Hey there,
Welcome to Provocation #31, where I again ask the question, “When we gonna wake up?”
NEWS: In case you’re an educational leader in British Columbia or know one, I’m teaming with the BC Principals and Vice Principals Association to put together a cohort around my Confronting Education Workshop. Please spread the word!
JOIN US: As you know, the third Confronting Education Workshop cohort launched last month, and if the first sessions are any indication, it’s gonna be quite a journey. You can sign up for the waitlist for Cohort 4 that starts in February by visiting the workshop info page.
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As always, thanks for reading. ~W
If you haven’t noticed yet, or if you’re new to this space, one of the biggest influences on my work over the last couple of years has been Vanessa Andreotti and her collaborators at Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures. Her book Hospicing Modernity kinda melted my mind, and her follow-up Outgrowing Modernity has deepened both my understanding of the predicaments that we face and my respect for her willingness to push hard despite the discomfort of it all.
While she writes about education generally, I could easily compose a post that amplifies and layers a K-12 lens on her ideas and themes every week if I wanted to. And, as my workshoppers will tell you, she is ever present in our discussions on how we meet this moment with more relevance for our kids. All of which is to say, if you’re an educator and haven’t read those two books, you need to. They’re heady and complex, but they are definitely worth the time and effort.
I want to highlight one section in “Outgrowing Modernity” that I found especially provocative: “The Top 10 Hallucinations of Modernity” (pdf). I urge you to go and read it and then come back here and think with me.
Here’s the way she tees it up:
Modernity’s algorithms produce collective illusions that shape how we perceive and engage with the world. These hallucinations are not simply false ideas—they are embodied habits of thought, feeling, and action that structure our relationships with ourselves, others, and the rest of life. By naming these hallucinations, we can begin to expose their influence, metabolize their weight, and open space for relational accountability (62).
As you can tell if you read the whole thing, the section is written to provoke each of us to interrogate our own attachments to these “hallucinations.” But what I want to do is map them to what we do in schools.
No one wants to hear this, but schools are complicit in contributing to the very difficult challenges we are currently facing in the world. I’ve said that many times previously, and I’ll keep saying it. We need to wake up to that fact if we are to move forward in creating an experience of education that actually addresses our predicament instead of adding to it.
So, to that end, here’s a take on how schooling currently contributes to these “hallucinations” or illusions by the practices and narratives that are so deeply embedded in traditional education. If you’re being honest, I think you’ll struggle mightily to shrug off any of these ten “illusions” as being inaccurate or untrue. And if that is the case, that has huge implications for the ways in which you frame schooling and education for this moment and the future.
1. Separation Is Real
The illusion that “humans are fundamentally separate from each other, from the rest of life, and even from themselves.”
School enacts this hallucination by:
Structuring learning in subject silos: math ≠ art ≠ science ≠ body ≠ emotion.
Isolating students by age group, ability level, and behavior.
Disconnecting knowledge from land, ancestors, and non-human kin.
Treating “classroom management” as the control of individual bodies, not the tending of collective dynamics.
2. Progress Is Linear
The illusion that “progress moves along a seamless upward trajectory, where newer is inherently better, the future is brighter, and those leading humanity along this path are more deserving of celebration and resources.”
School teaches this by:
Promoting grade-by-grade “advancement” as a single right path.
Framing history as a march toward improvement, not as a cyclical or contested terrain.
Rewarding early readers and “on track” students, shaming those who spiral, pause, or detour.
Imagining learning as a staircase, not a forest.
3. Nature Is a Resource
The illusion that “the living world [is] an inventory of resources, modified for human use.”
School reinforces this through:
Science lessons that dissect life rather than relate with it.
Treating the outdoors as “recess” or “field trip,” not a co-teacher.
Ignoring ecological collapse except as abstract “issues” for debate.
Failing to teach reciprocity, stewardship, or kinship with the more-than-human world.
4. Growth Can Be Infinite
The illusion that “the myth of growth—economic, social, technological—can continue indefinitely, unbounded by the physical and ecological limits of the planet.”
School internalizes this via:
Constant push for “improvement” and “exceeding expectations.”
Overloaded curricula with no room to rest, digest, or compost.
Encouraging ambition without questioning its direction or cost.
Treating rest, reflection, and refusal as failure.
5. Consumption Equals Happiness
The illusion that “happiness can be achieved through consumption.”
School mirrors this by:
Celebrating consumer holidays while ignoring spiritual, seasonal, or ancestral rhythms.
Hosting book fairs, fundraisers, and reward systems tied to material prizes.
Advertising college and career as routes to material gain, not relational integrity.
Offering vending machines but no space to grieve, play, or breathe.
6. Individual Success Is the Measure of Worth
The illusion that “personal achievement [equals] value framing worth as something to be earned through productivity, accolades, and status within its systems.”
School trains this belief by:
Ranking, grading, labeling, and streaming students early and often.
Celebrating top performers while invisibilizing collective growth.
Using merit-based systems that ignore context, care, and co-dependence.
Framing self-worth as performance, not presence.
7. Social Mobility Is the Purpose of Life
The illusion that “the ultimate goal of life is to move up, to climb the social and economic ladder, achieve higher status, and secure a more privileged position.”
School sells this by:
Framing education as a ladder to “get out” of your neighborhood or class.
Emphasizing college as salvation, rather than relational contribution.
Ignoring the roots of inequality while promising mobility through hard work.
Teaching students to ascend systems rather than transform or compost them.
8. Science and Technology Will Save Us
The illusion that “technological innovation is the ultimate solution to humanity’s crises.”
School preaches this by:
Positioning STEM as “the future” and the humanities as optional.
Glorifying tech “solutions” to problems rooted in relationship and harm.
Ignoring wisdom traditions, spirit practices, and community knowledge.
Preparing students to innovate, not to repair or reckon.
9. Certainty and Mastery Are Attainable
The illusion that “Life can be controlled and certainty, achieved, positioning these states as ultimate goals.”
School demands this through:
High-stakes tests that reward confidence over humility.
Curricula that prize answers over questions.
Penalizing “I don’t know” instead of celebrating curiosity.
Framing learning as control, not as relational becoming.
10. Reality Is Objective
The idea that “Reality is a fixed entity, fully noble, measurable, and articulable through human perception and constructs.”
School enforces this by:
Teaching a single, “neutral” version of history and knowledge.
Depoliticizing lived experiences in favor of “facts.”
Prioritizing data over story, measurement over meaning.
Ignoring that what counts as real is shaped by power.
What’s been fascinating to me over the last 15 years of my time working with schools is that almost everyone acknowledges that these practices are not ideal by any account. Take almost any of the bullets above, lay them on the table, ask about the impacts, and most will nod their heads; we can do better. Yet those same folks will continue to employ them despite the obvious harm to students.
But maybe in this framing, it becomes more than just harm to students. It’s harm to us all and all other life on the planet.
Throughout her work, Andreotti makes a compelling case that we are denying these truths about our world right now. I don’t know what wakes us up to at least naming them as deeply problematic to our collective futures. As they say, the first step is to admit we have a problem. Can we do that, at least?
Honestly, if we’re not compelled enough as educators to “go there,” then we simply don’t have our current kids and future generations at heart. I guess we just can’t be bothered.
Thoughts? Join the chat and let’s discuss. Or, leave a comment below.
Will
These are great reminders, and I’m interested to read the books you recommended! This post really reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement speech, about the challenges of becoming aware of our unthinking assumptions. I wrote about it here, in relation to my substack’s topic of educator burnout: https://open.substack.com/pub/regenerativeschools/p/why-do-educators-resist-rest?r=6kxkx2&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
I can really see the connections with your points: the same extractive mindsets that are denuding our planet are also burning out educators. That’s why regenerative farms are such a powerful model for schools to rethink our own systems.
This is a fabulous article and I'm so glad I came across it. I'm an educational developer in the British Columbia post-secondary system and have been working to explore similar ideas. I really appreciate how you've taken up Vanessa Machado de Oliveira's work on the ten hallucinations in context of schools. The same activity could be undertaken for post-secondary with near identical results. I'm curious if you've heard of (possibly read) Ahmed Afzaal's book: Teaching at Twilight: The Meaning of Education in the Age of Collapse. This is where I started and I'm intrigued by the texts you recommend in the post.