Bring student activism into the classroom Chris Muller
Let me tell you about an experience
I had at a school in Zambia
in Southern Africa.
A privileged school with all the bells and
whistles:
beautiful classrooms, well-resourced.
The kindergarten had a playground full of
beautiful big toys, expensive tricycles,
everything designed for inquiry-based
learning, for interaction,
for communication, and of course, for
safety.
The teachers at the school organized an
exchange
with a severely impoverished kindergarten
not far away in the rural countryside.
This kindergarten had very little:
a few mud huts, minimal furniture,
no resources.
The playground was just endless bush.
Most of the times the kids spent there,
spent visiting there from the
privileged school,
they were outside playing
with new friends.
When they came back to their privileged
school,
the headmaster asked them how it was.
Their response?
“They’ve got such a big playground, we
want that too!”
They didn’t care about
their expensive toys.
What they appreciated was the abundance
of space to run and play,
as opposed to their boxed
in, safe playground.
That kind of experience gets me thinking
about the whole meaning of privilege.
There’s so many shades of privilege.
Some people will consider it a privilege
to drive a Bentley,
others the fact that they can afford
dental insurance or a meal out.
To many people in this world,
it would be a privilege to be able to
express their political and religious
beliefs freely.
I’ve been to African villages
where the locals will tell you
how privileged they are
because they have a well in the middle of
the village
that will supply everybody with drinking
water.
We can’t just look at privilege in terms
of money or material posessions.
We musn’t think of it dualistically, all
or nothing.
Instead, we should be thinking of it,
we should be cultivating some sense of
gratitude for what we have
and looking at it in a more
global perspective.
Every child grows up with a reality that
is shaped by their environment,
their culture.
My reality growing up happened to have
given me a huge head start in life.
My privilege has included food security,
the fact that I’m white male,
that I grew up in a loving home,
surrounded by adults who fed
my confidence.
My education all the way through
university was an expectation.
My privilege even included the fact that
my parents got upset
if I scored poorly on a mathematics test.
I also happened to have spent most of
my professional life
working in schools that catered to
predominantly privileged families.
Should this be seen as a perpetuation of
exclusivism and elitism?
Is it something I should
feel guilty about?
No, not at all.
I believe we can only address
inequality in this world
with an honest accounting of our own
individual privileges.
We can’t deny our place in society.
It’s what we do with the privilege that
matters.
What in the world has made you privileged,
has given you a head start in life?
Think about that.
Honesty and clarity about the privileges
we are fortunate enough to enjoy
is the first step towards empathy.
Where better to begin these conversations
than in schools?
Of course, no child, especially teenagers,
wants to hear about
how privileged they are.
My dad’s voice still rings in my ear:
“Ooh you don’t know how lucky
you are” and “When I was your age…”
So let’s do things differently.
Let’s make gratitude and reflection a part
of daily conversations in schools,
let’s open up new visions of systems
underlying our society:
money, race, gender, power, wealth.
These are not inviolable, eternal truths.
These are man-made, flawed concepts,
that can and should be challenged
and that can change.
The younger we begin this process of
introspection and realization,
the better the future looks.
Let’s talk in schools about a commitment
to ending extreme inequality.
Let’s contrast our own privilege against
the fact that everyone in this world
deserves economic security, safety,
and opportunity.
And let’s recognize that if a single
person’s circumstances of birth
denied them that opportunity
then we have a moral and political
imperative to push for change.
We live in a world where 26 people earn
50% of the world’s wealth.
Surely that’s not right.
A world in which natural resources are
being squandered
at the expense of millions of lives.
That’s not sustainable.
And it is precisely this concept
of sustainability
that we can use as a vehicle to start
conversations and to raise awareness.
Sustainability is all about our community
in the context of greater humanity.
It’s about a viable livelihood for all
human beings.
It’s about sharing this precious
planet of ours.
In schools, we need to be asking enduring
philosophical questions.
What is the good life?
How do we create a better world?
What privileges am I growing up with?
How do I widen my circle of empathy
beyond my family, my community,
my tribe, my bubble?
Such conversations need to be pervasive
in schools.
Now, I know much is already being done in
schools.
In my experience in international
schools worldwide,
I’ve seen some fabulous projects, often
based on very strong philosophical tenets
that do a lot of this awareness raising.
The problem is they are often individual
localized projects
started off by a passionate persons or
a group of people, usually adults.
We need more student-initated,
student-led action.
Throughout history we’ve seen a lot of
cases of very effective student activism.
Think of the recent Swedish teenager
Greta Thunberg
who skipped school to raise attention
to climate change.
I’m old enough to remember the 1976
Soweto uprisings in South Africa,
where school kids walked out of the
classroom
to protest against the gutter education
they were receiving
which their parents had so sadly
grown to accept.
They paved the way for
generations to come.
But I’m also old enough to know that
adults don’t always know best.
Part of my privilege is my age,
my professional status,
my financial security.
I’m a voter who politicians appeal to.
I have vested interest in the status quo.
But that’s the wrong way around.
It is a system that is rigged against
young people,
and their idealistic, clear-eyed
view of life.
We adults, we need to step down from our
perches of high privilege.
None of us have the right
to speak out against actions and
voices like those of Greta.
When Greta and her peers walk out of
the classroom
to protest against something
that directly affects their future,
it’s not our place to tell them to sit
down and keep quiet,
and far less so to accuse them
of insolence,
because you know that’s what
a lot of adults said to them.
No, we should be cheering
them from the rooftops.
We should be clearing the streets and
allow them to pass.
We need to feed their idealism
by giving them the facts and figures
that will make them informed and help them
shape a vision for a sustainable future.
So where should schools
begin this process?
How about using the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals
as a basis for discussion?
These 17 goals developed in 2015
are all about the survival of the planet
and of our society.
We’re talking quality education, water
resources, clean energy, gender equality,
and a whole lot more.
Make these Sustainable Development Goals
an issue in school.
Make them part of conversations
in classrooms.
Bring them into the curriculum.
Have them visible throughout the
corridors of the school.
Bring them up at school gatherings.
Create a sense of urgency.
How about starting off every school day
with a fact that gets sent
out to every classroom,
like the one I just mentioned, about 26
people owning 50% of the world’s wealth.
Or the fact that one third of the food
that is produced for human consumption
goes to waste every year.
This’ll get students talking.
Let them talk.
Let them come up with solutions.
Adults, be the ones to feed
the information,
but then, let the students run with it.
It’s precisely because they aren’t
yet cogs in the system
that they have something valuable to say,
and that they need to be heard.
Young people need to know that they are
never too young
to put things on the political agenda.
And they also need to know that in taking
on these challenges
they are not alone.
Clearly not all students will grow up to
be sustainability activists.
But this kind of program will create an
awareness that is critical.
And more so, some of them will take
it to the streets,
and they will disrupt
conventional thinking,
and that is what this world needs.
Don’t let them grow up to be mini-us’s.
We kept too quiet.
We took our privilege for granted.
We messed up this planet.
Give them the tools to help them shape
their own, secure future.
Help them recognize that actually the
right to choose your own path
is probably your ultimate privilege.