Continuing the CW conversation…

Picking up where we left off with Friday’s Pro-D discussion…

Here’s a link to a presentation Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw gave on June 21, 2021 called Education for worlds to come (Curriculum in Canada Seminar Series, UBC). In it, Veronica talks about what, for her, is missing, overlooked, and/or lost in popularized take-ups of common worlding (CW) pedagogies, particularly through the BC ELF’s brief mention of the framework (when there is so much more to consider, as discussed on Friday).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[5:04] If there is an idea that I want to emphasize today it is that EC education needs to be a possibility of transformation of the status quo. For the invention of otherwise worlds and for thinking about what the human might be…

[6:09] My concern is that perhaps we are a moment in ECE that we have forgotten – we have left behind what bell hooks says – that education is a revolution and a space to invent oneself…

Among other things, Veronica talks about the creation of the ELF, some of the so-called ‘accomplishments’ and concerns arising for her now, specifically in regards to an unfortunately insufficient (superficial) incorporation of the term common world (common worlding pedagogies) into the revised BC ELF (2019, p. 15). In actuality – as we discussed during Friday’s Pro-D – these pedagogies are layered, complex, often taking years to create and comprehend, requiring us to think carefully about how to experiment and enliven these concepts through methods like slowing down, cultivating new modes of attunement, and creating intentional curriculum- making processes that help us reconfigure children, families, colleagues, and the more-than-human we share place with. Presentation link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6uwAKqHfpM

Around the 9:43 minute mark  in the presentation, Veronica shares concerns about what she has witnessed in conversations with pedagogists and educators as she travels around the province of BC, including observations of the ways common worlding pedagogies are taken-up/engaged with. Her perspective is an important one to consider, as we continue working common worlding concepts, highlighted during our pro-D day discussions.

Reflecting on the dangers inherent in what Veronica has been witnessing in the field, through increasingly popularized ‘applications’ of a common worlding approach, she talks about tendencies to fuse common worlding with romantic notions of ‘Nature’ that reinforce colonial and neoliberal logics. Veronica cautions:

I have become very concerned. The concern is that common worlds pedagogies are becoming de-politicized. By that, I mean that they are becoming ‘The’ answer, ‘The’ solution to our problems. They give practitioners direction for managing and instructing children to be able to achieve predetermined ends. They are used to perpetuate individualism and [function as] the guardian of social privilege. They are used interchangeably with nature-education and stewardship pedagogies. They are used to position children as investment for future economic productivity.

Within the [ELF] framework, common world pedagogies are not just misunderstood but are quickly appropriated with neoliberal aims. Using the words of bell hooks, common worlds pedagogies might not necessarily be understood in counter-hegemonic ways but used politically to maintain the status quo. Children are not encouraged to reinvent themselves. Rather, common world pedagogies are merely used to strive to reinforce domination…As Sharon Todd writes:

On the one hand pedagogy touches on the hope that people can think differently, can change the way they relate to each other, and can form new understandings of themselves and the world. And other the other hand, the demand for ‘learning to become’ carries with it a great burden. For if pedagogy is about the the becoming of the subject, (she says,) then it can become a tool for the most oppressive ends.

Perhaps what I see in the way common worlds pedagogies are working now, is under and educational paradigm that creates adaptive capacities toward individual success. Often early childhood educators quote these pedagogies and draw from theories that are activated and valued within Early Childhood, like theories from Population Health, using EDI, using qualitative evaluations of young children’s engagements, self-regulation theories, neuroscience-scientific theories, social and emotional development around children’s adjustments to society.

If I ask about ‘what is the child and what is the society that we are trying to create through common world pedagogies?’, even though these ideas are not necessarily thought through and hidden in most of these kind of neoliberal pedagogies, [through a neoliberal lens] we would say (and this is what the [ELF] framework says) that we’re trying to create “strong, competent children, in their uniqueness, capable children, self-actualized, well-adjusted within society, a society that works toward individual rights and liberal competencies”. And then in the way in which these pedagogies are practiced, the methods that are used, are: 
-observations of individual children meeting competencies; 
-activities that keep children occupied; 
-play as something that young children do, and also 
-the management of the children through 'health and guidance' 

This, specifically, is what concerns me.

So what does this mean for us? In taking her concerns seriously, as co-founder of the Common Worlds Research Collective and framework, we might want to reflect on the impetus behind doing things that we easily attach to ‘common worlding’ in centres. For example, when taking children to Haro Woods have we stopped to consider: How to do this in a way that resists instrumentalizing the forest as cure for so-called ‘modern deficits’ in children?  Such as going to the forest “because it is inherently good for children, for their eco-social development, to burn energy, etc.” How do we attend to children’s forest relations in ways that do not abandon or white-wash histories of colonization that removed Chekonein (Lekwungen and WSANEC) children and families from these lands in the first place? Alongside honouring joy and excitement often associated with ‘going to the forest’, have we stopped to consider what is required of us, as educators and pedagogists, to go to the forest (and/or other places) in ways that invite reconsiderations of: What kind of human does the forest (world) need? How might we experiment with children to meet with our responsibilities, the politics of place, relations still yet-in-the-making, and entanglements that continue to influence ideas and shape material realities of who can grow in the forest/who can visit/who is excluded (questions about who we imagine ‘belongs’? Who doesn’t? Whose connections to place are historicized or located in the past? Whose relations are understood as ongoing?).

Throughout the rest of the presentation, Veronica moves through 4 different ‘Acts’, sharing facets of her childhood experiences growing up under state dictatorship in Argentina. In so doing, she delves deeper into  power and deeply political framings behind the development of common worlding as a framework and educational approach. In the Q & A she responds to a question from a webinar participant, Dana (in Vancouver), about the depoliticization of common worlding  [37:58]  continuing to try to explain her concerns, saying:

Part of this is what happens in a capitalist space and it is constantly appropriating…I don’t know if it’s unavoidable when education today is about maintaining the status quo...In general, what concerns me is that: we continue to think that all pedagogy(ies) are outside of political aims, outside of political intents. And I don’t think early childhood educators do it because they have bad intentions or anything like that. But I think part of it is: we forget why we are in education. We forget about the political project of subject formation that takes place. That the goal of when we take common worlding pedagogies – or, when we engage in nature education or stewardship/environmental pedagogies - is about maintaining the status quo, maintaining nature/culture divides, maintaining humancentric notions of the world, and so on and so forth.

Thanks again everyone for such deep engagement with the concepts and methods on Friday. Lots to think with as we continue working together! Always.