Dear Readers:
In response to continuing news reports and interest in this forum about Ebola, I post this piece on behalf of Richard Barbieri, a quarterly contributor to Independent School magazine’s books section. After 40 years working in independent schools, Barbieri is now providing mediation, communication, and conflict support to families, schools, and courts. He invites you to be in touch and can be reached at [email protected]
One Way Schools Can Calm Parental Concerns about Ebola: Parents' Own Words
By Richard Barbieri
In November, I traveled to regional independent school conferences in the south and the east, speaking on the subject of conflict resolution. At two of these events, administrators approached me to explain how repercussions of the West African Ebola epidemic were presenting novel challenges to their schools.
In both regions, issues had arisen in the parent community, with some families asking schools to keep the children of medical, humanitarian, or diplomatic parents, who were returning from the affected regions, out of school until a safe time had passed, even though the returning parents themselves were symptom-free and had not been quarantined.
As you might expect, the reaction of the returning parents was dismay and anger that, instead of being congratulated for their efforts in a humanitarian cause, they were being seen as a potential danger. Though we might share these opinions, we agreed that a self-righteous stance on the part of the school would be entirely out of the question, as would a bland reassurance that there was no medical support for any concern.
What strategies might help calm the situation? We should start, of course, with a general framework: no dismissing viewpoints, no disrespecting individuals, no unilateral pronouncements. One paradigm I suggested was drawn from the well-known advice on holding difficult conversations, from the book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. Their idea is that every conversation is threefold, involving: the Facts, the Emotions, and the Identity. In this case, the Facts, as understood by the medical community and probably by a majority of Americans, are that Ebola is not communicable until an individual is symptomatic, and is only contagious through direct contact with bodily fluids. But, as experience of such parallels as vaccination and AIDS show, inaccurate beliefs often persist long after data seem conclusive to most audiences.
This doesn’t mean that statements of fact are unnecessary or irrelevant, only that by themselves they are insufficient. One school, for example, was able to bring an exceptionally prestigious and articulate medical specialist to the community to speak sincerely and compassionately to parents, with significant success.
But that speaker and others acknowledge that Emotions are in themselves a type of fact that needs to be considered deeply. While a catastrophic event may be seen as rationally unlikely, its imagined consequences often outweigh any statistical reassurance. And with Ebola, as with so many other contemporary concerns, constant public reminders of the danger can deeply influence our perception of its likelihood. (One interesting theory suggests that we still react to a small number of incidents drawn from huge populations as if they were occurring in the local tribes or communities where humanity began, therefore feeling as if the danger is imminent and overwhelming.)
Finally, Emotions and Identity join together in situations in which our own self-definition is involved, and in this case, Identity cuts two ways. Doctors and others may feel their dedication and courage are being challenged, but among opposing families, the central identity of parenthood is at the heart of the conflict. What parent will not attempt to protect a child from a risk he or she would willingly take on themselves without a second thought? Dad may bike without a helmet, but his child certainly won’t if he can help it. Is there any one of us who can’t recall forbidding a child to do something we ourselves did without incident at their age, both because we now perceive the danger differently and because of our overarching love for them?
This Identity issue, it seems, is the exact place that any intervention should begin. The logic is simple: the returning parent feels the same sense of parental identity as does the worried parent. The returning parent, however, would have to be shockingly indifferent to the family’s welfare to put them at risk by his or her presence. But only by being that indifferent could he or she begin the chain of exposure that might lead to someone else’s child being infected.
But it’s not enough to state the logic: the syllogism we could make out of these premises might impress an uninvolved spectator, but could be viewed as condescending if presented to a fearful family. This is, rather, a case for person-to-person communication. As with any fear of the Other, and what the Other brings with them, direct contact and personal testimony are the primary means by which conflict may be eased.
So asking returning parents to tell, whether in a parent meeting, by video, or through the written word, their personal stories, not of heroism, but of the precautions they have constantly taken, of their experience of the disease’s devastating effects, and of their own commitment to protect their own families, at whatever inconvenience to themselves, may well be the best method of reaching an understanding. This, of course, would work best if the returning parents could hear and acknowledge the fears of others, and even in possible cases, the prior life experiences that strengthen such fears, before telling their own stories.
Certainly this approach places a significant additional burden on the medical or humanitarian parent, and perhaps not every such parent can take on such a delicate task. But even one per community (or drawn from another parent group if necessary) may be enough, and the same commitment that drives them to engage with the epidemic, combined with their own love for their child, may be equally effective in motivating them to take on this task.
The views expressed here reflect those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of NAIS. Please contact the author at [email protected] or leave comments below.