The Milk of Human Kindness

Three days after leaving Vermont, still vibrating from driving 3010 miles through 11 states, I found myself comfortably ensconced in a borrowed lawn chair at Sand Cove contemplating an admirable performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

I had come west to work with an exceptional educational community, Lake Tahoe School, a community that believes that students deserve to be treated as individuals and that inherent in every student is the potential for creativity, courage, and compassion. And though school had yet to start, though I had yet to meet my colleagues, the families, and most importantly, the Lake Tahoe School students, I was mulling over those three traits - creativity, courage, and compassion - as I watched the witches chant "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" in the first scene.

This equivocation is one of the leitmotifs that Shakespeare threads throughout the play. Part of Shakespeare's creative genius is his ability to craft plots that speak to the ambiguity of the human condition. Every battle has a winner but the same battle also has a loser: that which is fair to some can be foul to others.

Ambiguity is essential to creativity, and those communities that value diverse perspectives and demonstrate the fortitude to encourage questioning are communities in which creativity can thrive. Schools should be such communities.

As for courage, it is extraordinarily difficult to come by. Macbeth is a courageous warrior, and if it were not for his valor on the battlefield at the beginning of the play, the rebels threatening to overthrow King Duncan would have been successful. Yet when it comes time to murder the King, Macbeth lacks the courage to commit the crime. Lady Macbeth, incensed by his timidity, scolds him saying that his nature is "too full o' the milk of human kindness" and, as a result, he will never accomplish that to which he aspires.

But, as any teacher will tell you, Lady Macbeth is wrong. Courage is not analogous to naked ambition; courage stems from a self-confidence that allows one to overcome fear. Courage is the trait that allows a parent to entrust her child to the kindergarten teacher on the first day of class, and courage is the trait that enables a shy student to give a speech in front of the entire school.

Schools are compassionate communities uniquely suited to encouraging courage. Schools allow students to experiment within a safe, supportive environment, thus enabling students to take risks, to explore their imaginations, and to learn the self-confidence necessary to exhibit courage.

Yet the capacity of compassion is often neglected. However, Lady Macbeth is well aware of the power of compassion to prevent her and her husband from performing the evil they are planning. She prays to the witches to "Stop up th' access and passage to remorse" so that they will better be able proceed with murdering the King. However, the absence of compassion leads to such cold-blooded chaos reigning in Scotland that Lady Macbeth is finally driven to suicide, the ultimate unnatural act. Shakespeare's message is clear: compassion is essential to the health of any community.

I appreciate the fact that the communities that support Lake Tahoe School and the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival are healthy. And I believe that it is a healthy community's responsibility - as educators, as children, and as parents and grandparents - to champion creativity, courage and compassion. We need to raise our children on "the milk of human kindness" so that they can explore their individual creativity, can find the courage to take chances, and can embrace compassion as a natural means of building and maintaining a healthy community.

--Steve McKibben
8/26/05