Have you ever noticed how often people say in conversation, “To be honest with you”? Now, that is always extremely comforting to hear – we want people to be honest with us.
We are glad they admit to being honest (when our inclination is often that we do not find people are honest with us).
We are encouraged that they recognise the importance of being honest with others.
But, here is the thing: why do people have to say they are being honest with us, when we have always presumed (and they will have wanted us to presume) that they are being honest?
And do we therefore assume that when they do not say “To be honest with you” that they are not being honest?
A friend recently challenged her friends on her social media page (to be honest, are they all friends?) to do what she had done – to ask ChatGTP for an unhinged description of ourselves.
What she got was not what would be put on her CV – and yet, the thing is, it is a powerful, beautiful, colourful accurate description of who she is.
It includes (with her permission) such lines as “Built like a corporate assassin, but emotionally operated by poetry, grief, caffeine, and ‘it is what it is’ lies” and “Will absolutely help you rebuild your life while hers is held together with iced coffee, dry shampoo, and pure force of will”.
Employ that lady! Especially when it concludes “Not everyone can handle her. Mostly because she can read emotional inconsistency from six provinces away.” Truth is beauty.
There is the unhinged version. In modern parlance, “unhinged” will be taken as meaning, unbalanced, unstable, uncontrolled, unpredictable, unrestrained, untidy – and those are all seen as being negatives.
However, let us understand what it also, and in reality, means – unadulterated, unabridged.
We think that if a door is unhinged, off its hinges, it is broken, damaged, but in truth it allows people to go through the door; it is not shutting the door in someone’s face, not revealing what lies hidden the other side of the door. It is saying “To be honest with you”.
Let us then consider for a moment an unhinged view of education, not the glossy, fancy, polite, clever, smart, reference-style view that we would want people to think is behind the door.
Let us be honest; let us considerate the unadulterated, unabridged version – without the help of ChatGTP even. Let us tell it straight out, whether it hurts someone’s feelings or pockets.
Let us tell the truth, but make sure we tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let us walk through the broken door.
We proclaim education is about results but that is clearly not the whole truth; otherwise why is the world, our country, our city, in such a mess?
We declare ubuntu as the stated desired goal yet live as each man for himself with a massive ever-increasing divide in society. We preach diversity yet impose one-size-fits-all regulations on all.
We espouse innovation but demand control and permission.
We encourage critical thinking yet clamp down on those who think differently.
We say everyone is a winner when clearly everyone is not.
We do not wish to offend or upset anyone, so we play down truth, but we do not accept alternative views.
Of course, no-one really wants the unhinged version of ourselves. And we do not want to upset anyone.
But is the problem of a door that is unhinged the fact that it will not shut, and therefore it will not keep what happens inside the door from being seen?
Is it that we cannot keep danger from entering our comfortable world by closing the door to what is actually happening inside?
Are these thoughts unhinged, unbalanced, unstable, uncontrolled, unpredictable, unrestrained? Are they unlikely, unwanted, uncomfortable?
Perhaps we need to be challenged to take a critical unhinged view of education (we do not need to ask AI to do that) and see how much more beauty, character, depth, life there can be in education if only we are honest. Do we dare do that?
Maybe we should ask that certain young lady – after all, she apparently “Can close a six-figure deal, organise a funeral slideshow, survive heartbreak, style a gala outfit in 12 minutes, and still somehow end up crying in a European cathedral over a song she heard once in 2014”.
There are the perfect qualifications.
Which is the unhinged view?
Unbalanced or unadulterated? Just ask: which is the honest one?