Tending the roots of our education crisis

'We need to stop blaming young people for their distress in reaction to problems in the school system. They aren’t the problem; they are pointing out a problem.' Naomi Fisher.

Last week our small team at ThoughtBox brought 15 education leaders together for 3 days for the Transforming Education Summit – a chance to step back from firefighting symptoms and start to address some of the root causes of a system - and a world - in crisis.

It's hard to look at the overwhelming crises we’re currently facing. Yet look we must – for by zooming out (being a hawk) and looking at the bigger picture, we better understand how best to respond to address the root causes and create a healthier culture for people and planet.

During our gathering, we created an ‘ugly wall’ to capture some of these feelings and of the heartbreak we’re feeling about our world and honour the pain we’re feeling. This heartbreak stayed with us for the duration and helped to focus attention on treating the root causes of our nested crises – for whilst it may seem we’re spiralling out of control when we turn on the news each day, all of the issues we’re facing across the world stem from one just thing: a crisis of connection.

“The metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises." Jonathan Rowson.

We used the lens of the metacrisis to appreciate how all of the problems we’re facing - on a personal, local and global scale – stem from a crisis of connection and the severing of relationships with ourselves, each other and nature.

Whilst painful to look and to appreciate, seeing through the lens of metacrisis allows us to focus energy on co-creating a healthier future for people and planet; responding to all our crises by practising ‘reconnection’ – with ourselves (self-care), with each other (people-care) and with the wider natural world (earth-care).

🤝Take a look at a headline story (or something on the ugly wall below) and think about how this is showing us a symptom of disconnection (from ourselves, each other, the planet).

🤝Think about how this could be addressed through a process of connection / relationship building.

🤝Focus on one action or practice that you could start doing today to respond.

NB: Gratitude to one of our teachers – Ben Mali – who was quietly playing piano as I was filming the wall. Ben didn’t know I was filming – which makes the poignant key change as I pan to the ‘gratitude tree’ mid-way through even more powerful 😊