Trust and Empathy
In late April, the public radio program This American Life told the story of individuals brought together in a focus group to explore their refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Now, I’m decidedly pro-vaccine and have had two shots myself, yet my reaction to the piece was not principally frustration at my fellow citizens’ resistance, but a kind of chagrin at the way focus group members announced their distrust of a great many social institutions. These were folks who came from across the nation, occupied different economic strata, and varied in terms of age and gender and vocation—but almost all of them harbored some measure of skepticism about communities of learning, media, research, or government.
A healthy skepticism is a useful bulwark against naivete, and certainly appropriate to responsible democratic citizenship; indeed, none of us should cede our own counsel or approval too readily. And I’m not interested in judging the validity of the focus groups members’ suspicions. But as I listened to the program, I was reminded anew of the great levels of trust that so many have placed in our institution, and what that trust has enabled us to do as a community over the past 14 months.
Trust doesn’t guarantee agreement on all matters, and I know that I and my colleagues have made decisions this year that certainly didn’t meet with universal approval. Some of this was the usual run of school business; indeed, the virtue of any institutional choice about curriculum, discipline, or culture can be interpreted in multiple ways, particularly in a community with engaged, curious, and thoughtful students and families—that is, in a community like Browning’s. But this year, there was also the complicating element of the pandemic, which created areas of potential disagreement where none had previously existed. In previous years, we didn’t have to worry about who got access to classrooms or the best way to teach all our boys while facing insurmountable spatial constraints. We didn’t have to make real-time judgments about health screenings or mask protocols. We didn’t have to think about Zoom call protocols, the safety of school sports, or ever-changing public standards around testing, quarantine, and distance In these and other areas, I and my colleagues made decisions with which community members sometimes disagreed, and sometimes vociferously so.
Yet it’s not the disagreements that I will remember most about 2020-21; again, legitimate differences of opinion are inevitable in any school, whether they emerge from concerns that are perennial (Why are the boys reading this, rather than that?), or unique to a pandemic year (Is this the most effective approach to learning under these conditions?). What I will instead recall is the deep level of trust and belief that so many in the community were able to maintain in that same community, despite their concerns about any particular policy or action.
“It is these qualities, these elements of social trust, these enactments of empathy and patience and decency which have allowed us to accomplish more together in these unprecedented times than we otherwise might have”
There was, I believe, a widespread recognition among Browning community members that when school professionals made choices—and even when those choices turned out to be non-optimal or misjudgments—these professionals were doing the best they could to devise ways to serve our boys, our families, and our mission. The restrictions that boys and families and colleagues were willing to accept, the skepticisms that they were able to forestall, the judgment they worked to withhold—these are the qualities most characteristic of Browning since the pandemic’s arrival. And it is these qualities, these elements of social trust, these enactments of empathy and patience and decency which have allowed us to accomplish more together in these unprecedented times than we otherwise might have.
I appreciate that trust is sometimes earned through actions, but I also think it makes sense to sometimes treat trust as a gift given out of generosity and hope; for all the grace that our community has extended the school, I am profoundly grateful. As we move into our final month of this academic year—with its inevitably complex mix of relaxed restrictions, viral variants, shifting information, and sometimes competing wishes—I thank you again for believing that ours is a beneficent community driven to do well by all its boys, and for supporting your boys and their teachers in our effort to conclude this year, together, with the senses of purpose and community that makes Browning such a special place.