The unexamined life is not worth living. —Socrates
Boxes vary widely in shape and construction, but they tend to all serve the same purposes. They define important boundaries, protect what’s inside, and help us organize our lives. Some are big and bulky; others tiny and delicate. We use them to carry around things ranging from the irreplaceable, a Stradivarius for instance, to outright junk. Those of us who have moved lately know that there seems to be a box for everything and every purpose. As a matter of fact those with more stuff than can be rightly used go find an even bigger, more substantial box to store things like that extra ironing board, old baseball cards, and worn-out tools. For a more complete list of items we lock up in these big boxes, watch an episode of Storage Wars. As the winning bidder finds out, occasionally there are treasures that have been left behind or stored away and forgotten, in which case the bidder loads the valuable things in a box truck and takes them to a big box building to sort through and sell. The buyers in turn, find smaller boxes to put their new items in and the cycle begins anew. However, all of it eventually ends up in a bigger box, even us.
It seems to me that our lives are all about boxes or boundaries that define our existence, protect us from harm, and organize our lives. These limits (some knowable and others more ill-defined) help us figure out the rules to solve things like oxidation reduction reaction equations and how to build fires and put them out by understanding fire’s three-sided box. Science is a discipline built on tests of hypotheses based on knowable boundaries or conditions necessary that help define, protect, and organize things like butterflies and yellow squash. Clear and precise thinking inside these boxes have helped smudge the boundary lines that limit the knowable and expand the possible.
However, with that said, we live in a world of bigger and smaller boxes that at some point limit the possibilities. The notion of boundaries makes most of us a little uncomfortable, but as Richard Paul suggested in The Foundations of Critical Thinking, the best thinking is done in the confines of the rules of logic and from defined points of view with precise clarity, accuracy, and precision. Nevertheless, we are attracted to the fanciful idea that we can do anything we want to do or be anything we want to be. That’s simply not true. For instance, I can’t dunk a basketball (at least not on a regulation goal) and I desperately wanted to be the shortstop for the New York Yankees. However, as one scout put it, “He can’t hit the curve, and his arm is really weak.” As much as I hated it, I had to accept the hard boundaries of my too-common athletic ability. William James starkly characterized what were my options at that point. He said that to increase your self-esteem about any behavior there are only two alternatives—either increase your success or lower your pretentions. I chose the latter, and accepted the reality that I was not a professional baseball prospect. Thankfully, that did not disqualify me as a teacher, a husband, or a father. In fact, it may have made me better.
We do indeed live in a finite world with limited resources and fences that may not always be visible. Some argue that there are no boundaries on the horizon, but if you go far enough even the Great Plains of the Midwest are bounded on one side by the Rocky Mountains and on the other by the mighty Mississippi. Still, most of us have a hard time accepting limits that are imposed or implied, especially on our thinking (me included). Nowhere is this more evident than in our professional development meetings. I think there is a rule that it’s not a real seminar until the speaker encourages the crowd to “think outside the box” at least three times, or mentions the word “piece” as in “my piece of the program.” Realistically, we must know that there are and will always be boundaries, especially in education. Clearly, there are some things that I cannot do with my students as a result of boundaries of safety, security, decency, or decorum.
As a teacher, I am in a box—not a square, but a really big box that has interesting and unexplored corners with tops and sides whose full promise is yet to be discovered. Like the upper limits of my 100-billion-plus brain cells, I’m not even sure of the capacity or dimensions of this box that defines my role, protects my students and me from the elements, organizes my life, and most of all, preserves priceless treasures.
I am not advocating that we reduce our lives and our thinking to tiny boxes that too tightly define us—on the contrary. I am suggesting that we do good science, ask hard questions, and test our assumptions. This revolution in thinking happened in the dark, damp halls of medieval castles, in prison cells, and under apple trees (where traditionally the gravity box was discovered). That kind of innovative thinking can certainly happen in small rural classrooms with few resources or in giant urban schools bristling with technology. There are new frontiers just over the horizon, but they, too, will present problems to solve with our trusty tools of disciplined thinking, but we have to find them first. Let’s keep exploring and pushing back the boundaries, perhaps even (ironically) by discovering new boxes. Who knows what’s in the distant, far corners of the big school box or just over the bumps in the road on the bottom (or maybe the side) of the box? What we can’t do is leave school without understanding more about what’s inside the box we live and learn in. To do that, we’ll have to think deeply . . . inside that box. What we are likely to learn is that what we can’t do is not as important as what we can.
Gary Riggins is the director of graduate studies in education at Lee University in Cleveland,Tennessee.
