Educational Equity and Bumbling Humans

• Lucinda J. Garthwaite, ILI Founder

As we prepare for another round of evaluation research about the ILI Equity Scholar in Residence (ESR) approach to K-12 educational equity, several people have asked me how we’ll know when the program isn’t needed any more.  One friend asked, “What’s the end game?”

My vision for educational equity, which is shared by every educator I know, is all children thriving peacefully in schools, able to learn what they need to learn so that they can thrive as adults.  That vision will, I believe, always require attention. There is no end game.

That’s because, like the rest of nature, humans are still evolving.  Like the rest of nature, we adapt to change with changed behavior, and we learn more about ourselves as a species every day.   Advancing genomic research has made it clear that humans continue to evolve biologically as well.  Even traits that are the foundations of centuries of both culture and bias, like skin color, gender, and size, are changing.  There’s no stopping these changes.  People will keep showing up in surprising new ways, for as long as there are people to show up.

Several weeks ago, when I spoke with a school board about the Equity Scholar in Residence program, I said, “Who knew, five years ago even, that kindergarten teachers would need to figure out how to create a good learning space for six-year-olds who don’t see themselves as boys or girls?”

I was suggesting that expecting educators to become, in some final way, culturally literate enough to meet the needs of every student isn’t fair to teachers or to students. I was making the case for a critical component of the ESR model, responsive scholarship, providing educators with information they need, in the context of their community, as they meet emerging ways of being human.

There is another reason there is no end game when it comes to working for change. I think an elder friend of mine said it lovingly and well, “We are all just bumbling humans.”

Humans bumble; we always will.  We make mistakes, and we are vulnerable to fear.  Fear warns against danger, triggers action to secure safety. Fear responds to threats - including difference, including change.   The vulnerability to fearing difference and change puts humans on a collision course with the absolute fact that change is inevitable. 

That collision too often looks like willful, unkind ignorance, and bigoted, hateful behavior. When that puts children in harm’s way, a commitment to educational equity requires immediate action to stop the harm.

But what about honest ignorance?  What about fear? Those are human conditions. Punishing them has never promoted change.

Honest ignorance and fear respond best to compassion and curiosity, to restorative practice – which through peaceful connection can reassure the fearful. Honest ignorance and fear respond to information that speaks to their questions or concerns.

All of these assumptions undergird the ILI Equity Scholar in Residence approach: the requirement to stop harm immediately, as well as the requirement to respond to inevitable human bumbling with compassion, restoration, and information.

If there’s no measurable, final result of that work, then what’s the outcome we seek?  Like all of our work at the ILI, we’re looking for change.  In the systems where we work, we want to see evidence of more people thriving, living more meaningfully and peacefully in those systems. We want to see more people behaving in alignment with that kind of change.

As I said to that school board a few weeks ago, it’s certain that next year, or sooner, a child will show up in that system presenting themselves in a way those educators have not seen before, that challenges current understandings and the ways things have always been done.

For sure, that child will encounter honest ignorance. Almost certainly, that child will encounter fear.  How that not-knowing and fear is met will determine the strength of the circle around that child, the circle they’ll need against bigotry, denigration and violence, the circle that will make it possible for that child to thrive in that school.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no time for bad strategy in the service of liberatory change. This is, for me, especially true when speaking of children. There are few things more heartbreaking and, frankly, enraging than seeing a child diminished and hurt.

Meeting honest ignorance and fear, even heartfelt disagreement, with denigration, bigotry, violence, punishment, and isolation is bad strategy; it never has and never will result in more people thriving in ever more peace. It won’t keep more children from harm.

So, we at the ILI will continue to build a strategy based on relationship, compassion, restoration, and responsive information; and rooted in fierce commitment to work that has no end.