Explanation of the thought " Eductaion is for improving the lives of others and leaving your community and world better than you found it."- Marian Wright Edelman
Answers
“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it”
In recent months, it has been difficult to remain positive about some of the abuse that seems to have been normalised in so many corridors of our worlds. The political climate centres on telling slighting jokes or name calling. Education continues to just about survive the ongoing drive towards employability and functionalism—aiming to collect just enough learning to enter the world of work without thinking too much about contribution and much more about paying back debt. Economically, we are nearly all much worse off than we were pre-2008. Our general societal attitude towards people who are careworn is that they simply need to sort themselves out and to work harder. I’m struggling. Despite apathy, I have always found hope. Hopefulness has been my strength and has allowed me to continue to try to be me.
Lately, I find that being me is a burden that requires a significant amount of work. I have always believed that by being kind, thoughtful, generous, and so on means I am privileged to be able to shine a light in darkness so that whoever I am with can begin to see their reflections, often despite my internal shadows. Generally this has meant that when times feel overwhelming, we can talk through how to recognise small moments to celebrate—to magnify what might have been displaced. Amongst the raucous discord of shrieking justifications for mistreatment and increasing layers of management to amplify surveillance, I listen for the music. Increasing the managerial labourers who place bricks ever higher—building the internal walls of the panopticon—even they must stand outside the walls and into the light at some point. Choosing to build a vessel without windows or doors offers no exit. So do we stand and resist, allowing ourselves to be continuously pounded into the unfertile soil; do we join in and comply; do we fight to the death; do we tunnel our way out? No choice seems particularly hopeful. Is being on the right side of history all we can hope for?
By accepting that bricks are built not only with the collected pain and tears of educationalists who believe in the practice of enacted social justice, these actors are constructing their own mass grave. The edifice will become another ruin in the increasing complacency of educational malpractice. Burying the hopeful corpses beneath ever tightening walls, the replacements stand in rank and file—they do not know how to question. They only know that they feel pain. Still, no one will mourn its destruction. There is no tribunal for educational war crimes.
Emily told us that “hope is a thing with feathers”. This was one of the few poems I ever memorised as an adolescent. Somehow the birdhouse in my soul . really loves to conceptualise hope as a tiny bird singing inside me—even in the distance, the hope is felt internally. The echoes of birdsong in the garden remind me to listen carefully when I feel lost.
A friend of mine asked several of us to reflect on what it means to be strong. I have struggled with this because I’ve been feeling particularly unwell and demoralised recently. I also am not a natural fighter. My default position is to attempt to find common ground so that we can have a conversation that will allow us to negotiate a relationship of some sort rather than anticipating that I am going to have to defend a point or go into battle. In my darkest moments, I am reminded that my consistent and unconditional love can create ripples of light. A problem for me is that whilst I am filled with love and, initially, I approach everyone with unconditional positive regard, this does not remain a blind constant. Nevertheless, I think my strength comes from hope–I hope to hear the tiny birdsong somewhere even in the shadows of the heartless. Somewhere, even if it is lost in a memory, there remains hope in all of