Arrogance vs Humility - the Face Off

This weekend was the Teach for America 2008 corps opening activities. I got my first taste of what this program looks like in the trenches – much more to come on that – the week’s activities fueled my thoughts about the tradeoffs between humility and confidence. TFA preaches humility as the most salvific quality teachers have. This is because so many hot shot kids like me join TFA and think that they know everything and this rubs experienced teachers the wrong way because they have been around the block, and get the impression that TFA is trying to come in and change the world and save the day. The truth is, that is exactly what we are trying to do, but if we do it humbly it bothers less people, and we learn lots about teaching – which admittedly, we know little about. At our opening dinner, the director talked about humility. At my first meeting with my direct supervisor, she talked about it. Humility is all over our preparation materials.

I was about ready to drop my arrogant exterior buy into humility wholeheartedly (I know, most of you are gasping right now) when I had the privilege of sitting in on one of the current corps members’ classes. She pulled the three of us aside who were observing her and said “listen, I know that TFA teaches us humility, and that is important. I have learned a lot for great faculty members here; however, if I was content to leave school everyday knowing that I did more, and did it better, than anyone else at the school, I wouldn’t do half of the work that needs doing.” She went on to say that if she humbly deferred to what everyone else expected of her, she would be perpetuating the mediocre status quo.

This rekindled a debate that has been in my head for a long time: the seeming diametrical juxtaposition between humility and confidence – which can look a lot like arrogance. Many dictionaries, including Webster and Princeton actually define humility as lacking pride or arrogance. I have long sought to understand what the correct balance should be between confidence and humility. In areas I know that I have relatively little competence or knowledge I think I am generally humble; however, I usually express what I perceive as my abilities with confidence. Perhaps the heart of the problem is that I have often thought of both humility and arrogance in the context of comparative relativity. Being humble relative to someone else is however, meaningless, just as being arrogant relative to another is meaningless. Perhaps finding a way to express both attributes irrespective of any comparative context is becoming of us.

I have always felt that false humility is foolish… it drives me crazy when individual A gives B a deserved complement, so often B tries to play off the complement saying, “you are much better than me” or “no I am not” instead of graciously accepting deserved praise. Clearly, the deserving part is the lynch pin… putting any weight on false or empty praise or insult is counterproductive. Even more counterproductive humility is differing to substandard, mediocre, or otherwise insufficient standards, principles, or objectives in an effort not to seem pretentious, or a wave maker. It is precisely these circumstances that demand confident and assertive changers (leaders) willing to make waves, and confidently use whatever abilities they make have to improve situations instead of assuming a humble stance and assuming to know too little about a problem to act decisively on it.

I don’t wish to undermine humility… clearly being teachable and willing to learn is a very desirable characteristic. Some of the men I admire most, I admire for their humility despite tremendous professional and personal accomplishment. However, more admirable than humility in and of itself is knowing how to balance true knowledge of ones own weaknesses, and strengths – both humility and confidence – with using those abilities and deficiencies appropriately, playing the role of teacher and learner, leader and follower when appropriate.