The disruption wrought by COVID-19 has many people rethinking, along with many other things, education. Right now many are considering different options for how education takes place (in-person, remote, or hybrid; in classrooms, community pods, or in independent families; etc.), the necessary skills for educators to possess, and what new economic models schools might need to employ.

The social consequences of not only COVID-19 but decades of persistent inequalities have raised additional attention to the essential services schools provide (meals, safety, etc.), their problematic ties to the criminal justice system, as well as history curriculums that may or may not be offering students all the facts on our country’s continued legacy of racism.

Beneath all these questions that have recently surfaced lies this important one:

What exactly is the purpose of education? Or, more pointedly, what is the purpose of schooling and schools?

While some may disagree on the finer points, I think we all understand that schools in America are meant to prepare young people for our country’s notions of adulthood. We are trained to become productive workers in the capitalist system and socialized to conform to existing values and social norms.

When these norms are products of centuries of colonistic traditions, schooling becomes a critical part of a system that consistently (and often subtly) dehumanizes us. It makes us complicit and complacent.

Educator and pioneer A.S. Neill put it well in his book about his school Summerhill and its philosophy of community self-governance.

“Interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots. You cannot make children learn [anything] without to some degree converting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into acceptors of the status quo - a good thing for a society that need obedient sitters at dreary desks… a society, in short, that is carried on the shabby shoulders of the scared little man - the scared-to-death conformist.”

I first read A.S. Neill’s book as an adolescent, shortly before I entered a decade of working in a variety of roles in which I had the pleasure of getting to know and supporting young people in living lives that fulfill them. I loved all these young people exactly as they were, and I did my best to support them in living their own lives. It didn’t take long for me to experience a rude awakening that led me to recognize something important…

It’s not young people who need education. It’s adults.

Adults are the ones not only in positions to support young people, but also with the most power to affect change, whether that change is in themselves, their lives, or our society.

This epiphany led me to change my career path so I could learn more about how to best educate adults. Tellingly, this was not a linear journey. I began by drawing from teachings in communications, marketing and design, but it wasn’t until I started working with social workers, community organizers, and organizational change agents that my understanding deepened.

While it’s true that media plays an important role in adult learning, the biggest influence on our lives are the people in it - our family, our peers, authority figures, and, if we’re lucky, some heroes we look up to.

My heroes are the people working to make the relationships we have with these people healthier, more equitable, and more mutually prosperous. They really have their work cut out because the school system has been successful in its purposes. Most adults are indeed will-less conformists. Too many of us have by and large, as sociologist Miki Kashtan puts it, sacrificed our need for freedom for our need for belonging.

Too many of us believe that our democratic participation is limited to the act of voting, which tellingly doesn’t start until we have completed our culturization. Personally I believe that if our democracy starts and ends with voting then it is not democracy at all.

Democracy is a philosophy that emphasizes choice and freedom which can be exercised in all aspects of our life. The trouble is that our schooling limits our choices profoundly, and we quickly begin to accept this as normal. We are told where to go, when to go, how to dress, how to act, what we must say, what we mustn’t say, how we must spend our time, what we must learn, and, above all, that there are serious consequences for not following the rules.

We are reaping the fruits of the shortcomings of our schooling in fullness right now. Understandably, most adults are overwhelmed by how COVID has disrupted the status quo, and they are searching for authority figures of one kind or another to give them a sense of security.

Not only have we not learned self-governance, we also haven’t learned how to live in community, which is what we all need most of all in order to navigate well the uncertainty and complexity of these times. Tragically, in the face of so much ambiguity, so many of us are trying to exert control over one another, in a myriad of ways. We aren’t leaning on one another so much as turning on one another.

Since in the midst of all of this we are rethinking education, I can’t help but wonder: What if schools were considered to be more like communities, like Summerhill, places where we could practice self-governance and cooperation as soon as our bodily independence allowed?

After all, knowledge is readily available through books and of course the vast web of the internet, so young people are already independently pursuing subject-centered education outside the classroom, whether they realize it or not.

What all of us, young and older, most need, and what could be of no greater value to us, is what we can learn from community living, and community living alone.

This is the knowledge that colonialism and its legacy has taken from us, all of us.

It is what author, poet, thinker and activist adrienne maree brown so eloquently describes:

"in community,

our potential is truly realized.

what we have to offer to each other

is not merely critique, anger, commentary,

ownership and false power.

we have the capacity to hold each other,

serve each other,

heal each other,

create for and with each other,

forgive each other,

and liberate ourselves

and each other.”

The good news is that we can reclaim this living and this knowing. There’s never been a better time to begin.

This article was originally published on the School of Thought blog. Visuals by Dr. Jane Shore.

The Education We’ve Been Waiting For