Education During COVID

Sweltering through the hot days of summer, school seems a long way off, but it seems to be on the minds of many. Parents, teachers, employers, and the general public are watching closely, waiting for news about what education will look like in the fall.

There is no easy answer to the dilemma of how to safely run a school system during a global pandemic, and it seems hard to even find consensus on the basic merits of doing so. There are many conflicting perspectives about whether schools should open and how. Like many issues that have come up over the past few months of lock down, I feel like there is an exciting opportunity here to break from the status quo. Re-opening schools will require creativity and re-imagining what it is we need from our education system.

What will we do about medically fragile children and family members? Emotionally fragile or anxious children and family members? Those with allergies or the common cold? If we continue on with expectations as before, are we setting up ALL children for failure when we charge ahead, disregarding the effect of frequent absences, stress, and trauma?

In the months since school closed, I’ve heard a lot less of “New math makes no sense” and a lot more of “I can’t work with my child at home.” In the arguments for re-opening, I’ve heard a lot of “My child needs socialization” and “I need to be able to do my job.” What we are describing here, folks, is childcare. I would suggest that at this point, childcare and social-emotional well-being are miles up the list from standardized testing, individual curriculum expectations, and even certain subject areas. After six months without socialization, and many children with trauma inflicted by dysfunctional family dynamics, being entertained primarily by screens, and an overdose of frightening news, it seems reasonable to believe that school-as-normal will be impossible in the fall, no matter how safe we can make it.  With the understanding that some families will choose to keep their children at home, and that many students will be out of school with minor ailments throughout the year, it seems like continuing the curriculum as before is unrealistic at best, and more likely harmful to the overall system, since it will be impossible to apply consistently or equitably.

What if we took a break from school as it has traditionally been carried out and catered to our current needs? What if we used this time to experiment with what actually works for students, and not just the presumed normative student, but the wide variety of students who actually walk through our doors?

What if we listened to what society really needs from our education system, and used this time of uncertainty to invest in the long-term mental health of children and families as well as figuring out how to educate for the 21st century? What if we met needs instead of expectations? Let’s face it – the curriculum expectations consist of a somewhat arbitrary set of criteria that have been shaped over the years to reflect what we think students should know at given ages. According to Wikipedia, the school system originally “provided not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing, and arithmetic) but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience.” Over the years, this focus has changed to reflect changes in society, but not at nearly the rate that society has changed. Most expectations have grown so that we are now asking teachers to impart a ridiculous amount of knowledge to all children that only some will need, completely ignoring aptitude, interest, and relevance. Some years ago, we decided that students needed a year less education and we cancelled grade 13. To be clear, I don’t think there was a great clamour of parents that thought their children would be ready to leave home a year earlier, nor a decree from post-secondary institutions or the job market that students were coming out over-prepared. This was a financial decision, designed to save money by removing one year of publicly funded education. So we CAN change those arbitrary decisions. As the drive to be better, faster, smarter has increased, with competition to enter post-secondary education and even particular high schools, we have pushed children toward formalized education at younger and younger ages. There is a ton of research showing that children learn best through play and that early reading instruction can actually harm students’ long-term success. Many countries that perform high academically start their formal education later. What if we experiment with some of those models now?

With an inevitable imbalance in the coming year among students with different circumstances, this seems a great time to re-evaluate how we approach education, especially in the younger grades. As radical an idea as it may sound, I am suggesting we consider a learner-driven childcare setting of sorts, with pilot projects assessing different learning strategies and environments, as opposed to a return to ‘normal’ academics. To be fair, I am in favour of these kinds of reforms to the education system all the time, but hear me out on why this is a particularly good opportunity to try it out.

We are not done with the Coronavirus, and it is not done with us. Unlike our neighbours to the south, Canadians seem reluctant to venture back into reality as we knew it before. That means that a good portion of students likely won’t be back in school next year. For those who are, the tolerance level for attending when sick will presumably be a lot lower. Think how often children under 16 have stuffy noses, dry coughs, sneezing, and/or fever. If they need to be tested or quarantined for 14 days each time they catch a cold, then the average child is going to miss a lot of school next year. If each class, or school, is going to be quarantined for 14 days for every positive case, which would make sense, then children are going to miss even more school. For many, if not all, the sudden return to school after months of ‘parenting by screen’ will be difficult, and for those with anxiety, the new protocols will be mildly traumatizing at best, and incapacitating at worst. Mental health will need to be a priority, which is tricky when trying to maintain curriculum standards that were hard to reach even under ‘normal’ circumstances. We will need to catch students up from an extended absence, undo the trauma of learning at home (with parents who were not prepared to teach without criticism), and manage increased anxiety and frustration. Teachers will be scrambling to catch students who fell through the cracks in the early closure, there will be a backlog of need for testing and social services, and there will be absences from teachers who are sick or required to quarantine because of exposed family members.

So what if we put students in smaller groups, spread out teachers who are currently providing extra academic support, and focused on social skills, mental health, resilience, and basic academic skills? Students would be encouraged to pursue topics of interest and supported in hands-on exploration of real-life materials and real-world problems. Released from the demands of the current curriculum, students could work on communication skills, leadership, and critical thinking – skills that are valued in today’s work environment, but which are hard to teach well when we are bogged down by all of the expectations put forward for each grade.

I understand that there isn’t enough money to fund extra teachers and the extra space it would take to teach all children in small cohorts every day. But to be fair, there wasn’t money to provide CESB either, but somehow we made that work because it was deemed a necessity. Forcing people to choose between their children and their careers is a recipe for disaster, setting back women’s rights, and increasing poverty and reliance on social services. Furthermore, it disproportionately affects single-parent and low-income families. Getting children back to school IS a necessity, if only to free up the government from having to pay EI and CESB indefinitely. People want and need to work, and they need to know their children are safe.

As for safety, either it is safe to be in class or it is not. The way I see it, a hybrid model is the worst possible solution. Being in some limbo state is not only risky, it is not much better for children’s mental health than being home, and in fact, may be worse for many. Because parents need to work, children will need to be cared for daily. That means if they are in school only part time, then they will be elsewhere the rest of the time. That means that in every cohort of 15 students, likely half will be in some form of daycare, either licensed or not, and several others will be cared for by aging grandparents. Say the daycares have an average of 10 children each – each cohort of 15 just became a cohort of 100, with at least a handful of seniors thrown into the mix for good measure. We’d be better off with consistent classes of 20 or 25, except that there isn’t room in classrooms to distance that many children.

It appears that children are not strong transmitters of COVID, although it is unclear whether that is because they don’t carry and transmit it or because they haven’t left their homes in four months. I am not advocating to go back to school unsafely, but I do feel that children should be in school if it’s possible. There will never be a guarantee of safety for children or staff in schools – not before a vaccine, not after a vaccine, and not before we had ever heard of Coronavirus. I’ve heard the argument that we can’t go back until it is completely safe, but to be realistic, driving in cars is not safe, but we still take kids out in them. I’m not saying that I am okay with any number of dead children, nor am I willing to needlessly risk the lives of teachers or the extended family of children who attend school, but I am saying that we need to find ways, like seatbelts and speed limits, to make school safe enough that children can return without undue concern, monitoring and responding quickly to local outbreaks. I don’t think it is healthy or realistic to believe that elementary school children can consistently and comfortably maintain physical distancing, wear masks, and avoid sharing materials. We must absolutely teach them to practise good hygiene, but we need to find ways to make schools safe for everyone in them. No form of learning can be effective in an environment of uncertainty and fear. Safe re-opening must include the option of daily attendance, paid sick leave for both teachers and parents, clear and consistent enforcement of attendance protocols, and smaller, self-contained cohorts.

It might include flexibility for parents who want to keep kids home – that takes the pressure off the public to pay for ALL students to be in class. Those who do better OUT of class might get online support, or some kind of organized home-schooling support. It might include the adoption of more outdoor learning centres, where students would spend most or all of their day outside. Alternatively, it might make use of other community spaces, like recreation centres, to accommodate physical distancing while keeping kids in school full time. Really radical ideas might include mixed age groupings, where siblings could be kept in the same class to reduce the circles of contagion. If we weren’t so hung up on grade level expectations, mixed age groupings could encourage leadership and collaboration in ways we can’t even imagine.

Let’s not go back to normal. Let’s go back to something better. We need to stop pretending that a one-size-fits-all model works well for every child and start finding innovative ways to meet the needs of those who don’t fit the mould we’ve been using for the last hundred years. If we took a year ‘off’ school as we’ve known it and provided much needed childcare in educational settings that felt safe and unpressured, there is no telling what amazing and creative ideas might emerge. What better opportunity to start re-imagining than right now, when our whole lives have shifted and we aren’t sure what the next year holds? Let’s turn this time of uncertainty into a gift and invest in what truly matters.

Is Racism Really the Problem?

Having read and listened to a host of articles and interviews on racism in the past few weeks, I am impressed by the strength, clarity, and passion of the voices I am hearing. I see acts of compassion. I hear impassioned pleas. I see and hear cogent arguments and a range of ideas on how to fix the current social problems. But I am struck by the difference between the voices of white policy makers and the voices of Black activists and researchers. Of course, that is a huge generalization – people of all colours are all over the map on this topic. But I see policy makers calling for more of the same – we need exposure, both personal and cultural, and love, and acceptance. We need awareness, education, and quiet listening to the voices of previously unheard and unrecognized voices. We need to make space for Black voices. But what I hear Black activists saying is that this problem – racism – this is a white problem and we need to take care of it, not as allies, but as a matter of duty. That this isn’t about not liking Black people or Black culture – it’s about white culture and self-preservation. I believe in education. I believe in exposure. I believe in acceptance. But I don’t believe that those things on their own will change anything, other than maybe a few new cross-cultural relationships, and maybe the adoption and mainstreaming of new trends in areas like fashion and music. At best, we might inspire the next generation to do better – perhaps today’s children would be inspired to change the world for their grandchildren. But we have the power to make change NOW and we have a moral responsibility to do that.

I don’t think racism is the big problem here, actually. I think racism is mostly a symptom. I think white supremacy is the problem. And that’s a lot harder to change, because we are INSIDE it. It’s hard to see the shape of a ship when you’re comfortably ensconced in a cabin. And it’s hard to identify ourselves as white supremacists. That sounds BAD. But we live in a society that has historically seen whites as the top of a hierarchy. A hierarchy where Blacks are at the bottom. And that, by definition, IS white supremacy. We don’t have to feel guilty. WE didn’t make those laws. WE didn’t condone slavery. We did not make this problem. No one is asking us to feel guilty. We are being asked to feel RESPONSIBLE. It can be hard to choose change for the benefit of others, especially when we have little to gain from the change ourselves. But the RESPONSIBLE choice is to see accurately what is going on around us and to make changes to improve society for everyone. And there are benefits to all of us when society works more justly, but that’s a whole other blog post.

Ibram X. Kendi is a leading scholar of racism. He talks specifically about how “the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” He basically says that racism was mindfully invented as rationalization for atrocities that helped create prosperity for the architects of the racist ideology. He starts with slavery.

One cannot love and respect someone while enslaving them. Rationalizing that type of behaviour REQUIRES one to think of the other person as different, and necessarily less than. It follows that one cannot love and respect someone while insisting that they go to a different school, that they must give up their seat on the bus, or that they cannot vote in elections that directly affect their lives just as much as those who ARE allowed to vote. In order to keep the status quo, white people had to fabricate reasons to hate and disrespect those who didn’t enjoy the same freedoms they did. Believing that skin colour divides those who should and should not have those freedoms is the definition of racism, and favouring whites is the definition of white supremacy. White supremacy is not synonymous with Nazi-ism, but when we hear it, we react as though we’ve been accused of war crimes. It refers only to believing that the white race is better than or more ‘normal’ than other races. When default setting make avatars white and we call others ‘racialized’, as if we don’t have a race, that’s normalizing whiteness. If the policies in place support that viewpoint, then people are forced to manufacture reasons to support them. It becomes a cycle that is hard to break.

Unless…

Unless we could just change the policies. That would make space to heal the wounds caused by hundreds of years of racism. It would even the playing field and empower People of Colour to begin to rebuild their communities in ways that feel safe and prosperous.

What might that look like today? We no longer allow slavery. We no longer support segregation. Anyone can sit down on the bus. All citizens can vote in elections. But Black people are still the face of poverty in Canada. And to keep them there, we have to convince ourselves that they don’t deserve what we have. They don’t deserve what we’ve worked hard for. Why do we feel like we’ve worked harder than Black folks? Because look what we have that they don’t – see that cycle? Lifting Black families out of poverty would help a whole lot. Basic income. Affordable housing. Changes to loan policies. Those would be a start.

There’s a stereotype in Canada that Blacks are more violent than whites. The proof? Jails are full of them – and so we look more closely at their behaviour, we are quicker to report them to police, and the police are more likely to escalate incidents. And you know what happens? More Blacks end up in jail. See that cycle? Lessening mandatory minimum sentences, reducing or eliminating time for minor offences, a focus on rehabilitation BEFORE jail time – these would have a disproportionate benefit for Blacks, because they make up a disproportionately larger part of the prison population doing time for minor crimes. Why? Because as a group, they are charged more often, and have fewer resources to bail themselves out and find good defense lawyers. Then, once they end up in court, they’re significantly more likely to be convicted and to get longer sentences. That’s racism at work.

Black mothers are no more likely to BE on drugs when their children are born, but they are 1.5 x more likely to be TESTED and 10 x more likely to be REPORTED for this. The result? A higher proportion of Black children in foster care. Indigenous numbers are even higher. Guess what that proves? Certainly not that Black and Indigenous children are less cared for, since it’s the reporting rates and not the drug rates that are different. What It proves is racism.

For most of my life I have been aware of a particular kind of racism – it was the one form of racism I saw all by myself. I didn’t need master’s level courses on anti-oppression and an accurate accounting of racial history to understand that I am not who they are looking for. When I cross a border, I am not suspected of criminal behaviour. When a store alarm goes off, I am not suspected of shoplifting. When something goes missing, I am not the obvious suspect. And I am aware that those examples of white privilege are at someone else’s expense. I am not who they are looking for because they are looking for somebody else. If they were looking at everyone equally, then I would be searched or questioned some random percentage of times. I would be treated the same as everybody else. But in fact, what keeps me exempt from those indignities is that the people who inflict them are actively ignoring me. I do not trigger their sense of danger. That’s white privilege at work. I’m not saying I should be stopped more often at the border, or tackled at the store entrance when a clerk forgets to remove the sensor, but I AM saying that my freedom isn’t worth the harassment of people who don’t look like me but are equally innocent. I know people personally who have been stopped, questioned, searched, and followed simply because of the colour of their skin. That’s not probable cause – that’s racism.

Why should a woman of colour with a white child be assumed to be the nanny, while a white woman with a child of colour be assumed to be an adoptive saviour?

Why should a white man running in his neighbourhood be considered an athlete, while a Black man running in the same neighbourhood be suspected as an escaping criminal?

Why should struggling white students get extra tutoring, while struggling Black students get counselled into applied courses, with the assumption that they won’t go to college or university anyway?

None of these circumstances make sense, but stereotypes and long-standing myths support them. We need to change the policies that allow or require us to keep believing, and therefore acting on, our biases. We need to work top down and make space for good, compassionate people to even out the rest.

When historical laws have kept certain groups from getting ahead, the obvious answer is to give them a boost. Many people react to that with a knee-jerk reaction of “Wait, that’s not FAIR!” But what’s not fair about it? If Black people have had fewer opportunities for hundreds of years and many of them were put into that situation by forcible confinement and mistreatment, then what isn’t fair is leaving them at the bottom. If Blacks are disproportionately affected by poverty, poor education, and an unfair application of the justice system, then we need to target those systems and give Black families, students, and petty criminals a better chance. Dismantling white supremacy does not require guilt or shame, or feeling badly for what we have. It involves acknowledging that some of us have privileges and opportunities that aren’t universally available, and then readjusting so they are.

When I was growing up, my mother had a strategy for making things fair between my brother and me. It was the “I cut, you choose” rule. When there was something to be shared, one person cut and the other chose which piece to take. That ensured that the cutting was fair, because the cutter never wanted to get left with the smaller piece. To make a fair system, we need rules that would work for everyone, where there was no real advantage to being born into a white family, or an affluent family, or a conventional family. Imagine the rules we would make if people were only assigned their positions in society AFTER the rules were made…

What rules would you change?

To Speak Out or Hold Space?

A couple of years ago, I started a Master’s of Social Work program. I was shocked by what I found in the first few courses. More accurately, I was shocked that it had taken getting to a master’s level of education before I came across the information presented. How could this be the first time that I had encountered the truth about racism, privilege, and anti-oppressive practice? I mean of course I had known about racism and privilege, but in a vague, imprecise way. I had never encountered the idea of anti-oppressive practice. These are concepts that we should be teaching from kindergarten onward. Every politician, journalist, teacher, medical professional, lawyer, and business person should have to take a course in anti-oppressive practice. And yet, it took a specialized program at the post-graduate level to come across the basic history of how racism got to where it is today.

Some of the bigger learnings that really struck me were the effects of slavery and land ownership laws that persist today, the effects of colonialism and capitalism, and the pervasive impact of implicit bias and systemic racism. We read studies where children as young as six were showing preference for white dolls, labeling the white dolls as ‘good’ and the Black dolls as ‘bad’. This was true for children of diverse cultures, even the Black children, who labeled the Black dolls as bad, but also correctly identified them as the dolls that looked like them. Heartbreaking.

One of the topics of discussion that came up in that program, and that I have heard bantered around again recently, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s death, is what white people should be doing about racism, privilege, and white fragility. There are many conflicting views on this topic, with many ideas but little consensus, especially with regard to speaking out. Some are of the opinion that it is the responsibility of privileged individuals to speak out on behalf of those who are marginalized. Others believe that those with privilege should consciously take up less space, leaving room for those who know first-hand what they need – to hold space for marginalized groups to speak out on their own behalf. The idea is that those with voice who are used to having a platform have taken up enough space and that it is important that we hear from those who have been silenced or spoken over for way too long. Proponents of this view believe that the best thing white folks can do right now is to LISTEN and get out of the way.

I’ve thought a lot about this issue in the last week, as my Facebook feed has become full of comments and shares, and I’d like to weigh in on it. I am listening, and I’m willing to be corrected. I am stepping out imperfectly, open to feedback. This is where I am on my journey toward effective allyship.  

I think the question of speak up or shut up depends very much on the circumstances. If I am sitting at a table with a variety of people, some of whom are marginalized in areas where I hold privilege, that’s a good time to shut up and listen. That’s a time to hear and magnify the words of people who have first-hand experience of the problem and know what they need to heal their own communities. That is a time for me to listen and follow the lead of the people I want to ally with.

But I think that when I have a platform that marginalized people might not have access to, I have a responsibility to speak out. For people who aren’t yet ready to embrace the voices of those they aren’t used to hearing, I feel I have a responsibility to speak in a more familiar voice – to speak as a peer, providing leadership within the safety of a friendship, a family relationship, a classroom, or even an institution. My silence in those moments is more harmful than taking space, because I leave space for people to argue AGAINST the cause of justice. I leave space for prejudice, for the perpetuation of privilege, and for the arguments born of white fragility. Moreover, I have a responsibility to speak out against those arguments, being careful to frame my rebuttals in words that can be heard by those I am addressing. I have to meet them where they are.

That said, it is important that I continue to learn, to LISTEN to marginalized groups, and to believe what they say about what they need. This is not my soapbox. This is an opportunity to participate in undoing the wrongs caused by my ancestors – wrongs that have benefitted me both directly and indirectly my whole life. This is not a time for hurt feelings, for defensiveness, or for feeling good about my contribution. This is a chance to lean into the discomfort of conversations long overdue, to really hear the pain of those who have been silenced, and to begin to change the systems that continue to oppress them.

So how do I know when to speak out and when to sit quietly? If the vacuum left by my silence is filled by a voice that does damage to the cause of moving toward justice, or is not filled by any voice at all, then I have a responsibility to speak up. If the vacuum left by my silence is filled by a voice that otherwise would not be heard, then I have a responsibility to shut up and let that voice be heard.

Let’s listen and speak together. How can you use your ears? Who can you hear? How can you use your voice? Who can you reach? Let’s open up the conversation!

First Thoughts on Racism

I nervously step out into unfamiliar water. Nervous that I will say the wrong thing. Nervous that my words won’t matter. I know that they are not enough. But I refuse to stay silent. I will not continue to be someone who turns my head away and does nothing, claiming there is nothing I can do. On one hand I feel massively unqualified to talk to this issue. I know that I cannot truly understand racism and its effects because I am too shielded by my privilege. But on the other hand, I do feel qualified – indeed, compelled – to speak out, if only because I CARE. Those of us who care need to try, even if our words are inadequate, even if we miss the mark, even risking harm in learning to do better.

And we can do better. We MUST.

Starting to do better must include understanding and acknowledging what this is about. That this is not a band-aid issue. This is not a police training issue. This is a systemic issue. You are a part of it. I am a part of it. Every institution in our society is a part of it.

Take public school, for example. Public education – the great equalizer. Public education, where every child gets an equal chance at success. Ha! I work in the system, and I see those ‘equal chances’. I worked in an inner-city school for the first three years of my career as a teacher. A school where the majority of kids were Black, and almost none were white. My students came from homes where both parents (or the only parent) worked multiple jobs and sometimes seven-year-olds did most of the parenting. Where students came to school hungry and underdressed and when I called home there was about a 50% chance that the phone had been disconnected. Where the student response to a shooting in our school yard was either apathy or excitement – excitement to share their own stories of violence or of family members who’d been sent to jail. Seven-year-olds. When we had a fundraiser, we raised a couple hundred dollars, and it all came from our own neighbourhood. We used that money for subsidizing field trips for kids who couldn’t afford to go with us. That might have been their only cultural outing of the year.

Contrast that with the school I moved to, where students spent their evenings and weekends at tutoring and language class, where families went out for dinner, where extended family provided care and healthy meals. Families not only had phones connected, but students had access to their own devices and reliable internet. When we had a fundraiser we raised several thousand dollars. And some of that money came from colleagues of the parents, who lived in other more affluent areas of the city. We used that money to buy Smart boards and iPads, even though these kids mostly had access to devices at home. Tell me where the equalizing is in that scenario.

That’s racism.

How about the justice system? Or the education system, as it leads INTO the justice system? Students of all colours, and especially Black students, are more likely to get into trouble for the same behaviour as their white classmates. They are more likely to be suspended for that behaviour. White kids who are unlucky enough to find themselves in the justice system are more likely to get good representation and lenient sentences.

That’s racism.

Even when you control for poverty, there is racism at work here. But you can’t control for poverty. That’s part of the problem. Because of the way laws were set up in this country, and even more so in the US, when we abolished slavery and then eventually changed the laws that made it illegal for Black people to own property, it didn’t really do much. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn’t actually change anything, because the property was already owned by white folk.

Still confused? Imagine you sit down to play a game of Monopoly. But some of the players start with a couple of properties and three times the money as the others. How fair will that game be? How much fun will it be for the have-nots? What’s the chance they win? Now imagine that’s your life. No matter how much we say the rules are the same for everybody, the disparities will never become even, because we aren’t all starting from the same place.

That’s classism, which is inextricably linked to racism, because Black folk are the face of poverty in North America. But racism exists even without poverty. Every part of society is infused with implicit racism, unconscious bias, and white privilege.

As a white woman, I know when I cross a border, I’m not who they’re looking for. I won’t likely be singled out in an airport line. When I ask for help, I usually get it. But that ease of travel comes at the expense of others. They aren’t looking for me, because they’re focused on somebody else.

That’s privilege.

When I send my teenage son out alone, my concerns for his safety do not include being harassed by police.  I don’t worry that his hoodie will endanger his life. I don’t wonder if the expectations of his teachers are skewed by the colour of his skin.

That’s privilege.

White people look at what happened to George Floyd and are shocked. We wonder how the police could treat someone that way. We have the privilege of being shocked because we don’t live that reality every day. Mothers of all colours  respond to this grown man’s call for his mama. But Black mothers, those who worry about sending their husbands and children out each morning, don’t have the luxury of being surprised. They fear and expect this kind of treatment every day. I read a heartbreaking account of a Black man’s discomfort with walking into a corner store with his face covered. I can wear a mask to protect myself from COVID without fearing that the mask itself will endanger me.

That’s privilege.

That shock and heartbreak is privilege, even when I feel like it’s an anti-racist thing. Even when I use it to sympathize with those who don’t share my privilege. Especially when I feel better because it shows I understand and care. Because that feeling better IS privilege. The Black community doesn’t need my sympathy – they need EMPATHY and CHANGE. They need me to check my privilege. To challenge it. To stop sympathizing and complaining about how other people are treated and start looking at the DIFFERENCES in how we are treated. Which is hard. It’s uncomfortable, and dysregulating, and sometimes feels dangerous. Often privilege isn’t about getting more – it’s about not having to put up with things I don’t even know other people experience Often privilege is invisible to those that have it. That’s the problem with privilege – it’s so hard to see, and so easy to live with.

That’s one reason why it’s irritating to those who don’t have privilege – that those of us who have it don’t even KNOW we have it. And truthfully, even when we notice we have it, we don’t want to change things. As Brené Brown recently said, “The system is NOT broken. It was built this way.”

I think that’s one of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard. It’s not that I didn’t know it was true – several months of Social Work training opened my eyes to that – it’s just that it is so simple and direct. People are complaining about a broken system (or broken systems) but really, the system is working well, if you think about how it was designed – to keep wealthy, straight, white men in power. If we don’t like that system, then we need to CHANGE it. We need to look at all the variables that keep various groups marginalized, and find ways to dismantle the policies that exclude and keep people from thriving. That’s hard, because all the variables designed to hold the status quo are what keep those of us on top up here. Those who are in power, who have money, and opportunity, and voice, still benefit from the status quo rules.  We need to imagine that there are better ways that can help EVERYONE succeed.

I’m aware that my standard of living might need to go down, at least temporarily, in order for others’ to go up.  I’m willing to take that hit, because I believe it is the right thing to do. But I am not willing to do it alone. I could give all of my money to charity and make small change for a few. But all that would do is decrease my voice. What I want is systemic change. Taxes and programs that help balance the rich and poor. Basic income. Housing First strategies. Integrated neighbourhoods.

It’s easy to call out rampant racism, or to educate ourselves enough to stop using blatantly racist language, but for many of us, that’s where it stops. “I’m not racist. Period.” It is harder to call out racism when it is sewn into the fabric of society, and when it benefits us in deeply personal ways. Should I reject the fundraising at my child’s affluent school? Suggest at Parent Council that we donate the fundraising proceeds to a less affluent school? Decide not to use the resources I have to fight my teenage son’s minor legal charge? Stand up to authority in an airport who make the Black woman in front of me empty her purse but allow me to walk through unbothered? Argue that the Black child causing fights in my daughter’s schoolyard is reacting to systemic racism in the only way she knows how and therefore needs leniency or exemption from the “Zero Tolerance” bullying protocol we’ve adopted?

These musings aren’t new to me. I’ve been uncomfortably aware for a long time. But I didn’t know what to do about it. But now, I feel like we CAN do something. Now, when people are focused and passionate. Now, when the world is in upheaval. When we see that systems need to change. This is our opportunity.

This is our chance to re-imagine.

The world has changed since the colonization of the western world. And the rules have changed too. But the rules have changed within a system that was built to look out for the people in power when it was designed. The truth is that the system itself still favours straight, affluent, white men and those of us who live with them.

The first step that I see in moving forward is recognizing that the system is indeed working exactly as it was designed to work. The face of the system may have changed – we’ve ‘upgraded’ to system 2.0 and 3.1 over the last hundred years or so. We pride ourselves, actually, on being up to system 6.8 maybe – “Look how far we’ve come!” And it’s true – people of colour have a lot more freedoms now than they did when the system was first designed. But what that seems to have done is to make us white folks feel pretty damn special. I mean look what we’ve done to make things better. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t feel that way for individuals who can’t remember those changes, and instead have lived all their lives feeling oppressed and ignored.

Imagine how frustrating it would be if there was a large fence that appeared to exist for the sole purpose of blocking your view of a park. Your landlord, who lives upstairs, comes by to visit and remarks how lovely the park is this time of year. You say that you can’t see the park because the fence is in the way. He commiserates and says that’s unfortunate. You suggest that perhaps he could remove the fence, since it doesn’t appear to be serving any purpose. He says the fence has always been there. Also, the mailbox is hung on the fence post, and if the fence were removed, neither of you would be able to get your mail. You offer to move the mailbox, but he says he thinks that’s a good spot for it.

Every time you see your neighbour out on the upstairs balcony, he is enjoying the view of the park and often commenting loudly about his great view. You continue to ask politely to have the fence removed, but become increasingly irritated by its useless presence. Your neighbour is so pleasant to you, and yet he seems to be using the fence to taunt you a bit. At what point do your requests or interactions become a little less polite?

Then, one day, you come home and find that the fence has been painted. Your neighbour greets you with a smile and tells you the good news – he has heard your complaints about the view, and has fixed it. Your view will be so much better now that the fence has been painted. Over the next few days he remarks to every passerby that he is a great landlord because he has improved the view of his tenant by painting the fence. His neighbours smile and commend him, telling you how lucky you are that the fence has been painted. At what point do you start to feel like you want to violently rip down the fence?

This is the way we have historically treated racism. We don’t change the systemic problems, but we talk a lot about the band-aid solutions we provide, patting ourselves on the back for how much better things are now than they used to be. We declare our solidarity with our Black fellow citizens, but we admire the paint instead of removing the fence.

Except it’s not just a fence. People are dying because of these systemic injustices. Children are suffering in school and not receiving education to equal their white peers. Young Black men are jailed for minor infractions. Black single working mothers aren’t paid enough to provide for their kids. And all Black families, even those who are powerful and affluent, fear for the safety of their children every morning when they walk out the door, wondering what race-related dangers might befall them before evening.

I don’t condone violence, or riots, or looting. But I do condone standing up for your own rights, and making a stand for what is right. And when peaceful methods don’t work, something more is needed. These riots help perpetuate racism, because people focus on the negatives. They reinforce stereotypes that Black people are more violent, and provide evidence to support the claims that help provide the backdrop for racism. Too few people focus on the desperation behind this kind of protest. EVERYONE is capable of violence when they are pushed hard enough. Members of the Black community are victims of violence by systemic racism every day – it’s just that those instances of violence are less visible by the public.

When there are no good options, people will choose bad ones.

What we need are better options. We need to make a society where riots and violence aren’t the only way to get attention. We need systems that don’t pit the police against whole communities, where officers aren’t forced to choose between doing their jobs and doing what’s right. Where prominent peaceful activists aren’t reprimanded or disciplined for taking a knee during the American anthem.

We’ve been through this cycle so many times. We see some shocking event that highlights racism, and we all get upset. We call for change. But when things settle down, nothing has really changed, and we go back to life as it was. But I am hopeful that the circumstances in the world right now might help. This is our chance to make meaningful change. To change the conversation and the policies that sustain systemic racism.

We need to listen. We need to acknowledge the deep pain in navigating a world that doesn’t recognize your value. And then we need to work at changing, both individually and as a society. That change starts with each of us recognizing our own biases and contributions to the continuation of racism rampant in our society. Think you aren’t racist? Check your implicit biases using this tool from Harvard University:

Project Implicit

And to those who feel empowered by declaring that ALL lives matter, that’s not the point. Turning on an overhead light when we need to see under a cabinet isn’t as effective as a well-aimed flashlight. Of course all lives matter. But not all lives are at risk of being ended by the people who are charged to protect them. I don’t want better police training. I want a system overhaul. Shine the light where it’s needed.

Black Lives Matter. Be part of the solution.

Starting from a Place of Love

Parenting is hard. Beautiful, exhilarating, healing, and wonderful… but hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It is gruelling, dirty, emotional, frustrating, and unbelievably exhausting. But it’s getting easier. Not easy by any stretch, but I am beginning to feel like we could live through it. Like all of us – the whole family. This is not just because the children are getting older, although in some ways that helps. What has changed is my approach. Or rather my understanding of what it means to be a parent. And I fervently wish that this shift had come earlier.

My understanding of parenting was that my job was to raise my children into responsible, capable adults. To shape each child into the beautiful potential I could see in them. This seems to be a common perception of parenthood, but it is one that causes an incredible amount of grief and frustration, for both parents and children. It imagines that children can be made into something they are not. But children are not bonsai trees – they are wildflowers. And the potential I could see was my own wishful thinking, or my own misguided beliefs of what children SHOULD be, or my interpretation of society’s expectations. I believed that their failures were mine and that my worth as a parent could be measured by their success with fitting into the world.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I started to understand that the real responsibility of parenting is to be with our children. To build secure and trusting relationships with them, where they feel loved and accepted for who they truly are. To help them find their full potential in ways that make them feel accepted and empowered. To listen to their own inner wisdom, so that they learn to do the same.

This goes against so much of traditional parenting advice that tells us that children need to be trained – sleep trained, potty trained, trained in social skills and listening, and drilled in math and reading. If we let our children lead, they will run all over us, they will become whiny and incompetent, or worse, sociopathic monsters. In short, they need to comply. Modern parenting advice throws in the need for children to be guided through emotion regulation – we are more focussed on mental health and recognize the need for leniency in responding to outbursts in young children. But this is still missing the point. Like in other areas of our life, this is putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. What we need is to re-imagine parenting.

I have two children, both boys. Both active, sensitive, intellectually gifted individuals, who couldn’t be more different from each other. And we’ve tried it all. My youngest, 10, is naturally compliant and goes with the flow. But my oldest, 13, is what some experts call ‘strong-willed’. He questions everything and outright refuses to do anything that doesn’t line up with his values and interests. He is curious, and generous, and quirky. People like him. But he is exhausting. Even just watching him is exhausting. He gets 10 000 steps in a day without leaving the house. He paces while he thinks and reads books in fancy gymnastic poses. He wakes up, every day, ready for battle. He is going to change the world.

The first thing he set out to change was our parenting. It took a very long time, but he has finally succeeded in doing so. With help from experts, and therapy, and research, and soul-searching, we have finally found a way to parent him that is working. In order to do that, I had to let go of conventional wisdom, society’s expectations, and my own need to be right. It has not been an easy journey, but it has been worth it in so many ways. I needed a new way to look at the world, at relationships, and at parenting. But this way of parenting isn’t new. It’s out there, in various forms. We have been lucky enough to work with Jennifer Kolari, of Connected Parenting, who started us down the path of what I will call a relational style of parenting. Jennifer has provided insight, tools, and support that have carried us through incredible trials in parenting. More recently, I discovered Sonali Vongchusiri, of Raising Your Strong-Willed Child, who is running a series of interviews with a panel of peaceful, connected, and relational-style parenting experts. This has been a crash course in understanding and insight, and it has been a game-changer.

I would say my philosophy around parenting started to change about three years ago. I started to ask myself in every situation, “What does my child NEED right now? How can I best SUPPORT him? How can I answer this with LOVE? How can I increase CONNECTION in this moment?” And that shift has made all the difference. Just today I listened to an interview with Juliet Marciano, who defines behaviour as “the communication of an unmet need, an unlearned skill, or an unsolved problem.” Punishing children for their behaviour solves nothing. No matter how atrocious their behaviour might be, it cannot be improved by harsher discipline or more consistent consequences. Children need to feel heard, understood, and valued for who they are.

As parents of children who push limits and fight hard to get their own way, we sometimes fear that if we let them continue on in such oppositional and disrespectful ways, they will surely land in jail. And certainly, the behaviour needs to change. We cannot send children out into the world with uncontrolled defiance, violent tendencies, and a complete lack of regard for others. Nor should we feel compelled to submit to our children’s angry outbursts at home. However, if we are seeing those behaviours, and we have tried reactive strategies for controlling them without success, it is time to think about a new strategy. I contend that jails are full of people raised with strict parenting and harsh discipline, those with no discipline or support, and those with needs that fall outside of traditional expectations. What jails are not full of are individuals whose parents made the effort to truly understand them, who advocated effectively for their individual needs, and who maintained strong connections despite challenging circumstances and behaviour. That is not to say that loving your children will keep them out of jail, and I mean no disrespect to loving parents whose children have ended up in the system. I only mean that keeping sight of that perspective helps me stay centred when I feel like unpunished behaviour is ruining their future.

So many parents come under fire when their children misbehave – not only are parents exhausted and hurt by their children’s actions, they are criticized by those whose job it is to support them. Sometimes, in extreme situations, we have to let go of the well-meaning advice of friends and family, leave the experts who continue to push strategies that are ‘the only way to curb this behaviour’, and push back against systems that advocate for more consistency and consequences. Clear expectations and consistent consequences landed my family in the horrendous position of choosing between hospitalizing my son or allowing him to destroy our house and the people who live here. He spent three days in a psych ward, which was the low point in my parenting. But it gave me the shake I needed – we were on the wrong path. I was not prepared to lose my son to a system that was clearly not designed to meet his needs. And so we committed to re-imagining.

Parenting is relational. By it’s very nature, it requires flexibility and collaboration. Sometimes it is worth losing a battle to win the war. We need to let go of our need to control our children, and instead work with them to find and create strategies that work. In our house that has meant backing off from almost all struggles. It has meant that easing expectations and requirements has allowed us to rebuild those frayed bonds. We have explicitly explained that we are backing off in an attempt to rebuild relationship. There are minimal expectations that are rigidly enforced, but not in punitive ways.

There will be no tolerance of violence. Violence will be met with restraint. Calm, neutral, and compassionate restraint that ends as soon as possible, even it that means leaving him to calm down on screens. There is no ‘consequence’ for the violence once he is calm – only a discussion about what happened and an exploration of how it affected the different players. And amazingly, the violence has disappeared.  

Disrespect is accepted and discussed when everyone is calm. Disrespect in the heat of the moment has not decreased, but interactions in other situations have become much more pleasant, and the expression of authentic gratitude has emerged on its own.

Family Activity is required, but not enforced. That means that on some days, we are forced to forgo an activity, with discussion. But it has also provided opportunities for discussion about why we value family time and has allowed the boys to express their support for that, even when it sometimes infringes on their other wishes.

We are working with the boys to find systems that encourage them to build the skills and values they will need to be successful in the world, even if they aren’t yet ready to practise those skills independently. Their motivation to engage in this way is inconsistent, but they are learning to take responsibility for their own choices.

I am not perfect. I mess up and blow my top here are there. But I have gotten better at catching it quickly, and going back to repair. I won’t say that this is an easy path, but it’s one I wish I had adopted earlier. It feels better. It lines up with current research. If every decision in the world were made by following a priority of love and connection, what a wonderful world it would be. Let’s start to make that a reality by teaching this priority to our children, moment by moment, so that they carry it out into the world and help shape the future into a more compassionate and loving place for all of us.

Dreaming Bigger

So, we want to change the world… but where do we start? There are so many things that need changing. There are so many balls in the air. How do we balance the economy with the environment? How do we balance the fear of leaving our homes as we reopen amid COVID with the fear of our economy self-destructing? How do we balance work and play? Our needs with those of our children? Urban vs rural? Liberal vs conservative? The need for domestic support vs the need for international aid? The list goes on…

I think we are at a particularly exciting time right now. Frightening, yes. Overwhelming, yes. But these strange circumstances are shining lights in places we haven’t traditionally been looking. Attitudes are shifting. Priorities are shifting. Things that weren’t possible last year suddenly are not only possible, but preferable. People are learning new technology, and technology is rapidly changing to meet the needs arising from new circumstances. People can clearly see that something is broken. These are perfect conditions for change. But HOW do we change?

People talk about getting back to normal. We long for the normalcy and routine of our old lives. We fear for the economy and for our mental health. We worry about the impact on victims of violence of being cooped up with their abusers for months at a time. We worry about the effect of a years’ worth of infants never seeing faces outside of their own families. We worry about the effects of isolation, and the proliferation of anxiety. We wonder if our children’s education will be permanently affected.

But these longings and wishes ignore the fact that life wasn’t so great before either. Better than this, maybe, but not something we should hold up as the standard we would wish for. I don’t want to go back to what we had before. I’m under no illusions as to how well our economy worked, how well we were dealing with mental health crises, violence, and isolation, or how amazing our education system was. I want something better. My new favourite quote is from Bruce Zink:

“If a medically-informed response to a pandemic creates economic hardship so serious that the economic impacts are more deadly than the virus, you change your fucking economic system not your response to disease.

Condemning some to die of a preventable illness so that others don’t die of engineered poverty is disgusting.

Seriously, some of y’all dream so small. Our species can do so much better than this.”

Bruce Zink

So, how do we do better? We are limited only by the scope of our dreams. We have now seen that the impossible can be done. We cannot be complacent with the old “It can’t be done” or “That will never work.” Why not? Why can’t it be done? If it’s the right thing to do, then let’s do it. But those of us willing to change need to make some noise. We need to speak up NOW, when change is happening all around us. We need to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. We need to speak up and be heard.

If we dream big, what can we dream?

I dream of a basic income. One that ensures all people have access to the basic necessities of life without worrying from day-to day where their next meal will come from. One where people don’t have to choose between feeding their children and keeping the heat on, or a roof over their heads. One that can easily be collected back from those who DON’T need it through taxes, so that those who DO need it don’t get missed.

I dream of a future where more people work at home, with flexible hours and no commute. Where corporations need less space and traffic becomes manageable. Where individuals and families can figure out schedules that work for them.

I dream that the corporate space freed up by working at home can be used to create affordable housing and housing first options for those who find themselves with no other options. That we can create spaces that promote mental health, connection, and co-operation.

I dream of sustainable environmental policies, where government money is used to incentivise innovators and creative problem solvers instead of to subsidize status quo systems because that’s where the jobs are right now. Let’s retrain people to do the jobs we actually want done.

I dream of prevention. Physical health, mental health, cycles of violence – we know how these things work and often how to fix them. But we are stuck. We are stuck in band-aid solutions and reactive care. I dream of a system where standards of care matter. Where we have enough people trained to provide preventative care in quality facilities. Where seniors live in accommodations that mimic family homes. Where we help those who need it instead of punishing them, where we facilitate healthy attachment and connection in families and communities. Where we take care of our citizens at each age and stage of life.

I dream of a mind-set where success is not measured by the bottom line, where profit is not valued over human life, health, and happiness, and where excess is not the norm. Where people enjoy connections and experiences over the accumulation of plastic trinkets and where gratitude trumps greed. A community where co-operation is valued over competition, and where we invite those with more to make positive change for those with less.

I dream of leadership that inspires and facilitates international cooperation to solve inequities that leave children starving and families with nowhere to go. A government that works together and creates lasting change that isn’t immediately undone each time the leadership changes. One where I can look up to those in charge of our country as good role models for my children.

I dream of an education system that excites students and meets them where they are. One that has flexibility to meet differing needs in different ways. One that transcends the need to produce literate and functional factory workers and instead guides independent learners and thinkers who can dream bigger than we can and then go out and make those dreams reality.

What do you dream? If you were starting over, how would you start? Join me in the dreaming, because the dreaming is the beginning of better…

The Neurodiversity Paradigm

Imagine believing there was only one ‘right’ way to be and that everyone had to fit into that box. One right race. One right sexual orientation. One right body shape. To be fair, it wasn’t that long ago when some of those WERE almost universally accepted. This is the basis of racism, homophobia, and sexism. This type of thinking results in power differentials and systemic inequalities that marginalize those who don’t fit the dominant model. It results in overt, implicit, and internalized oppression of individuals who are different in any way from the normative standard.

I have grown up in a time and culture where overt racism has always been recognized as harmful and wrong (but where implicit bias against non-whites, and especially against Blacks, is still the norm, even amongst those who believe themselves to be tolerant and enlightened). I was born into the feminist movement. Within my lifetime, we have seen steady progress toward reducing explicit homophobia. More recently, we have seen a shift toward the acceptance of a variety of gender identities. We are only now beginning to see the smallest shifts away from rampant ableism, with a marked emphasis on mental health and physical inclusion models.

Ableism is a word I hadn’t even come across until recently. For those who don’t know, it refers to discrimination against people who are disabled in some way, either physically or mentally. This would include a lower likelihood of hiring a blind or deaf person, designing spaces without wheelchair accessibility, making judgements about people with mental health issues, and forcing people into systems that don’t fit. Inherent in ableism is the idea that ‘normal’ is good, and ‘different’ is not.

One early step in combatting ‘isms’ is the reframing of ‘normal’. When I was growing up, one was either ‘normal’ or homosexual. There weren’t any other options. You were either normal or not. But advocates for the LGBTQ2+ community have worked hard to change the language we use to frame this issue. On top of identifying other alternatives, so that the characteristic becomes less binary, a word that describes ‘normal’ in a way that doesn’t inherently imply judgement has been encouraged in everyday usage. Heterosexual, a word that has been in common usage since the 1960’s, has only more recently become the standard label for those who would once have identified themselves as ‘normal’. This seemingly small change has a huge impact on how we value people who identify their sexuality in various ways. Even more recently, we have begun to see the term ‘cisgendered’, as opposed to ‘transgendered’, to identify those whose gender identity lines up with their biological sex. What these shifts in language do is to begin to normalize states that were once identified only in contrast to normal.

Any group can be at risk of marginalization and oppression if they can be identified as ‘different from normal’. As we make progress in reducing stigma and discrimination against various groups, more groups step up to be recognized. One group in the early stages of this process is a group whose differences are neurological. Autism advocates appear to be leading this movement, but neurodiversity takes many forms. Many autism advocates are calling for the adoption of the ‘neurodiversity paradigm’. This is an alternative to the currently favoured ‘pathology paradigm’, where differences in brain and mind function are considered pathological and are handled by medical attempts at correction rather than acceptance and inclusion.

The neurodiversity paradigm assumes that there is a wide range of normal neurological functioning. In the same way that we don’t try to ‘cure’ someone of their homosexuality, the neurodiversity model suggests that autism, ADHD and other learning disabilities, high sensitivity, and other neurological differences are just that, differences within a normal range of brain function. If we begin to see neurological diversity in the same way we see cultural diversity, perhaps we can begin to recognize the positives that come from listening to and embracing people with a variety of brain and mind operations.

If we systematically remove the barriers enacted against those whose brains function ‘outside-the-box’, we can begin to benefit from the creativity, big picture thinking, and attention to minute details that are often hidden behind overwhelm and diverse motivations. We often look at autism as a cruel condition that leaves people isolated and unable to communicate. But if we begin to imagine autism as a DIFFERENT way to view the world and to communicate with others, we can sometimes ‘unlock’ the hidden beauty and talent lying within these individuals. We often look at ADHD as a medical condition that interferes with learning and getting along with others. But if we begin to notice the stamina, energy, and singular focus on high-interest activities, we can admire the creativity and innovation often brimming below the hyperactive or inattentive façade. We often look at non-conformity as a result of poor parenting, selfishness, or maladaptive coping mechanisms. But while we require conformity and compliance in children, we celebrate innovation and creative problem-solving in adults, who often become leaders in their fields.

Many of the problems we face in current society are a function of outdated systems that have not grown and changed with the pace of technology and other advancements we have seen. We see the need for change, but we are caught in our own inertia. We cannot find our way out because we are too used to being ‘sheep’, following along the well-worn path that apparently leads to success. But what of those who don’t want to be sheep, or who cannot conform to the way things are always done? Perhaps, if our problems require creative outside-the-box solutions, we should look more to those who DON’T fit, instead of trying to medicate, shame, and consequence them into conforming to systems we agree are not ideal.

How can we begin to recognize those who are simply wired differently as contributing members of society, with views, skills, and talents that are valuable or even necessary? How do we reduce the stigma associated with atypical neurological or psychological functioning? Conservative estimates suggest about 1 in 5 people are wired differently from what we consider normal. If we DO begin to reduce the stigma and recognize that there is a wide range of normal brain function, how many of your friends will begin to embrace and celebrate their own divergence from the norm? How many of us could settle into our own ‘eccentricities’, knowing that they would be accepted and celebrated by those we know and love? What brand of atypical are YOU?

Neurodiversity Explored Through Thought Experiments

My son has struggled with traditional schooling for some time now. He finds it physically overstimulating, mentally understimulating, and emotionally overwhelming. For years we have tried different strategies to help him adapt to the realities of his circumstances. Kids have to go to school. Individuals have to learn to participate in non-preferred activities. We all need to understand that there are things we are forced to do, whether we want to or not. (More on this in a future post…)

We’ve tried reasoning with him, checklists, consequences, bribes, medication, therapy. Nothing has worked – in fact, pretty much all of these strategies have backfired, making him more and more resistant to compromise or compliance. More recently, I had an epiphany, and it changed the way I look at the situation. Basically, I realized that what we’d been trying to change in my son was his brain function – to make him ‘fit the box’. My son is neuro-atypical. He is gifted and diagnosed with ADHD. He has “a lot of markers for ASD (autism spectrum disorder), but not enough for a diagnosis”. Allow me, for a moment, to lead you through the series of thought experiments that changed the way I look at this.

Make Your Best Team

Imagine, if you will, that you need to put together a team of twelve individuals to participate in a series of unknown challenges. Your job is to put together the best team you can without knowing the participants. You will choose based on certain characteristics, which will randomly select people for your team. For each characteristic, your total needs to come to twelve. You may choose specific numbers, representative proportions, even proportions, or random selection. Once you’ve entered your choices, a computer will randomly assign members to your team to meet the specifications you requested. Here are the characteristics you can specify:

Gender – how many male, female, other?

Race – how many of each race?

Eye colour – how many of each eye colour?

Height – how many average, above or below?

Age – how many in each category – child, adult, senior?

Ability – how many in wheelchairs? Blind? Deaf? Learning disabled? Autistic? Able-bodied?

If you haven’t yet, take a minute to think about how you might structure your team, before you read on.

Now that we have our team, we begin our challenges. First up… wheelchair basketball. How’s your team doing? A team with even one person familiar with using a wheelchair will be miles ahead of a team without, because that person can offer expertise to the others. Second challenge… braille. How are you doing now?

Many people have an implicit bias toward ‘normal’ – we assume that the challenges will be geared toward the majority. When I’ve asked people these questions in person, most were pretty comfortable with an even representation of gender and race – those categories that have had a lot of attention in our lifetimes. Most said eye colour wasn’t relevant. But imagine if this had been asked during Hitler’s reign – perhaps then eye colour might have been a deciding factor. Where people had a lot of difficulty was when we got to the ‘ability’ section. People suddenly realized that this was going to get hard. If I make spots for all of these different disabilities, it doesn’t leave me a lot of spots for able-bodied team members… hmmm. And so we reveal how much we are socialized to value ‘normalcy’, how much we value physical and mental ability, and how easily we associate the two.

What if neurodiversity could be seen as a strength in the right circumstances?

Creating a New Settlement

Imagine that we are sending a human contingent to settle Mars. Now imagine that most of the settlers are blind. The society that was set up would necessarily cater to blindness. As a sighted person, it is hard to even imagine what that society would look like. I have ideas about how I might set up a society that caters to blindness, but I am acutely aware that my suggestions come from a sighted framework and are shaped by accommodations we currently use to facilitate the inclusion of blind and low-vision individuals. Presumably, starting fresh would allow systems to be built around lack of vision. What we CAN imagine is that blindness would immediately cease to be a disability and might even become an advantage. (As an example, I have a friend who is deaf, with cochlear implants. She often refers to ‘taking off her ears’, which allows her to function in situations where a hearing person might be overwhelmed or even incapacitated.) In our new settlement on Mars, blindness would be akin to my current ‘dis-abilities’: I don’t have a tail and therefore don’t swing well from trees. I don’t have echolocation and therefore can’t navigate in the dark. But nobody counts those as disabilities because no one else can do those things either.

Back here on Earth, we talk about disability as a problem within an individual. “Oh, that’s too bad – he’s blind” or “It must be so difficult being blind.” However, we’ve just seen, in our Mars example, that in fact the disability is not the blindness itself, but rather the barriers enacted that make life on Earth difficult for those with low or no vision.

What if neurodiversity is not a disability, but that there are barriers that make full inclusion in society more difficult for those whose brain wiring differs from ‘the norm’?

An Inclusion Model

Let’s imagine another resettlement. This time we are sending two different contingents to settle two different parts of Mars, where every settler has a voice in planning. The first contingent is made up completely of individuals of ‘sound body and mind’. The second is intentionally made up of people with many varying abilities and disabilities. Which group do you think sets up a ‘better’ society? Examine your bias – what makes the society ‘better’? My own guess in this thought experiment is that the first settlement would get up and running more quickly, mostly reproducing improved forms of the systems left on Earth. However, I imagine the second settlement having more resilience down the line, as they would build with all of those varying abilities in mind. Theirs would be a more inclusive society, with a more universal design. They would be better prepared to deal with new challenges that arise in the future. I imagine a society built more on empathy, compassion, and tolerance, and one where people were valued for a wide range of contributions.

What if people’s worth and contribution were measured by their strengths and what they can offer, instead of their proximity to normal or ideal?

Neurodiversity as a Strength

Canadian society tends to recognize cultural diversity as a strength. We value and include people from all over the world, and we celebrate the various cultures that can be found across our country. We know there is still work to be done, but we pat ourselves on the back for our tolerance and open-mindedness.

What if we applied that same model to neurodiversity? What if we recognized that we NEED people who think differently? What if we believed that we could learn something from people who see the world in unique ways? What if, instead of TREATING neurodiversity, as if it were a disease, we LISTENED to the diverse wisdom that comes from people with brains that function in different ways?

Everyone who meets my son finds him fascinating. He is a true outside-the-box thinker. What makes him AMAZING is that he doesn’t look at the world the way most people do. He refuses “to be a sheep.” But what is frustrating is that everyone wants to hear what he has to say, but only if he presents it the way everyone else does. His talent is being different, but we’ll only listen to him if he changes to become more like everyone else.

What if we shift from a pathology paradigm to a neurodiversity paradigm? And that is the topic of the next post…

Post COVID Visioning

One month into the COVID-19 inspired shutdown, we have had plenty of time to adjust to ‘The New Normal.’ While there are differing opinions on how long this crisis will last, how severe the restrictions will get, and what might put an end to our current situation, most people seem to agree that we will not emerge as the same society we went in.

For many, this change has been hard, and for some, disastrous, signalling the end of a dream, or the promise of a bleak short-term future, with jobs and paycheques dwindling, and uncertainty of what lies on the other side.

For others, this change has been an interesting experiment – a chance to find new ways to work, to pass time, and to connect with friends and family.

For still others, this change has been a welcome respite from the constant treadmill of everyday life – a chance to take stock of what is really important. A chance to reconnect instead of attending endless meetings, to cook fresh meals instead of commuting, to figure out who they really are.

I have discovered that I am an introvert. For years, I have grappled with this question – I have believed that I hover somewhere near the middle of the spectrum. But it turns out that when I don’t feel I HAVE to be out, I prefer not to be. I don’t miss my life from before social distancing. Sure, there are some things I miss – face-to-face chats, the convenience of popping out to pick up something I forgot, feeling safe near other people – but on the whole, I’m pretty comfortable hibernating. Turns out I am a bit of a hermit underneath all of my jovial busyness. And that lines up with a book I recently read, Quiet, by Susan Cain. It suggests that many introverts in our society learn extroversion, because it’s so much more valued than introversion. And it makes me wonder… how many other closet introverts do I know?

Surprisingly, our family is functioning better now than we ever have. Stepping off the treadmill has allowed everyone to relax, to bond, and to find ways to be together more cohesively. We are planning meals and cooking almost everything from scratch. There is time to cook, eat, and play a game without having to rush off to hockey, or to parent council, or to run errands. The boys are finding creative ways to fill their time – admittedly with too much time on screens, but also choosing outdoor activities, reading, building and creating, and spending time together. Without the pressure of school everyday, with uneaten lunches, stress, homework, and sensory overload, the children are slower to escalate and more relational in their problem-solving. I know this is not the experience of many, but we are not alone. It seems especially poignant for families with children who struggle with the daily grind of school, but there are other people reporting that this enforced slow-down has been a miraculous gift that has allowed them to re-evaluate their priorities.

The COVID numbers are scary, and the stories are sad. People are grieving their lives before the pandemic. Fear and uncertainty has brought out the worst in some people – those who have hoarded supplies, or taken this as an excuse for blatant racism, or flouted social distancing because it needn’t apply to them – but for every one of those, there seem to be so many beautiful stories of connection, and grace, and unity.

What I find most incredible is the sense of community that has been built. The sense that we are all in this together, that we need to help each other. I am struck by the sudden shift as we all learn new systems and protocols. The grace we offer each other in our learning curves, the willingness of people to take risks, to ask for or offer help, and to think critically about what works and what doesn’t as we re-imagine what life might look like under new conditions. I am inspired by the outpouring of support for front line workers, both in health care and in low-paid retail and service jobs, who for the first time are being recognized as essential to our survival. I don’t hear many people grieving the loss of professional sports, and artists are offering shows and lessons online. People are sharing ideas, inspiration, and humour as we try to carry each other through an anxiety-producing situation. My Facebook feed is full of inspirational stories about the positive social and environmental impacts of a global shutdown: people singing from balconies, blue skies over China, dolphins in the Venice canals, swans in the fountains.

And to me, that is beautiful. This is not the society I lived in three months ago. At the end of 2019, it was clear that there was a desire for environmental protection. But there was also a sense of futility, that it couldn’t be done. You can’t just stop everything. It isn’t possible. The change needs to be slow.

But look – it CAN be done. As it turns out, when the threat is great enough, there is the will and ability to change. But environmental degradation threatens to kill more people than COVID. Significantly more. One article I read suggested 7 million people a year, already. So the question becomes “Why can we change for this, but not for the environment, which threatens more lives and also the welfare of all living things on Earth?” And I think the answer is that this is more immediately terrifying, as well as being contagious. There is an obvious solution that is being offered by experts and governments. The restrictions are not optional. But this sudden stoppage has shown us a glimpse of what could be. It has show us what we CAN live without.  

What if we use this enforced change to create lasting change? What if we emerge from this, not looking to rebuild what was, but to build something new? Something better. Something more sustainable, both socially and environmentally, while also preserving a functional economic system? What if we actually LEARNED from this experience? How would we re-imagine?

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Out of the Well! I am a teacher, parent, and human being interested in finding creative solutions to the myriad challenges that face us in modern society. I have been half-heartedly meaning to start this blog for years, and more recently had a false start where I ALMOST got going. Now that the world has STOPPED for a bit, I’ve been re-inspired. As difficult as this social distancing is in response to COVID-19, it brings me hope.

Hope that we can change.

Hope that we can learn.

Hope that we can re-imagine.

Hope that the connections we are building will open new possibilities.

Hope that the realizations we are having will help rebalance social inequities.

Hope that we can work together to make our world a healthier home for us all.

Be the change you want to see in the world, right? What changes do you want to see?