Now what do Fabian Cancellara and Albert Camus have to do with education?
Echoing John Donne's poetic claim that no person is an island, Hillary Clinton was criticized and satirized all along the political spectrum for her "it takes a village," a call by Clinton about the lives and futures of children. Why?
Clinton's message works against our commitment to rugged individualism as both possible and an ideal. We are prone to see success and failure as inherent only in the effort of each person, a message we send time and again to children about their own lots in life.
Yet, no child learns in a vacuum, no teacher teaches in a vacuum.
Education is a complex and community-based journey that has no finish line. When we suggest and outright proclaim that students simply need to work harder, that teachers simply need to work harder, we are speaking to a deforming myth of individualism that helps neither the individual nor the society.
In Cancellara's victories, he was defined by his adversaries (competition), he was blessed with elite ability (genetics), he was afforded the equipment and training opportunities few people ever experience (collaboration), and he was assisted by other riders who placed his individual success at the finish above theirs (sacrifice).
For children facing a wide variety of rocks and mountains, the rugged individualism myth is not only misleading, it is overwhelming, especially for children who start their lives feeling as if they are under rocks not of their own making.
Do perseverance, determination, and self-sufficiency matter? Of course. But asking a child to lift herself or himself up by the bootstraps--alone--is a self-defeating ideology that ignores the value of collaboration and sacrifice--among many of the complex aspects of living and learning that are ignored when our mythologies cloud the realities of being fully human.
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