Conformity or Reality

There are a number of issues floating around at the Academy these days, all of them relating to the development of our Secondary students. However, these issues have little to do with academic development and much more to do with character and maturity. These are difficult issues at any age but even more so as children make that emotional evolution from children to adults.

One of the issues we have been facing is whether it is better to have these developing young adults conform to our system or to give them the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. What is the role of the school? Of the staff? The easiest one for me is to have them conform because then I am only dealing with rules and rules are easy to deal with. The other way is messy and requires a lot of time and investment in each youth.

Lately I find myself confessing to my own failings as a youth which went a long way to contributing to how I deal with things as an adult. There were not a lot of people I trusted in my youth. It was my own fault. I was more interested in books, to the delight of my mom. I invested my money and time in stories that stayed within two covers and that did not demand very much from me as a person. I had friends but I certainly did not invest myself in them. I dealt with everything alone and it led to some disasters in my youth because I was not willing to allow people to invest in me. I have not changed all that much. I remain a very private person, or so I thought.

I discovered last week that just because a person is private does not mean people can't know them. I was having an heart-to-heart talk with the Secondary trying to resolve some things. I told them that I had been angry with them for the last two weeks because of their constant disregard of the school rules for computer use. I then stated that they could not tell I was angry because I do not allow my emotions to effect how I respond to people. A hand went up and a student said, "We knew Pastor Paul. We always know." I was dumpfounded. I asked them how they knew. So they started describing my behaviour, how I change things, the tone of my voice and so on. One student said, "You are very easy to read Pastor Paul", and they chuckled. Here I associated shouting as a sign of anger, which I do not do but the students associated it with a series of actions and tone that I use. It seemed they knew more about me than I knew about them. It was not the only lesson God had prepared for me.

Yesterday it was Pastor Roy's turn to preach at our church. He said something related to this that made me sit up and take notice. He was referring to how we do not get involved with each other. He stated that this was not a sign of respect but instead an attitude of not caring. "You go do your thing and I will do mine. I won't bother you and you don't bother me, because I don't care and don't want to be involved." Let's face it, life is messy; friendships are messy. Do we want a school that tells the youth we don't want to be involved, we don't care? Or do we want a school that invests in our youth? If it is the latter then we need to be prepared to get messy and to pay the price of time and energy.

What it comes down to is do we want our kids to hide their sins from us so we don't have to deal with it? Or do we want them to be honest even if it hurts us so that we can deal with it? In order for there to be honesty there has to be trust. In order for there to be trust there has to be love. And in order for there to be love there has to be tolerance. This is the fine line where we love the individual even when they do things that we cannot and will not accept. Love is helping them navigate these things without ever giving up on them. Our youth need this even if they don't realize it right now. Conformity or reality? Which is important to us?

I think we all need to get messy.