As a teacher and parent, I’ve struggled with this question to no end. There are many moments in each role that I wish I could take back because I failed to consider the question, believing my expectations for who someone should become came from a position beyond questioning. I knew best, and I was in power.

It’s an impossible tension. When does honoring autonomy become neglecting a responsibility? When does encouragement become coercion? When does guidance become manipulation?

I’ve thought so much about this topic that my first (and so far, only) work of fiction, the philosophical fable Steven Sparrow & the Shade of a Great Tree, is an exploration of a life defined by the blind rejection of an expectation everyone believes beyond question. In this case, it’s that all sparrows learn to fly.

What if a young sparrow doesn’t want to fly? What if he doesn’t for no other reason than he’s expected to?

The above scenario sounds preposterous, but I believe many of our expectations for young people have become similarly unquestionable. How many young people struggle to become authors of their own lives because of our seemingly benevolent insistence on what their opening chapters should be? Later chapters, after all, are written in the shadow of earlier ones.

After decades teaching in compulsory schools, I’ve become quite sensitive to the related concepts of compulsion, coercion, and expectation. Maybe I’m sensitive because I have always abhorred being on their receiving end. I can admit that much of my life has been defined by my rejection of what others wanted of me, often (always?) without considering the value of what was being expected. I experienced great difficulty moving through school systems to earn the credentials necessary to do what I do, at each level calculating how little I needed to do to satisfy the requirements, my calculations costing me time and wasting energy. As a student, I never much cared for school.

In my strong desire to be the author of my becoming, I have often mistaken rejection of the expectations of others as an authentic act of creation. I have also infused compliance with too much evil. I don’t believe myself unique on either front, as many of my students share a kindred streak of youthful rebellion.

I am not dismissing the many positives of expectation. They have tremendous power, as I am sure we have all benefitted from someone else’s belief in our ability to become someone greater than we were, their belief and support integral to our becoming. But does the goodness of the expectation automatically grant the means necessary to achieve it?

It’s one thing to point to an open door, to allow another their moment of discovery, and to offer to walk alongside them as they go willingly. It’s something else to shove someone through it.

How much of what ails society is the result of unquestioned shoving?

We in schools are generous in our counting of those we get through the door, and less so in our examining of what happens on the other side to those we shoved through. I believe it’s time we pay closer attention to this group, and to the practice of shoving itself.

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I turned 57 on October 8 of this year, and as we do when such events approach, I provided my loved ones a wish list. For many years now my birthday and Christmas lists have unsurprisingly been a collection of vinyl records, books, DVDs, and aloha shirts.

This year, however, I went in a different direction.

I asked for eight minutes of forgiveness.

I knew my mother would need to spend all eight minutes forgiving me for denying her the opportunity to engage her next-level wrapping skills. Others would roll their eyes, something I’m sure to have caused them to do many times over the years. They would all, save for my mom, be grateful I saved them money and a trip to the store.

Our small family gathering was wonderful, and the conversations we had, sparked by my unusual request, were deep and intense, my favorite kind. My mom discovered a loophole, as Laurie and I had our anniversary on October 2, an event that included my wife who had not made a similar abolition. Otherwise, the evening was free of stuff, and full of people and conversation, like a less stressful Thanksgiving.

Whether or not my loved ones actually engaged in eight minutes of forgiveness I’ll never know. I do, however, intend to keep this practice alive. I have faith that somewhere along the way, a positive difference will be made in the world, a difference greater than any other physical gift I could receive.

Here is the letter I sent to my loved ones announcing my request:

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Greetings Friends and Family,

Please accept this as my “gift list” for my remaining years, or until such time as I see an amendment is in order. I feel that may be never, but I’ve learned enough to know that nothing is truly permanent. This knowledge, in fact, is a strain in the seed that grew my new “list,” but I’ll get to that in a moment.

No more of your earned or borrowed currency need be spent to purchase an item for me, nor a gift card or cash that I may purchase an item with. No more boxes or wrapping paper or bags or bows shall be used on my behalf. Any time you have the desire to honor me, be it an original desire or one compelled out of cultural obligation, there will be no need to reach for your wallet.

The exception to this would be if you wanted to purchase a card to write a note in, or treat me to a shared cup of coffee or meal. Cards will be accepted by post, but do not include a gift card with them for a coffee or meal. That is a loophole I want to close immediately. You must be present during the coffee or meal if you desire to share such gifts. Let me note here, however, that these cards and shared coffees and/or meals are not my new list. These are just acceptable items for those that feel lost not giving something material. It’s not my desire to induce any anxious feelings.

Now to my new “list”:

Anytime you wish to honor me with a gift, please dedicate eight minutes of your time contemplating forgiveness.

To do so, find a clearance in your schedule on or near the day you wish to share your gift that allows you to sit quietly without interruption. During those eight, quiet minutes, turn your attention inward and search for individuals (or groups of people, like politicians, lawyers, or bad drivers) that you currently harbor negative feelings towards and may have deemed “unforgivable.” The reason(s) for your feeling(s) is immaterial. Don’t forget to include yourself in your search. I would then ask that you consider “pardoning” as many as you can in those eight minutes, forever releasing them from the sentence you’ve imposed upon them. If it helps, imagine a prison door opening in your mind and that person or persons walking out, taking with them the negative feelings that were locked inside with them. Watch them walk away until they all disappear into the distance.

An important note to make is that an apology or act of penance cannot be a condition of their release. They are to be absolved of all wrongs you believe they have committed in the past without any expectation of further (re)payment.

Another important note to make is that I have asked you to consider forgiving these individuals. I understand that this is a big request on my part, and that letting go of the pain, anger, resentment, or any of the other poisonous emotions your grievance has manifested is not easily done. It’s definitely more challenging than ordering me another vinyl record off Amazon. However, I also propose that it is not as difficult as you probably imagine. So, while I hope that you can get to the actual pardon of absolute forgiveness, I will settle for consideration.

The inspiration for my request is thus: there is nothing more capable of radical, whole world improvement than forgiveness. Yes, the whole world. Once you come to understand that indeed all things are connected to all things, then you understand that to damn one is to damn us all. Likewise, to release one is to release us all. It is the sage advice our greatest voices have been imploring us to embody, from Buddha, to Jesus, to Gandhi, to Martin Luther King. The message is always the same: love your neighbor, even the difficult ones. It’s what they did. I am following their lead.

Before we can love many of our neighbors, we must forgive them.

So, I can take care of purchasing my next albums and books and DVDs and aloha shirts. I’m so rich in this life I often can’t believe it, and it has nothing to do with any of my collections of stuff. It has to do with you, and it has to do with the love I have for you and that you share with me. This is the one “collection” I would like to focus my remaining years on growing, the collection of love in the world. Our world.

With Love,

Matthew Dale Jones

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I began teaching in 2000, at the age of thirty in the largely middle class city of my youth, Westminster, California, in its southern, Orange County. I then moved to and taught in Hawaii, on Oahu at the august Le Jardin Academy, a private school as beautiful and tony as it sounds. These were light detail assignments, as the whims of the Empire found little resistance here, little to rebel against. Outside of isolated, infrequent sparks, friction between school and student was minimal (admittedly, this was also when my vision was adjusting to the darkness of my helmet’s visor). It was not here I first heard the modulated voice in my head.

In 2006 my wife Laurie (also a teacher) and I had our second child, and life in Hawaii as two private school teachers became financially untenable. We decided to move back to California, this time to its agrarian center where Laurie’s mother was from, where her cousins and their children lived, and where our teacher salaries went further than we’d ever dreamed possible.

For the last twenty years as married teachers in Tulare, California, we’ve been able to live in our town’s nicest neighborhoods, park in a parking lot full of its nicest cars, and on weekends dine at its finest restaurants, where running into co-workers is expected. In the fall, we love to share and hear stories of the exotic places visited over summer, or about the work done on condos at the coast. Our two children will earn college degrees without debt. It was not the life we imagined when we entered public education in Southern California, a decision made on a foundation of service and purpose, and a sacrifice of financial status. The Empire has smiled on us.

It was definitely sometime after 2006 when I noticed the shiny white of my reflection, although it wasn’t in the mirror; it was in a student’s glasses, a hint of rebellion gathering at the corners of their lips. I saw students cheating, and in a flash believed I played a part.

In a community like the one I live and work in, far from the Empire’s glittering cities, friction with metropolitan whims is constant. What makes sense to citizens and rulers in the urban centers don’t always jive with rural ways of living and culture, and in a state like California, where many entire states would fit inside our counties, our government takes on a federal quality, distant, out of touch, authoritarian. It was here I started to understand the effects of empire, of compulsory schooling, on the shaping of humans and humanity.

For the last twenty years I’ve taught here, and like the thick, dangerous fog that blankets our land in winter, the culture of thought that empires depend on has become visible to me. And in the sunset of my career, what the fog obscures is becoming known to me as faces appear in the disappearing mist, faces of students, in their critical time of becoming, twisted under the weight of compulsion.

The philosophy of the individual I was trained on has been revealed as belonging to the fog. Instead, a whole, relational world appears to me as the tint of my visor wears thin, atoms and the undulating fabric they form challenging everything my feeble, human eyes have told me is true. Certainty has been abandoned. Even these hard won thoughts will take new shape before too long, so like all things, I’ve learned to hold them loosely.

Consider these Substack posts as entries from a stormtrooper’s diary, one searching to find how human freedom and love can flourish in a universe ruled by force.

Welcome to Teacher Saves World!

Note: The name “Teacher Saves World!” is one I am reviving from a podcast and blog that my wife Laurie and I did from 2020-2022. The podcast episodes are still available. While the old website is not, I am restoring the domain name here and may post some of the old blog content if it seems relevant. Who knows, maybe even the podcast will be brought back to life…stay tuned!