I’ve been thinking about the change process for quite some time, actually for a number of years and Chris Lehmann’s latest post on Change brought it to my attention once again. Why is it so hard for some people to change? Schools are only a collection of people and therefore, schools don’t resist change, people do. Is this resistance hard wired into us? Is it an evolutionary mechanism designed to keep us safe? This resistance to change has been amplified over the past few years with a call for change coming from everywhere. The current and exponential growth in technologies over the past 10 years is once again reviving the call for a transformation in education. The video above is yet another call of action for schools around the world. Students are sprinting into the 21st century and dragging schools with them. However, students are also resistant to change and refuse and resist many of the innovative pedagogical practices teachers are asking of them. Why should a student search for the information on their own if they are used to a teacher just giving it to them. Why should a student work so hard at becoming an independent learner if they are used to total dependency? It’s so much easier. If we are so resistant to change, why should we be surprised when students are also so resistant to change?

Al Gore presented updated information on the climate crisis at the TedTalks in February. In a nut shell he was asking the same question I’m asking in this post. Very little has been done to solve the climate crisis in the past few years. Why are people resisting the urgency of the global crisis? Why aren’t schools leading the way in helping to manage the change process needed to begin transforming the perceptions of how young adults live in and treat the world? I’ve been exploring with my students in Global Ethics about what it means to be a 21st century citizen. Recently we have been discussing our responsibilities toward the other sentient beings that we share this planet with. We all agree that we have responsibilities toward these animals and that industrial food production is not the best way to both treat animals and produce food. However, they will still come in the following morning eating pre-packaged 7-11 pork sandwiches without thinking about it. Change is hard, even for students. Therefore, we need to learn to manage the change process not only for our teachers but also for our students. If we are asking them to think about both school and the world in a completely different way, then we must help them manage the change process. Anytime you change, you must give up something to make room for something else. When you give up something there is always a time of mourning, a time of resistance. We must do a better job of helping both teachers and students through this change process.

There is no question that we have to change. The world cannot continue to support both the industrialization of education and food. We must change, however how we manage that change may depend whether we succeed or fail.