Break the cycle!

It can only be broken in our schools

I talk a lot about engagement, why do I consider it to be so important?

If we are disengaged from our work and that work does not affect another person then that is not good for us, we stagnate, but we are the only ones immediately affected.  But if our work involves others and we are disengaged then it means we are treating the others as things, not as persons.

This may seem harsh but think about it for a moment.  When we treat the other as a person, we recognise that they are a subjective being, not an object, and as such they have an inner life, they have unfulfilled potentialities.  If we recognise this, we must engage, if we do not, by ignoring this reality we are treating them as an object.  Treating the other as a person implies engagement. 

Criticisms of our aged care systems include residents being treated as tasks to be completed, as objects (when these are, after all the parents who brought us into the world and loved us). As a society how have we consented to organise things in this way and actively incentivise working people to treat others as objects? Just as elsewhere most employees acquiesce, a minority remain engaged.

Aged care is towards one end of life’s trajectory and schooling is towards the other.  As I have shown*, 60% of teachers are disengaged, they treat students as objects, not as subjects.

If, in this context, we treat someone as an object, a thing, an ‘it’ we are oppressing them and, if they are young, training them to ‘host’ the oppressor themselves as they grow into adulthood.  Most of them will treat the other as an object and the cycle continues.

We can break this cycle.  The place to break it is in our schools.

*Why We Teach can be downloaded free here.

 John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

• To purchase a copy of Red Brain Blue Brain, Student Feedback or Why We Teach go here