May 18, 2012
I was reading a brief sketch of Florence Nightingale's life. An excerpt reminded me of some of our students at my school. :)
"Then war broke out in the Crimea (in Russia, on the north edge of the Black Sea), and Sir Sidney Herbert, now Secretary of War, obtained permission for Florence to lead a group of 38 nurses there. Of these, 10 were Roman Catholic nuns, 14 were Anglican nuns, and the remaining 14 were "of no particular religion, unless one counts the worship of Bacchus." They found conditions appalling. Blankets were rotting in warehouses while the men did without, because no one had issued the proper forms for their distribution. The lavatories in the hospitals had no running water, and the latrines were tubs to be emptied by hand. But no one emptied them, since official regulations did not specify which department was responsible for doing so. The result was that the hospital had a foul stench that could be smelled for some distance outside its walls. Far more men were dying in hospitals of infection than of wounds. The chief concern of many of the Army doctors was that the nurses might usurp some of their authority. Florence gradually managed to win the doctors and other authorities over, and to reform hospital procedures, with spectacular results. Once the medical situation had ceased to be an acute problem, she turned her attention to other aspects of the soldiers' welfare. For example, most of them squandered all their pay on drink. She noted that there was no trustworthy way for them to send money home to their families, and she set up facilities for them to do so. First, she undertook to send money home herself for any soldier in the hospital that wanted it sent, and the soldiers brought in about 1000 pounds a month. She asked the authorities to set up an official service to do this, and they refused. By appealing to Queen Victoria herself, she overcame opposition to the idea, and the men sent home 71,000 pounds sterling in less than six months. She established with her own money a reading-room with tables for writing letters, and the men used it enthusiastically. She imported four schoolmasters to give lectures, and the halls were filled to overflowing. All this was done despite opposition from officers who said, 'The men are hopeless brutes. You cannot expect anything from them.'"
Sometimes we think about some of our students as being "hopeless brutes," and there may be some that are. But we don't know which ones they are (only time will tell that), so what can we do to solve problems, motivate students, and give them opportunities to be better? Nightingale assessed the real problems these men were facing that led to their irresponsible choices, and she worked to give them opportunities and control in their lives. What more can we do for our students who are squandering their resources and living irresponsibly? We have to do some things differently if we are going to be successful with our students, at least as evidenced by our OGT scores, (which doesn't tell the whole story, but is an important indicator).
I am an idealist I know, but I like to think about and talk about these kinds of questions.
