In November 1989, citizen protesters smashed the wall separating communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin. The authorities, who until then had suppressed those citizens and their protests, could no longer sustain the repressive authority that maintained the actual wall.
And the breaking of that physical wall heralded the end of the metaphysical wall that protected a most oppressive and authoritarian system from its people. While some social scientists rushed to the judgment that history was over, that particular system of authority was indeed history.
Within months of that, the Cato Institute (if I remember correctly) sponsored an essay contest in which they asked respondents to write on the issue of "how free the former Soviet bloc countries could be," or thereabouts.
I did not write an essay for that competition, but I distinctly remember thinking that they were at the freest in the moment when they had breached the wall. Thereafter, their visceral and practical freedom would have to regress to the mean--as statisticians say. Germans and Germany--not to mention the rest of the bloc-- could not persist in the exultant sense of freedom that came in the delirious destruction of that symbol of tyranny.
Some morning, not far off, they'd all awake and remember that there was a country to run. Somebody would need to govern, somehow.
One thing I know, as a political scientist, is that governments coerce--if we would all naturally and spontaneously do the things that need to be done, we wouldn't need government. The key questions, then, are how much, in what ways, and with what accountability they do that coercing.
At some point--and it turned out to be quite soon, the newly liberated countries faced this difficulty. More than 30 years on, those societies have had different experiences and records with the fundamental issue of how best to govern themselves.
Teachers face a similar difficulty in their classrooms. They have a view toward the things that students ought and need to do--socially and academically. And students don't naturally and spontaneously do all those things.
So, some coercion happens. Teachers do some imposing of order, by their authority. And the same fundamental questions arise.
What is that coercion like? What are the limits and the instruments of accountability for that coercion?
This year, I am inviting students into the process of self-governing. Our room is not democratic, but it is what political scientists call "participatory"--each member of the community has a role and a path toward engagement in the process of governing the community.
In this way, I am hoping that students will "buy in" to the process of creating and sustaining our collective order. Along the way, I think there will be some practical lessons about the difficulty of living together well.
In other words, this activity won't be easy, because the processes we are trying to execute are complicated. Not to put to fine a point on it, we are trying to run a "society" of 25 people, and while not as complex as a whole country, the nature of the problem is similar.
We don't all agree on the best routes to the goals, which we don't all even see the same way in the first place.
So far, this committee leadership of our community has been a good experience. Students are mostly "leaning in" to the whole thing. And as much as they do, we have begun to experience some of the same difficulties that societies have.
My role as "governor" has transformed into one in which I help the governed find paths toward better execution of the governing process they have themselves have created, and in that way hope they generate better outcomes--of the academic goals, which they know they must pursue.
This work is fraught...for both me and the students. I'm not sure exactly what they'll come up with, and they're not exactly sure what they need to do (because they still feel some confusion navigating what they're "supposed" to do...but don't really want to.)
Personally, I think middle school has its own special difficulties in all this. They are not elementary students, more of whom naturally want to please their teacher. And they're not high schoolers, who have a growing sense of purpose and the self-awareness about how to pursue it.
This post has been a (tiresomely?) long musing on what I think has so far been an interesting, fruitful and edifying process. I can't be sure all the edification has been precisely what I wish it would be...but that's because I still want to be governing my way.
All that to say, governing--societies or middle school classrooms--isn't easy!
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