in homeroom. Expand your definition of we. Check your perspective, keep your ears open to expand your vocabulary, and make your choices. Fight for what you believe. Fight for a more inclusive definition of we within your communities. Fight, and then hand out roses. Hand out compliments in a compliment circle. Show others that you see them and you hear them and that you can change your mind because when they see that you are willing to do so, they will open up to changing theirs. Go out and build in your communities the kind of solidarity you have forged here at Winsor. Congratulations, Class of 2017, and best wishes on the road ahead. 8