Teaching in the Presence of Burning Children: Attending to Tragedy and Faith in Philosophy of/and Education

Educational Foundations, Winter 2003 by Milligan, Jeffrey Ayala

Let us offer, then, as a working principle the following: No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.1

In a 1974 essay entitled "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire," Rabbi Irving Greenberg offered the "Working principle" quoted above in response to Christian silence during the Holocaust and as a kind of moral plumb line by which post-Shoah theological claims should be measured. Later, the Christian theologian Dougles K. Huneke cited Greenberg's principle in his own effort to reflect upon the meaning of the Holocaust, and Christian silence in the face of it, for post- Shoah Christian theology.2 I have been troubled and strangely called by Greenberg's principle ever since hearing of it for the first time almost ten years ago. But one is tempted to remain silent in the face of such a principle lest anything one says fall short of it and risk banality, risk a trivial response to the most profound and troubling of human experiences. Moreover, the problem of evil and the inevitability of the tragic have vexed philosophical and theological reflection for centuries. No single essay can possibly hope to review such a body of literature or even begin to offer a philosophically coherent response. Yet Greenberg's principle, written at least partly in response to the silence of ordinary people in the face of such experiences, is simultaneously a call to speak out in response to such experiences as well as a measure of the credibility of such speech. Such a call demands a response, particularly at a moment in history when we are forced to see, as he did, the resonance between the scriptural imagery of his title and the concrete images of contemporary reality. We must, therefore, respond, albeit from the ultimately inadequate, provisional and circumscribed locations of our own experience, understanding, and insight.

As a philosopher of education I am particularly daunted by Greenberg's reference to statements "theological or otherwise," for it challenges me to reflect upon the significance of tragedy for secular education and thus engage a centuries- long conversation about topics that have confounded the conceptual nets of far more competent philosophers. But in the light of all that has happened in the past two years, in the shadow of all that happens year in and year out to remind us of the realities of Greenberg's clouds of smoke and pillars of fire, I am moved to apply his working principle to the enterprise of public education as it is commonly practiced in the U.S. and the claims made about it, philosophical or otherwise. In this essay, therefore, I propose to reflect upon the question of what it might mean to teach in the presence of burning children, and what it might mean to do philosophy of education in their presence.

The Call of Their Presence

Greenberg's principle, and Huneke's application of it to Christian theology, was proposed in response to the Holocaust as a specific, historical event whose impact on all subsequent human choices and deliberations must be understood. While privileging the historical specificity of the Holocaust and the singular victimization of the Jewish people it represents, I would like to suggest that the image of burning children stands not only for the concrete suffering of very real individuals at a specific moment in time, it also symbolizes the thousands of other individual incidents of suffering, whether occurring in ones or twos here and there around the world or in spasms of violence that approach the horror of the Holocaust. For we need not look far to find to find further examples of deliberate violence against both children and adults in places like Cambodia or Rwanda or in acts of terrorism in New York, Oklahoma City, Cairo, or Jerusalem. Nor need we look too far into the recesses of history to see the nameless, unnumbered acts of abuse, crime, and violence against children, women, gays and lesbians, cultural and religious minorities and other vulnerable people. Many thousands suffer the fires of poverty, hunger, and exploitation. And we all suffer, in Cornel West's words, the "death, disease, despair, dread and disappointment" that is common to all human experience.3

I recognize that in speaking of the tragic as a continuum of experience encompassing the Holocaust as well as the, perhaps, more mundane despair and disappointment I may well be stretching the concept in ways that seem obscene to some. For such a broad conception of the tragic may trivialize such events by suggesting that they are inevitable, something to be borne rather condemned and remembered as a deliberate act of human will. It may also exaggerate the significance of our inevitable disappointments and eventual death by suggesting that they are somehow akin to the specific events with which Rabbi Greenberg's working principle is obviously concerned. Perhaps it is more appropriate to make a distinction between tragedy as the unavoidable "death, disease, despair, dread and disappointment" and evil as conscious acts of human choosing. But surely, though Rabbi Greenberg's principle responds to the specific suffering of the Holocaust, its relevance is not limited to it. It challenges us to risk incredibility by eschewing silence in the face of human suffering, whatever its source. Applied to education it highlights possible silences as well as the dangers involved in responding to them. But it demands a response.