Story: When An Education System Saw Itself - An Experiment in The Quality of Witnessing

A few weeks ago, I was invited by a nonprofit to facilitate for a gathering of school leaders. These were leaders running schools in low income communities in Bangalore. Having facilitated such gatherings before, I had an intuition that it will be more meaningful for there to be other stakeholders in the room. So, we turned it into a gathering of school leaders, teachers, students(Grades 6 and above) and parents from the same communities. My intention was to create conditions for the group to collectively see the system. However, I hadn't met any of these stakeholders before and therefore, didn't know what to expect. That made me both nervous and curious.

In my earlier article, I wrote about the power and the enoughness of witnessing systems. I believe that the quality of witnessing matters. If we are able to witness self, others and systems with the eyes of the heart, actions that are just enough begin to arise and a process of regeneration can be activated in the system. This is a process that involves us all but is beyond us - in the same way that a piece of land regenerates itself when permaculture is practiced. So, here I was, standing in front of this group I did not know but this system that I know and have experienced from multiple vantage points. I had a story in mind that Otto Scharmer shares about facilitating for a group of healthcare practitioners in Germany. He describes in the story this silence that pervades the room in a moment when the system sees its own patterns.

At one point in the conversation, I anchored the group in a question, 'What is the experience of students in our schools?'.

Each of the 4 groups of stakeholders worked in separate groups to articulate this. I didn't know what to expect but the biases in my mind told me that perhaps the furthest we move from students, the more hazy the stakeholders' articulation of their experience would be. But that wasn't the case at all.

School leaders started by sharing how students do not choose to come to school. They are forced to by the system. Then, they come into school where they do not choose how they will spend their time. They are often reprimanded, compared, reduced to scores, bored.

Teachers articulated similar things by saying that we treat students as machines, that we don't see their uniqueness but measure them against these rigid measurements. Parents and students articulated the same things in deep, visceral words. Students also articulated the pain of favouritism and bullying. Through the framing of a question rooted in empathy, each stakeholder had found a compassionate lens through which to see the experience of students in the system.

Then, I asked the group, 'Who is the system?'. After a pause, the group recognized that they themselves, in fact, are the system. And then I posed the question I had heard Otto pose to healthcare practitioners and their patients in Germany.

‘So, if we are the system, and none of us want the outcomes this system is producing, why is the system producing these outcomes that none of us want?’

Strangely enough, the same silence that I had heard Otto talk about followed. We held that silence as a group in a moment of witnessing the system together. Then, a school leader broke the silence and said, 'If I had my way, I wouldn't conduct all these tests but there is pressure on me from above. It is expected from me'.

I acknowledged the struggle and then turned to teachers, 'Is this feeling familiar to you - that you would act differently, if you didn't have pressure from above?'

'Yes'.

Then I asked parents the same question with respect to socio-cultural pressure, and they resonated - yes!

And then students, of course, agreed to feeling all that pressure together.

Then I asked them, ‘Do you think if we went to the people above school leaders in the hierarchy, we would hear the same thing?’ A moment of silence followed and then everyone agreed that we would.

We held another silence together as a group. The system was seeing itself - its collective experience of learned helplessness.

'So, what can we do?', I asked.

Slowly, the group came up with creative solutions that were within their locus of control. School leaders ideated on allowing room for more choice and voice for students. Parents reflected on letting children be themselves and pulling back expectations. Teachers ideated on ways to involve students and parents in decision making in the classroom and students reflected on voicing their experiences and holding each other and their teachers and parents accountable.

When we started, the goals the stakeholders had articulated were limited to things like improving English learning and strengthening extracurriculars in their schools. Seeing the system in this way, allowed for a deeper quality of witnessing - one that was able to bring out the essence of the people in the system and the shared experience of each stakeholder. The intentions that emerged from this space of witnessing were more rooted in their deeper essences as people and their hope for a new system that produces different outcomes.

In permaculture, the farmer shifts from the question of 'What do I want to grow?' to 'What grows here?'. It's a powerful shift that grounds us in what exists, in curiosity, in sensing and seeing with the eyes of the heart.

Then, once the farmer plants a few seeds that are indigenous to that land, a process unfolds. New species grow around the species that were planted. An entire mini ecosystem develops. The need for pesticides goes away because various species balance each other. The need for fertilizers goes away as all living matter is returned to the same land and as the land is allowed to grow what it inherently grows. The role of the farmer then becomes one of being in sync with the land and doing only what is needed - bring water, allow sunlight, etc. Even barren pieces of land and entire landscapes have been known to regenerate themselves in this way.

If this ability for regeneration exists in all living systems, what does it require of us, who are both the land and the farmer in the systems we exist in, to activate this process of regeneration? I have a suspicion that it starts with compassionate witnessing and then acting from that sense of connection that that witnessing generates. The doing then becomes intertwined with being. It becomes sahaj(easeful).

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