Technolandy

Day 68 (of 2025/26) Confronting Education Reflection… thank you @WillRichardson (new cohort in 2026 – check it out!!)

Final takeaway: What to do next when…. Doing nothing feels irresponsible, as does doing the wrong thing…   but be mindful that first: do no harm

One of the hardest things (as pointed out)has been being able to come up with a way to “summarizing what we have done….” But I’m going to try… 

For some reason, iambic pentameter felt kinda right for a reflection/synthesis: 

Confronting Education 2025: One Foot in the Rubble, One in the Soil

When worlds deny the tremors in their bones,

When comfort dulls the warnings of the bells,

We stand in classrooms built on sinking stones,

And ask what future waits for child or kin.

For all is land — the ground, the code, the cloud,

Entanglements that bind our breath to dust.

We bow in thanks, but must unlearn the proud

Assumption that the world revolves on us.

Our crisis is no “problem” to be solved,

But predicaments that beg us not to flee.

The rubble shows the systems long dissolved;

The soil whispers what we yet might sow.

What schools deny runs deeper than we teach:

The limits of the earth, our borrowed joy,

The myth our comforts cost of unseen reach,

And hope reduced to shiny, plastic toys.

The youth speak truths we’re fearful to explore:

“You were not young within the world I face.”

They do not want our tests; they ask for more:

A chance to learn with dignity and grace.

We sit with grief — the microplastic ache,

The reefs that ghost beneath collapsing waves.

To hospice what no longer helps us make

A world worth living in for those we raise.

Yet in the quiet, something still takes root:

A circle formed, a question held with care,

The courage to imagine what we suit

If freed from fear and faithful to repair.

For learning’s natural — schools are not the same;

The lecture hall is not the human heart.

And banning phones won’t stoke a brighter flame:

Connection fails when rules replace the art.

So let us stand with one foot in the soil,

The other on the rubble of this age,

To face the truth, to look beyond the toil,

To turn our children’s futures from a cage.

Success is not compliance, test, or score;

It’s how we teach them courage, care, and choice.

It’s how we face the storms outside our door,

And how we raise a just, collective voice.

To be good ancestors, we must begin:

Create conditions where the heart can grow.

Tell deeper truths. Invite the grief within.

Imagine harder. Shape the world we owe.

More linear (and mindfully ironic as a five paragraph essay with five sentences for those who feel education output reached its zenith in 1698) 

This fall’s Confronting Education series made it impossible to keep pretending we are dealing with simple educational problems, because problems have solutions while predicaments demand courage. They require grief, adaptation, and a willingness to face truths we’d much rather outrun. The world our students are inheriting is fundamentally different from the one adults grew up in, echoing Margaret Mead’s reminder that each generation inhabits a new world. Today’s learners move through climate instability, technological entanglement, social fragmentation, and systemic inequities that can no longer be denied. And schools, despite noble intentions, were designed for a world that is now collapsing under its own unexamined assumptions.

Andreotti’s Four Denials help expose the foundations of this collapse, beginning with our insistence that progress has no limits. They also highlight our refusal to acknowledge the harm created by our own comforts, the denial of our entanglement with all life, and the unwillingness to face the scale of our crises. These denials appear in classrooms when we avoid discussing climate grief, rush to fix instead of witness, or ban devices that have become part of our students’ identities. They show up again when we cling to test scores as if they can save us from uncertainty. Together, they reveal an educational culture that often seeks control rather than understanding.

We are living through a shift from pre-tragic to tragic to post-tragic, but schools typically remain stuck in the pre-tragic stage. They insist that small adjustments will somehow repair a system facing existential challenges. Many educators in the series admitted they have already crossed into the tragic, acknowledging overwhelm, grief, and a loss of foothold. A smaller number are stepping into the post-tragic, accepting reality so they can imagine new ways of being. And this shift underscores a central truth: education is preparing children for our past rather than their future.

When success is defined by standardized metrics, the system takes precedence over the child, and learning becomes something to measure instead of something to experience. Yet learning itself is natural even if schooling is not, and this tension surfaced repeatedly throughout the series. Speakers emphasized that what truly matters are relationships, human connection, and community. They urged us to cultivate the capacity to envision different futures instead of doubling down on a collapsing present. Their message was clear: the relational is the soil where meaningful learning grows.

Moving forward requires spaces where difficult truths can be spoken without fear, along with conditions that support deep learning rather than compliance. It also demands the courage to hospice what no longer serves, the imagination to lead differently, and a shift from the idea of the “educated citizen” to the “educated ancestor.” As I leave this series, I feel changed, emboldened, and less alone in the discomfort that now feels necessary rather than flawed. I am committed to pushing provocations throughout the system, naming the denials, and asking the hard questions we tend to avoid. And if we keep one foot in the rubble and one in the soil, we may yet grow something worthy of those who will inherit what comes next.

Love the duality and hypocrisy of education at the moment – some great opportunities await – and provocations to ponder!