Respect

Teaching is Learning to tolerate ambiguity, consider possibilities, and ask unanswerable questions. ~ Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

“When my father died in 1986, my brother gave the eulogy, his intimate, loving view of a very public man. Chuck's voice cracked as he recalled one of our father Charles's loveliest qualities. Charles had a natural air of authority about him. He commanded respect without ever asking for it. In high school, my rowdiest friends-the guys who stole hubcaps and crashed parties-were perfect gentlemen in my father's presence. They'd stand and say "yes, sir, Dr. Lawrence," and answer his many questions about school and home and where their parents and grandparents were from. It was much later that I realized Dad's secret.

He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kid in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say. And although he had the intellectual and physical tools to outmuscle a smaller person son or mind, he never bullied. He gained your allegiance by offering you his strength, not by threatening to overpower you.

My mother Margaret shared her husband's quiet authority. I remember watching her at her work as a psychiatrist treating inner-city families at Harlem Hospital. I remember her sitting comfortably on a tiny child's chair, pulling play people and cars and balloons loons out of her large African bag. Sometimes she brought a loaf of her homemade "Maggie Bread" to be offered in bite-sized pieces for a hungry child. I remember the way a child responded with trust to her serious, nurturant gaze. The parents' bodies would relax as they listened to her soothing voice and began to appreciate the intelligence and bravery she saw in their son. Her reverent respect for the child and his family was always in evidence.

I suspect that my mother's "reverence" for her troubled and vulnerable young patients, and her understanding and empathy for their parents, is rooted in her own experience as a child. Not only was she respected by her own parents, but she felt empowered and honored by "the whole middle-class Negro community" of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she was raised. This respectful embrace protected her from the ugly racism then poisoning encounters between whites and blacks in Vicksburg, and made young Margaret feel that she could do and be anything. In this southern city, where, as Margaret puts it, "white folks were totally irrelevant," she absorbed the attention and admiration of her elders and saw her future reflected in their eyes.

Margaret's certainty about her parents' undiluted respect for her did not mean that she was confident of their love. An older brother, called "Candy Man," with fair skin and golden curls had died eleven months before Margaret was born, but his idealized memory haunted the family forever. There was no way Margaret could compete with this dead brother. With her brown skin and dark eyes, she would never be as beautiful or as loved. Absent the love, she channeled her efforts into gaining her parents' respect; and they gave it in full measure: a constant, unswerving belief in her talents, her achievements, and her dreams. The respect was clear, unadorned. The respect was enough…

Ten years ago, Jennifer Dohrn, a nurse-midwife, founded a birthing clinic in the South Bronx, the first built in the country especially designed to serve poor women, mainly black and brown. A radical political activist in her young adulthood, who often lived her life underground and took great risks in her fight for justice and equality, Jennifer chose midwifery as a way to bring a constructive mission and concrete skills to impoverished communities. Her work with women has empowerment as its central theme.

In a situation where women often feel most vulnerable and frightened, when they feel disempowered and diminished ished by the rituals and technology of hospitals, when medical experts tend to take over and make all the decisions, Jennifer works to give women the knowledge and self-confidence to feel their full strength. As Jennifer puts it, "Birthing is a time when lots of family building takes place; when women feel strong and powerful…”

Kay Cottle sees respect embedded in classroom dialogue, as she helps students learn how to ask good questions, value inquiry, listen to each other, and begin a habit of thoughtful reflection. To her, true dialogue combines heart and mind, "loving and thinking," and it always entails risk: the teacher and her students allowing themselves to be vulnerable in the safe haven of the classroom…

At the Harvard Law School, an environment known for its hard-edged encounters, competition, and rivalry, David Wilkins stands out. The generations of students who have passed through his demanding, first-year course in civil procedure, speak of this professor with respect, as well as appreciation for the respect and attention he bestows on them.

At the root of his unyielding devotion to "seeing his students whole" and "creating a classroom culture in which they can feel comfortable" is his own hard-earned fight for self-respect, his determination that none of his students will have to go through the pain he experienced as a very successful but often terrified law student at Harvard twenty years before. His journey of self-respect is haunted by a dark family legacy: a long line of extraordinarily bright and achieving men who never felt their full power, who always felt the emptiness and fraud that comes from deferring to others and never fully valuing themselves.

Respect then comes full circle, from the life-giving screams of birth to the terror and peaceful silence of death…”

~ Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (born 1944) is an American sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a 1984 MacArthur Genius.