negative power

Think about times in your own education experiences when you decided that you wouldn’t know something when it was well within your power to know it. Why did you make that decision? If you haven’t yet practised negative power, can you foresee a situation in which it will be necessary? Why so?

I think more about my power relationship with children than I do other adults.

Is this it; In my relationships with children, I often try to imply that I don’t know… I want the kids to be the experts. I can imagine being in a world where all the answers are known and that depresses me. I want the kids to have a sense of wonder. I don’t tie their knots, I look up insects that I know the name of, (what does someone learn if I just tell them). I let them tell me long stories about things I know about, and I don’t correct mistakes unless necessary. I once told an older kid he was being an arsehole – partly it just slipped out and partly because he was, and he wasn’t seeing the gravity of the situation. The other children told me how I could have handled it better, pointed out to me that my language was unacceptable, and it was this chat that actually got through to the older child. I think he had been using his cleaverness to manipulate the other children, but when he saw their compassion and that they were all one, he both cried and adjusted his behavior. I was once again amazed by the capacity of children for their positivity, forgivness, and their way of deciding fairness.

I don’t have a problem with being led by the children. Learning stuff is a group project. At Everyone Out, we do a karakia kai. My role in this is just to ask if anyone wants to say one? and there is always a kid who does, Māori and Pākehā. I could say one of the ones I know, but then the kids won’t get the opportunity to show leadership. The karakias vary. Some of the kids might say a Catholic school one, some are long and some short. But they almost always do this respectfully (private school kids sometimes are not able to cope with less direction). If I think there is something important for children to “learn” then we need to give them opportunities to step up even if they make mistakes.

Refusal to know things: how does this work when people refuse to know say about environmental impacts of what they do, I refuse to know what landfill looks like, I don’t want to see pictures of Gaza say… (I have met Israelis who have no idea about how life in Gaza is).

What about when withholding knowledge is a way of having power over – not teaching a child to use the bus say and therefore having them unable to have power over where they can go??

I have had times that I don’t want to know something – eg recently I did not want to know who distroyed a picture as then I would know who to be disappointed in – I communicated this to the children. I did not have to actually reform my opinion in a negative way of some child, at the same time as developing a trust with all the children that I am wanting to find things to like about them at all times, seeing their best selves. Some children found tape and helped put it back together.

role of passive restance

Jana -the unknowing of what you think you know, assumed you know because you have power, I don’t have a place in knowing this it is not my place to know that – humility