A lawyer-friend provides me with insight and advice that is invaluable.  She inserts into our conversation at just the right time, “… there is room for many people to stand on the high ground” or “there is room for more than one person to stand on the high ground.” 

In our democracy, we prize and favor free speech and the right of every person to their opinions and the opportunity to voice their opinions.  We start from this premise in every consequential discussion.  The more opinions expressed, the richer the discussion and likelihood of consensus with an outcome.

Knowing which opinions create the best answers can be subjective.  Today too many public conversations are dominated by loud voices that drown out other voices and loudness should not be equated with best.  Media can be a fog-horn – loud and blaring.  We are equally troubled with strong expressions of self-interest.  Those whose interests are threatened or ignored add to the cacophony of voices and noise.  A democratic process fundamentally is noisy.  As I have written in the past, Occam provides us with a tool for paring possible answers to the best answer.   Occam tells us to maintain the heart of the objective, its simplest expression, as the only objective to be achieved.  High ground is the simplest, most ethical, just-for-all response to the question.

Another writer, Sun Tzu, teaches us in The Art of War, to find and stake out the high ground.  He says the high ground allows a leader the strategic view of all that surrounds him.  He recognizes the low ground and its limitations for seeing all possibilities and for successful advancement against an elevated and often-obscured goal.  The analogy of the high ground translates from a military advantage of higher terrain to finding the highest ideals in a multi-opinioned syllogism leading to a best resolution of a question.  When all things are not equal, we should always seek the high ground.

Many claim they are on the high ground and often do so without examining where they stand.  It is as if the first person to claim a superior position is superior by default.  Not so.  The high ground is not where you stand but what you stand for.

Words help us understand the concept of high ground and I favor one word in particular – transcendent.  To transcend means to rise above or go beyond, to overcome adversity, and triumph over the negative.  Transcendence formulates an “ideal” that describes the “best” for all concerned and then works to make it “real”.  Taking the high ground is to not accept the usual or possible lesser outcomes.  Instead, taking is and strive for better and then best.  To be on the high ground is to have a better argument, one that overcomes negative and destructive comments.  A transcendent statement or belief shuts down opposition because it cuts to the heart of the matter and sheds prejudice, self-interest, and malice .  It is hard to argue against an ideal without painting oneself into the corner of one’s bias.

Public education contains many solid high ground positions.  In each, there is an aspiration for transcending what has been to what needs to be in order for the ideals of public education to live.  Equitable access.  Equal opportunity.  Just and fair treatment.  Free.  Diversity of opinion.  High standards.  Many chances.  Individual potential.  Universal literacy.  Each is an ideal we build practices to attain.

In every instance when education has moved to higher ground it has been the result of individuals and groups of people who have made aspirational arguments and pointed the way upward.  As an institution, public education tends to rest at a status quo – institutions are only what they are required to be. 

Schools, as expressions of their communities, have not always sought the high ground.  Often the judicial system of government has helped schools transcend lower ground practices regarding race, gender, poverty, and special education.  Even with legal decrees, it still takes local initiative to move an institution to higher ground.  Aspirational people are needed to hold an institution’s feet to the fire of doing what is right.

There are inherent problems with taking the high ground.  The high ground becomes personalized.  Those who claim it, assume a superior status over others.  The high ground becomes moralized.  Those who claim it assume a moral superiority over others.  It becomes possessive.  Those who claim the high ground want to personally own it and fight, often wrongfully, to retain it.  There is an assumption that the high ground is reality – it is not.  The high is an ideal to be striven for.

The power of a high ground position is when more and more people take a stand for it.  Some may think that the gravity of numbers defeats high ground.  Additional people necessitate compromise and compromise dissolves the clarity of high ground.  Too many people weigh down and flatten the argument.  Too many people look like a crowd and crowds do not comport with our conception of high ground.

To the contrary, when more people want to affirm a high ground ideal, they create a new standard for better practices.  This new standard becomes the base from an even high ground ideal can be postulated.  The higher the number of people who affirm a high ground ideal, the more likely higher ground can rise to new heights.

My lawyer-friend says, “affirm a high ground ideal and then move over so others can join”.