Learning is Change

I am a Crypto and Blockchain Luddite.

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In the 18th and 19th centuries, the industrialization of textile equipment allowed for cheaper production of clothing and disempowerment of skilled craftspeople across the industry. In the face of losing their livelihood to automated textile production technologies, the Luddites fought back. They fought for better working conditions in factories and they fought for a return to a pre-industrial era. They are known for “Machine-breaking” which was outlawed in the early 19th century as a way to ensure the Luddite movement would have severe consequences (death, in many cases).

And yet, many have noted that the Luddites were not actually anti-technology or anti-progress. Rather, they were against the poor treatment of workers and the deterioration of working conditions in the factories that implemented these technologies. They wanted high-paying jobs and skilled work for continuing to make high-quality goods. They rightly saw the “race to the bottom” for textile production (making the cheapest possible shirt, for example) was beneficial only for those who owned the factories and not for those who worked in those factories.

The Luddites were for a concept of “fair profit” in which the increase in profits from the efficiency gains of technology would be widely shared with the workers as a kind of moral imperative. They believed it was “good” for the wealth and productivity gains of industrialization to make positive change for the lives of more people and it was “bad” for those gains to have a negative impact on society by concentrating wealth in the hands of a few industrialists who, in many cases, already had the benefit of generational wealth.

Ultimately, the Luddites were defeated, as they lacked political power and the money from industrialized production easily outweighed the poor workers that were displaced by the advanced machinery. And yet, the concept of a “minimum wage” and worker’s rights continued to have an impact across multiple industry modernization efforts. Their movement was not successful in finding a way back to high-paying jobs for thousands of skilled handloom weavers, but their fight was an important one for how we understand the power technology and “progress” can have on our lives.

And perhaps, I am starting to see a movement toward a new kind of Ludditism, a new fight for the future of how money is made and who gets to control it. I believe the new fight is with Crypto and Blockchain technologies. And this time, the Luddites are going to win.

For the past few years, I had been cautiously optimistic about how blockchain technology might be beneficial for education. I was listening to folks in the Office of Educational Technology (in the US Dept. of Education) about their Education Blockchain Initiative which seeks to subvert traditional educational models in favor of transactional and credential-able learning outcomes.

I was enamored by the idea of easily transferable credentials that would not have to be verified by a single arbiter of education (a school, a business, a government entity, etc.), but would rather be verified by the whole system of learning that we had all agreed to govern the process (a distributed ledger of all learning!).

I was further excited by the idea of student ownership for their learning data and that future versions of student profiles could have their entire portfolio of learning objects stored “on the blockchain” which would allow for better reflection and demonstration of competency and progress.

And when strong and inclusive Community structures for learning became a part of the blockchain ecosystem, my head started spinning with possibility for what it could mean for educational institutions and individuals who are passionate about bringing people together to do important work (like solving for the climate crisis or creating a more equitable society).

Just imagine if you could hold “a token,” or key, to all of the resources you might need for your learning. Imagine that token was your identity and it could contain or provide access to your transcript, your job history, your “learning transactions,” and all of your assignments in an immutable ledger that requires significant storage space and computing power to add things or build upon.

And while I was continuing my cautious optimism about the ideas or the future of blockchain, crypto.com was buying stadium naming rights and Matt Damon started telling the world that investing in crypto was going to be the new frontier and we better get on board or we will be left behind (or worse, poor). The things that were actually the here and now of blockchain, the things actually being done with it in 2016-2022, were kind of terrible.

But, all of these important “caveats” of blockchain were somehow dismissed as either “beside the point” or were not about The Future, which was obviously going to be awesome! And then I watched this video from Folding Ideas (Dan Olson):

I fully understand that you may not have the time to watch this documentary length YouTube video, but you should. You should take one of the times you would otherwise watch a movie and watch this instead. It is that good. Oh, and after watching it, there is a high likelihood that you will start to see all of the complaints about Blockchain, Crypto, and NFTs as just the opening gambit for the full truckload of terribleness that is the grift-laden blockchain hype machine.

But, in case you don’t have the time to sit down for the full video, here are a few summarized highlights that I found compelling (with linked timecodes):

  • Blockchain projects (especially those around NFTs, Cryptocurrency, or gaining access to something via ownership) are inherently a “Greater Fool” scam in which the early adopters and hype-based promoters are rewarded and later adherents receive diminishing returns (38:51).
  • The security of blockchain is laughable and the privacy of blockchain transactions is almost nonexistent (81:00 and 85:41).
  • NFT’s (and all blockchain data) only “point to” the resource/image/asset being sold, and therefore manipulation of the NFT is as trivial as changing what the URL resolves to and the assets are infinitely copyable and can be “owned” on as many blockchains as can be created (46:47).
  • One of the primary (although, unstated) goals of blockchain technology is to “tokenize everything,” making everything into a stock market that can be speculated upon (94:48).
  • Organizations (like labor unions, communities of practice, schools, etc.) are too complex to be represented in code as a DAO and any of the claimed benefits (efficient bookkeeping, improved asset management, etc.) can already be done by faster technologies at a fraction of the price of running transactions on a blockchain (123:54).
  • The “winners” of Crypto and blockchain projects are the same “winners” we have in more traditional financial instruments and that is why they so closely mimic the financial bubbles (and busts) of the past rather than representing a brave new world of commerce (75:16).
  • Putting all of your records (passwords, credit card info, your social media profiles, etc.) into an identity on the blockchain creates a single, easily decipherable and socially engineered, point of failure that is not only impractical but has demonstrated to be an easy target for would-be thieves (80:25).
  • Deflationary assets (in particular, currencies) punish the actual use of those assets, as there will never be more “tokens” or “coins” and so holding on to them is the only way to guarantee you “win” (meaning, can sell them tomorrow for more than they were worth yesterday). This means that the Crypto becomes essentially useless for tasks other than speculation (112:06).
  • While decentralization has been sold as a core tenet of blockchain technology, the power over much of the “network” is concentrated in a very small number of people’s/company’s hands, and those people are not interested in further democratizing the internet (114:19).
  • The power consumption for blockchain technology is entirely unnecessary, as the vast majority of the power needed is consumed doing duplicate work for verifying transactions (15:52).

I could continue to list all of the persuasive things in Dan Olsen’s video essay, but I feel as though it would just be piling on. By this point, you should recognize that Blockchain technology is bad at what it claims to do well: propose a viable alternative for economic institutions and transactions and way forward for building lasting and meaningful social institutions. You should also see that in attempting to solve for non-existent problems like man-in-the-middle attacks (31:15) or previously solved problems like conducting straw polls (125:20), it creates far worse problems for pretty much everyone involved (136:09).

This is why I am now a Crypto and Blockchain Luddite.

It isn’t enough to write snarky jokes on Twitter about Blockchain projects or do important think pieces about why paying more than a million dollars for a meme is a terrible idea. We must actively engage in “Machine-Breaking.” We must dismantle the incentives for folks to create more and more “Greater Fools.” We must not listen to the celebrity endorsements or the promises of large windfalls just over the horizon. We must not wait and see what the future of Blockchain technology holds. It is here now and no amount of hype is going to make the fundamental flaws in the technology go away.

But, what does a Blockchain Luddite believe? I have a few thoughts:

  1. I believe in hard work over inscrutable schemes.
  2. I believe in people and transparent processes over code and immutable ledgers.
  3. I believe in shared ownership of ideas and power over individual gains and concentrated wealth.
  4. I believe in equity and inquiry over toxic positivity and a hype machine.
  5. I believe in sustained progress toward a better future over techno-futurists’ quick fixes.
  6. I believe in building trust in and with others over creating trust-less systems.

And what can a Blockchain Luddite do to make sure that this kind of technology does not become the backbone of our economy, politics, or education?

  1. Invest in local solutions to local issues. This includes investing in and supporting public schools, independent journalism, and technologies/companies that honor and value people.
  2. Fight back against the hype machine wherever it presents itself. Whenever someone “makes a good point” about Crypto solving a problem (or potentially solving a problem in the future), ask if that problem could be solved better without blockchain technology. Ask if those who are “getting in now” are having the same opportunity as those who “got in” days, weeks, or months prior.
  3. Do not buy Cryptocoins, NFTs, or other technologies that are based upon the Blockchain. If we do not provide more “Greater Fools,” the speculative markets will collapse.
  4. Make cool things that do not leverage append-only ledger technologies or trust-less networks. Make privacy-focused opportunities for innovation. Bake equity into your technology and your organizations.

With all of this said, I do not claim to have a special kind of knowledge about the future (or the past for that matter). I am a technologist and an inquirer. I make observations based upon the information in front of me and what I can learn from others who have done the same. So, even if you aren’t ready to join me in becoming a Blockchain Luddite, I encourage you to read widely on the subject and make financial and technological decisions based upon your values and your understanding. That is the best that any of us can do.

If, on the other hand, you are ready to make Regular Progress that is not built upon the Blockchain, I’m attempting to forge a new community of people here to do just that. Blockchain Luddites of the world, unite!

Violence is not Dissent

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Language is powerful. It has the ability to make us cry or move us to action in an instant. A few words, when written out and written on paper or pumped into our eyeballs on a screen can inspire a generation or topple a government. And because the cost of “printing” those words has gone through the floor, we no longer understand what they are capable of, what we are capable of when we use words to threaten or advocate violence.

A tweet is ephemeral. A text takes almost no thought whatsoever. A message posted to a private facebook group or the local Nextdoor community is habitual. Even, a letter sent to someone’s house after they have been doxxed is barely harder after you have been given the words to say by “your team.” We may not be inoculating ourselves to deadly viruses at the rate that will allow us to leave them behind, but we are all inoculated to language. It is around us in every moment, barely registering. Written language is water.

It is just that some of it has been poisoned.

Even though these poisoned words may cost us nothing, we must remember that they can cost others everything.

Our words:

And to what end?

What does winning look like for those who are advocating violence? Is it to live in a society where there are only those who believe as you do? Is it to have a single vision of education, politics, and the social order?

It seems now that we have ratcheted up the stakes so high that every message sent is kill or be killed. But, that isn’t all that language is for. We can speak to inspire, to create, or to empower. We can write to create opportunities for ourselves and others. We can entertain or wonder aloud. And yes, we can also dissent.

But violence is not dissent. It is not speech of any kind. In fact, it is the limiting of speech. It is making sure that others know that speech is meaningless. At least that is what it has become. For if the words you write into the little Facebook field don’t mean anything, you can say whatever you want and feel no remorse for death threats. You can keep encouraging one another to feel more and more aggrieved so that you feel justified in posting noose iconography. You can make others feel unwelcome and unsafe.

But, this is not where it ends. When words lose their meaning, violence is all we have left. And even if it isn’t dissent, it is still incredibly scary. For those of us for whom words still have meaning, we know what is coming. While it may have been true once that the pen was mightier than the sword, by making the pen impotent many feel as though the sword is all they have left.

Community Rules

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I joined Twitter in March of 2007. In the five thousand four hundred and forty-six days since then, I have tweeted nearly 19,000 times. That is a lot of words to put out into the world. The question you might ask yourself is, “Why?”

What is it about Twitter that continues to hold my attention? Why have I invested so much of my precious time on this earth in writing a few words or sharing a few links with a seemingly indifferent internet populous?

Even though much of Twitter is wholly uninteresting, hateful, or even toxic, I can honestly say that the reason I keep coming back to the service after all of these years is the community that I find there. I can say this without a hint of irony about the same Twitter that empowered much of this country’s worst instincts. I can say this because I mean something very specific by Community.

For me, Community is not a hashtag to be thrown around or painted with a broad brush. A community serves a function.

A community:

  1. Provides value to its members (although not the same value for each member).
    • I laugh frequently after reading what others have posted. I am inspired and I am angry. I am moved to action. I read and learn about new ideas. I get outside of my own little bubble of the world. The value I derive on one day is not the same as any other day. My value is not universal. It is personal.
  2. Is made up of a diverse and ever-changing group of people.
    • I have mass-unfollowed everyone a half-dozen times over the last 14 years. Each time, I build a new group of individuals, sometimes political, sometimes personal, and sometimes professional. With as many types of people there are in the world, I have yet to find the end to the variation. It is incredible.
  3. Receives contributions from its members based upon their varied lived experience and cultural backgrounds.
    • I want to learn from others who are different than me. Collectively, we know far more than we could ever know individually. I will likely never live in Paris nor will I ever know what it means to grow up Black in a Southern state. On Twitter, I can learn from both experiences. And that is the contribution they give to the community: the gravity of their own lives.
  4. Has a common language that is always adding new words, memes, and touchstone moments.
    • We didn’t always have retweets, hashtags, or @ mentions. We didn’t always know how to thread conversations together. These things have grown up because we needed a reason for them to exist. Their reason is community, and that shared understanding of the platform helps to build deeper connections.
  5. Has a shared self-selected purpose, even if that purpose only lasts for the duration of a single afternoon.
    • Many of us use twitter to comment on the world around us. When we are in a shared moment (a major world event, a political movement, etc.), we can engage in the same conversation. We amplify and build upon one another’s voices. This is a shared purpose, even if it is just a 3 hour football game.
  6. Contributes to a larger public conversation.
    • One of the most important aspects of Twitter is that Tweets (for the most part) are publicly available and publicly searchable. It is the opposite of Facebook groups and pages because those spaces let anyone hide behind the garden walls. When people share on Twitter, they are speaking in public. And, that let’s us learn from anyone.

And yet, the same things that make this Twitter community so strong are the things that make it amorphous and often unfulfilling. The concept that “anyone can tweet” presents a challenge for maintaining long-running conversations or building deeper bonds within a community. Ideas can be co-opted or hijacked in an instant, and until now, Twitter has lacked the tools to fight against the base instincts of an internet mob.

But, that may be changing.

Yesterday, I was invited to take part in the Twitter Communities beta. This means that I can now have a space (exactly one, actually) with a set of community rules and a shared understanding for what should happen there. These are the ones that I came up with:

While these may change over time as the community grows, these were my first instincts for how to create a space that is only the best of what Twitter has to offer. And when I finally created the “Regular Progress” community, it felt like I was getting back what it felt like to scream into the void in 2007 and have a dozen or so strangers respond.

I wonder if you might like to join me there. Maybe you too would like to help “Chronicle the Regular Progress we are all making, whether that is in parenting, politics, or personal growth.”

We aren’t just going to share #wins, but also what we have learned from our losses. We are going to be real, whole, human beings in this space, and I would love for you to take part. And I hope, after spending some time there and sharing your progress, you will come to believe what I do about Twitter: Community Rules.

Our dishwasher is broken, and I like it that way.

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I just finished cleaning up the last of the detritus from our Super Bowl Festivities last night. We had a neighbor family over for “the big game” and the experience did not disappoint. We enjoyed wings, brats, little smokies, sautéed carrots, cucumber sandwiches, and all manner of terrible snack food (including an enormous bag of movie theater popcorn that one of our children’s friends had procured from the local AMC). All of those foods (and the people who ate them) required 77 bowls, plates, serving containers, utensils, and various other cooking implements. I know this because I washed all of them by hand this morning.

It is a ritual I complete every morning. And more or less, my counter looks like this when I’m done:

You see, our dishwasher is broken. It stopped working over a year ago, and I don’t anticipate getting it fixed any time soon. It isn’t because I’m overly cheap or because I think that I can fix it myself (I’m not and I can’t). Rather, my dishwasher will remain broken because I like doing the dishes, by hand.

There are very few visible accomplishments in my day. Most of the progress I make, is nearly imperceptible. Whether that is a deeper relationship with my oldest child or the dozens of applications that I review for role at Minerva University, there is no physical manifestation of the work I am doing. The dishes are different.

When I do the dishes, I know when I have scrubbed each one enough to consider it clean. I can see the food residue coming off as a result of my (not so) steady hands. I am making a difference in the clutter of my kitchen, ensuring that each of these dishes will find their way back home in the course of the day. I am responsible for them, and I love making good on the promise I make to myself each day, knowing that I will complete this task and have something to (literally) show for it.

I also wash dishes by hand because I know the outcome. Unlike most of the other actions I take in a day, doing the dishes is a known quantity. When I ask my children to clean up their room, I am often surprised by the result. Going to the grocery store has a million possibilities and I know that I will be influenced by a thousand different advertising decisions that others have made to ensure I buy their product. There are no such competing priorities or mysterious options when I turn to a sink of dirty dishes. Each dish passes through my hands going from one state to another. It is transformed in the time I take with it, which is not something I can say for every email I send or errand I run. I am not typically changed by the experience. But, these dishes are. They are clean. And, I know this because I am the one that is doing it. I am the one ushering them to a new state, ready to fulfill their purpose once again.

Washing dishes by hand, also affords me one more thing that I so desperately need: time with myself while not looking at a screen. Because the dishes require a certain level of care and attention, I am forced to look away from the shiny object in my pocket. Because I have to cover my hands in soap and water, there is no room for electronic devices in the mix. It is, with the possible exception of cooking and eating food with my family, one of the only times in my day where I don’t even have that option. It is glorious. For 30-60 minutes of every morning, I have removed the ever-present visual stimulus. My thoughts are my own as I work to remove the bit of ketchup on the plate or milk from the bottom of the glass.

And sometimes, during the best dish washing sessions, I can even be inspired. I have listened to books that have made me change the way I think about oppression and societal hierarchy. I have listened to podcasts that have brought me out of the doldrums I was feeling or made me cry for the sheer beauty of collective humanity. I have also listened to my own thoughts and had important realizations about my marriage and my own happiness.

Washing the dishes by hand is a “life hack.” It gives me far more than clean cups and plates. It gives me a better day, every day.

I’m not a good neighbor.

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My house, and more importantly my driveway, face to the south. This means that at no time during the day, does my house throw shade onto my driveway or the sidewalk in front of my house. While this may not seem like a big deal, it is.

I live in Colorado, and when it snows, it is incredible. These huge fluffy flakes come down and start to accumulate almost immediately. They create a effortless blanket on my miniature lawn, my postage stamp driveway, and my too small sidewalk (mostly it just functions as a curb to designate the difference between the road and the driveway). It covers everything, elegant and undisturbed.

But, this is where the magic of the south facing house comes in. Because of our altitude and the number of sunny days in suburban Denver, the sun will start to sublimate the snow from the moment it rises. So long as I don’t drive over it or walk through it, the snow is most often gone from my driveway by 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. This includes snowfalls of more than 6 inches in an evening and sunny days where the temperature is below freezing.

It is an incredible gift that I take full advantage of. Often, I have boasted that I have never shoveled my driveway in the 13 years that I have lived here. This may sound crazy to those of you who live on the east coast or in a “snow belt” like I did growing up where the cold weather would pick up moisture from the lake and “dump” huge piles upon your house.

And yet, there are those who are not content to let me hold on to this little bit of magical grace. On the rare occurrence that it is not a sunny day after a large storm, the snow does not disappear and we are left with the white blanket for multiple days. And sometimes, as people walk through the snow, those footprints will turn to ice.

One such occurrence was last week, when it took 5 whole days for the snow on my driveway to melt. During this time period, I patiently waited for the sun to work its magic, but it was too cold and the sun was too often playing peekaboo with the clouds.

It was during this time that I received a letter, presumably from one of my neighbors:

This letter certainly had the desired effect. I dutifully got out my shovel (a yard shovel, because I don’t own a snow shovel, as I am really committed to the bit about the magical sun) and got the icy-snow off of the sidewalk that measures less than two feet across. It took less than 10 minutes.

The issue is that I don’t really know how to feel about this letter.

This neighbor is not being mean. They did not accuse me of trying to make them fall or of targeting them specifically. They were simply asking me to be a “good neighbor.”

But then my brain started doing somersaults when I turned to think about this neighborhood and what it takes to be a “good neighbor.” To be a good neighbor here, you have to do the following:

Being a “good neighbor” can mean a lot of things, but it requires that you live in a “neighborhood.”

It requires that you respect the difference among you. It takes an understanding of what might be going on for an individual who, for whatever reason, chooses to not shovel their driveway. It may be that they are physically unable. It may be that they find the numerous trails 100 yards outside of our tiny neighborhood to be far superior to the small sidewalks within it. It may be that they have been having a hard week and would prefer to let inessential things go.

And yet, it may all just be a fiction that I am telling myself in order to get out of contributing in such a small way to others. Why should I make my own issues with the neighborhood into everyone else’s. Perhaps I should just suck it up and shovel the sidewalk.

I’ll let you judge for yourself.

This is what my driveway looked like this morning at 8:29:

This is what it looked like at 2:50 this afternoon:

Why would you want to interrupt this magic?

Am I a Bank now?

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I set up my first bank account with Wells Fargo when I arrived for college in Colorado during the fall in 2001. It was in the local Safeway branch that was within walking distance from The University of Denver. It was convenient-ish to go down the street and get money out for the weekend. What really got the hooks in, though, was when I met my wife. She too had a Wells Fargo account and we just ended up merging all of the finances.

We opened business accounts and savings accounts. We took out a loan to pay for our badly needed new windows. We used these accounts for incredibly boring reasons and to do impressively mundane things like paying our mortgage and paying off student debt.

But, yesterday we quit doing even that. I went into a branch near my house and closed down every account that we had with Wells Fargo. After 21 years, we no longer have a need for them.

And, as I received the “close out” checks and signed the digital paperwork, I used my phone as my Digital ID (which is one of the more incredible things about Colorado). I then deposited those checks with my phone into our last checking account in existence (at Key). Then I went to get a coffee, using my watch to pay for it.

While I sipped that coffee, I read that Apple is enabling anyone to become a merchant and to receive payment just by tapping their phones together. For a while now, you have been able to send and receive money on your phone. Services like Venmo, Cash App, or Apple Pay Cash have become absolutely pervasive. So much so, that it seems odd in any situation that requires a “routing number” or a even a physical card.

So, am I a Bank now?

The things I used to need Wells Fargo for when I was 18 hardly seem to matter. Cash is almost nonexistent in my life, such that ATMs feel like a novelty. I have not written a check in years and I’m pretty sure my kids will never write one. All of my bills are paid online (even if I hate the little fees that some folks still think are appropriate). I pay people back with Venmo. I pay for services with Cash App. My phone provides more functionality and a higher level of service than a bank branch, and there are no minimum balances to worry about or weird transfer setups that are required in order to have a specific type of account that gives better interest rates. (This was an actual process we had to do for years at Wells Fargo, in which we had to create a monthly recurring $100 transfer back and forth between two business accounts.)

I still do very boring things with my money. I buy groceries. I pay off debt. I try to make good decisions about my credit. But, I have opened my very last bank account. And if I wanted to, I could manage everything from my phone (including getting paid with direct deposit.) I am convinced this is a good thing. It is progress for me, and for the rest of us for whom going into a bank is an incredible hassle. It is better to have the tools for commerce at my fingertips.

Just this week, I donated to political candidates who are advocating for equity via text. I gave money to a student who wrote something I found essential. I paid for a digital gaming service that gave my children a weekend of joy. This was all from my phone and without any friction whatsoever. These too are boring things to do with money, but I’m pretty sure they are fundamentally changing our relationship to our devices, to corporations, and to each other. Hopefully for the better.

[Caveat: All of the above is coming from a incredible place of privilege. I am well aware that many parts of the country still rely upon cash. I also know that being “unbanked” is a huge issue for folks who cannot establish credit or get loans. I am attempting to comment on the current state of my own personal banking needs and these observations are likely not widely representative of all generations, races, or socioeconomic levels. However, I believe that these advances in technology and practice have the potential to provide banking, credit development, and other services in a far more democratized fashion than previous eras. I hope this is leading us to a better and more equatable place with money, but I have certainly been wrong before.]

From Mastery to Inquiry

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I have often considered Mastery to be the thing to which all students should strive. I have thought of it as the pinnacle of achievement in any area of my life. After all, the spectrum of knowledge moves from naïveté to Mastery, right? You should want to be a master of your domain, whether that is engineering, film-making, poetry, or cuisine.

And yet, I now find the concept of Mastery to be severely lacking.

Why should we strive to master concepts or disciplines in the same way that others might master human beings (you know, slavery)? Why should we encourage children to pursue mastery when that word implies a singular feat, a destination to be reached by competing with and dominating others. There is no final state of learning. You will never become the master of math or reading (or basketball, for that matter). You can only continue on your path, one distinct from every other.

And it isn’t just the word, its definition, or its origin that I am struggling with. When you look up all of the other words you might replace it with, you realize just how gendered and fraught the whole endeavor is:

We should not seek to be “Big Daddy’s” of our learning or the “owner” of all knowledge. As educators and leaders, it is not for us to be the opposite of our “pupils.” We are on the same journey, and it isn’t triangle shaped with the “Archetypes” at the top and everyone else who is striving to climb a fictional ladder to be installed as the final “champion” of education.

I believe we are experiencing the golden age of learning. We have access to everything we need to authentically make progress in any pursuit we like. This is happening every day with Youtube mechanics, Wikipedia scholars, and Medium storytellers and journalists. We just lack the words to adequately describe the process of moving from a lack of knowledge to a significant amount of expertise and understanding.

Furthermore, we lack the language to differentiate between those “doing their own research” and those who are applying the scientific methods (or other rigorous frameworks to establish objectivity and validity). If we claim “expertise” or “mastery,” we are claiming a high ground, no matter how rocky the footing is. If we continue to build our educational systems (including those employed within organizations in the guise of Professional Development) based upon those who have developed Mastery, we are setting ourselves up to be disappointed. We will never get there. We will always find ourselves fighting against hierarchy and gatekeeping because our language makes it so.

If there is one Master, then the rest of us are servants. At least until we can be Masters ourselves. This dichotomous language doesn’t serve us well. So, I would like to propose a change.

Inquiry is the new Mastery.

If we frame the spectrum from Naïveté to Inquiry, there is no final state. Inquiry goes on forever. Inquirers thirst for information and can always find more. While Masters dictate truth, Inquirers make meaning from the world around them. Inquiry serves us far better in a world where there are far too many sources to ever know the whole story. The authentic quest for learning is is the goal, not Mastery of some fictional ideal.

Better yet, Inquiry is actually possible, whereas Mastery is always out of our reach. Even the most incredibly talented individuals experience “imposter syndrome,” but no one is ever done learning. Orienting our systems toward inquiry and becoming better at learning over time is the best tool we have for combating misinformation and skepticism for well-established research methods.

So, whenever you find yourself advocating for Mastery, please take a pause. It is likely that you want Inquiry. You want to be a passionate inquirer, an experienced inquirer, an open inquirer. You want others to inquire with you, as teammates, colleagues, or friends. You don’t want to be Masters over them. You want them to go on the voyage with you.

By changing our language we may just be able to start inviting others into our world, not as subjects which must pay fealty, but as inquiry companions. To get us started, maybe we should all post the universal sign to indicate our movement away from Mastery: Inquire Within.

Parents vs. Teachers?

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I am not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point in the last 50 years, teachers became “Other.” They became people who come from outside of the community in which they teach. Teachers became antagonists in a war for our nation’s soul. They became masters of indoctrination as well as robots doing the bidding of boogeyman unions.

They were no longer civil servants who spent a great deal of money to join a profession with very little monetary upside. Teaching was no longer a vocation to which people heed the call but rather a dead-end job of last resort. Teachers were not kind. They did not care for, or even teach, your children. Rather, they were a liability, a parasite leaching off of the perfection of your kids for a paycheck. 

At least that is what you would think if you only read the Facebook comments.

In particular, the comments that were so well highlighted by Nick Covington, an History teacher from Iowa, in a debate about whether to put cameras in every classroom of a school for the expressed reason of “seeing what our children are being taught.”

This thread struck such a chord with me because it seems so foreign and such a drastic departure from the discourse that I was a part of as a teacher in the first decade of this century. And yet, it follows directly from the rhetoric of fear that has been pervasive in many other areas of our lives, from politics to healthcare. 

I felt so strongly, that I felt compelled to respond. Not to poke fun at the outlandishness, but rather to delve into what is really being asked for and seeing if these words can stand on their own when they are taken out of the toxic cesspool that are Facebook parent groups:

This is the clearest indication that many parents do not know how to navigate the publicly available curriculum of their schools. The information about which books are being taught, which textbooks are being purchased, and which teaching resources are being utilized is not a secret. In fact, the vast majority of these decisions are made at a district level and are available via open records requests. The need for cameras is entirely misplaced, given the wealth of opportunity that is afforded to parents for engaging with the transparent way that public schools have to make purchases and provide records.

This seems like an innocent enough statement, as we have come to believe in the proliferation of “body cams” for police officers as a true asset for public awareness and accountability of bad actors among them. And yet, this would require us to see students as (potential) criminals, and I find it hard to believe that parents want their students to be thought of in that way.

The issue is that Cameras do not discriminate. They will pick up hate speech from everyone. They pick up the vulnerable moments of kindness from all. They will pick up the mistakes of every single fifth grader who hasn’t figured out the boundaries of acceptable behavior. They will pick up the machinations of an ill-informed teen who is bullying a classmate for their differences (politically, socioeconomically, racially). It is a statement of belief that all behavior should be policed. And the results of that are that all children will be prosecuted for their transgressions, not just the adults that you think are “doing harm.” And yes, that includes your children. Read this statement another way, “If your children have nothing to hide, they will hide nothing.” When your kids are the ones under suspicion, how much do you want cameras in the classroom?

It is obvious from this statement that this individual does not trust teachers, but what is less obvious is she also do not trust her children (or the children of the other parents in this Facebook group). If she trusted her children, she would not worry about multiple viewpoints in the classroom. She would know that her children would be able to critically evaluate “woken, leftist or progressive beliefs” and reject them as inferior ideologies. Instead, she sees her hold on her children’s minds as so tenuous that even the mention of equity in a classroom will somehow turn them away from an “america first” perspective.

So, I have to wonder, is this belief system so fragile, so uneasy and ill-conceived, that it will all crumble if it is presented with an opposing viewpoint? If “progressive beliefs” are that powerful and persuasive, it is a marvel that any other viewpoints have survived in the face of them.

As for the respect argument, I would love to probe into what it would take to “earn” this woman’s respect. Does she want each of her children’s teachers to share lesson plans with her for approval? Does she want the teachers to take a loyalty oath to her way of thinking? Or, perhaps it would be better for the teachers to simply have the vague threat of being fired perpetually hang over them because of cameras in the classroom. That would certainly earn her respect, right?

Or, is it rather, that she is afraid that her children will learn to think for themselves and question the things that she has taught in her home? She would certainly see that as disrespectful! And that kind of disrespect is something that she will not stand for. Her children are her own. They are not independent thinkers. They are not capable of making their own decisions. They do not deserve respect. Oh wait…

My only response to such thinking is this:

Surveillance is not inevitable.

It is a choice that we make each day. It is a stance that we take in our public and private spaces as to whether or not we actually want all of our lives to be recorded and available to others to parse through and find objection with. We do not need to “suck it up and deal with it.” We should fight the invasion of our privacy, and think critically about any time that we invite surveillance into our lives (Ring doorbells, etc.). We should question the need for more data and inform others whenever data is being collected because it isn’t just what is being done today with these recordings. Today they exist as simple video files on a hard drive somewhere. But, what would happen if you had trillions of video files that could be used to train machine learning in order to “spot suspicious behavior” or “determine intent” before actions occur? This is not about what these cameras are capable of in this moment, it is what these cameras allow for in the future.

We are definitely at a crossroads in our discourse about the education of our children. From clandestine board meetings to remove employees with a lifetime of service to debates about whether or not our history can be taught in our schools, this is not an easy time for teachers to care deeply for our kids. These are important conversations, and ones we should be having. But, let’s do it in the open. Let’s not hide behind private Facebook groups where we can whip each other up into a frenzy. Let us have good-faith arguments about our educational standards and the scope and sequence of our curricula. But, let’s root it in the agency that kids have over their own lives. They are the ultimate beneficiaries (or casualties) of our decisions, so let’s make sure they are rooted in the hard-fought history of the last 50 years and not just the last 50 months.

Also, don’t put cameras in classrooms, please! It is a terrible idea.

Fascism isn’t cool… for long.

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Teenagers are a construct that has propelled popular culture forward for 100 years. But, prior to the end of the first World War, they mostly didn’t exist. It wasn’t that somehow people skipped from age 12 to 20, but rather that there was no pause between childhood and adulthood before the advent of child labor laws and the progressive political movements that supported them. In 1900, children (10-15) made up nearly twenty percent of the work force. A generation later, this was seen as an affront to the family and to the normal progress of young people.

In 2014, Director Matt Wolf made a film from the perspective of these individuals who had magically been transformed into “Teenagers.” He did so by looking at existing archival footage (and the stories that surround them) of Teenagers in The United States, England, and Germany:

Within these vignettes of newly minted “Teens,” the movie explores the rise of political and social power for students around the world. It shows how seductive night life was (thus, flappers) and how much the Nazi’s (and to a lesser extent, the communists) relied upon the zeal of young people to affirm their ambitions. As the youth started to see themselves as the inevitable future of the world, it was clear that they wanted to be a part of something big. And Fascism was about the biggest and newest thing you could find in the late 1920s and early ’30s.

In the beginning, Fascism was a form of rebellion. It was going against the established world order. Fascists were the underdog class, trying to come to power. Their ideas were not yet mainstream, and for a generation of kids for whom rebellion was a rite of passage, fascism felt like a logical extension.

One such German teenager describes her plight this way, “parents complained about the unemployment and poverty, but they didn’t do a think. [I] wanted action. So, [I] joined the Hitler youth. My mother expected to be unquestioning and obedient, like the maids. But, I rebelled. I wanted to be different – to escape from my narrow childish life… to be allowed to belong to a community which embraced the whole youth of the nation.”

And yet, once the fascists (Adults) were in power and the kids fully realized what fascism meant, once they saw the hate and the death that came along with imposing a racial and ideological hierarchy, teenagers no longer flocked to it. Their culture-setting rebellion shifted to asking for more freedom and more opportunities for expression.

So much so that by 1945, the teenagers of that era wrote their own “Teen-Age Bill of Rights,” which states that Teenagers should have the following:

  • The right to let childhood be forgotten
  • The right to a “Say” about his own life.
  • The right to make mistakes to find out for himself.
  • The right to have rules explained, not imposed.
  • The right to have fun and companions.
  • The right to question ideas.
  • The right to be at the romantic age.
  • The right to a fair chance and opportunity.
  • The right to struggle toward his own philosophy of life.
  • The right to professional help whenever necessary.

These statements (in particular the right to question ideas and struggle toward your own philosophy) is how I know that Fascism will never truly be “cool,” at least not for very long. While hatred and bigotry may be interesting for a season, it is the teenage propensity to question ideas and construct their own theories about the world that will never let it become the dominant philosophy.

So long as we never return to putting children to work in large numbers, there will always be a class of people with enough time and attention to rebel against the current political “prevailing wisdom.” And if we should ever again find ourselves on the brink of war, we should turn to the youth of the world (the ones who will actually fight that war) and they will help pull us back from the precipice.

While it is emphatically true that children are the future, it is the teenagers who are the arbiters of what that future will actually be. And somehow, the fleeting interests of youth are a lot more reassuring than the entrenched opinions of the old right now.

Asking Forgiveness

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I ran across an incredibly insightful tweet this week, one that I could not ignore or get out of my head since I saw it:

“Forgiveness is not a hot tub time machine. Forgiveness brings about a new reality.”

We cannot go back in time to before we caused others trauma. We cannot undo what is already done. We are still the same person who made the mistake. We don’t get a do-over, and we do not get to cover it up as if nothing happened.

And when I ask for forgiveness, I am not asking for those impossibilities to occur. Instead, I am asking for those who I have wronged to co-create a future in which we are both equal stakeholders. When that forgiveness is granted, the new reality that I am presented with is infinitely better than the one that came before.

It feels simple. And yet, it is so incredibly hard. To ask. And to forgive.

Which is why it was some kind of beautiful coincidence that I was also introduced to a simple way to facilitate such a conversation this week. Via a LunchClub meeting (a free networking service that I have used to meet over 90 incredible human beings during the pandemic), I was introduced to Victoria Yeung. Through her Canadian consulting firm, Nonsequitur, she and her co-founder have built out a series of notecards that are “fill-in-the-blank” versions of apologies:

Along with their incredible Apology Guide workflow, this kind of simplified version of asking for forgiveness makes me think that there is hope for us all to bring about a new reality, together. So, how might we use this process? How might we bring about new Political realities? Or, new Marital realities? Or, new realities for religious tolerance? Or, perhaps, just a new reality for the divided neighborhoods and communities we inhabit in 2022.

MAGA could apologize for assuming that only their votes should count. Leftists could apologize for impugning hard working police that are trying to bring about social justice from within a racist system. Christians could apologize for demonizing all other religions. Average Israelis could apologize to average Palestinians for their oppressive policies.

I fully recognize that it isn’t that simple, and that having a notecard doesn’t guarantee that forgiveness happens. And yet, when faced with the alternative, a world in which we only move further apart from one another, forgiveness is the only way forward. I wish that we would choose it more often.