Week 4

We're Trying To Do Things Differently

#AdultConversations #52weeks52speaks

Week 4 Freya Aquarone

Freya has worked in a number of educational contexts, including mainstream schools, alternative provision, and democratic schools. Freya joined King's in October 2018 on an ESRC funded MA+PhD studentship to research democratic education practice in further and higher education. Alongside this work, Freya has been teaching on the BA Social Science programme at KCL since September 2019.

Last year I had the privilege of working with ten undergraduate students from King’s College London on an action research project about higher education and social justice. The project involved turning the research lens back on ourselves and our own learning community (KCL’s BA Social Sciences programme, launched in Sept 2019) and its attempts to place democracy, relationships, partnership and emotional care at the heart of HE practice.

Although the programme’s aims are not unique, our journey so far has taught us a lot about the realities of trying to implement alternative or radical approaches in a mainstream education space. We decided to document that journey - both its successes and pitfalls - through a collaborative research project run by students and staff. What started as a small internal report snowballed into a co-written book, which was published last month.

Each chapter of the book contains a poem: most of these are constructed out of verbatim or near-verbatim extracts of participant interview material. The poems are an attempt to capture or crystallise key ideas and feelings from the research which we felt deserved a more creative platform than conventional data presentation. The poem below is from chapter 1; it brings together student and staff perspectives on the frustrations associated with trying to ‘do things differently’ in the world of HE as it stands, but also the many reasons to hold onto hope.

We’re living in a society

Where things are very undemocratic

Where education is not democratic

Where there’s huge pressure on students,

The pressure for success – and what counts as success?

It’s getting A*AA on those tests.

We’re living in a society

Where the mainstream ideal

-well maybe I’m getting a bit too political-

but it’s neoliberalism.

Where everything is labeled – given a mark

and we know that’s in the school system too.

There’s a lot of damage to undo.

These approaches have not been normalised

People are just not used to engaging in things that aren’t credentialised

I still can’t let go of the fact that I’m coming from a school setting where I was told what to do, every time.

So no wonder it’s about where the money lies

That’s how we’ve been incentivised

Especially when the cost of living is so high

And with the diminution of the welfare state

And other educational resources

It’s like

If we’re not being assessed on it, then it doesn’t really matter

It’s not important to our lives.

We’re living in a society

Where we’re not taught that we are equals with our teachers

So maybe it’s not surprising people haven’t got used to the idea

that it’s a different kind of relationship we are able to have here.

I reckon some people come in with a set of expectations

about staff and authority and institutions

and they see the community meetings as glorified feedback forums

They put out complaints but provide no solutions

They don’t see it as a thing between humans.

And maybe that’s why there have been so many times

Where I’ve come home and gone:

we’re trying to do something really big really late on

in people’s educational journeys-

To model a sense of collective obligation and community

In a society which doesn’t have much time for

the unmeasurable and the unquantifiable

And how we do this in the confines of the neoliberal university is questionable.

A world of individual customers and service providers

£60 worth of lectures for someone to inspire us

Or a refund.

As if it’s about the money and not the way

The university continuously treats its staff like they don’t matter.

As if as students we’re nothing more than the amount we pay

and not what we can do for each other.

And yet-

I do feel like we’re doing something meaningful.

That the majority of us

are not trying to just get a degree and a job

but are actually trying to change the world.

That we’re not doing it to have the highest grades

we’re doing it for ourselves

That some of us see the strike as an example of what this course is trying to do:

Fight for people’s rights

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes

That there’s an intrinsic motivation

To carve out a vision

Which is distinct from the culture and practice of the rest of the institution.

From this society we’re living in.

*‘We’re trying to do things differently’: the challenges of relationships and recognition in higher education was published by the Centre for Public Policy Research in December 2020. Physical copies are available via this online order form. Alternatively, the e-book version is available to download from the King’s College London website. Both versions are available completely free of charge thanks to generous funding from the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership.

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