“We must always seek the truth in our opponent’s error,
and the error in our own truth.”
--Reinhold Niebuhr
Learning simply doesn’t happen without humility. It never has. St. Mark’s holds to three core values, and all three are derived from our Episcopal heritage. One of them, “We believe in the intentional teaching of wisdom, compassion and humility,” might appear to be separate from other core values of education —an “add-on,” somehow, because we are a school founded in a religious tradition—but of course it is not. Any teacher at any school could tell you that: we learn when we want to learn, and we want to learn when we recognize there is some knowledge, insight or skill that we currently lack. We only open up to others’ wisdom—and especially the wisdom of someone we view as an “opponent”—when we know our own understanding is incomplete, or wobbly.
It is no different in the classroom than it is on the playground, or in civic life. We only listen when we want to listen; we only collaborate when we want to collaborate. And we only want to listen and collaborate when we suspect that our way is not the only way, and might not even be the best way. It is humility that inspires us to go out and learn, that compels us to search for the wheat even when it is hidden among chaff, and the sense even when it is cloaked in nonsense.
--The Rev. Barbara Talcott
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