Pressure to Produce

I was talking to a good friend of mine, another educator, just checking in the other day and in reflecting on our conversation I thought about how capitalism's pressure to produce over everything else ruins so much. In particular I was telling him about how so many aspects of my life involve reading and writing right now, from my day-job in education, to my PhD work as a student, and even teaching the one class that I facilitated last semester at USD, liberal studies 100. My friend said, then you must be getting really good at writing. To which I responded, maybe, but I don't feel like that right now. I feel burned out. Of course, now I'm sitting down to write about it, about how I feel burned out by how much writing I've had to do lately, and I'll process this burned out feeling, by writing about it, ha!

An idea struck me though. Within my PhD program it feels like I really want to work hard at becoming an elite athlete (an elite scholar), but instead of having room to practice our craft, instead feeling like we have space to really flourish, to move openly, and in ways that feel right for each of our bodies (minds and spirits), instead of being trusted to trust our own body (mind), intuition, and movements, it's like we're being asked to break up boulders with sledge hammers, over and over again. It's tiring. I was already tired (this pandemic has me exhausted). And so when I go to practice my own techniques, my own movements, I'm tired, burned out, feeling like the breaking down of the boulders hasn't really helped me progress in my path.

Granted, part of my burn-out, probably a large portion of it, is the COVID-blues. I am so sick of this panorama, er, I mean pomegranate, wait, wait, I meant to say pandemonium - uh, well, I think you know what I'm talking about, I hope. Or maybe I hope that you don't, because that would mean either you really don't understand what I've just written which is just fine, probably better to spare you the re-traumatization, or you're reading this from some distant place, or time - more likely time - after this has blown over and is in the annals of history.

Back to the topic, of capitalism ruining everything. My current PhD experience has some parallels with my (now) 15-year old son's high school experience, during his first semester of 9th grade. Without getting into too many intimate details, the basic gist of the connection between my experience and his is that we are struggling to help his school understand that some of their grading policies and procedures have been punitive and unrelated to our son's learning. That the compliance task-heavy nature of the industrial model of schooling is taxing, mind-numbing, soul-sucking, creativity crushing - and ultimately dehumanizing. I mean, we haven't said all of this to his teachers and school leaders, and while I think they would actually agree with some of (or even a lot of this) they, like so many educators, continue to perpetuate these cycles and systems of capitalist-driven punitive structures.

So why do we have grades? Is it to measure learning or effort? What is the definitive difference between an A and a B? Is it measurable, consistent? Is it like temperature, where a 10 degree difference in Celsius in one classroom is the same as in another? No, right? Can we be sure that the difference between two grades, the differences in assessment or evaluation of student work by a teacher, is the same between all instances of As and Bs throughout all Western forms of schooling? Of course not. An A in one class, from a particular teacher, with a particular student, is going to mean something completely different than an A in any other class, or even in the same class with a different student. So why do we keep using them as if they measure something tangible, real, or valuable - like effort and hard work? And is "effort" and "hard work" what we want to or should be measuring? 

Let me be clear, effort and hard work are keys to growth, but is that what we should be measuring in our school settings? How hard a student worked? Is it measurable? Is one student's 3 hours of focused time and effort the same as another student's 3-hours? If I can write 5 pages in less time than my brother (and I know I can), does that mean that I can get a better grade in less time with less effort? So we aren't really measuring effort then, right? Maybe these concepts of hard work and effort, that we attempt to measure, or pretend to measure, with our schooling systems' grades, are graded because they translate easiest into the capitalist working conditions that exist in our society? Maybe.