I'm thinking a lot about change these days, mostly in the context of how we go about asking people to change their minds, behaviors, patterns, assumptions, and beliefs for both the greater good and personal growth. I'm coming to an incomplete conclusion that Change is really Learning and for change to be successful, we have to create spaces where it is safe to learn. We need places where people will WANT to learn because they can see the benefits that knowledge and change will bring them and the people they care about.
I've been parenting for 35 years, so most of my models of teaching and learning come from raising my kids. One thing I learned to ask myself when one of my kids was acting out was, "Hmmm, I wonder what they are trying to learn and how can I help them do that?" As they taught me to be a better parent, I worked to make a space where they could risk and fail, risk and succeed, risk and be loved. I learned that nothing slows down learning like derision and impatience, but fortunately kids and adults alike have pretty excellent systems for telling us when they are out of their safe learning zone or are being pushed faster than they can possibly learn.
We are surrounded by people who do crappy stuff ranging from the mildly offensive and thoughtless to the truly horrific and hateful. I keep wondering what would happen if, along with the practical attempts to curb harmful actions (just like we would take a stick away from a kid who's lost control), we starting asking, "What are they trying to learn? How can we help them learn it?"
How can we create space for taking risks and learning and wisdom? How can we make the most reluctant student of life eager to learn how to take care of themselves, the people around them?
I'm pretty sure the most effective social change activists I know either have kids or work with kids and have taken the time to really soak up how children learn. They instinctively understand that you can't convince someone to change though anger, bullying or fear - you simply cannot get someone to learn something their minds aren't ready to accept. But you CAN teach the the things they need to know to get ready to accept it. Maybe it's vocabulary or feeling words or games for mental and physical dexterity, or co-operative activities, or just one toe in the pool at a time.
How does this change the world? I don't know, maybe it doesn't. But I do know that this is the only way anyone has ever convinced me to change my mind about anything and the only way my kids learned how to tie their own shoes, though I'm pretty sure they still leave their socks everywhere, because I do that, too.
