Transforming the Classroom

“The children do not learn mathematics in school, they learn how to live together with a mathematics teacher. . . . My claim is pupils learn teachers.”

–– Humberto Maturana

If we truly wish for systemic change in education, it is time to consider how we might begin to live differently with our students.

In considering the impact of his work in education, Chilean biologist and philosopher Humberto Maturana posed three essential questions:

 – “What should the future adults be like when leaving the school one day?

 – How do we anchor a way of life in the school that permits acting and thinking according to that ideal?

 – How do we accomplish the essential task of preparing the teachers for their job in such a way as to do justice to the desired goals – to enable them to live what they have to achieve?”

To support the emergence of curious, creative, and compassionate citizens arising from our schools, we need ways to transform our processes of living with our students. If we continue to focus on content and its measurement, competition over cooperation, right and wrong answers as definitive, students as a category rather than as individuals, and continue to marginalize those deemed inadequate to our current processes, we cannot hope to produce the curious, creative, compassionate citizens who are capable of responding to the urgent needs facing today’s society.

To participate in systemic change, we urgently need to reexamine the current balance between three primary dynamics of learning:  content, process, and relationship.

From the Explicit to the Implicit

The delivery and measurement of content has been the primary focus of schooling since the advent of modern universal education in the early 1900’s, a time when available information was a fraction of what exists today. Most content is now ubiquitously available and can be held in a device that fits the palm of one’s hand. No doubt content – the “explicit” curriculum – is essential to schooling as it informs students of the necessary language and concepts they need to function in society.

However, by now it should be evident that the primary focus on content delivery and measurement is not achieving the goal of producing the adults that can respond adequately to the needs of society and our environment. It is time to shift our focus and to pay greater attention to the “implicit” curriculum: process and relationship. By understanding how these two key dynamics impact a child’s sense of self and their relationship with others, we can discover how we unknowingly inculcate patterns of behavior that travel with them through life. We must see that the “implicit curriculum”has a profound and lasting impact on the development of the values, character, and intellectual capacities of the child who becomes our future citizen.

The essence of Maturana’s work as it relates to education revolves around discovering how children can emerge from our institutions as self-confident, reflective, caring human beings. Many may remember one teacher or adult who saw them, encouraged them, or helped them when they were struggling. Remembering Maturana’s aphorism that “pupils learn teachers,” imagine if this type of caring and support became systemically embodied in our teachers and their process of living with their students.

What if we moderated the torrential flow and measurement of content, and instead began to consider the ways the processes of learning to conserve children’s natural curiosity, develop their self-reflective abilities, and enhance their relational/collaborative skills? This becomes more urgent as we observe the growing social divide between humans and reflect on how we are engaging in our critical relationship with the natural world on which we depend.

The stress and competition in our “winner take all” strategy has a dehumanizing effect. It presupposes that that the educational playing field is level, and that we live in an educational one-size-fits-all world that ignores the diversity of culture and circumstances from which our children arise. These competitive processes, leveraged by fear or the inducement of economic gain and status, encourage the victors who have conformed to believe they are more worthy. Can we not see how this fuels the tendency to social and economic indifference at a time when we are confronted with issues of poverty, equity, global displacement, environmental crisis, and a generalized “othering” of those who are different or live on the margins of society? This does not bode well for the maintenance of a civil society.

Transformation in Action

An opportunity to reconsider the learning process came quite unexpectedly for me. Like most teachers, I began teaching much the way I had been taught. After many years in the classroom I was invited one day to bring three students to a workshop with two well-known organizational development consultants, Peter Block and Margaret Wheatley. When we arrived, we were put into groups of three with a provocative question.

The instructions were:

1) Pick the people you know the least as that is where you will learn the most.

2) Don’t wait to be asked (take a risk).

3) Most importantly, listen with curiosity greater than criticality. In place of judgement or advice, ask questions of clarification.

That weekend I saw a lot of learning with very little teaching. This experience got me thinking about how I was living with my students and inspired me to reflect on my process of engagement. Mirroring my workshop experience, I began an experiment, first removing the desks from the classroom and placing the chairs in a circle. I acquired easels to hold large pads of paper. When students assembled in class, I put them into small groups of three and asked them to discuss what they noticed in thereading that struck them. I suggested they write or illustrate whatever seemed relevant to them on the large note pads. We would then reconvene. Each small group presented aspects of what they found relevant. This allowed for discussion and questions to arise. My role was to facilitate the discussion and, from time to time, offer clarifications.

In this process I discovered:

– What mattered to students and how they thought.

– That students learned best from each other, by seeing what each of the others noticed.

– That small groups were safer and invited participation rather than demanding it.

– We let go of the “right” and “wrong” dynamics, and the teacher as the arbiter of answers allowing students to reflect for themselves. This encouraged risk taking and flexible thinking. As one student said, “I can change my mind without being wrong.”

– Student relationships shifted as they worked together and saw new dimensions in their peers who they thought they already knew.

– There was a greater sense of student agency, and a more collaborative process emerged that allowed room for collegiality over competition.

– There was greater participation in the larger group, which is one of the main challenges I have encountered with all groups I have facilitated.

This description of my experience is not to advocate any specific process. Teaching and learning inevitably depends on local context and culture. It is simply to say that focusing on the “implicit” curriculum (process and relationship) had a decisive impact on the quality of my engagement with students, and their relationships with each other. Experiencing processes of creative collaboration, mutual respect, and appreciation for divergent thinking will help students develop as more reflective, flexible, and empathetic human beings with greater capacity to meet the requirements our rapidly changing world.

If we wish to consider systemic change, we must be willing to reflect on what kind of human being we wish to leave our schools one day. We need to reexamine theprocesses by which we engage in learning and see how those processes impact therelationships that students will develop within themselves, with each other, and with their communities as they live their lives.

About the Author

Ward Mailliard is a life-long learner and a founder of the nonprofit Mount Madonna Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in California. He developed the “Values in World Thought” program at Mount Madonna High School where he taught for thirty-five years. He serves on the board of a foundation that sponsors an orphanage and school in India where he and his wife, Kranti, spend several months each year. He is deeply committed to understanding how we conserve our humanness in the learning process and its consequent impact on organizational and communal life.