I feel very similarly, but I didn’t arrive at the same conviction through work — it came through parenting my children. I can see that each of my children is different and needs a different amount of time and space, and that some of the commonly recommended “standard” approaches work for one of them, while one of them is so unique that what works one day doesn’t apply at all the next.
I don’t yet know what life will bring, but this experience — not trying to fit children or people into boxes and templates — is something I would like to carry with me.
It’s a wonderful thing to carry with you, and so important for the time we are living in, I think. Yes, I can really see how parenting very different children can bring someone to the same perspective I shared here. Often we only recognise what wasn’t working, or what wasn’t ideal, in hindsight. But that doesn’t mean the path was wrong — sometimes the path itself is what allows us to arrive at a different way of seeing.
This article comes at the perfect time, continuiing your honest, insightful exploration of how our educational sistems often flatten complex human experience into harmful, quantifiable metrics, which really resonated with me as a teacher.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting. It means such a lot when I have carried these feelings for such a long time, to find that they resonate with others when shared 🙏 At the same time, I wish it wasn’t so… that we weren’t seeing such harms :-( I can only imagine how challenging your job is when you hold this kind of awareness. I hope that if more of us call it out then something will change.
This post really thoughtfully describes the danger of 'datafication' in education. Not every quality of a child can be quantified. Not nearly every one. Thank you for your thoughts on this topic Gem
Beautiful piece. I'm sharing it around because every parent, teacher, educational assistant needs to read this. I just read a news piece about how teachers and other education workers are being abused by children. The system's response is to hire more people to protect them, rather than asking why these children are lashing out, why they don't want to be there. So tragic!
Gosh, that’s horrendous and so backwards. What a mess we’re in. Thank you so much, Wendy — I’m deeply grateful that you’ve read this post and are sharing it; it really means a lot. You’re right, it’s so important to share these stories to shine a light on the shortcomings of systems that, unfortunately, so many people still place their trust in.
I feel very similarly, but I didn’t arrive at the same conviction through work — it came through parenting my children. I can see that each of my children is different and needs a different amount of time and space, and that some of the commonly recommended “standard” approaches work for one of them, while one of them is so unique that what works one day doesn’t apply at all the next.
I don’t yet know what life will bring, but this experience — not trying to fit children or people into boxes and templates — is something I would like to carry with me.
It’s a wonderful thing to carry with you, and so important for the time we are living in, I think. Yes, I can really see how parenting very different children can bring someone to the same perspective I shared here. Often we only recognise what wasn’t working, or what wasn’t ideal, in hindsight. But that doesn’t mean the path was wrong — sometimes the path itself is what allows us to arrive at a different way of seeing.
This article comes at the perfect time, continuiing your honest, insightful exploration of how our educational sistems often flatten complex human experience into harmful, quantifiable metrics, which really resonated with me as a teacher.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting. It means such a lot when I have carried these feelings for such a long time, to find that they resonate with others when shared 🙏 At the same time, I wish it wasn’t so… that we weren’t seeing such harms :-( I can only imagine how challenging your job is when you hold this kind of awareness. I hope that if more of us call it out then something will change.
This post really thoughtfully describes the danger of 'datafication' in education. Not every quality of a child can be quantified. Not nearly every one. Thank you for your thoughts on this topic Gem
Thank you so much for reading and commenting 🙏 You’re so right, much cannot be and probably shouldn’t be. The drive for data is a runaway train.
Beautiful piece. I'm sharing it around because every parent, teacher, educational assistant needs to read this. I just read a news piece about how teachers and other education workers are being abused by children. The system's response is to hire more people to protect them, rather than asking why these children are lashing out, why they don't want to be there. So tragic!
Gosh, that’s horrendous and so backwards. What a mess we’re in. Thank you so much, Wendy — I’m deeply grateful that you’ve read this post and are sharing it; it really means a lot. You’re right, it’s so important to share these stories to shine a light on the shortcomings of systems that, unfortunately, so many people still place their trust in.
So honest and brave...Gemma's legacy:) beautiful!
Thank you 🙏😘