It is absolutely wild and unjust that in many/most schools, you can be *expelled* for having bad grades.
Imagine that you were on a hike on a mountain with a group. The group says: if you fall behind, we will kick you out of our group and leave you behind. Is this a good group?
Imagine that you were on a hike on a mountain with a group. The group says: if you fall behind, we will kick you out of our group and leave you behind. Is this a good group?
Is it really a place for learning, or a place for fear and competition? Institutions of supposed learning have been sites of policing where you have to be “good enough” to not be exiled. This is deeply violent and policing and harmful. Grading is part of this: a tool of policing
Learning has been systematically harmed by teaching: a culture of grades and exile as primary forms of punishment. As a teacher I can “feel” the expectations and uncertainties of school culture from my students. Institutions of teaching don’t easily support cultures of learning.
This makes me incredibly angry. Every class, it takes a while to get to a place where we can experiment and find things together: the norms of the school is so strong, in all of us. What do we expect, having spent time in schools that hold a carceral mindset? Or an elitist one?
There are alternatives: treat classes like reading groups, or a exploratory research group, where you discover things together. There is only an us. Knowledge isn’t transmitted from teacher to student, rather, learning is about playing together, finding more ways to play together
Learning isn’t lectures; it’s co-learning / cooperative / collective organizing. So many good thinkers and practioners and writings along this line Montessori, Vygotsky, Illich, Ranciere, La Paperson, Jo Freeman. (Do you know any - esp by bipoc?)
Where are the places where learning (not teaching) is really supported and celebrated? Where are the centers of learning that put learning first, that really let us remember what it’s like to discover and explore and be curious, that can actively undo trauma around schools?
Imagine teachers without the inner cop, prison. It’s one thing to do it in a classroom, but we NEED to feel this energy across an entire institution, a joyous co-conspiratory energy of researching and finding and sharing with each other. Full of support, care, mutual respect.
Some other actual steps to do: don't have grades / have pass-fail grades / actively encourage risk-taking (and incorporate in grade metrics, if grades are required) so that students are encouraged to explore new territory and projects that may not work well
The teacher can be a facilitator, not a lecturer, and class time should be facilitated like a collective organizing meeting: cooperative, organized around group discussions, readings, projects, sharing. The teacher is like an field trip leader through a landscape of learning
A mistake (I've made before) is also for the teacher to "do nothing", let students do "anything", which is akin to a field trip that goes nowhere. A really good field trip does all the planning and logistics to mobilize planes, trains, so that a group can then explore further
Another mistake is to erase the teacher/student distinction altogether, which in my opinion is unethical and confusing because instead it conceals a power relationship that is present, rather than being open about it and altering it to be more about accountability
the joyous moments in teaching have been about exploration, opt-in curiosity, moments in the classroom open to the unknown, a shared discussion and rumination about finding and thinking about projects, of sharing resources together, of giving each other feedback
Teachers and students are roles upheld by an institution and a power relation. The learner is an identity that can’t be forced upon anyone, only chosen by each person. The best learning contexts are when everyone in the classroom, including the “teacher” is a learner.
What would an abolitionist, anti-policing approach to schools? What are the opposite of grades? What would this look like at a level larger than the classroom, but at the scale of the cohort, a community?
Schools are not just microcosms of society; they are future societies. They are self-fulfilling prophecies, in that they train us to recreate the societies we experience inside of them. An abolitionist caring society would have caring, supportive, anti-policing schools.
classes where you learn how to dance and move your body. classes where you learn how to facilitate a meeting, make working groups. spaces where you realize that nobody is in control / everyone has agency. classes where everyone is oriented in a circle, listening to each other.
oriented in the same direction, like a school of fish, trying to find something together. oriented outwards, as if we are exploring a city of thought and agree to meet back in a few hours, with photos and notes of things we’ve discovered.
classes where suggestions upon suggestions from everyone builds on each other, hilariously, and together we try something new out and see what happens. classes where rigor is generous, rigor is solid and firm and friendly. classes where nobody knows what will happen at the end!!
What did your schools teach you about its societies? about how to live, and what you wanted or didn’t want? About power, and policing, and safety? What was the most safe and exciting learning environment (school or not) you have been part of?
(Also! I've been collecting a very incomplete set of resources here around pedagogy: are.na/dan-taeyoung/a… and cooperative practices are.na/dan-taeyoung/f… )
More thoughts:
