What's in a Name?
Uncovering Meaning and Purpose
This is my first “actual” post as I get Enemy in the Field up and running. I may continue to have a few edits over time, and I will undoubtedly find errors (in the spirit of the endeavor) — but I want to get this one up in order to test functionality and gain familiarity. Please feel free to share and recommend Enemy in the Field. gb
Any name should have meaning, maybe a bit of history, and especially purpose. My father’s name was George, my older brother’s name is George, and my name is Geoff – see the pattern? My wife and I courted over Mets games (another story for another time) so our older daughter’s name is Shea. Our first real travel together was in Ireland, so the Irish name Ciara (pronounced “Keera”) seemed fitting for our second daughter. Shea’s middle name is Manning, and Ciara’s is Ward – grandparent surnames from both sides of our family. I call my home Camelot because of my fondness for Arthurian Legend, the hopefulness of JFK, and, well, just because …
Enemy in the Field is no exception. It stems from a principle I like to think I have always held in high regard and which has only grown in importance during a lifetime of working with students – the centrality and importance of free thought, discussion, and speech. This is certainly a topic that has moved to front and center throughout society, but particularly in schools. Create a stew of peer pressure, cliques, finding oneself, inquisitiveness, and curiosity and you have a custom made recipe for doing everything possible to quiet discussion and enervate that wonderful spirit of youthful curiosity. Add “cancel culture” and you’re virtually guaranteed to crush any genuine sense of intellectual exploration and growth.
So this is the stage onto which walks John Stuart Mill. In my eyes, Mill’s great gift to us is one of the most succinct and articulate defenses of freedom of thought and discussion ever written. In On Liberty he provides us with a pithy summary of four reasons why society needs to embrace and foster free speech and discussion.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Infallibility – wow, what hubris must it take to assume that mantle. I think it goes without saying that this is a “non-starter.” I prefer to fall back on the rather comforting notion that there is a great deal I do not know, am frequently wrong, and have a bountiful learning-scape ahead of me. Then we find:
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Makes sense. Let’s get closer to the “truth” by letting ideas collide and “separate the wheat from the chaff.” So let’s move on to the final two – where it really gets interesting.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: thew dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Brief, clear, sound, and substantive reasoning. It is not only difficult to see where there are any holes in this argument, but it serves as a blueprint for how a society can progress, or to choose not to. At the very least it should serve as the foundation for academia, for the university, for politics, for policy, for science, for any growth oriented endeavor. Who would have thought – a sort of Hegelian dialectic used for good and freedom (unlike how it was later used by some Marxists).
But we’re still left with the question of the origin of the name Enemy in the Field. Well, hidden in the text which leads Mill to his four part summary is an absolute gem about the nature of teaching and learning. In talking about how to keep ideas alive and avoid letting them become mere dogma, he stresses the need to have them continually challenged – to be forced to defend even the most accepted of truths in order to perpetually breathe life into them. He points out that
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field. (emphasis mine)
There it is! We appreciate those who challenge, who disagree, who come with new and unformed perspectives. They are the ones who will help us learn and grow – to be our best selves.
Why have we lost that? Whether it is the demand for conformity through cancel culture or the simple refusal to genuinely listen to alternative ideas, we seem to be moving in the direction of less discourse, at the very moment we need more. We need to rely on our enemy in the field to to make us better, to keep us on our toes, and to serve as our ally in the adventure of discovery. It’s ok to let our ideas evolve — after all, the alternative is to remain stagnant — to cease to think.
When I was in the hospital for an extended stay last year and had to miss a fair number of classes, my students made me a get well poster of support. In large letters right in the center it read “We Miss Our Enemy In The Field” – and I couldn’t have asked for a better, more hopeful affirmation of purpose.
I love these kids …