Who Cares?: A Quirky, Quantified, and Qualified Look at Caring, in Schools and Elsewhere

By Dr. Anthony Bongo

Caring can be quantified, qualified and quirky. This publication uses the four components of caring (Noddings, 1984) as a theory and framework for my work. Caring cannot be explained solely by individuals’ definitions, understanding, and descriptions of caring (Noddings, 2005). There needs to be a thorough and detailed analysis with examples of people’s beliefs’ and behaviors about caring in general, and in schools. Hence, the use of Noddings (1984) four theoretic components (modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation) will help guide the thinking in this book.
This work has obtained data that is consistent with her well respected and comprehensive theory on caring. It also merges my personal life and experiences that has moved me to associate with this premise of caring in and out of schooling.
The goal of this book is to present data that is quantifying, as well as informal qualitative assumptions on how one can understand and apply caring to one’s life. The hope is that it presents an operational method that can help one live a more fulfilling life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667169101

Book preview

Who Cares?

A Quirky, Quantified, and Qualified Look

at Caring, in Schools and Elsewhere

Dr. Anthony Bongo

Copyright © 2021 Dr. Anthony Bongo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any

means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission

of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews.

Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-6671-6911-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6671-6912-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6671-6910-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021907265

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/07/2021

Dedicated to my wife, Tricia. The most caring person I ever met.

Author’s Note

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Quirky, quantified, and qualified are all relative. My desire is that they can provide an honest, humble, real, and applicable approach to my content. Putting together beliefs in writing should allow the reader to understand the writer’s intent and message. To beat to a different drum is to make new music. See what you think.

Caring is a word with multiple meanings that make defining, recognizing, and conducting research on this topic challenging (Beck and Newman 1996). German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962) described caring as the very being of human life. Heidegger used this term broadly, assigning characteristics to his definition of caring such as an attitude of solicitousness toward human beings, a concern to do this meticulously and deep existential longings. Milton Mayeroff (1971) describes caring in two contexts: first, to care for another person is to help that person grow emotionally and realize his or her potential as a human being, and second, caring gives meaning and purpose to the caring person’s whole life.

Nursing caring theorist Madeline Leininger (1981) defines caring as an essential element of human growth and development. She defines caring by using descriptive terms that are closely associated with comfort, empathy, compassion, and sharing. Nel Noddings forgoes the assumption that caring may mean different things at home, at work, within a family, or at school. It is universal in all its applications.

So, who am I to take these theories and stretch the shit out of them? Why would someone break the box and find tangents that somehow all connect? I welcome you to a horizontal rainstorm, a roller-coaster ride through the mind of someone who daydreams and asks Why not? I hope this book makes you think and feel good, and gives you stories to share.

Preface

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I decided to write this book to express something I believe in and want to share. I did it in book form, as I am tired, in my life, of being interrupted by people giving me a rebuttal to everything I say. I have no problem with dialogue—as I write about it later—but I have a hard time hearing the usual responses to my somewhat odd claims.

I have heard many times over the years You can’t say that? or how can you say that? You are wrong, or You are the only one who thinks like that. This book is a little different, maybe convoluted, and you may scratch your head from time to time—not necessarily because it is boring but because I merge my expressive writing from narrative biography to dissertation research and then to somewhat questionable applications for schools and society.

I decided to write everything down in a variety of forms so I can express each point without interruption. I hope the framework of the book is not frustration, as like everything I do, it moves from idea to idea quickly, and not necessarily in any reasonable order—much like life. I have mixed the more structured educational research with my natural means of common talk. I do believe in the value of formal education, literary research, and scientific discovery. I also value the everyday learning that goes on in the streets, factories, and homes of people who may not choose higher education as a path.

In order to get my money’s worth from my investment in this book, I picked a universal topic that has baffled, bothered, and belonged to me my entire life. Caring is a phenomenon that excites me. I think it has the power and capacity to explain the human condition better than any other theory. I have come to depend on three theorists to frame my work. I used these three researchers, and my opinions, as I merged information over the years.

The first is Martin Buber (1965), who explains caring as not so much a heartfelt emotion as an assertive behavioral act. Viewing caring in this manner has allowed recent explorations into caring to focus on behaviors that are observable and measurable. Buber’s (1965) description of caring is almost forty-five years old, and his belief is that caring is an act of affirming and encouraging the best in others (Austin 2020).

Next, Milton Mayeroff (1971) asserts that the primacy of caring is to help others grow. He, like me, immediately applied this act to the teacher-student relationship. Teachers should know a student personally and adjust their behavior in response to the student. Teachers can believe that students will develop their potential. Also, a teacher can be a role model for caring.

These two men inspired my thoughts, as caring could now become a measurable occurrence. Buber was more of a theorist on caring itself, while Mayeroff, who I first read as a late teen, now assigned the act of caring to teachers and student. But neither of these can compare to the grandmother of caring and the third theorist who inspires me, Nel Noddings. I based my dissertation on her work, and I follow her writing to this day.

Noddings has created a concept of caring that can be embraced and applied to all people, in all instances. Later, I will explain her work at length. Her fundamental explanation of caring is as a simple interactive process. She describes a caring encounter as having three elements:

1. A cares for B (that is, A’s consciousness is characterized by attention and motivational displacement).

2. A performs some act in accordance with 1.

3. B recognizes that A cares for B. (Noddings 2002)

I hope you now have a context for my scattered but solid thinking and can enjoy my humor as well as my serious research and recommendations. I hope you can visualize how caring is unique and powerful. It can easily be applied to any situation. Finally, I hope you have a little understating of how essential caring is to the human experience—how it can create and heal. In my opinion, caring may be the greatest feature and fascination available to human beings.

Part 1

Introducing Myself

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The dogs on Main Street howl ’cause they understand, If

I could take one moment into my hands. Mister I ain’t a

boy, no I’m a man and I believe in a promised land.

—Bruce Springsteen

Nobody questions a dog’s howl. We do not delve into the psyche of our canine companions with deep concern and seek understanding from their cognitive experience. Yet they are arguably one of the most trusted species in existence. If they understand something, we can assume it is a simple phenomenon. Perhaps we have become so cynical, self-righteous, and verbose as we pontificate on our roles and goals as they pertain to politics, religion, and one another that we cannot stop long enough to listen.

Maybe dogs understand something we cannot. Maybe the trek of life is not as mysterious and complicated as we have been led to believe. Perhaps we have not listened long enough to realize that within the answer to the greatest complexity is often a simple and clear image. And even if they don’t understand, even if our canine colleagues are just murmuring sound with no particular meaning, it’s OK. Even if there is not a simple message out there that can explain this whole menagerie we are in, at least there’s always going to be hope. After all, if you believe in a promised land, you have something to look for after this particular run is done.

This road is damn long, and it is hard. After over sixty years of experience, I wonder if I am an apprentice or getting closer to actually mastering this thing called humanity. Things have changed from the time when I would walk to the grocery store and buy groceries with nothing on the label but a price. The fruit we purchased had to be eaten in a day or so or it would turn rotten. There was a cashier who would punch a series of levers on a big cash register, and we would fill the bags and hand over a commensurate amount of cash to cover our purchases.

We threw our garbage out, everything, in a tin barrel. There was no plastic bag coating the can, and definitely everything from food to paper to bottles to cans went in. Twice a week, some gentlemen would walk to the side of my house and take it away.

We would drive with our parents, without seat belts, and we used gasoline fueled with lead. We never had to wait to use a ballfield, and there were always kids around to pick up a game. We used Vicks, rubbing alcohol, and Bayer to manage whatever we could before asking the family doctor to come to our house for a health inspection.

I learned to use the one phone in our house and navigate the circular wheel that had numbers and letters to figure out. Most of us had black-and-white televisions, but my parents had a stereo connected to it. They loved to listen to the album from West Side Story.

As six decades flew by, I developed a different approach to the common and everyday agenda we once had. I’m not complaining, as I don’t have to get up to change the TV, and I have central air-conditioning. I don’t have to talk on the phone. I can message people without having to hear their voice, let alone see them. Christmas shopping doesn’t take a month now, and we can get it done in a few hours, with delivery!

The backdrop of my life is just a canvas to set the framework for understanding where I came from and how I became what I am today. That is the same for anyone, at any period in time. However, I feel that those of us born in the time of Eisenhower and Einstein have come a long way from simplicity to the period of E-everything. In addition, finding ourselves as older adults has changed as well … or has it? Are we created and formulated to become an adult in one universal brushstroke, or are we a function of the time we travel and live in? Or is there another theory for how we evolve and what our purpose in life may be?

I only ask because I don’t know. But I have some ideas, and perhaps a theory. As I state through my dialogue, I’m just one voice, but I want to share mine with you. Perhaps you will be inspired, or just have a good laugh at the cost of a fool like me. I apologize in advance for this book if it is not to your liking.

This work is not meant to diminish, exclude, or judge anyone. This is one man’s account as he intertwines the immersion of experiences he has had in family, faith, music, psychology, philosophy and everyday life. It is not better than yours—just maybe different.

* * *

Nobody cares how much you know, until

they know how much you care.

—Theodore Roosevelt

Who cares? Who really gives a shit? Who really means it when they say How are you? or Are you OK? For that matter, what does it mean when someone answers I’m good or Everything is OK? I really would like to see a society where people truly care about one another and give a damn how others feel and what their dreams are.

Me? I curse too much. I make lots of jokes and probably cross the line at times. I come from an Italian American background, and I was raised in an atmosphere of anger and depression, with a light covering of cheerful celebration. To combat the fear of ugliness, I learned to make jokes and pretend often.

I have a tendency to try to fix things and make light of things that can cause anxiety. I do this because I don’t like conflict and want everything to work out so everyone is happy. I might be a fixer, or an avoider, or maybe in denial.

I have some anger within me and a deep loathing of injustice. This may be because as a boy, I was blamed for anything and everything in my extended family (mostly girls) and saw my friends being treated differently because of their color. Who the hell knows, but I have strategized to become somewhat of a kind and upbeat fellow and learned to combat my feelings of unfairness and resentment.

I was considered a good listener and a loyal friend by my peers. Yet adults—teachers, parents, and family—perceived me as an anxious, impulsive, and often challenging child. I was told I had a high IQ, and that I was gifted but lazy. I was a daydreamer and a romantic, and I anticipated the good in everybody. I heard the word gullible and naive often, even though I didn’t know what they meant. I assumed it was bad.

I was born in 1958. I was a child of the sixties and (sort of) came of age in the seventies. I was raised to work hard, be honest, never hit a girl, and share whatever I had. I was told not to back away from a fight (with a boy, of course), and I learned how to take a punch to the face and how to deliver one as well.

My grandmother, a second mother (maybe even a co-mother), told me I was going to be president, or at least like Elvis. We loved our country, and our world was rocked when JFK was assassinated. Even my dad, who was not a Kennedy fan, walked with his head down in the days after that traumatic event. In between the crying and mourning on November 22, my grandmother quietly asked me, Where were you when this happened? As a five-year-old boy, I wasn’t sure if she was worried about my emotions or if she was suggesting I had something to do with it. I got blamed for lots of shit growing up, even the things I didn’t understand.

My childhood years would continue to be marred by episodes of grief and confusion. I would go on to see the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. The Vietnam War was the backdrop of all my childhood memories, as I watched older guys go off to a place that sounded eerie. Those who returned told stories that supported my notion and then some. By the time I was ten, my grandmother had passed away, and in light of my first decade of life, things didn’t seem too good.

Elementary school was full of coming-of-age moments that were wonderful, yet my tenure in school was marred by punishment, discipline, and physical reminders of how a good boy was supposed to act. I had my first fallout with teachers in kindergarten, as I found the corner a place to reflect and weep. Things didn’t get much better as my grade-school years continued, with teacher disappointment and beatings that I thought only happened on TV. I was told to stand up for long periods in first grade for punishment. I had my mouth washed out with soap in second grade and was the recipient of extreme slaps and body blows as I went onward and upward in my elementary experience.

I moved into my teen years full of worry and anxiety. My mother suffered from depression, and my father was busy trying to keep things together. His often-angry side was fueled by his own demons, which he did his best to manage. We were warned by our teachers of the inevitability that Vietnam was our next step after high school. Nevertheless, I forged ahead and started to spend more time with girls. I played all the sports the Boys’ Club (yes, it was just a boys’ club then) had to offer.

I would daydream about Evel Knievel soaring relentlessly into the sky, defying the nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one cars in his way. I was shocked when he crashed at Caesar’s Palace, but I knew he would be back. I thought, What a man I would be if I could be that brave. I loved Mickey Mantle. When he hit his five-hundredth home run, I thought he was a god.

I made it to high school and kept my head above water. The summer of my freshman year, I was free. I worked a little construction and got strong. I also got stupid. I made curious mistakes like playing with fireworks, weapons, or booze, and I often carried on with these activities without a safety net. I was an active teen with a combination of fear, anger, and curious caution fueling my work. I continued to resent the discrimination some of my friends had to endure based on their color or race, and I tried to convince others that one of our friends, who happen to be gay, was just as normal as us. Only a few of the guys I hung out with had a problem with that. Big shit, we thought.

The summer before senior year was fun. We worked during the day, and we drank and played all night. Softball games were a staple, and drinking after the game was a ritual. (Remember, eighteen was the legal