Schools are a Problem
Provocation #24: Because they don't realize they're a problem.
Hey there,
Welcome to Provocation #24. This one took me a couple of weeks of churn to finally feel publishable. Not that the dam is breaking, but it feels like my writing brain is loosening up a bit. We’ll see...
NOTE: Did you hear that I’ve opened up registration for Cohort #3 of my Confronting Education Workshop? I’ll say again that in many ways this feels like the most important work I’ve done in my 40+ years in education circles. If you’re looking for a safe space to convene with a global community of educators to acknowledge and face the realities of this moment and do a deep dive into all of the implications for education, I hope you check out the details.
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REMINDER: All of the posts on this site are now free. But a paid subscription will help keep my energy up for this work (8/10 today; just got back from a 7-mile stroll in nature...) AND will support folks in need, as all proceeds from paid memberships will go to my local food pantry this year.
As always, thanks for reading. ~W
So, you may not want to read this post if you are still operating as if…
…the planet has no limits to what we can take from it in service of our own comforts and conveniences.
…humans are more exceptional than all other forms of life.
…it’s not as bad as it looks.
…you’re not contributing to and complicit in the violence and harm.
…traditional schooling isn’t contributing to those things as well.
Just sayin’…
There’s a fascinating piece in the New Yorker this week that reports on the circumstances that led up to the deaths of over 100 people in Kerr County, TX, when the Guadalupe River rose to 27 feet over flood stage this past July 3rd. It details the impact of climate change, for sure, but what I found most interesting was how deeply in denial the people in the area were about the risks.
Despite previous fatal floods, despite being in the center of what was called “Flash Flood Alley,” despite knowing that future flooding was likely (if not a certainty), people chose to build—and rebuild—in the floodplain, even securing waivers to place summer camp cabins directly in the path of the next event. According to one local geography professor:
“We have this history of flooding and rebuilding here.” She mentioned five floods within living memory, in 1978, 1987, 1998, 2002, and 2015, in which not just houses but whole neighborhoods were washed away. “They just rebuild,” she said. Moreover, she added, “people continue to request variances to rebuild even closer” to the river. “There’s no really strong regulatory authority to prevent it,” she went on. “And so it just continues to put more people at risk.”
There’s so much to unpack there. But what struck me most was the unwillingness (or maybe the inability?) of both residents and their leaders to learn from the past.
And here’s what struck me most: it wasn’t just ignorance. It was something deeper. A kind of emotional paralysis. A refusal to grieve the comfort, familiarity, and nostalgia tied to place, even when that place had already been repeatedly washed away.
Educational Paralysis
Right now, I see this same paralysis showing up in schools and education in general. Not just among policymakers or administrators, but within all of us who love teaching, who’ve built our identities around a vision of schooling now facing existential cracks.
We know the floods are coming (they’re already here, in fact), but we just keep focusing on shoring things up, staying rooted in the same spot, with the same basic materials, hoping we’ll keep the rising waters of change at bay.
But let’s be clear: It’s not change we fear. It’s loss.
Just like those families in Texas clung to a false hope that “it won’t happen again,” too many of us in education are clinging to an outdated vision of the classroom, even as the increasing irrelevance of the experience becomes more and more evident. We seem more inclined to stave off our grief until after it all collapses than to look at the world honestly and acknowledge that what our children need from us right now is not more of the same only better, but, instead, something vastly different. Something that requires us to fundamentally reimagine our purpose and our value in their lives.
In this increasingly complex moment, that something asks us to grieve the end of a story of schooling we’ve been trained to embrace for centuries, one laden with harm and separation, …and one that, frankly, defies common sense when it comes to how humans actually learn.
We deny that taking the most natural thing that humans do and trying to force fit it into this very unnatural thing we call school (even with our best intentions) can only leave the most important learning behind. And we all know this.
And yet, we act surprised when students disconnect, dissociate, or rebel, as if their resistance is a problem, not a signal. As if the structure of school—its hierarchies, surveillance, and standardization—hasn’t quietly shaped generations to comply with systems that harm.
We’ve come to call this “preparation.” But what if it’s something else? Something we’ve learned not to question because the cost of doing so might unravel too much.
“Succeeding” at What?
If we’re going to be honest about it, the problem is schools aren't seen as a problem. As long as we are preparing kids for and delivering them into a system that is extractive of both people and the planet in service of a “success” narrative that is (ironically) failing us, it doesn't really matter how we do it.
That shift is more than admitting our complicity in teaching kids to “succeed” in the very systems that are devouring the planet, fueling inequity and separation, and numbing their ability to notice any of that. It's about equipping kids and communities with the tools and skills to grieve, not just what's coming but what's already been lost in service of the narrative. It's about being honest with them and ourselves and our communities about what “success” really means now. Connection. Relation. Health. Being able to find joy in the rubble.
The truth? Schools. Cannot. Change.®️™️ because they are unwilling to put what's good for kids and the planet ahead of their own addictions to reputation, “correctness,” appeasement, comfort, and business models. Full stop. Like those folks in Texas, they are stuck in place, beholden to the past, unwilling to face the realities staring them in the face.
If we could collectively own just that piece, maybe, finally, we could move the whole enterprise to some higher learning ground.
Thoughts?
Will
It’s so true! I’m reading Imaginable by Jane McGonigal and she talks about “normalcy bias” and says, “If you don’t want to be shocked or blindsided by possible future crises or disasters, you have to overcome your normalcy bias and convince your brain that these strange events can happen—no matter how “unthinkable” they seem to you today.”
What’s bizarre to me is how at this point though is how “strange events” are actually the norm and still so many people have their head in the sand. It applies to so many scenarios in the world, the workplace, and schools.
~Zoë
Wow, this is a brilliant analogy. I'm going to be thinking about this all day.