Faithfully yours - Things you can’t learn from a book—Tolerance
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- Published on Monday, September 3, 2018
By Neil Strohschein
Neepawa Banner & Press
The “hallowed halls of learning,” also known as public schools, will officially open for business next week. Teachers and students will begin another year of making new friends, forming new relationships and learning new things about life and how to live it.
Over the next ten months, students will acquire a great deal of knowledge. Some will come from books—but increasing amounts of course material are being on-line through articles, fact sheets and videos, many of which can be accessed by a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Computer workstations are as common in today’s classrooms as overhead projectors were in my school days.
But these advances present new challenges to teachers and school administrators. Their biggest challenge is helping students sift through the massive amounts of available data to find material that is factual, truthful and free from bias or prejudice—not an easy task for anyone.
But some essential life skills cannot be taught in a classroom or acquired by reading an article or watching a video. These skills must be developed over time; and the best way to develop them, in my view, is through interacting with other students in the halls and rooms of a public school.
One of these skills is tolerance—learning to accept and accommodate people from many other countries, cultures and religions—people with whose beliefs, habits and lifestyle choices we may not always agree. As we meet and interact with people from all walks of life, we learn to look past the things that divide us, see each person as a unique creation of a loving and caring God and allow him or her the freedom to become all that God intended for him or her to be.
Being tolerant doesn’t require us to condone opinions or practices with which we cannot agree. We are free to voice our displeasure with things other people say and do just as they are free to do the same with us. We can agree to disagree on issues of theology, philosophy, politics and lifestyle—we can passionately debate these issues and, if a spirit of tolerance is present in the debate, end the discussion knowing more and understanding it better than we did at the outset.
Being tolerant also means that we choose to avoid meddling in the personal lives of others. We are free to set standards of conduct to which we will adhere and are free to define how much (or how little) contact we will have with those who may not share our views. We choose to respect their right to live as they please and ask that they will show us the same courtesy.
None of us is an island unto ourselves. We do not live in isolation from others. We are part of a community; so we must learn to see the value in others, welcome them into our lives just as they are and work together on projects that will help improve our towns and rural areas..
Merely reading a book on the subject or taking a course won’t make us loving and caring people. Knowing what to do isn’t enough. Tolerant, accepting, loving and caring communities are built by tolerant, accepting, loving and caring people who follow the words of our Lord: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.”
The campus of a public school is a good place to begin learning these qualities of character; and I pray that they will be learned well in the coming school year.
