The Annoying Student

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

I learned in school that it’s not cool to not understand.  Any student still asking questions at the conclusion of a lesson was subjected to social cues indicating he was a laggard holding up progress in the classroom.

I learned later in life that those social cues were a smokescreen; some students did understand, but many more did not and would not admit it so as to avoid looking stupid.  Lessons went totally unchallenged by a group lacking comprehension and clinging to personal image.

Social cues don’t dissolve upon graduation from high school; they intensify with adulthood.  One of the strongest unspoken messages among adults is that you must be smart.  I filled my brain with plenty of information and flailed around the farm all swollen with smart for years before I realized I really had no idea what I was talking about.  I had hidden my naivety because I remember that not understanding is monumentally stupid.  I don’t want to be stupid, I want to be noteworthy.

The problem with my charade wasn’t the climb – that was fun - but the long fall back to reality when the scaffolding finally buckled.  And what exactly is one to do after realizing the significant inconvenience of not understanding the words coming from one’s own mouth?  I wrote an article.

It was submitted to my favorite grazing publication and released in print last November.  For once in my life I was publicly honest: Ladies and gentlemen, I have tried my best to do what you say and I am not getting the results I expected.

Let me share a secret with you.  I get a thrill seeing my name in print.  I’m forever grateful to have this column in The Leader-Vindicator.  My pulse quickens when somebody recognizes my name because of the newspaper.  And as a result of my admission in the grazing paper I received a tremendous amount of feedback from all over the country.  That, to an amateur writer, is exhilarating.

There were two responses, however, that really stood out.  A couple of the big names in grassfed beef responded not to me, but to the audience at large, using plenty of thinly disguised inference that there will always be a dummy in the bunch, saying that I’m completely wrong.

I won’t defend myself here or offer a pitiful attempt to counter their arguments by appealing to a different and possibly more sympathetic audience.  In fact, I need to make clear that I believe these men are correct; I do believe they have accomplished what they say they have accomplished and I respect them for it.  So no issue there.

My issue is the message that I’m not allowed to not understand.  More specifically, nobody is allowed to not understand, because if you say you don’t you’ll be publicly criticized.  That’s a disappointing attitude from people in a teaching position.

The attitude from superiors has a palpable effect among the grassfed community.  I’ve traveled around enough to realize that everyone is using the same language and very, very few people are getting consistent results – that’s plainly obvious when visiting farms.  There is a huge gap in understanding but it’s disguised and buried and no progress whatsoever is made to remedy the ignorance.  There are the same faces at the grazing conferences every year and people are buying books by the millions and still when you step back and look nothing has changed.  Nobody wants to look stupid and admit they’re having trouble so the charade lives on, crippling the grassfed industry.

I think the problem is too many facts and not enough dynamics.  Much of my public criticism was a regurgitation of well-worn facts that are neat, but not at all helpful (among them is an admonishment that if I mow goldenrod I’ll leave behind microscopic tractor particles that may harm the environment).  Facts are rigid and unliving and incapable of flexibility.  Facts propagate dogma and deter creative thinking.  They’re just about worthless when broadly applied to millions of very specific circumstances found on millions of different farms.  Two neighbors will respond differently to the same fact due to their circumstances.

If there is to be survivability in the business of grassfed livestock then people need trained to use exactly what’s available to them in order to achieve maximum result.  There is no “right” answer and there is no “wrong”, only precisely what will work in that specific context in that specific moment.  Some of my darkest days are those I find myself failing to achieve what I read “should” be done, when in reality what “should” be done is simply not within my current context of survival and therefore is not at all what needs to be accomplished.

I have decided to stop this ridiculous pretending.  I don’t have all the facts and figures figured out.  I know I’m going to accomplish something this season but I have no idea what it will be; my decisions will be responses to circumstances as they are encountered.  Those high on the tower can send their condescension; I’ll be the student with questions after class.