This past spring, I taught a new course titled “Your Life’s Calling.” One of its main goals was to help students discern what it would mean to feel called in a world that often feels noisy, angry, confusing, and devoid of reasons for hope. As we moved through the course, students—especially those who knew they wanted to become classroom teachers—wondered how an educator could support every student’s calling, especially those callings that might challenge or directly conflict with the teacher’s most firmly held beliefs.
John Inazu’s notion “confident pluralism” offers a useful way to understand how citizens can remain committed to their callings while tolerating the fact that we are each called in different, and often opposing, directions. But my students were looking for something different. Teachers don’t just tolerate their students—they are charged with freeing each of them to do their best thinking. This obligation often means giving students tools that they might eventually turn against causes and ideas we passionately believe in.
As my students’ questions illustrate, we’ve grown distrustful that such a disinterested commitment to another’s individual formation is possible. As Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, neutrality is a fiction, but a useful one. Even though a politically liberal professor might find it easier to cultivate the talents of students who share his or her beliefs, this doesn’t mean it is impossible for such a teacher to improve the thinking of all students. Students might also find it easier to learn from teachers who look like them and share important aspects of their identity, but it’s also not impossible to create an engaging, effective, and ethical learning environment for students with radically different backgrounds and beliefs from their teacher, even though this practice might take a great deal of effort.
As a teacher, my primary calling is to facilitate learning and the positive effects it has on a developing person. My goal is for the students in my courses to get the most from each class meeting, each assignment, and their entire undergraduate education. Although I didn’t have this vocabulary when I began teaching, I’ve come to value pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s sense of dependability in any relationship aimed at facilitating another person’s wellbeing. For Winnicott, it is only when children experience a sturdy and dependable environment that they can test their growing independence. When young people act out and resist authority, Winnicott argues, we should see their behavior as a sign of health. This testing is essential for the development of responsible and creative agency, and a dependable environment is essential for such testing.
As psychoanalyst Adam Phillips explains in his essay, “In Praise of Difficult Children,” children labeled as difficult often test their environment because they wish it were sturdier; or if they know they are in a dependable environment, then they feel free to exercise their own agency. When the environment isn’t dependable, acting out is either impossible or unproductive. But with the right type of facilitating environment, children learn that they don’t need to conform to narrow expectations to be acceptable and loveable: they are free to push boundaries. Such boundary pushing doesn’t become an end in itself; rather, children who can play with and test boundaries grow up into adults who are dependable and able to facilitate the freedom of others.
For educators who care about vocation, fostering dependability and facilitating freedom could be useful ways to address the challenge of educating students into a plurality of callings. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, I worry that our collective distrust and confusion will only grow. Our students, and at times we ourselves, might feel overwhelmed by the world. They, and we, might be tempted to think it is impossible to educate, or be educated by, someone from another party or someone supporting a different candidate or cause. As such, we will need to be even more dependable, proving—through our lived presence—that we can learn from each other even when we differ and disagree.
As such, we will need to be even more dependable, proving—through our lived presence—that we can learn from each other even when we differ and disagree.
Not that this work will be easy. At times we will be tempted to despair. In such moments, when I need strength to support others, I draw sustenance from religious figures like Saint Joseph. There is something inspiring about the way Joseph devotedly served as father to Jesus and husband to Mary. While Mary was called to carry God, Joseph was called to support Mary and Jesus. Unlike the men who take up too much space wherever they go, Joseph was humble, dependable, serving his wife and child, often through extreme danger.
Though not much is written about Joseph in the Gospels, he reminds us of the virtue of being called to dependability. Being called doesn’t always mean being called to be the center, or the leader, or the most important. Rather, we can be called to facilitate the gifts of others—to be dependable so that they can shine. This doesn’t mean we aren’t important or that we must humble ourselves in subservient or self-erasing ways. Joseph’s calling to be dependable allowed him to contribute to and participate in the magnificent. What more could one desire? At times, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect, or to be unique, or to be notable—as if these were the only ways to live as a called person. But facilitating another person’s gifts, through our gentle dependability, is also a noble and rewarding calling.
As educators, one of our most important roles is to be dependable so that our students can discover their callings. This fall, many of us might feel pressure to do more than embody such reliability as we work with our students in the context of the election, or feel the call of despair. We might feel that the risks to our country are existential, which they might be. We might feel destabilized and lose faith in our belief that dependability matters, right when it is needed the most.
But as Winnicott argues, dependability is essential for student development, perhaps even more so when the world feels untrustworthy. Through our sturdiness, we can be a force of good. As many people across the country lose faith in higher education, we might ask ourselves if it’s because they feel like we don’t really care about freedom and that we only care about replicating our beliefs. As our campuses are tested again with this election, I urge us all to think about how we can facilitate the callings and the gifts of all our students, especially those who feel called in ways that we don’t understand or may disagree with. This is one way we can rebuild faith in higher education, while demonstrating that people who disagree with each other can still care about one another. It may not be the most romantic of callings, but it is a profound and important one.
Jeff Frank is professor of education and chair at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He has published two books as a philosopher of education: one on John Dewey and engaging students in the present, and one on what it means to be a liberal educator. To read more posts by Jeff, click here.
