Stagnate? Nope, Disrupt
With each unfolding horror in the world, I feel a deepening in my resolve to do this work - and by that I mean the process of un-twisting myself so that my body is calm, my mind alert, and my heart open to our shared humanity. Bring it. I'm ready - and I'm not alone.
Somatic liberation practitioner Jasmine Hines says "the labour is you confronting you," becoming well by stabilizing your nervous system and keeping your body open to the unknown. We find power in the pause before the response. What do we do in that pause? We gather. First ourselves, and then each other. Hines asserts that we must disrupt ourselves daily to be ready to move and disrupt - the opposite of stagnate - on a broader scale.
It's time that we disrupt schools.
Do you remember Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"? Chances are high that you do given that it is the #1 most watched TED talk of all time with almost 75 million views; obviously the talk hit deep chords within us. What became of it? Why didn't it ignite a movement? I believe that the answer may lie partially in our inability to collectively face up to the harms of school. We need to stop pretending that schools are not a part of the systems that keep us stuck thinking we're separate and powerless.
I recently heard this dynamite interview of Baratunde Thurston. Thurston says that, just as we must fully know the whole of a person in order to fully love them, so must we fully know - warts and all - a country. Only when we turn to and acknowledge the harm wrought, can we work toward real freedom and love on the other side of the pain and grief. Moving from denial into truth, rupture, and repair makes the relationship stronger. We need to feel it all.
How does this apply to schools? What do we need to turn toward in order to fully love - and transform - schools? We need to look at the history of schooling: the how and why of them. Who benefitted from schools being created in the way that they were? How have schools, run along non-democratic lines, contributed to the erosion of our democracies? Why do schools rely so heavily on coercion and external motivation, which in actuality decrease internal motivation, when we know that young people are wired to learn? [Note: I would argue that there is no such thing as “low intrinsic motivation” if students are given the freedom to pursue their gifts]. What is the cost to our culture of schools more highly prizing some gifts (e.g., linguistic, mathematical) over others (e.g., kinesthetic, mechanical)? This practice results in millions of young people leaving school believing they’re less intelligent than their peers and millions more spending their most fruitful and innovative years trying to find their way back to their life’s purpose. Youth are wired to innovate. School hobbles them; we put straitjackets on the very people who are in the best position to lead us into the future. We underestimate youth when really, they are key to a new way of being.
The time is past due for us to understand both the harms and the power structures of schools and why change has been so difficult to implement. School perpetuates the old world, the one that is steeped in white supremacy culture with its poisons of one right answer, either/or thinking, adherence to "objectivity", paternalism, individualism, and a sense of urgency that leaves us all running to the beat of the bells. School principals and teachers carry the enormous weight of ensuring their students pass exams, move to the next level, and eventually win the game, otherwise known as graduating. They are overwhelmed with the demands of the system - which is locked into the systems above it. Students themselves have very little power and the system does not encourage them to question itself. As for parents, the anxiety-provoking future success of their offspring almost always takes precedence over any efforts at school transformation. Even activist parents find their tenure as school activists is just ramping up just as their kids are exiting the system. We need compassion for ourselves and each other as we begin to face what we haven't been seeing. We can begin with the beleaguered teachers and administrators who are doing the best that they can to provide structure and care as the world crumbles around us. Imagine how difficult it will be for these individuals - who have poured their energy into our children in the #1 profession for burnout in the US - to face the harms that school causes. Educating our young should be joyful, not draining. It will require a good deal of compassion and tenderness from all of us to hold that grief and anger.
And what then? After enough of us have owned up to the harms of school and are ready for real disruption, what happens then? Restorative Justice was built to help us navigate such a rebirth. It’s there waiting for us. We start from within ourselves and move outward from there in ever-expanding ripples of relationships. Schools are a linchpin to the future and are inextricably linked to climate justice, violence, wealth inequality, health, gender equality, and democratic renewal, to name just a few. School transformation will require a coalition of us led by love and compassion. And really, what’s the alternative? To keep traveling the same path toward our own destruction - taking many of the earth’s species with us? Because the people in power really do seem intent on burning it all down and escaping to New Zealand or, possibly, the moon. I’m done with the inhumanity project. It’s time to disrupt.
