“I’m not the kind of guy to rat people out, but some things just cross the line. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but you just can’t put up with things like this.”
-Soldier Joe Darby who discovered
and handed over Abu Ghraib prison
pictures
(Margaret Heffernan’s Ted Talk, The Dangers of “Willful Blindness”
It was early in the first quarter when I showed my sophomore English class Margaret Heffernan’s Ted Talk,“Willful Blindness.” We had just completed Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” a story in which the average and the gifted were handicapped by cumbersome weights and mind deafening jolts of sound. The imbeciles on the other hand were left to live and reign without any such burdens or consequences. I remember one unintentionally poignant series of questions a student (I’ll call him Joe) asked. The sweet sad irony unfolded,
“What
are Hazel and George thinking? Why can that stupid Diana lady with a gun just
take everyone out? It’s just so fake. This story’s stupid and doesn’t make
sense!” Joe was clearly irritated by what seemed to be a waste of his
time.
“Can
someone tell me what happened in the Freshman Commons the other day?” I asked.
“What
do ya mean?” said Joe
“Wasn’t
there a fight the other day and everyone circled around to watch?”
“Uh,
yeah. That was crazy,” Joe’s comment
elicited a couple chuckles from the other kids and a few others tried to give
some quick synopses of what they saw.
“What
was everyone doing who was there?”
“Cheering
it on, being loud,” he said
“Did
anyone go get a teacher?”
“No,
of course not! Snitches get stitches! One
ended up showing up though.”
“So,
not only did some people just watch it happen, others even encouraged it to
continue and even worse, if you told then you were the biggest villain of them
all?”
“Yeah! We don’t like snitches!” Again, a soft chuckling rolled around the
room.
“Then
would you say that Hazel and George did the right thing because they didn’t
‘snitch’?”
“No,
that would be stupid,” Joe said deeply conflicted.
“So,
then how are those kids who allowed the fight to continue any different than Hazel and
George?” My words were met with silence and even some open mouths.
“That
was deep, Ms. That was deep.”
It was at that moment my students realized
they were potentially as much the problem as the two kids who were throwing
fists. It was at that moment they
understood they had to take responsibility for choosing to be “willfully blind”
in the literal and metaphorical fights in which they’ve participated. It was at that moment they began to
understand what it truly means to be an independent thinker and that there would
be consequences for doing what’s right; but those consequences are absolutely necessary if they want the world to be a better place.
Heffernan’s
talk continues to come up in class even though we’ve moved way beyond that unit
and one student even accused me of making her “think too much about
stuff.” I’ll happily take the blame,
because what we don’t need are a bunch of Hazels, Georges and Diana Moon Glampers (imbeciles), and we’ve got to help mold our Harrison Bergerons (the
most gifted) rather than leaving them to their own devices and ultimately, their
own demise and/or misuse of power. To do
that, we must teach our children and our students the value of reflection and ultimately, the
value of life. We have to teach them
that to do the right thing most certainly will result in pain and suffering,
but that pain and suffering is
precisely what gives us the ability to appreciate life and without it, no true
learning takes place. We have to teach them to be brave. As Heffernan
stated in her talk, “freedom doesn’t exist if you don’t use it” and so we must
teach our youth to have the “determination not to be blind and
not to be silent” when it comes to doing what is right, not what is expected.
