Chris Colley 0:07

Welcome back, everybody. Here we are, uh another episode of Shift Dead. Just a great thinker for educators, uh, has been talking about education for a long time, wrote many books, um, has a great blog, too. I'll put all this information in the descriptor. But I reached out to Will because he is going to come and work here within our community in Quebec uh to support us a little bit about thinking about what we do here as educators. And are there ways that we can get kids more engaged and passionate about what we're trying to pass on to them? Um, Will, thanks so much for hopping on here and and thanks for supporting our community. I really um I've been looking through a lot of your materials and really pleased that that connection has been made.

Will Richardson 0:50

Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And um, I I'm really appreciative of the opportunity to work with some leaders in the province. So looking forward to it.

Chris Colley 0:57

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I did listen to a TED talk that you did about 10 years ago. This is kind of where I want to start with. Has it been that long already? It's been that long already. And I mean, you talk a lot a lot about the similar kinds of things that we're talking about nowadays, right? Like the schools are built on this old foundation and we continually just kind of push through all the time. And yet this narrative of how school works is you know, was crumbling back then. I think it's still crumbling nowadays. Are we forever caught in this we need to change, we won't? You know, like this crazy loop, it seems, where we have research and understandings that are much more um innovative than they were even 10 years ago, yet we're just seem to be repeating this cycle all the time. How do you think we get out of this? I know it's not an easy question, but it's the question no way to that one for a little bit.

Will Richardson 1:59

Yeah, let me let me start by saying it is interesting the extent to which the conversations we were having 10 years ago we're still having today. Um, I do think that almost the more things change, the more they stay the same when it comes to education. And in answer to your last question there, I'm not sure we can change it at this point. I I've uh over the last decade since I gave that talk, I think that was the one in Vancouver. That's right. West um West Vancouver, yeah. Yeah. Um you know, I've kind of come to the conclusion that uh schools can't change. They can't. And the reason they can't is because they are captured by uh the narrative of modernity, this kind of bigger meta kind of way that we think about and orient ourselves to the world. Um the world right now is running on a narrative, kind of on a code. And I used a lot of phrasing from Vanessa Andreati, who uh wrote a book called Hospicing Modernity. Um, she was the uh dean of faculty uh of education out at University of Victoria. And um we're running on a code that basically um makes us want to continue to grow, continue to extract, continue to define success in the same ways that we've defined it now for a couple of centuries since really the industrial revolution, um, despite the fact that we are reaching our limits for extraction, reaching our limits for growth, reaching our limits for planetary survival, if you really want to get existential about it. Um, but the code is so deeply embedded in us that whatever changes we try to make in systems or institutions or in schools by and large gets pulled back into the status quo because there isn't enough agency left in the change effort to really make those changes stick. I think that, you know, we're at a point right now where I would say a good portion of educators know and feel this dissonance between what we know about learning and what we do in schools. I think, you know, most of us know that learning requires conditions that we don't create in schools. In fact, the conditions that we create in classrooms are antithetical to the way that humans learn. And I think most of us know this by now, right? Most of us feel it even, um, but we don't know how to get out of it. We don't know how to change it. When when you when you say to people, look, um standardized testing, that's not a great condition for learning. Separating kids out by age or subject or grading or all of those things, those are not not good conditions for human learning. Yet when you say, why don't we just stop doing that? It's like, well, we can't. We can't stop doing those things. Um that's that's exactly right. We can stop doing those because that's how we're measured. That's how you know we're defined in terms of whether or not we're successful. That's, you know, those all those metrics, and those are metrics that are in the code, if you know what I'm saying, right? They are hardwired into our systems and our institutions right now. So um, as as kind of depressing as it may be, I think I've come to the conclusion. In fact, I know I have come to the conclusion that it's not going to change until it breaks. And the unfortunate part of that is that there's going to be a great deal of kind of collateral damage when it comes to schools finally realizing that they are not preparing kids for this emerging future that we already can see the outlines of that look nothing like the future, quote unquote, that we're supposedly preparing them for. It's filled with complexity, it's chaotic. Um, and there is collapse that is happening all around us already. And yet we're kind of hardwired into this narrative that says, well, we can't really change that preparation process to accommodate for this kind of new reality that we're in. And when you get that, when you get to that point, um, something breaks. Something has to break before it can change. So I think um, you know, I listened to a podcast by Nate Hagen's called The Great Simplification, and he has a great term where he says, well, not a term, but he has a hope that we can get into a bend, not break future, right? Where we can bend into something new that is emerging that is different from the kind of traditional ways we think about life on the planet. Um, but there is a very real possibility that the the change will come when things fundamentally break. And that's not a that's not a very rosy picture, right? It's not for anyone, for anyone. For anyone. But I do think we're at the hinging everything on the case. Yeah, you know, and total collapse. Well, but it's you know, uh that is that is a I think a viable, uh that is a path, a potential path um that we are facing right now. And I think you can see it not just in schools. I think you can see it in the way that we're reacting to climate issues, to biodiversity loss, to political uprisings, to economic inequities. We are like, yeah, acknowledging the problem, but we're putting band-aids on it, or we're just kind of, you know, trying to find these little fixes to it, which in many cases create more problems than they fix, um, especially in technology. And so, yeah, you know, it's it's not a very, it's not a very optimistic scenario, but I think um ultimately if you go to the really high level, it may be what's required in order to sustain life on the planet. And I think it's that existential at this point. I really do.

Chris Colley 7:56

Oh, I do. I I totally am with you on that. Like we're we're in this timeline that is just insane right now. Um, and it kind of made me realize that listening back to your 10-year-old TED talk of how so much has changed just in this 10 years since you recorded that. Um, I was really interested too in this this um confronting education. You have this online workshop, but uh this manifesto also that you're having, and it kind of alludes a little bit of what you were talking about where you have the three C's of the collapse, the chaos, and the complexity, right? And this is the lens at which we need to start looking through or you know, starting to to to to hold on to that this is the way that change will eventually come to place. Can you put a few more words to the your three C's and the importance almost of that we have to kind of go through this process, eat painful as it might be?

Will Richardson 8:54

Well, I I I think we all feel it, right? I said that before. I um, you know, I live in the United States where you want to see chaos with a capital C. I mean, come on and visit. If if you're we tend to not to we don't we don't visit anymore. Um, but you know, and then you look at so that there's chaos in terms of all of that stuff, right? And then you look at complexity. I mean, I got two letters for you, AI, right? I mean, it is complexifying everything, right? It is changing our economic systems, our education systems, our political system. The everything is being kind of uh made much more, much less understandable by AI. It is, it is like freaking everybody out because we can't really get our brains wrapped around what's happening right now, right? And then, you know, I mean again, you could uh you could change that quote by I can't remember who said it, but you know, the future's already here, it's not evenly distributed. You could change that and just say collapse is already here, it's just not evenly distributed right now, right? Because um there are people around the world who are absolutely named collapse, um, who um, you know, do not have basic resources, who are um uh oppressed, you know, all the things, right? And um one of the slides actually that I'm gonna use today with the Quebec leadership group is basically um says basically, you know, uh the only change with collapse now is that um privilege doesn't help you escape, right? It's it's everywhere. It's it's coming for us one way or the other. I know up in Quebec, the the obviously some of the environmental challenges that have happened over the last year with flooding and and heat and you know, all those things, right? There that that's not pick and choose, right? That's everybody that's that's basically um subjected to that. Come down here in the States again, things are such a mess right now. Everybody is impacted by by gas prices, by the war, by you know, all of that. So um, yeah, it's it's uh it's I think it's different. People people will say, well, you know, when I was a kid, you know, yeah, you know, is we have challenges too. I I just feel like I mean, I remember those. I'm old enough to remember, you know, um uh you know, atomic bomb, you know, like what do you call them, like drills in school where you had to get under your desk and things, but um yeah, but I I just it just feels more existential right now. It just feels much, much, much deeper than these individual problems. And I'll I'll just finish by saying a lot of people look at this, well, we have to fix these problems. And no, we it's not about the problems, it's about the collective predicament that we're in right now, in which we we're it's not about solving things, it's about navigating them. You know, problems have solutions, predicaments have outcomes. So, how do we get to the best outcome through this is what the real question is. And that requires a whole bunch of way different ways of thinking about our orientation in terms of how we live on the planet, obviously, how we relate to all life on the planet, but certainly in education, it requires almost a total rethink in terms of what are the outcomes that we want for our kids to better prepare them for this kind of emergent reality, uh this emergent future, which is totally unpredictable at this point. And um, you know, yeah.

Chris Colley 12:36

So I mean, I I love what you're saying too. And I I also feel that in what you are delivering now as you know, a thought leader and and pushing the boundaries that you've gone from modern learning to confronting education, that it has to be something that we're confronting, that it can't be like, oh, we'll just sit around, we'll talk about it, and we'll pontificate and like it has to be more um you know, from your gut. Like we have to start confronting these kinds of things. And in the series that you do about confronting education, like what is your what's the thesis or the intent of that workshop series? Like, what are you hoping people are leaving thinking about once it's over?

Will Richardson 13:25

Well, I I mean ultimately it's an attempt to help people build capacity to metabolize what's happening right now. Um, obviously, there's a lot of of just feeling again. I keep coming back to that word because that's actually been part of my work over the last few years is how do I not just intellectualize this stuff? How do I not just try to understand it? But how do I really feel it? How do I really feel the kind of separation, which again to me is what the heart of this problem or what this predicament is, is that we are basically not in right relationship with all life on the planet. We have modernity in the code. The code is about separation, it's about separating us as much as possible. Because if we are really in relation, all of these problems would go away. Like literally every one of these problems that we have, if we were coming at it in in from a stance of empathy, from a stance of love, from a stance of care, from a stance of of promoting life, putting life at the center, all of it would go away. It literally, right? So um it it really is seems so simple, Will. So, you know, I mean, it's uh it okay, it this is intellectually, I do kind of think it's that's not that heavy of a lift. I think that the the the argument is is pretty obvious at this point that we are broken. Something's really broken here, and I do think it is this broken relationship, break in relationship that we have, right? And this separation. But it's one thing to understand it here, it's another thing to begin to feel it, right? And but a lot of my work, personal work lately, has been to try to really feel that relationship and feel what happens when I sense that break. And I think a lot of people don't want to go there, right? They don't want to get into their bodies. And I know this sounds starts to sound a little woo-woo-hoo, right? But I mean, look, this is where we're at. We have to, we have to understand how do we metabolize, how do we bring in and and process um a lot of this this kind of confusion and complexity and all that, right? But then that there's a third level to it, right? Which is really, really hard. And that is you can know it, you can feel it, but then how do you begin to live in relationship, right? How do you been how do you begin to live differently? And I guess you could spin that a little bit and say, well, then how do you begin to educate in relationship, right? Um, and that's where it gets really hard. Um, because they're they're all the messaging that we're getting is that's not the way that you become successful in the world. You become successful in the world by separating yourself from everyone else, by being more successful, uh, you know, according to those traditional metrics and all that kind of stuff. It's not sustainable. We're seeing it. It's simply not sustainable. So, how do you live in relationship is something that is much, much more difficult, but I think at this point should be the focus of education. How do we help kids develop the capacities, the literacies, the dispositions to live in relationship with all other life on the planet? To not see themselves as separate and not and stop separating them out in almost everything we do in schools, but to see themselves as entangled in a much larger kind of just you know, understanding that um these trees that are outside my window, if they're not there, I'm not here, right? That it's not like I can just keep going cutting down all the trees, because at some point I'm cutting my own life out, you know, and and yet we don't we don't really live in that way. And I look, I I'm complicit too, right? I'm it's really hard because that code is deeply embedded. And you know, it's it's I'm a little bit more privileged, obviously. I'm a little bit later in my life, uh, you know, kind of have things squared away a little bit. But you know, I you can't say to a a school leader in Montreal, well, if you're not doing those things in school, just quit your job. Just go start a school, go do something they have mortgages, they have food they have to put on the table, right? They're they need that income. And I get it. I totally get it. But it again, it's just a very, very, very difficult moment.

Chris Colley 17:44

Yeah, totally. I love what you're saying though about the stewardship, like kind of looking back at the simplicity of life and what keeps us here and what brought us here, um, and what will keep us here in the long term. Like, we've been doing a lot of outdoor kind of learning and like how you can take your lessons outside and use nature as you know, that guiding, you know, classroom, basically. You know, it's all out there. We rarely go out there with kids. Um and this idea that if we want them to feel connected to what is natural and be good stewards in the future, well, we've got to start bringing them out there. And I'll say that one of the interesting things about AI, I found anyway, is that it's kind of been pushing us back outside. Like this revolt against AI. I'm doing a master's course now and no AI, a lot of schools, no, no AI, pen and paper, no, that's how we're doing tests now. It's like we're gone back 20 years here. But maybe that is an opportunity for us also to rethink about you know how we connect with the outside world, you know, beyond the classroom walls. What are your thoughts on that? Is are we in a are we in a rejection of technology now and kind of maybe uh an embracing back of nature that we've kind of neglected for some time now?

Will Richardson 19:10

Let me let me just highlight something you said at the very beginning of that comment where you said we have to take you have to take your lessons outside, right? We want to take our lessons outside. But it's interesting that our lessons there are still our things that we want. You know what I mean? Yeah, that it just because you take something outside doesn't mean that it fundamentally changes in any way, right? You could put a blackboard outside, it's but then do the same fundamental blackboard outside, right? Yeah, the the the lessons that we need to learn are outside already, right? They're not our we need to we need to go out and simply live in the world and experience the world in a different way to understand the lessons that the world wants to teach us right now. One of the questions I ask is always, you know, what is the planet asking of us right now? Right. And you know, a lot of people have a planet can't. Well, yeah, it actually can, you know, it is a part of it is what sustains our life on this, you know, and it's why we're alive. So it's a fair question. What does the planet require? The planet doesn't require, or the planet isn't asking us to take kids out outside and then do their math homework, you know. That's not the point. I mean, it's nice, don't get me wrong, but the planet is asking us, I think, to take kids outside and let them really explore and ask questions and find their own inquiry um and create those conditions where they can learn really deeply. And I see this more and more, not at a that scale, but I see this more and more with schools that are like forest schools or schools that are much more in um just about creating relationships. Um, and you know, getting back to the the last part of your question, I do think that there's a little bit of a pushback against technology and specifically AI. But again, I wonder if that pushback is really about um just us feeling like we're losing more of our agency, or if it's more about um we are finally figuring out that the technologies that we really need were the ones we used a thousand years ago. Um, that, you know, the ways that we in the ways that we interacted with, again, the way life on the planet, the ways that we felt entangled, the ways that we learned from the living world around us. Those technologies were really powerful and sustained us, sustained humanity for a long, long time. Um we're in a different situation right now, obviously. It's it's not and it's you know, it's nice to say, well, let's go back to the indigenous waves, and it's let's go back to the ways that you know people were really engaged in those relationships. Yeah, but you know, it's really hard to do that without layering on this kind of, again. Modern, postmodern kind of lens of the way the world operates right now. And it it we don't really we don't want to colonize that. Like we've already done that, right? So it's it's much more than just saying, let's study the indigenous ways of life. No, it's kind of not in this is the point, right? Let's go live in ways that really are uh more kind of connected to that. So yeah, amusing. So but let me just say too, I think the AI thing is interesting. Um obviously it's interesting. I mean, it's it's like it's it it is a huge, huge threat to the traditional ways we think about education. A huge threat. And right now I think education is just trying to keep it off, push it away, type of thing. This is what we do when we get kind of cornered, right? We say no AI, blue books, right, you know, handwriting, all that go back to what we know. Let's go back to what we know. Like this and I mean, come on. I'm sorry. You know, blue books are not the answer here, right? Um there's there are there are larger forces, larger systems, larger just ways of thinking about life again on the planet that we have to attend to before we can understand AI in a very different way, right? It's not enough just to say go away or to close, you know, take all your phones away, which I think Quebec has done that. I think we have to sell this uh bell the bell sell bat now. Yeah. Well, you know, I I mean, I understand why they're doing that, but have we really thought about what it is that we're doing that makes cell phones problematic in the first place? You know what I'm saying? It's like you're you're not treating the cause, you're just kind of trying to get rid of the symptoms, and at some point that's not gonna fix it, that's not gonna, you know, heal it.

Chris Colley 23:49

So and it and it kind of offloads the problem to the family, you know. And the family is not, you know, I mean, they're not AI literate um themselves, you know. So like it's a real problem that we've kind of created in the sense that we haven't addressed it, we kind of like just we'll eliminate it.

Will Richardson 24:10

Um we're not addressed, but because AI isn't the problem. Right. Right? At the end of the day, AI is not the problem. It's it's humanity. It's the way, again, that we're living our lives on the planet, right? Again, if we were in right relationship with um the rest of life around us, um, I think we would make very, very different decisions about technologies. I think, you know, the extractive, well, how much mineral extraction, how much resource extraction, how much all of that, right? We would find either either we would not go down that path because we would say, no, this is more important, is more important for us to sustain life than it is to, you know, help billionaires make billions of dollars. Um, or we would find different ways of doing it. We would have better conversations about it, you know, instead of having this very small coterie of very rich, powerful people who are kind of jamming this down everybody's throat, which again is part of why we're reacting like this, right? Where they're there are actually a um, you know, a very tangible kind of per or a group of people that's very tangible and uh and uh identifiable that we can just you know get mad at. And and whereas um, you know, somehow really have those conversations. Right, is right, yeah, yeah.

Chris Colley 25:33

Well, I guess my last question, well, and thanks so much for this. I I've really, really appreciate this conversation. I don't know if I've made any sense at all, but you made complete sense, and it's like you're throwing out a lot of seeds that are gonna start to sprout in me anyway, and I'm sure the listeners are gonna feel the same. So you are starting some work here in in Quebec. You're starting to have these conversations. What conversations do you hope we keep talking about once you are finished?

Will Richardson 26:02

Yeah, well, I mean, uh uh it's gonna sound weird for me to say this, but I hope most of the conversations are not so much about education, um, but simply about again, um, trying to uh really get clearer on what is happening in the world, um, how it impacts all of us right now, finding ways to live differently in the world. I think, you know, part of the problem too is that we have a lot of individual personal work to do before we can really bring a change into systems or institutions, you know, like schools. Uh again, it's it's nice to be able to talk about it, right? But um unless you're feeling it, unless you're living it, um, it's really, it's really much more difficult. So I mean, look, I I think that there's just a huge conversation to be had, uh, some a conversation that I I think is beginning to start in a lot of different places, but um, that is is you know built around the idea of uh what is the fundamental underlying cause of all of this stuff, and how can we begin to really explore that with curiosity, you know? Um and um again, not try to solve it, uh, which I think is a problem for educators because we want to fix things, right? I get that. Totally um, but can we just sit with it? Can we just kind of again metabolize it, think about it, talk about it, try to see it for what it really is, and then um figure out ways from from kind of what is emerging in the world right now to to find our way through it. Um and to, you know, it's a a new term that I've seen, not a new term, but one that's keeps popping up these days, is wayfinding, right? Like how do we how do we find our way um through all this chaos, through all this complexity without trying to fix it all the time? Because trying to fix it isn't gonna work, number one, and number two, it takes so much energy, you know, to to try to worry about that. So I don't know. I I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, I think that there are just lots of big hairy questions and big big conversations that um that we need to have in general. So hopefully this will start some of them in Quebec.

Chris Colley 28:22

Absolutely. I love too that you mentioned too that we've got to think about us. We gotta look inside us for it more as well. And that's where maybe some of the answers start happening as we come back to the collective after we thought about yeah.

Will Richardson 28:35

And and again, just to say just really fast that it's not just intellectualizing it, it's not just understanding it up here. That's you know the first part, but there's so much more that um we need to really begin to to figure out about ourselves. And a lot of that is resisting the code, right? A lot of the code modernity does not want us to feel it, does not want us to act differently. Um, so yeah, it's hard work, but it's I think it's really important work.

Chris Colley 29:03

Yeah. Well, I mean, hopefully you guys can take this podcast out as you walk in nature around trees or in a nice park and think about that as you're connected to our beautiful world that we still have. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I thank you for coming to our community and sharing.

Will Richardson 29:23

Yeah, my pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me.