For many of us, the best part of a meal is the dessert; in fact, a meal of just dessert would be a dream! Just lay on the dessert, please! Let us go further, though – bring on many desserts, the more the merrier!
Let us be having the trifle, the ice cream, the malva pudding with lashings of custard, the crème brulee, the crème caramel, the strawberry mousse, cheesecake, crumble, banoffee pie, pannacotta, pavlova.
Shall we go on? The thought of any one of them, let alone all of them, might make us salivate wildly.
In the minds of some people, desserts are a bonus at the end of a meal, a reward. Many meals will not include a dessert, so consequently they are seen as a reward, a treat, something special we have earned or deserved. In such a way, our juicy desserts have become our just deserts.
We are all into deserts, into getting what we believe we rightfully deserve. Indeed, schools are all into deserts, into pupils receiving what it is deemed they deserve, be it Colours or prizes for things that they have done well or punishments for those things that they have done wrong. For many people, education is seen as being about results, about what is deserved, about status, money, power, positions, all those things which are gained because of what is deserved.
If a child does well, she receives a merit; if a child does badly, he receives a demerit. Simple, is it not? In both cases, it is what is warranted or earned or deserved. So then a merit is the opposite of a demerit.
If that is the case, what is the opposite of ‘deserve’?
Surely it would be ‘serve’? Yet, here is the problem: we do a disservice to service by emphasising what children deserve as opposed to who or how they serve. There is rather a disconnect between deserving and serving. We want the deserving but not the serving. Serving should be the plus and deserving the negative.
If “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity”, as the classic novelist Leo Tolstoy declared, why is education not assisting in that regard? Why are we not committed to ensuring everyone understands and practises service? If, as Martin Luther King Junior once claimed, “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’”, what we are we doing for our children to make them understand the absolute need to serve others?
Does it play any part in our education system or in our parents’ communication? Do we reward those who honour that charge?
If we are going to teach (and that is education, after all) then surely we should be teaching the fundamental principles set out in the wonderful prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola: “Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve; to give, and not to count the cost; to fight, and not to heed the wounds; to toil, and not to seek for rest; to labour, and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we are doing your will.”
What it means to serve is found in the verbs following in that statement: in giving, in fighting, in toiling, in labouring, with all the ‘not’s attached, yet those are not what are rewarded in schools! It should not be about what we deserve; it is about whether we serve.
In a school, only the talented, only the few, receive rewards, as a result of what they deserve, yet Martin Luther King famously said that “Everybody can be great ... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace.
A soul generated by love.” Yet how much of our education is geared to achieve that? We will not find a college degree in service! Who needs degrees anyway?
Albert Schweitzer served as a missionary doctor in desperate conditions in Gabon for many years but he stated that “I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
Do we not want our children to be happy?
Similarly, Albert Einstein, often seen as one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, simply yet succinctly summed up life when he said that “Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.”
Should our education system and curriculum not therefore be geared directly, specifically, unerringly, unrelentingly at making our youngsters’ life worth living? Should it not reward all those who serve? Education must not be about desserts or even our just deserts; it is the very opposite. Serve, not deserve – let us not negate serving by going on about deserving.
Tim Middleton is the executive director of the Association of Trust Schools [ATS]. The views expressed in this article, however, are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of the ATS.
Email: tim@atszim.org website: atszim.org