Harmony Between People
Concord
Being in Concord, Massachusetts, soaking up the history of the space I felt compelled to write - as many others who have lived and stayed here have…
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark, and others… of you search “writers from Concord, MA” you will notice that many of them were philosophers and/or teachers. They are also predominantly white - Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark being one of the exceptions - although finding stuff online to quote is much much harder than most of the others. Ellen was an activist and is often her walking hand in hand with a white girl, as the only black child in the school parade has garnered comparisons with Rosa Parks.
I am staying in a hotel with the word “colonial” in it’s name, which I find somewhat disturbing to be honest - and I can’t understand, in a country that wouldn’t allow me to use the word “plantation” in my book because it evokes too much trauma, that the word colonial would seem acceptable - but words are strange and carry different weight in different places, and I think it’s why we need to continuously be reflecting on the words we use.
Like the word concord - the name of the small town where I am staying. concord means harmony between people - but strangely the people in the area pronounce the name like “conquered” and suddenly it doesn’t feel quite as harmonious anymore - and instead reflect the revolutionary fighting history of this area - when the colonists fought for their freedom from the British King George III. The above literary people were a part of creating a USA culture not dependant on European culture (but I think this is also absolutely ridiculous, clearly there was no genuine fight to free themselves from their European cultural ancestry - it’s just to look at the names of the towns in the area, the design of the buildings etc to see that they did not stray far… and even today there is a kind of obsession of tracing ancestry amongst many US citizens in a way that does not exist elsewhere). I also wonder whether the fact the word “colonial” is not as negative here is because in their white eyes the colonist are the “good guys” of the story - while in European history colonists are the bad guys and are connected to slavery, oppression and violent abuse???
I some of the conversations I have been having here the word balance has come up several times… because being a teacher requires us to balance so many things - what the curriculum demands, what society demands, what parents expect, what research says and what the children actually need from us. We balance play, learning, teaching and belonging. And that in unstable times this balancing act becomes even harder.
As a British/Swedish person walking on the bridge where the American revolution broke out I decided to keep my Northern English accented mouth shut. Not that I felt unsafe, but it just felt strange being around the place where my birth country flag belongs to the enemy.
And I wonder how often this happens to children in our care when their cultures, or countries of their parents (and maybe themselves) are being othered or depicted as the enemy, or weak and in need of being saved. Women, rightly, have demanded not to be the princess that always needs to be rescued, because women and girls are capable - and that stories need to reflect that to remind the world of this. The same must apply to to cultures and countries.
How do the Indigenous people see this… that the colonists fighting of the rule of the country where they originated from are recorded as heroes, while they themselves fighting to not be pushed off the land they have called home for centuries are seen as the bad guys thwarting the lives of the colonists.
And it does not go unnoticed that in these unstable times of ours where protesting injustice and authoritarian rule has become a much more dangerous thing is happening in the country born from protesting rule.
What drew me to the Reggio Emilia Approach was this deep rooted sense of creating a place where children could learn how to make informed decisions so that in the future they would not simply follow a dictator again as the Italians had done with Mussolini - that enough children had learned how to think critically, how to ask important questions, how to consider how things impact others and not just themselves and how to come to a not only to a decision but also find the courage to act upon it.
Sadly the education system, for the most part, is about teaching compliance and learning how to write specific answers and memorising certain facts, often at a pace that does not allow understanding. It’s like there is an intentionality to ensure that citizens know enough to be useful, but not enough to interfere with the “greater good” (and if you have ever watched Hot Fuzz, there is a specific way of say “the greater good”). This “greater good” is often for the benefit of a small minority, and not everyone.
Tomorrow I will be the keynote at Lincoln Nursery School’s 80th celebration which is focusing on optimism. I have chosen two titles for my presentation - because it is essentially about being play responsive… but it is also viewing play as resistance and a pedagogy of hope.
Play is resistance because -
We learn to empower each other and not just our self while at play
It is subversive, as play will not follow pre-scripted paths
It is community when the system wants us to feel isolated
A pedagogy of hope is -
The small every day steps where we focus on the joy of learning.
Achieving play, learning and teaching flow.
Witnessing every child's play
And honouring it
Valuing every child's being and becoming.
Scaffolding children to be able to scaffold others - so that they remain stronger together
Understanding the benefits of supporting each other rather than competing
I truly believe that it is important that change is sustainable, and I would much rather encourage small steps rather than big leaps if it meant they lasted.
This is because it is about habit forming. And changing our habits can be hard work, and often we have lots of small habits, that we barely think about, that need changing if we are to truly create spaces where every child can be themselves together with others. The collective autonomy that I am constantly talking about, because we should not sacrifice who we are for the group, but neither should we forget that our rights come with the responsibility of caring for the rights of others (just as they have the responsibility of caring for our rights). Reciprocity. Not competition. This doesn’t mean we should never compete, only that competition should not be the only way to live our lives. In a world where being first seems to be the most important we are setting up our children for failure. Because there are few people who can be first, fewer still who can be consistently first.
One of the greatest skills we can give children is to take joy in the successes of others, that it almost feels like we have succeeded ourselves. This is something that I learned from my twin daughters - that their ability to feel that both had succeeded when one had was contagious - and also filled with so much positive energy which fuels being courageous to try new things. And by success I mean that the children achieved what they set out to achieve, or discovered something that they felt great joy in, or overcame a struggle… It’s in the little things that we can feel great optimism.
