Awaken... Reflect... Engage...

How? By Joining in the 'Education for What' Conversation hosted by Indigo Murray, your Guide for Steppingstone #4

Indigo Murray

Stepping Stone 04 Guide

"I love learning about relationships and the healing arts and I am endeavoring to embody vulnerability, fearlessness, and joy in all that I do."

This, Dear Friend, is the steppingstone that invites us to consider the hugely important question: Education for What? In other words, in your experience, what is the purpose of education?

As a way to begin, consider these words delivered by Erica Goldson during her high school Valedictorian speech: “I have no interests… I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling and not learning. And quite frankly, I’m very scared.Allow Erica’s words to settle in your mind and notice what arises. Could it be that what Erica really learned in school was school—i.e., a way of being grounded in obedience?

Like Erica, you, too, have been educated in something called a school. It is likely that you began your schooling, as a child filled with curiosity, wonder, and lots of questions. But over the years, you probably learned that your job, as a student, was not to ask questions, but, instead, to respond to your teacher’s questions with the right answer. In so doing, like most of us, you learned to conform by doing what you were told.

"Imagine how it would be if our creativity was encouraged… if our questions were celebrated… if we were given more opportunities to let our curiosity guide us?"

Schooling as Compulsory

Whether public, private, parochial or charter, we were each subjected to roughly 14,000 hours of compulsory schooling between Kindergarten and 12th grade. Do the math: 180 school days/year x 6 hours/day x 13 years = 14,040 hours.

Through the process of schooling, our freewill and innate curiosity is chipped away until we get squeezed by the status quo into a “box” called a job. Sadly, most of this happens without our full awareness. Indeed, this loss is a sort of soul loss that is difficult to define. We lose the chance to experience who we could have been.  But imagine how it would be if our creativity was encouraged… if our questions were celebrated… if we were given more opportunities to let our curiosity guide us?

As a way to reflect on your high school experience, I invite you to complete the five open sentences below:
1-What I mostly learned in high school was…
2-If I allowed myself to speak my full truth about my time in high school, I would say…
3-The times I felt most alive during my high school years were when…
4-By the time I finished high school, I was…
5-If I’d never gone to high school, today I would be…

Personal Testimony

Grappling with these five prompts led me to think about my own education decisions and career path. I graduated from Penn State in 2018 with my mind set on going to law school. I convinced myself that my family’s dream for me was my own and I had no future if I didn’t attend law school. But while taking a year off to study for the law school entrance exams, I realized that I was at odds with myself. Everything inside of me was shouting “Don’t do law! This won’t make you happy!” In the midst of my angst, I realized that a future that I knew wouldn’t make me happy wouldn’t be much of a future at all.

So, I stepped back and in an effort to discern my calling, I asked myself questions like: When do I feel most alive? and What makes my heart sing? I didn’t really know the answer to these questions then, and to be honest, I’m still not sure. But one thing I did know was that I really enjoyed building relationships with people and that I felt enlivened when working with children. This led me to pursue a Master of Science in Education and to land my first teaching job, last year, in an elementary charter school. While my first year as a teacher had its share of fulfilling moments, it was also disheartening. My idealistic notion that within a year I would be able to somehow dismantle systemic educational inequity, deliver empowering lessons, and shape young people’s lives for the better was naïve. Instead, the year was filled with a slew of unprecedented challenges: The pandemic, remote learning, lack of access to technology, inadequate support and training, and entirely too many academic tests.

Looking back, now, I feel uneasy with the role I played in my students’ lives this past year. As it turned out, more often than not, I was the authority figure telling my students to sit still, tuck in their shirts, and stop talking. I mostly taught what the school wanted them to learn, not what they themselves wanted to learn or what I believed was most important.

Charting a Life Course

As one means of gaining clarity around my future, I engaged with the Charting your own Life Course exercise located at the end of this steppingstone; and I encourage you to do the same. There are seven prompts to reflect on—each one providing opportunities to gain insights into one’s meaning and purpose in life. For illustrative purposes, here (below) are my responses to these seven prompts:

Prompt I-What fascinates me about being alive in these times is…      
i-Emotional literacy
ii-Connection and relationships
iii-Music and the arts  

Prompt II-As far as I can tell, my purpose in life seems to be about…
i-Deepening my understanding of myself and others
ii-Nurturing and healing myself and those I love
iii-Unleashing my curiosity to whatever catches my interest

Prompt III-Things that break my heart about being alive in these times are…
i-The wounds adults inflict on children
ii-Excess greed and insufficient love and care
iii-The ways we conceal our emotional burdens rather than heal them

Prompt IV-I feel most myself—most open to life—when I am…
i-Content and still
ii-Dancing in the rain
iii-In the presence of those who I love and trust

Prompt V-Qualities that others sometimes recognize in me are…
i-That I am nurturing
ii-That I am a good listener
iii-That I am insightful

Prompt VI-If I were to be true to MYSELF and free of FEAR, I would spend my time…    
i-Learning how to play different instruments
ii-Working with a pottery wheel or painting in front of an easel in an art studio
iii-Learning about holistic medicine and other healing modalities

Prompt VII-What gives me the most meaning in life is…
i-Knowing that this lifetime allows me to learn about myself over and over again
ii-Knowing that I can have a family of my own one day
iii-Creating and maintaining meaningful relationships

Summary: My name is Indigo and I am the one who loves learning about relationships and the healing arts and I am ready to dedicate my life to embodying vulnerability, fearlessness, and joy in all that I do.  

An Invitation to Join the Conversation

As your Guide for this steppingstone, my hope is that our Community Space will become a friendly setting where we can learn from each other by sharing stories, questions, feelings, and reflections relating to the Education for What? theme of this steppingstone. As a way to participate, please consider posting your responses to any of the prompts (below) that call to you:

i-What do you most enjoy learning about? What makes that learning satisfying?

ii-If you could go back and change three things about your schooling experience, what would you change, and why?

iii-What do you think it means to be ‘educated’ and do you consider yourself to be an educated person? Why or Why not?

iv-In response to the question, education for what? high school teacher, John Taylor Gatto, wrote: “Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."  Question: How would you feel and what do you think would happen if Gatto’s words were inscribed on the front doors of all public schools?

Use the comment box below to share your reflections!

When posting, focus on what you know to be true for you