It’s the age old question of what came first, which I would like to apply to the education system and the need for it to be changed to one that educates for justice and peace rather than just economy and progress. These reflections arose from responses to my recent posts about human values and change, and comments elsewhere in social media, and the mix of hope and hopelessness when it comes to changing the education system to one that is about learning and not just teaching… one that focuses more on intrinsic values and less on extrinsic values.
I realise that this requires a change in behaviour so that we can alter the system - but equally we need to be changing the system to be able to alter behaviours - hence my chicken and the egg dilemma.
But if we think about the chicken and the egg in reality, eggs already existed before chickens came into being, and the most likely answer is that a proto-hen laid the egg that hatched the modern chicken - and no doubt a whole series of ancestors as eggs have existed for at least a billion years (maybe twice as long) and chickens only for 10,000 years - the process of natural animal evolution and then human selection of the least aggressive birds of the Southeast Asia red junglefowl bird.
The egg surely must represent our behaviour. The system is the human selection and domestication of our community (the bird), but our behaviour (the egg) has always been there. So is it possible for a new system to hatch? Can this current system nurture such a possibility so that it can flourish? And how much does the system affect our behaviour and vice versa? I don’t have the space to answer these questions here… but I am going to dedicate 2024 to finding out.
I think what we need to become more aware of is confirmation bias that we tend to notice and focus on things that give evidence to what we already believe. We need to start noticing what is beyond. Confirmation bias can lead to poor decision making because it means we are focusing on what we have been lead to believe rather than what is actually happening. It is the tethered listening that the forest taught me about (see my New Years Eve post). It’s just to look at how hard it is to make systemic changes because there is a tendency to favour information that confirms our existing beliefs while ignoring evidence that does not; and the more entrenched we are in our preconceptions, the greater influence confirmation bias has on our behaviour and, as a result, the kind of people we choose to surround ourselves with. This can mean we find ourselves in a kind of echo-chamber, and lacking challenge of opinions, and allowing biased thoughts to prevail. Sometimes I am quite happy being in my bubble of likeminded people but have to remind myself that not everyone is working on decolonising, anti-racism and social and climate justice etc - and that I need to contribute to the world to help it on it’s path towards peace and justice for all.
Confirmation bias is clearly problematic in societies that lack equity because the it is defining people’s realities and preventing real action being taken. And sadly there are few places in the world that are truly equitable. This is why it is so important that we teach children how to notice the world, how to have empathic curiosity so that we are not seeking out facts that confirm our personal bubbles, but are seeking out knowledge for a sustainable, just world rooted in peace.
As I mentioned in Butterflies and Somersaults, this process of change will need to be both slow and revolutionary - where individuals, groups, communities, institutions make steps towards change with the occasional somersault that flips everything they thought they knew on its head and sets them on a more suitable path for change. But it also requires tenacity and resistance. To resist the bias and see beyond. Resist the demand to adhere to the status quo. To resist the tiredness of having to explain what is actually happening rather than what the systemic blinkers have permitted.
I am currently writing another book in Swedish - about play - and I have been writing about play as a democratic act and the fragility of democracy as a force for the people, and the limits of democracy when it is still not considering all people. Historically “democracy” has excluded large parts of the population more than it has included all humans as having democratic rights. Gender, ethnicity, ability, age, marital status and more have all been used to exclude parts of populations from making democratic decisions. And if you think this is just a long time ago thing think again…
In Canada not all women got to vote until 1960 when it was allowed for Indigenous women to vote without requiring to give up their Indigenous status. And 1971 women in Switzerland finally got the right to vote while it was 1990 before the Swiss canton Appenzell Innerrhoden allowed women to vote!!! So the western world has no right to look on other nations and say they were “late to the game” - those other nations had to deal with colonialisation as well as issues such as women’s rights (which were often colonial ideas of women suppression). But what I think is also interesting is that in Sweden some women had the right to vote between 1718 and 1772 which then was taken away and was not returned until 1919 (and then not all women) - from what I can gather, the right to vote started to shift to economic status and businesses - due to the fact the the definition of “citizen” also shifted to a more capitalistic way of viewing humans.
This implies that we have undergone systemic changes before - multiple times if we are to look at the hunters and gatherer systems, feudal systems, slave society systems, capitalistic systems, communist systems, nomadic systems - and this is no evolution of systems - these are just changes - and not all societies have deemed it necessary to change in order to survive and thrive - and many communities have been forced to change against their will in order to be exploited.
What kind of system do we need now? I think we need a system that
values all humans as equals if we are to have peace.
listens to understand if we are to have justice.
is grateful if we are to live sustainably together with nature (rather than nature being a human resource to be exploited as desired).
So what kind of behaviours do we need to be teaching? This might seem a strange question, because do we teach behaviour? I think we do - our school system currently is authoritarian it teaches compliance despite the content being about democracy and inclusion and creativity. The school system is rigged so that no matter what lessons are learned by the children the fundamental, underlying message is comply - which by default excludes many children and limits creativity and reveals that collaboration is not the way to success but scrambling to the top is, in order to be the person that has the authority by any means necessary. The authoritarianism is teaching. The underlying intention of the school system is to teach a curriculum to children that can be measured in specific ways to see if the teacher has taught the curriculum, and to rank the children.
What would happen if the schools were fundamentally democratic instead? And the focus was on the children’s learning, the sharing of knowledge and skills, and the creation of collaboration, equity and justice? Where autonomy is valued as intrinsic motivation to balance extrinsic motivation. The idea of mwe - me and we together. That we focus on the individual being able to evolve to their full potential as part of a group rather than despite the group. That each individual feels safe and brave to be themselves due to acceptance, and equally provides that safety and bravery for others to be themselves. Another chicken and egg thing… to be me, really me, I need others to accept me as I am and to value me - otherwise I will hide part of me to try and fit in; at the same time I need to self regulate my ego, my reactions, my agendas so that I do not infringe on the rights of others to dare to be themselves. I think too often we are teaching children about their rights and failing to teach about their responsibilities (all the while controlling the rights adults don’t like children to have).
So all these rambling thoughts?
Well it gives me hope that we can change the system - because systems have been changed before throughout history (for better and worse). It reminds me that it is a slow process and will come with much resistance. And that it is complex - and requires us to think behaviourally and systemically and beyond.
And that we need to be kinder to each other. We are are all in different places in this system and thinking about the system and shouting and being impatient at people to take a leap into the unknown is seldom the best strategy - they need encouragement and support to feel safe and brave. And yes, this can feel frustrating at times, so patience and kindness. But it needs more of us to be actively doing this - because it feels like it’s going to get worse before it gets better - and it would be wonderful if we could avoid more of the worse stuff.