My Place in the World Is Next to You
Cathy Doetkott
The Way Things Appear to Me: Education’s Responsibility in Creating Inequitable Systems
Is it possible that we have been marching toward a national crisis like this one for many years? My emerging sense is that this crisis is of our own making and it has been coming for some time.
In the stillness that has surrounded us over the last few months, I’ve found myself wondering what has brought us here, not just in a political sense, but some of the other bigger, systemic reasons. Capitalism has played a major role in creating systemic inequities in health care, housing, nutrition, access to white collar work, etc, but how has education in particular impacted these things?
Many of the harmful and destructive behaviors that we are witnessing nationally, locally and within all political spheres seem very much in line with the way schools have been sculpting young Americans to think and behave. In general, our testing culture in public education has taught our young students that their needs and experiences are the most important, rather than teaching them how their needs and experiences intertwine with those of others. We have taught children that being in the world with others is competitive and quantifiable. That their desires are their entitlements, not that their desires exist within a complex and interconnected society where one relies on other people in a multitude of subtle ways. And we certainly are not teaching children that each ‘choice’ they make is possible because of the work of hundreds of other people, other choices, other biases, and many other privileges that they have experienced.
At this point in our history of public education, several generations have experienced school as a place that values measurable, quantifiable data about what a child knows, not how they think or how they see themselves as part of the world. This way of working reinforces the idea that one’s own needs are paramount and perhaps a right, and lacks an emphasis on the interconnectedness of our society. And it reinforces the idea that their success is due to their hard work alone, something they have earned within a vacuum, and for many shows up later in life as a sense of entitlement.
What happens when these children grow up and later hold positions of power? What lens will they be looking through when they make decisions? Who will they regard, and more importantly, who will they disregard?
When we leave out deep, meaningful moments when children are experiencing the power of our interconnectedness we are not only failing them, we are significantly contributing to the erosion of a humane society.
Additionally, our leaders are using fear and scarcity to speak directly to our most primal selves and people are blindly, seemingly conflict-free, following along. Have we truly been teaching children to be critical thinkers? Have we taught them to think beyond the rhetoric of our many leaders, and to see it as such, particularly when their messages fly in the face of science and math? Have we taught children to value science and math, for that matter? Do they hear the unnamed intention to harm communities of color and marginalized groups?
BECLP Cohort 12
In the stillness that has surrounded us over the last few months, I’ve found myself wondering what has brought us here, not just in a political sense, but some of the other bigger, systemic reasons. Capitalism has played a major role in creating systemic inequities in health care, housing, nutrition, access to white collar work, etc, but how has education in particular impacted these things?
Many of the harmful and destructive behaviors that we are witnessing nationally, locally and within all political spheres seem very much in line with the way schools have been sculpting young Americans to think and behave. In general, our testing culture in public education has taught our young students that their needs and experiences are the most important, rather than teaching them how their needs and experiences intertwine with those of others. We have taught children that being in the world with others is competitive and quantifiable. That their desires are their entitlements, not that their desires exist within a complex and interconnected society where one relies on other people in a multitude of subtle ways. And we certainly are not teaching children that each ‘choice’ they make is possible because of the work of hundreds of other people, other choices, other biases, and many other privileges that they have experienced.
At this point in our history of public education, several generations have experienced school as a place that values measurable, quantifiable data about what a child knows, not how they think or how they see themselves as part of the world. This way of working reinforces the idea that one’s own needs are paramount and perhaps a right, and lacks an emphasis on the interconnectedness of our society. And it reinforces the idea that their success is due to their hard work alone, something they have earned within a vacuum, and for many shows up later in life as a sense of entitlement.
What happens when these children grow up and later hold positions of power? What lens will they be looking through when they make decisions? Who will they regard, and more importantly, who will they disregard?
When we leave out deep, meaningful moments when children are experiencing the power of our interconnectedness we are not only failing them, we are significantly contributing to the erosion of a humane society.
Additionally, our leaders are using fear and scarcity to speak directly to our most primal selves and people are blindly, seemingly conflict-free, following along. Have we truly been teaching children to be critical thinkers? Have we taught them to think beyond the rhetoric of our many leaders, and to see it as such, particularly when their messages fly in the face of science and math? Have we taught children to value science and math, for that matter? Do they hear the unnamed intention to harm communities of color and marginalized groups?
BECLP Cohort 12
“Are we the ones who are actually responsible for bending that moral arc?
No, but we are given a little place on it to do our bit of tugging. And it actually matters.”
-Gary Haugen, on the podcast Everything Happens, with Kate Bowler.
No, but we are given a little place on it to do our bit of tugging. And it actually matters.”
-Gary Haugen, on the podcast Everything Happens, with Kate Bowler.
Over the last year, rarely has a topic passed before the women of Cohort 12 without someone encouraging us to examine how equity and inequity are embedded. The members of my cohort have boldly led by example, naming the often unnamed with clarity and concern. Because I was fortunate to have been sitting alongside them I have found my voice again and feel prepared to use it. Had it not been for these women, and the rich, deep work we have all done in BELCP, it is unlikely that I would be moving through this time of crisis with the awareness to identify behaviors and ways of thinking that are perpetuating systemic inequities, and how my role as an educator is contributing. No longer can I assume all is well and carry on as normal. I have a responsibility to name the unnamed with clarity and concern.
This is an invitation to you, to take this unprecedented time to observe and reflect alongside me, and to start to look for where the fissures intersect with our practice as educators. We work within an imperfect system, one with faults that are not of our own making, and one that often defines what we do. How can we navigate our way through the system better? How can we take advantage of the things we have control over and illuminate and elevate the things that are working well? How can we lead those around us to do the same? We have been given a rare gift of time to look even closer at our practice, and if we choose, start to tinker collaboratively to make improvements.
This is an invitation to you, to take this unprecedented time to observe and reflect alongside me, and to start to look for where the fissures intersect with our practice as educators. We work within an imperfect system, one with faults that are not of our own making, and one that often defines what we do. How can we navigate our way through the system better? How can we take advantage of the things we have control over and illuminate and elevate the things that are working well? How can we lead those around us to do the same? We have been given a rare gift of time to look even closer at our practice, and if we choose, start to tinker collaboratively to make improvements.
Making the Lines From Me to You to Us Visible
The problem that has risen to the surface for me during this time is our society’s deep lack of appreciation for our interconnectedness, across communities, cultures, ages, and genders. What if we used this time to identify ways education could be restructured to better nurture an appreciation for our global interconnectedness? If we began working with this understanding as the backbone from which all other learning stems, what would be the result? What if we started to focus on social studies with the same kind of intensity that we’ve given literacy for the last two decades? What if we taught literacy, math and science within a social studies context that is meaningful to our students? Would it be possible for students to spend years of their lives exploring systems and structures that connect us and then later walk out into the world with anything less than a deep appreciation for others and ideally, an awareness of the places in which they themselves have experienced privilege?
Harvard’s Project Zero has been exploring how to nurture a deeper understanding of global awareness for our students. In Veronica Boix Mansilla’s article in Educational Leadership How to Be a Global Thinker, she beautifully highlights the powerful connections one fifth grade teacher is able to foster by asking three specific questions to help guide her students’ thinking and work towards global competence and awareness. She calls them the 3Y’s:
Harvard’s Project Zero has been exploring how to nurture a deeper understanding of global awareness for our students. In Veronica Boix Mansilla’s article in Educational Leadership How to Be a Global Thinker, she beautifully highlights the powerful connections one fifth grade teacher is able to foster by asking three specific questions to help guide her students’ thinking and work towards global competence and awareness. She calls them the 3Y’s:
1. Why might this (topic, question) matter to me?
2. Why might it matter to people around me (family, friends, city, nation)? 3. Why might it matter to the world? |
“The routine's simple reflection process sparks students' intrinsic motivation to investigate a topic, make local-global connections, and situate themselves in a global context.”
Mansilla’s work reminds me of some years ago, when I was teaching in Brooklyn, my kindergarteners co-created an inquiry study about our local post office. They befriended our local mail carrier, observed how the people in the neighborhood used the post office, and created their own post office in our classroom. Students worked as mail clerks selling stamps and mail carriers delivering mail to their peer’s homes. My students discovered the power the written word could have, bringing them great joy and a few play dates. They noticed how the mail system was utilized by many different people. They explored a system that was providing access to communication to everyone and they experienced relying on others within the system to ensure their message was delivered.
During another year we engaged in a school study that emerged out of students’ curiosity around a drain in our playground. I taught the required learning objectives within the context of the plumbing within our school. We explored the properties of water, wrote personal narratives about our experiences, and practiced representing our mathematical findings in different ways.
During another year we engaged in a school study that emerged out of students’ curiosity around a drain in our playground. I taught the required learning objectives within the context of the plumbing within our school. We explored the properties of water, wrote personal narratives about our experiences, and practiced representing our mathematical findings in different ways.
As kindergarteners, most of their day happened within the four walls of our classroom and our room was their only school community. Through this study they discovered how vast our building was, how many people were using it each day which affected the availability of resources that were in high demand, and how many adults worked to make the school safe and clean so that they could learn.
How does a study like this impact their understanding of their place in the world? How does it help the children shape an understanding of how dependent they are on the numerous and often subtle actions of others?
How does a study like this impact their understanding of their place in the world? How does it help the children shape an understanding of how dependent they are on the numerous and often subtle actions of others?
What Tomorrow Could Bring
And now I ask you to consider the 3Y’s:
Why would working with a sense of illuminating interconnectedness matter to your students? Why would it matter to the people around them? Why might it matter to the world?
Our potential impact as educators is so much greater than simply training our workforce. How can we best leverage our positions to start to redesign some of the broken practices, structures and systems that support the prosperity of only a few? What is the why behind your work?
Personally, I am interested in supporting children in discovering that there is a place for them here, in our society, that their voices matter, that they are wanted and welcomed, that they have ideas that need to be shared, and that they can have an impact on things around them. I want to support children to see the beauty and wonder the world has to offer, to walk through life with a gentle awareness and appreciation for how fragile things can be and act accordingly. I want them to embrace the complexity of the world and welcome the rich potential that lies within our differences.
These are the people I hope will be building our society in 20 years and the lens through which I hope they are looking when they do. Certainly, reimagining a more holistic approach to education is only one small component to addressing systemic inequities, but it’s a starting place that feels impactful and within my control. What else do you see that we could add or tweek? Come with me and let’s reimagine together. Together, our potential is so much greater than alone.
Why would working with a sense of illuminating interconnectedness matter to your students? Why would it matter to the people around them? Why might it matter to the world?
Our potential impact as educators is so much greater than simply training our workforce. How can we best leverage our positions to start to redesign some of the broken practices, structures and systems that support the prosperity of only a few? What is the why behind your work?
Personally, I am interested in supporting children in discovering that there is a place for them here, in our society, that their voices matter, that they are wanted and welcomed, that they have ideas that need to be shared, and that they can have an impact on things around them. I want to support children to see the beauty and wonder the world has to offer, to walk through life with a gentle awareness and appreciation for how fragile things can be and act accordingly. I want them to embrace the complexity of the world and welcome the rich potential that lies within our differences.
These are the people I hope will be building our society in 20 years and the lens through which I hope they are looking when they do. Certainly, reimagining a more holistic approach to education is only one small component to addressing systemic inequities, but it’s a starting place that feels impactful and within my control. What else do you see that we could add or tweek? Come with me and let’s reimagine together. Together, our potential is so much greater than alone.