Communicating Ignorance

It has been said that acknowledging one's ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. I sure hope this is true because I confess to being ignorant about a lot of things. For instance, I currently teach several classes in public relations. Week-in and week-out I struggle with messages to share with my students - over 80 of them this semester - that will resonate with them intellectually and inspire them emotionally to want to learn more and raise their base of knowledge far beyond what I can do for them. While this is a challenge I embrace, the reality of of it does not make it any less daunting.

What complicates the challenge is the profound confusion that seems to be dominating our society. People want change yet are reluctant to change themselves. They want freedom yet want a future that is as risk-free as possible. They want less government intervention except when it benefits them. This list of contradictions can easily be expanded and has been written about by scholars and public policy experts for decades. Whether it is more intense these days than in ones past, I will leave to historians. But it exists and its level of intensity is certainly no less than what we have seen in the past.

I confess to not knowing the solution to these contradictions. It is all I can do to try and raise them in the context of teaching communication in a way that goes beyond the mechanics of the profession and the fact my wanna-be PR pros are looking into entering a world where communicators are often the go-to people for explaining society's complexities and the contradictory behavior and perspectives of the people in it. Perhaps driving home a couple of truisms would help: be prepared for the reality that not all communication strategies will succeed and that PR professionals must be nimble because circumstances and people change constantly.