Whose Real World?
How to stop isolating kids within schools all day
Ask any school child, and it’s clear as day to them that there is a school world, and a Real World. School world means friends, but also an abundance of rules and endless demands on their time, often for goals they don’t share. The Real World is nebulous, scary, and appealing all at once. It seems to represent adult life, but also the way that people interact in general when not in the strange environment of school. Tapping into the Real World is, without a doubt, a good way to engage students more in school. But there’s something deeper at play here — why do we separate these worlds to begin with?
In my imagination, the origin story goes something like this: Well-meaning people create a very artificial world in school, and then almost in the next breath, begin to worry obsessively about whether they are preparing students for the Real World. It’s almost a kind of separation anxiety. As soon as we create our bubble, we doubt whether we should stay in it. And for good reason.
In our doubting, committees spring into existence and begin studying the Real World. What better vessel for anxiety than the creation of a committee? We ask them to determine what the Real World might require of our students. Business leaders and important experts are consulted, curriculum is written, and we begin earnestly pushing all that important-sounding knowledge in the form of new requirements on students. We are certain we’re in the right here, because after all, the Real World is looming out there (and the farther we try to push it away, the scarier it seems). So we do whatever it takes — rewards, punishments, you name it — to motivate students to study these things we deem essential for Success in the Real World.
Are you sensing how something seems off about this? We separate kids from the Real World, then we abstractly decide what that same Real World will demand of them and we start anxiously preparing them for it. At best we feed them mashed-up bits of “Real World” here and there, as if they can’t experience it directly. Why did we separate them from it in the first place?
There is good news, though. Despite how it may appear from within the walls of school, the Real World is still there. And it is, by and large, not as scary a place as we might fear when we are separated from it. We’ve become used to isolating children from the rest of society in ways that are, I believe, downright strange. It’s as though we have raised a baby in a tiny windowless room, earnestly working to entertain them with images of what the outdoors looks like, until someone reminds us…there is a door.
But wait — what do you mean by the Real World?
The Real World means a web of relationships. This web is an exchange of work and value and care, an intermingling of people, places, and needs that make up a community. Humans grow best in community. Young people need to witness, then participate in (even from a very early age), that genuine exchange of work and value and care.
This web is packed full of relevance - obvious relevance, to which virtually any child is drawn. Which part of the web draws them will vary greatly, but there’s little doubt that they want to understand, at their own level, what happens among other people. How does she skateboard so well? How do they make money? How can he sing like that? Why is there a protest today? And on, and on…questions that school struggles to answer in its isolation, but for which the real world offers an abundance of juicy, vibrant experience.
This natural relevance of the Real World is not only fun — it is profoundly motivating. When I was leading Millennium School, several project ideas emerged from students about the homelessness crisis in San Francisco, because they saw it firsthand, walking into school every day. There was zero need to convince them this was an important topic. And so naturally, they went above and beyond. They (middle schoolers) met with city officials to learn about housing regulations; they spent weeks designing mass-manufacturable housing as a possible solution; they created individual backpacks stuffed with essentials to deliver to homeless shelters. They did this because they were motivated. The Real World is the definition of relevance, and most students — especially adolescents — need relevance to access their full motivation. They derive that relevance from seeing what objective people — not their (lovingly) subjective parents and teachers — are interested in or struggling with.
How exactly do we do this?
It’s all well and good to make the argument above, but it’s fiendishly hard to break out of the walls of school. Yet we have to try. Schools are not, I hate to say it, healthy communities, in the sense of being able to offer what a full, “Real World” natural community offers. Schools are too centralized and controlling, trying to set the tempo of everyone’s life within their walls, when the Real World is more jazz, more a constant variance of tempo and focus which allows everyone to find their niche. Not to mention, schools require you to be with people of exactly the same age, a strange rule which helps the machinery run smoothly but is generally not helpful for humans. So, if we believe that humans grow best in community, it’s on us, parents or educators, to help the young humans in our care experience real, healthy, vibrant communities. But how? Here are 5 starting points.
Be a bridge. As a middle school principal, I often got questions from incoming parents about how they could volunteer in their child’s classroom. That can be wonderful, but not all adolescents want their parents in their classroom, so I would always suggest another option: could you be a bridge to the Real World? In other words, instead of coming into school, could you help us get out? Parents took me up on it, and I can’t describe how many adventures, field trips, apprenticeships, expert interviews, and more came from it. You, adult reading this, are an ideal bridge.
Find the hidden community assets. I’ll never forget a workshop I attended long ago by John McKnight, founder of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute. He told a story of an urban public school that had its arts funding completely eliminated. Their response was radical. Working with volunteer community organizers, they identified a 5-block radius around the school, and knocked on every single door. Volunteers explained the situation and asked if anyone there had any artistic skills, and then asked if they would be willing to volunteer locally, since the school just had its arts program eliminated. When the dust settled, they had something like 90+ artistic and musical offerings in their brand-new, volunteer-taught art program. What if students mapped out a community’s assets and skills like this, and not only for their own benefit but to make them visible for others to see?
Create a Real World Survey Course. One challenge that comes up in exploring the real world is that students, with their own agency, may gravitate toward only what they already know. Here, like good wilderness guides, we have a duty to introduce students to options, without controlling their chosen path. What if schools offered a survey course, taught by parents or volunteers, which introduced students to a different profession or personal pursuit in each class? There are some curricula out there working toward this as well, like Road Trip Nation in the US or the beautiful Inspire High program in Japan.
Include an Authentic Audience. Remarkable things happen in academic projects when students present not just to a teacher, who they likely believe to be subjective, but to someone in the Real World who has expertise or life experience that makes their opinion really count. Studying bioethics? What if a professional bioethicist looked over your paper and gave comments. Studying the Civil Rights movement in the US? What if someone who lived through segregation responded to your essay? Both of these examples I’ve seen happen with middle school students, and the effect on their motivation and quality of work is palpable. Teachers are more engaged too, knowing that they have an objective and valued audience for their work. Perhaps best of all, when students get positive feedback from someone with this air of Real World expertise and experience, it means much more to them.
Get into the wilderness. This sounds obvious, but even knowing the truth of it, I am consistently amazed by how much it changes kids. A few weeks ago, I was part of a beautiful Step-Up Ceremony for a group of 7th-9th graders at Hakuba International School, where all students do four, week-long outdoor expeditions each year. As they each shared end-of-year reflections with the community, I couldn’t help but notice that the large majority of them identified outdoor experience as what gave the most meaningful growth of their year. In this ultimate version of the Real World, they had to make it through discomfort, they felt moments of awe and discovery, and they bonded deeply with friends as they all experienced it together. The conditions of the wilderness did most of the work for us. After all, we are part of nature — we don’t “go to” nature — and we benefit from a diversity of experience in the natural world, not only existing in the built world of humans.
There’s one last piece here. Kids don’t just go to the Real World like a visit to an amusement park. Kids are needed in the Real World. It doesn’t help society when all the young people are siphoned off into buildings five days a week. We lose a great deal when we chop up the web of relationships like that. Kids are natural creators and connectors. Far from the Real World being a scary place not fit for kids, it is possible that it is scary in part because it is missing children, and that adult communal life would be richer with kids around and between us.
When the Real World becomes a place full of kids, it becomes safer, more connected, more playful. Then it’s not just us adults translating our notion of the Real World and pushing it into schools. It’s their Real World as much as ours. In fact maybe more —they’ll live in it, design it, and improve it, far after we’re gone. And it’s there now, waiting, right behind the door.
We are nature: Hat tip to my friend Benjamin Freud for reminding me of this, when my language starts to separate human life from the natural world. We’re part of nature; even our densest cities are part of nature! More on Benjamin’s beautiful writing and work here.
On Apprenticeships: I mentioned this as one way adults can be a bridge, but apprenticeships are easily worth a whole post of their own. They are one of the most powerful and under-appreciated learning methods out there, and are not limited to traditional trade professions. Until I get around to writing that post, there is a section in my book, Finding the Magic in Middle School, on how to set these up!
These ideas are not new. We had an education revolution in the 1970’s. I was a student then and remember going to artist colonies in Berkeley, and spending days on end at out in a nature park, disassembling motors, and redesigned classrooms with pods in the center. Even before that children learned without school at their parents or an apprentice’s side, in the community learning a trade or skill. So why do they seem so “radical”? Especially to teachers.
I wish I could put you in charge of education in this country, Chris.