The wonderful idea of the month is “natality.”
Specifically, I am referring to Hannah Arendt’s development of the term from the notion of human birth where, “we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else whoever lived, lives, or will live.” This uniqueness of each child is what informs our sense of the “miracle” of childbirth, the entering into the world of a new creature, a new being, a new way of acting in the world. As a parent, each of your children, even if you have one, is special in his or her own way. As teachers, while we may have a curriculum and a set of experiences that are in some way common to the group or school, we pride ourselves in responding to and supporting the unique needs, abilities and interests of each child. And even though as communities and societies we are constituted through common values, purposes and forms of dependence, these communities are made up of unique beings that bring something special, undetermined, new, “that cannot be expected, from whatever happened before.” Hannah Arendt argues that it is the very fact of the birth of new men, new human beings, and their corresponding capacity to act in new ways, that saves society from its own ruin, its predilection to destroy itself in trying to reproduce itself, the tendency of the powerful to dominate, control and exploit people for their own limited ends.
Children in some sense are only potentially new, they prefigure the possibility that human beings can act, individually and in concert, in new ways that are not entirely determined by the past, present or future. Arendt underscores this point be emphasizing how the “novus ordo seculorum,’ the new order of the ages promised on the back of every dollar bill, is only guaranteed to the extent that this new country, this new world, not only can “does away with poverty and oppression,” but also does not shut itself off from the outside world, and in fact welcomes the newcomers, the immigrants, that renew the founding promises of this country. Thus “natality” embraces children, immigrants, artists, “dreamers,” political actors and beginners of all stripes. Natality foretells the good news, the glad tidings, the possibility of new beginnings, the possibility that we can start over, that there is always a second chance to get it right, that we are always beginning again.
But the “potential” natality of the child poses a specific dilemma to the parent, caretaker, and teacher. How do we provide for the child’s wellbeing, inculcate values that we believe are important to the child’s and the society’s wellbeing, and at the same time not rob from the child his or her ability to “bring the noise,”bring something new, special and different into the world?We have to be willing to both prepare the child for the world as it is, and preserve and cultivate the child’s ability to rewrite, remake and renew culture. Arendt puts it this way:
“We have to decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable… where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of understanding something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”
As teachers we have a sacred responsibility and privilege to both share our “love of the world” (another Arendtian turn of phrase) and protect, preserve and advocate for the natality of each child. This works itself out in countless ways throughout the day. How do we teach art, dance and athletics, reading the word and the world, critical thinking, the civil rights movement, our history as a people, and how to care for the earth and each other, and at the same time protect and advocate for the child’s natality? I’m down for the cause. Are you?
