Honoring Our Responsibility to Students...and the Future
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BIG Questions Institute Bi-Weekly UpdateJune 19, 02024, No. 175 (Read online) Honoring Our Responsibility to Students...and the FutureHey, Every now and again we come across something that makes us literally tingle with goodness. And that's what happened this week when we read an amazing story from the University of Victoria Department of Education about how they approached some very difficult budget conversations earlier this year. Every school is confronted with hard decisions, whether budget or programs or curriculum. But few (if any) that we've come across has situated those conversations so deeply and explicitly in the needs and futures of children. We urge you to read the whole post, but here's a snip that captures the incredibly powerful lens through which they frame their deliberations: A red bowl was placed at the center of the meeting table, and we were each given strips of paper. The first task was to write the names of children we know personally who are under 17 years old (Generation A). As we placed their names in the bowl, we called their names out loud, evoking a personal and tangible connection. Following this, we identified broader groups of children we felt connected to or who were underserved—such as Indigenous children, non-binary youth, children caught in conflict zones, children with disabilities and mental health challenges, children in care and other groups —adding their names to the bowl in a second round. The third round extended our consideration to children who were not already in the bowl, children coming after the children in the bowl and non-human children who are integral to the life-support systems that the children in the bowl depend upon, broadening our perspective on whom our decisions would impact. We then covered the bowl with petals from red and white roses, symbolizing a blanket of protection, compassion and healing—ultimately reflecting our responsibility toward the future. We were tasked with considering these children as witnesses to our budget conversations, urging us to make decisions that would benefit them in a decade. Imagine if every meeting, every deliberation, and every act you took in your school started there. Your students, current and future, must be "witnesses" to your decisions. If they can't be physically present (which is something we advocate for,) they must at least be acknowledged and represented in whatever form that works. (Though, we love the idea of calling their names aloud at the outset.) After all, our students, current and future, are the "business" of school. Every decision we make should be in their best interests. Unfortunately, students are absent from these conversations, physically or metaphorically. In fact, many schools that we've worked with are suprised when we suggest student participation in all levels of decision-making. But creating a bowl or some other representation of the children you serve, and creating a ritual to center them in every discussion about their experience in school seems to us to be a wonderful way of bringing what's really important to the forefront. It might just change how you think about everything you do. If you try it, we'd love to hear how it goes. Onward! Will and Homa What We're ReadingA few links to fuel your inquiry: Fourth Person: The Knowing of the Field by Otto Scharmer "The number one problem facing humanity today is not climate change or inequality or war. It is not the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI). Rather, it is our sense that we are powerless to change any of it. The old ways of knowing and acting in our world are no longer sufficient. Our systems are collapsing. If we are going to serve societal transformation in the face of this collapse, as we believe is fully possible, we need to draw on a new form of knowing—knowing for transformative action.
Our existing categories of knowing—first-person (subjective), second-person (intersubjective), and third-person (outside-objective)—upon which our systems of learning, knowledge creation, and leadership are based, are important but not sufficient to activate the deep shift and energy that are called for now. We need a quality of knowing that allows us to connect with and appreciate more deeply the dignity and interiority of the worlds that surround us and that we co-shape and co-enact moment to moment. It is the collective interior of the worlds co-arising in us in general, and the more subtle and emerging qualities of social systems in particular, that have remained in an epistemological blind spot if seen from the viewpoint of positivist approaches to science. And yet, deep in our own experience, many citizens, change makers, and leaders know that to meaningfully address the profound polycrisis of our time we need to tap into a deeper source of knowing. That source of knowing already exists and in many ways underlies the actions of thousands, if not millions, of innovators and networked communities around the world. This deep collective awareness is a gateway to emerging future possibilities that depend on our presence and agency to manifest. We believe it is this very personal and yet collective-interior way of sensing and knowing that is at the core of our planetary moment and movement making and that we refer to and introduce here as fourth-person knowing.”
Doing Nothing Has Never Been More Important by Kate Neville "TAnarchism—or what scholar Marina Sitrin calls the “anarchist spirit,” noting the ideological diversity of anarchic ideas—can involve a vibrant social life, with fundamental operations that rely on collective care emerging without force and coercion. Far from a rejection of society and relationships and care, this understanding of social life suggests that order can arise not from following mandates set by higher authorities—monarchs and dictators, militaries and rulers, or even elected officials vested with enforceable powers—but instead from voluntary, co-operative agreement, continually renewed and renegotiated. Individual judgment is needed to enable this consensual collective.
As socialist scholar and ever-hopeful activist David Graeber wrote, “One cannot know a radically better world is not possible,” and anarchism, at least in some forms, can offer a path to that reimagined world. Idleness as anarchic, then, suggests a kind of self-determination. Slouka proposes that undirected consciousness is crucial for being in community as a meaningful political citizen, an engaged social participant—and, perhaps, an engaged participant in the wider world.”
I Kinda Hate the Internet Now by Stephen Moore "The internet is still a relatively new technology in the context of time, and it may only have been a more blissful place in those early years because people hadn’t clocked on to how it could be monetized, farmed, controlled or bent to their will.
Alas, we are where we are — on the verge of ruining it completely.
The question is where to point the blame. That’s a hard one to answer. As the users of the internet, we’re all accountable for how we use it, what services we use, and what models we are happy to engage with. If you learn that Facebook was stealing your data to sell to Big Advertising, and you still use the platform, you’re complicit. If you hate that Google isn’t playing fair with search but still use Google, you’re complicit (I’m guilty of this one). If you hate that media sites have adopted A.I. to turn out sludge, and you still read them, you’re complicit.
But a lot of blame also falls on tech overlords and venture capitalists, who have been destroying the experience in the pursuit of turning it into an attention-farming system because, as we all now know, clicks drive advertiser money. Venture capitalist money and its control over media, platforms, and social companies have forced them to design not for customer value but for shareholder value. Every update, every pivot, every decision is made to drive that line higher."
Learn With BQIWill We Be in Your Neighborhood?Homa and Will would love to connect at any of the upcoming events they're speaking at: June 20 - RET Retreat, Iowa State University, Ames, IA (Will) June 25-27 - Leadership Seminar for Overseas Principals, Office of Overseas Schools, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC (Homa and Will) July 25-27 - "Building and Becoming" 2.5-Day Retreat, Atlanta International School (Homa and Will) Info and Registration August 1 - Student Agency Summit, Olentangy (OH) Schools (Will) August 21 - Chilliwack (BC) School District Leadership Retreat (Will) August 22 - SD67 Leadership Retreat, Penticon, BC (Will) September 3 - Nanuet (NY) School District Open Day (Will) September 6-8 - United Nations International School (UNIS), Hanoi, Vietnam Governance as Leadership Training Institute: “Charting Tomorrow - Board Governance, Big Questions and the Future of Education”(Homa) October 25-27 - Tri-Association Conference, Mexico City, MX (Homa and Will) October 31- Nov 3 - Cape Town, South Africa: Association of International Schools in Africa annual conference (Homa) WORK WITH US!Let BQI help you unlock the opportunities that are rapidly unfolding in education and the wider contexts. Everyone is talking about the challenges and the difficulties that are breaking systems and people. Leadership navigates change with fearless inquiry, futures thinking, imagination, and diverse relationships. That takes new skills, lenses, and dispositions and we are here for it. We help school communities:
Why not think about having us work with your staff, leadership team, or board on some BIG Questions worth pursuing? We're working to design healthier, more just, more relevant, and more sustainable futures for school communities. Get all the details here. Onward with hope, Homa and Will |
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