Imagining New Systems

Even though I was excited to return to my profession when my son was four months old, my relationship to the contemporary school system shifted drastically within those first few months.

I deeply felt the ways that this antiquated system resisted and ignored the physical human bodies that existed within it. First in the structure of the school day: the start time of 7:30 did not allow for a humane morning routine when nursing, soothing, and diapering a baby and yourself after waking up every other hour throughout the night. Secondly, just a month into teaching, I had to give up nursing my son because I did not have enough time to eat enough and pump throughout the day so I could not keep my breast milk supply up. Of course, this tension between work and new parenting, specifically new motherhood, is not unique to teaching. However, the irony of the situation felt especially heavy--while I was working in a profession that is focused on nurturing, fostering a love for learning, and caregiving for adolescents in my community, it felt overwhelming to support my own new baby. 

When I was pregnant people were eager and excited to tell me their own stories about giving birth. The horror! The beauty! The anticipation! But no one articulated their stories of returning to work after giving birth. No one! Of course, women mentioned that “Things were totally different” or that “they were exhausted,” but not one person described the push towards the mental, emotional, and physical edges of their own existence. It seems that this was implied in the common saying “everything changes,” but the reality that the mothers were still doing their jobs implied that this split life was practicable. When I was discussing this with a coworker, she then told me that when she returned to work after having her son, she would have to grade papers with one hand while he nursed in the evening. Another coworker reminisced on her own early years as a parent-teacher: she said that she felt like she wasn’t doing either “job” well; she just had to get comfortable accepting that there would always be something missing in either her experience of mothering and her experience of teaching. 

Both myself and these coworkers did not fit the original, now antiquated, imagined public school teacher. All three of us contributed at least half or more of our families’ incomes. All three of us were in a committed partnership. All three of us were mothers. All three of us expected school to not just be a place of conformity but of self-actualization. 

Because the inherited practices of the system did not support the mother-teacher, these teachers often find themselves trying to fit their whole selves into a space that will not or can not support them.

What I found out is that this split fractures the mother-teacher and often makes her more emotionally dependent on the system. Because the integration of self, motherhood, and work is mostly discussed in cliches, I didn’t even think to ask about it. This is similar to Hannah Arendt’s argument in Eichmann in Jerusalem; unquestioning adherence to the cultural hegemony results in clichéd language and thinking that only works to reproduce the status quo. In the experience of the parent-teacher, the toxicity and chronic stress that one experiences are typically discussed in broad cliches, rather than specific, action-driving language. The thoughtlessness inculcated in the system allows for a system that ignores the bodies and full humanity of the people within it.  

A closer look into our traditional school systems reveals many values that work against our full humanity. Of course, while each public school and school system is unique to the local community and culture that it arises out of, there are common thought forms, narratives, and practices that typically show up in traditional American public educational institutions (when I refer to culture in this section, I am specifically referring to the American hegemonic culture). For example: 

• Perfectionism
• A sense of urgency 
• Defensiveness 
• Paternalism 
• Either-or thinking
• Defining progress as bigger and more (instead 7 generation thinking)
• Objectivity
• Individualism 
• Power hoarding 
• Reproducing existing power dynamics
• Repressive power structures 
• Suppressing individuality and creativity 
• Strong surveillance and punishment to control behavior
• Exclusion
• Extensive focus on developing the mind while minimizing or ignoring holistic development
• Fallacy of Neutrality 

While some of these cultural narratives or collective parts might have been helpful in the past, rising rates of students’ anxiety and depression, violence among children, mass shootings, teacher burnout, and normalized apathy prove how this consciousness is actually restricting our humanity rather than enlivening it. 

Of course, as teachers we are integral parts of this education system. Keep in mind: a “system” does not mean “the people in charge.” More accurately, a system is the invisible and visible being that is created out of our ways of handling conflict, practices, beliefs, power, purpose, and creative energy. The invisible aspects of the system are the beliefs, values, and cultural narratives. These invisible beliefs and values give birth to the visible aspects of the system: physical objects, the language (rhetoric), policies, and norms. 

At this point, we do not have to settle for just lamenting about our frustrations within this system or discussing them in clenched language. By looking at both invisible and visible aspects of the education system, we can name them specifically, recognize where they come from, consciously decide to embody them or not, and, when one is ready, choose to act out of another set of values.

Sometimes the thought of letting these beliefs, values, and narratives go feels terrifying. This fear might sound like: “If there is not constant surveillance, won’t kids sneakily engage in harmful behavior?” or “If we don’t encourage children to strive for perfection, then they won’t reach their full potential!” These fears are important to listen to. Rather than try to immediately silence them or fully give them authority in one’s mind, we can notice that many of these fears come out of the belief that people have a greater chance of defaulting to badness rather than goodness. However, a growing body of research shows that harmful behavior typically is a result of unmet human needs, not innate badness. By looking at our earliest days of life, we can see that humans are actually wired for connection, love, belonging, and cooperation. Nevertheless, honoring these fears by listening to them, rather than letting them craft our shared systems will create a new kind of school system. 

A system originates in the worldview and beliefs, then materializes and claims authority simply through its presence. While most teachers would say that the beliefs, values, and narratives on this chart do not align with their personal values, many teachers might still embody these beliefs, values, and narratives because our education system has associated them with learning, care, growth, and community. By specifically naming beliefs, values, and narratives that cause pain, we can consciously let them go to make room for a more life-giving system built from life-giving beliefs, values, and narratives to flourish. 

One specific student conference from my first year of teaching still stands out to me. I was talking with a twelfth grade boy who did not particularly like writing, or school for that matter. In his essay about his plans for after high school, he wrote that he knew he needed to “just work hard and keep his head down so that he could graduate.” When I asked him what he meant by that, he said that his goal was just to get out and then he could get a job and make money and not have to waste his time in school. 

Years after this incident, I realized that this boy was not alone in his sentiment. Many students spanning all socio-economic levels and social groups express this kind of attitude. If a student sees their time in school similar to a prison sentence, this certainly is not an empowering and enlightening system for them. 

In fact, is anyone that you know actually thriving in this system? This collection of thought forms and patterns is using the workers’ labor while diminishing the humanity–the joy, the creativity, the dignity, the bodily needs–of the workers. This collection of thought forms and patterns, which might have some positive outcomes (at its best that might be helping young people gain cultural capital, creating a predictable space for young people, fostering positive connections) is still not a healthy system if these outcomes are dependent on a majority of the participants’ dis-ease. A system is not good if the people that fuel the system are exhausted, silenced, marginalized, and not compensated fairly. 

[Thank you Phil Brown for the beautiful cover photo.]