Education for Social Liberation: A Teaching Philosophy

Education is based on the principle that the juvenile requires instruction to prepare for adulthood, and the skills, knowledge, and content passed along through the process of schooling is that preparation. Within the context of education in the United States, this preparation includes moral, ethical, intellectual, and civic awareness.  Schooling in the US has also historically emphasized homogeneity, uniformity, and workforce readiness within the capitalist system, which functionally separates and divides people by socioeconomic class.  Thus, the American educational system has always been organized around the principle that schools would “secure employment for all while maintaining the social privilege of some” in order to maintain “normalcy,” (Urban et al, 2019, p. 206).  And yet, there is an emerging sense that education must be more than this.  Students today must acquire socioemotional awareness and executive functioning skills, as well as being able to successfully navigate cultural differences and cross-cultural relationships.  They must have strong conflict resolution skills.  Students have to be adept at all forms of technology and content creation.  And increasingly, teachers are finding their students need many of the practical life skills that support independence and self-reliance, from home economics and budgeting to driver’s education.  

Therefore, I believe that the purpose of education has to change to meet the needs of the 21st century student.  As bell hooks reminds us, “our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students,” (2014, p. 13).  Schools systems and administration organizations must acknowledge that standardization and homogeneity do not serve all students.  Differentiation, individual needs, and a strong focus on humanity and community, including adaptiveness and improvisation, must be the driving force of 21st education.  Classrooms should strive to ensure students have a proficiency for life, not university-level education, including a strong sense of independence, self-reliance, perseverance, and resilience.  Curricula must include intentional work on socioemotional well-being and self-regulation.  And classrooms have to focus on critical thinking and compassion, over competition and egocentrism.  “Mattering, citizenship, community sovereignty, and humanity go hand in hand with ideas of democracy, libert, and justice for all, which are the inalienable rights needed to thrive,” (Love, 2019, p.2).  My role as a teacher is to facilitate my students' process of fully becoming themselves.

In the new classroom of the 21st century, I believe the educator is a guide.  Teachers can no longer  be the source of all information or the gatekeeper to learning and growth.  The teacher is a facilitator, supporter, cheerleader, and safety net for exploration and inquiry.  Buddhist spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh describes the “teacher as healer” who supports the student in unifying their body and spirit (qtd. in hooks, 2014, p. 14).  This wholeness, a combination of embodiment and spirituality, is echoed in what Montessori called the “whole child” approach, and in the US, progressive education’s “child-centered” approach.  Especially in an increasingly fractured and isolationist world, teachers must facilitate classrooms that are intent on unifying the disconnected parts of the child.  Within the Montessori framework, this means connecting the hand and the mind to unify the body and the spirit, which in turn promotes connection to the long history of the human family.  

“Thus the way leads from the whole via the parts back to the whole. In this way the child learns to appreciate the unity and regularity of cosmic events…Thus the child will develop a kind of philosophy, which teaches him the unity of the universe. This the very thing to organize his intelligence and to give him a better insight into his own place and task in the world, at the same time presenting a chance for the development of his creative energy” (Montessori, qtd. in Grazzini, 2013, p. 113).  

This also changes the emphasis in the classroom to life skills, not just content knowledge.  

Teachers must have a growth mindset about their students, a foundational belief that all children CAN with responsive levels of support, intervention, and satiation of their Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  The embodied and unified classroom is also built on trust in student funds of knowledge.  Students bring so many gifts and experiences to the classroom that can be leveraged for success and confidence in the classroom.  “Rather than seeing students’ environments as lacking or inferior, educators see and identify the richness and resourcefulness of their communities,” Milner, 2020, p. 27).  Classrooms that are holistic, responsive, and built on trust will ensure that student growth is more than just academic.

This type of classroom also necessitates a pedagogy built on the active refutation of standardization from a white, heternormative, middle-class norm.  “Teachers must feel supported to teach in ways that honor all students and that disrupt, challenge, name and call out the perpetuation of racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic thinking, mind-sets, practices, policies, and discourses” (Milner, 2020, p. 14).  This must mean the inclusion, valorization, and representation of all people, especially but not limited to those communities that are represented in the classroom learning community.  The shift of the teacher to a guide also shifts the responsibility to the students, and the process of learning moves away from a top-down model to a more equitable, bottom-up model.  This is the “discourse of possibility,” which is “a way of thinking critically but hopefully about teaching and learning,” (Nieto, 2014, p. 5). 

Education has long been considered a vocation, and in the 21st century that vocation must also include love.  I feel that teaching is an act of service to the future and a demonstration of hope for humanity.  Teaching is having faith in children and belief in the beauty of knowing.  As Paulo Friere reminds us, “Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation,” (Friere, 2005, p. 89).  When it is based in love, education becomes a foundation for societal equity.  The classroom is a sphere in which all students can be honored and supported, to access materials and ideas that transcend history, geography, and culture.  This sphere of freedom and access is also a responsibility to learn more and move forward, fulfilling one’s responsibility to one’s own intellectual growth and understanding, and one’s responsibilities to the community.“This is one of the joys of education as the practice of freedom, as it allows students to assume responsibilities for their choices,” (hooks, 2014, p. 19).  I trust my students, I believe in their infinite potential, and I want them to have the opportunity to chart their own path.

Furthermore, I believe classrooms should be hubs of collective effort, which means that students learn the power of collaboration to effect change.  Struggles for change can only be navigated in the collective, and collaboration and active listening are essential for future progress.  “For the truly humanist educator and the authentic revolutionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by them together with other people,” (Friere, 2005, p. 94).  By experiencing the holistic, collective classroom, students are better equipped to navigate the intense changes that many communities will continue to experience in the coming years.  “Society is never redeemed without effort, struggle, and sacrifice.  Authentic leaders are never found breathing that rarefied atmosphere lying above the dust and smoke of battle,” (Counts, 1978, p.2).

Finally, education in the 21st century should be about access - breaking systemic discrimination structures that prohibit student opportunity based on the limitations of geography, social class, cultural experiences, and family history - and liberation.  “The very fact of freedom’s incompleteness (no one is free so long as others remain unfree) necessitates action directed at changing society.  Freedom, therefore, is ultimately a practice, rather than a possession or a state of being,” (Michael Hames-Garcia, qtd. in Love, 2020, p. 9).   And as freedom is a practice, education must be as well.  Lifelong learning, and the humility that comes from knowing that there is always more to understand, must be understood as a lifetime of work.  Education cannot only be a phase with a determinate end and completion; graduation cannot be the only goal.

In conclusion, the future of education must be intentional, holistic, interdisciplinary, culturally-responsive, and founded on love.  The cliche of preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist yet may still be true, but this doesn’t inspire action or a commitment to student growth and self-actualization.  Student lives should be about more than work or an occupation.  Furthermore, education must move beyond propping up a capitalist system of socioeconomic privilege.  Instead, education must move towards preparing students to navigate change, to observe and adapt, to listen first and show compassion.  Our students will be the leaders of the future.  We have to prepare them for leadership in moving the human community forward, to bring “justice for all” out of the theoretical or aspirational and into the practical.  When teachers and school systems only conceive of education as a limited sphere of occupational preparation, the life of the child is reduced to machinations and there is no impetus to improve.  “To refuse to face the task of creating a vision of a future American immeasurably more just and noble and beautiful than the America of today is to evade the most crucial, difficult, and important educational task,” (Counts, 1978, p. 51).  To move towards a society focused on peace, social justice, and empowerment, education must prepare the future to embrace others, listen with intention and compassion.  “Averting war is the work of politicians; establishing peace is the work of education,” (Montessori, 2007, p. 24).  Education must be reframed as a lifelong project of becoming, not a temporary phase of preparation for something else.

Resources

Counts, G.  (1978).  Dare the School Build a New Social Order?  Southern Illinois University Press.

Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group. https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf

Grazzini, C. (2013). Maria Montessori’s Cosmic Vision, Cosmic Plan, and Cosmic Education. The NAMTA Journal, 38(1). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1078117.pdf

Hooks, B. (2014). Teaching To Transgress. Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700280

Love, B. L. (2020). We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. National Geographic Books.

Milner, H. R. (2020). Start where You Are, But Don’t Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today’s Classrooms. Race and Education.

Montessori, M. (2007). The Montessori Series: Education and peace.

Nieto, S. (2015). Why We Teach Now. Teachers College Press.

Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, J. L., Jr. (2019). American Education: A History. Routledge.