Jennifer Blog Post 2: Cracking the codes, breaking the traps.

In this week's reading, Meadows explores  archetypal problem-generating structures, revealing their inner systemic workings. Righteously, she says that understanding these structures is not enough.  We need to be able to avoid these traps, or see how to get ourselves out of them.

I agree, while also believing strongly that fully understanding these archetypal problem-generating structures, understanding them personally, painfully, with felt experience, is essential to the process of refuting, repudiating, and rectifying the trap.

Here's a recent example of a role-play that took place in my daughter's high school last fall, exploring some problem-generating structures of our society.

One day all the students in her Equity Class showed up, and most of the class-- all but 6 -- were told to wait quietly in the hallway.  They were given no explanation and were monitored for silence and compliance.  

The 6 students allowed into the classroom were shown to a large table, sketch pads, plates of cookies and drinks, colored markers, given detailed instructions on how to generate a plan for their community, with two instructors present to assist them.

After 10 minutes of standing in the hallway, another 6 students were allowed into the classroom.  In a separate section of the room, they were given a smaller table, water, no chairs, a smaller piece of paper, pencils, and limited instructions.  They were told to make a plan for their community.  

So it continued, until the final group entered the classroom, including Sage, had 10 minutes to work, had no snack, no water, no paper, and were told to make a plan for their community but were not allowed to talk to one another.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this role-play:  some students in the second group noticed the first group's cookies, and went to take some.  After less than 30 minutes into this role play, the students in the first group had internalized their stance as an oppressive elite, and refused to share their abundant cookies -- with their classmates!!

This is real.  I think of our school system: gated private schools for the elite, with resources, coaches, expectations and assumptions of power, privilege, and success. I remember schools in poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, where I worked in crowded classrooms; met bored, overwhelmed, and disengaged  teachers; and heard expectations that students would join the army upon graduating.

Even beyond these are the schools described vividly in crackingthecodes.org, where racist police discipline children with violence and use handcuffss.

Meadows condemns these system: "...some systems are more than surprising. They are perverse. These are the systems that are structured in ways that produce truly problematic behavior; they cause us great trouble."

It's necessary to get inside the perverse behaviors our systems are creating, to taste and feel this harm and trouble.

Then we will be willing to accept change, our scary friend, and disrupt these archetypal problem-generating structures that are imprisoning  so many of our fellow humans, the living beings on this earth, and ourselves. 

Comments

[Jennifer Shriver]

Question: which systems do you need to understand (stand under) more deeply, in order to disrupt them?
Racism?
Sexism?
Capitalism?
Junkfoodism?
Denial?
Addictions? OK stopping before this gets...addictive.

[Gabby Makatura]

Wow, 1. I wish I went to a school that introduced me to these ideas that young, and 2. It is terrifying how quickly the power dynamic in the room changed. I think it is terrifying because children were easily able to identify what happens in society as a whole, even subliminally, and decide that was acceptable behavior.

Spinning off of the ideas here, I wonder which of the following would be more effective: teach children these topics young so that they have the tools in the future to change the system, or take these matters into our own hands and attempt to change the whole system. I also think that a combination of these two would be beneficial, but from this example we can see that a collective effort needs to happen soon.

[Harsha Maragh]

I really enjoyed reading this Jenn. The activity that your daughter participated in reminded me a little bit of the privilege walk that we did last semester as well as some other exercises I have done in the past.

Reading this made me think back to a conversation that I had with a friend recently about schools in inner cities. A lot of times these schools are in the situation similar to that of the last group of the role-play. The administrators of these schools have limited resources and are placed under all different kinds of stresses and restraints. This may lead to sub-par learning opportunities and growing frustrations as well as a hostility between public and private schools. But is it the fault of that school itself? Or is it the system at large (educational system) perpetuating this downfall because the lack of allocation of resources, educators and funds? I think about this topic frequently, because on one hand I had the privilege of attending private schools my whole life but on the other, I am still from the Bronx and have seen and worked in schools like this. We can only hope that some large-scale systematic changes will happen in the future to rectify some of these injustices.