Individuals, Autonomy, Agency

I have recently had the pleasure and privilege of working with my wonderful Grade 12 Theory of Knowledge class to look at perspectives, paradigms and culture. One of the things that emerged from our discussions was just how hard it is to see our own assumptions and habits of thought – especially when they are widely shared by everyone else (increasingly common in the echo chambers of social media).

That idea has been rattling round in my head as I have been preparing a presentation to prospective parents; in which I find myself explaining that our goal is not only for students to excel at school, but also for them to develop into independent, self-determined and autonomous adults who are ready to make their own way in an uncertain world.

After the Theory of Knowledge classes, I’ve been trying to consider this goal in a wider context, and contrasting autonomous cars with autonomous students. Autonomous cars navigate the world by themselves, without needing any corrective intervention. Of course we also want for our children to be able to navigate the world; indeed, their independence from us is a critical part of growing up – and if we are having to constantly intervene in our grown-up children’s lives then likely something is not quite right. We’d rather be there to occasionally provide advice, support, company, affection – not running their lives.

But there is a broader goal here too – which goes beyond ‘navigating the system’. The world is far from perfect – it can be improved in many ways, small and large. Sometimes it is intrinsically unfair or unjust; sometimes it really is broken – if not for us then certainly for many others globally. So I guess we’d like our children not just to navigate the system (as either winners or losers) but to seek to nudge that system to a better place in whatever ways they can, according to the scope of their influence. That’s what, I hope, the cliche of making a difference really means.

Autonomy is, therefore, the stepping stone to the capacity to be an agent of change; and so I’m coming to understand the need for agency as the ultimate goal here; not just to navigate the system, but to understand the system, its causes and effects, decide if it needs to be changed, and take steps to change it if it does. It’s about more than simply maximizing one’s own outcomes, but having a broader purpose beyond oneself.

Most adults are more or less autonomous; but agency is a much higher bar. So how might we get from autonomy to agency? What strategies might we need to put in place in a school to get from one to the other?

There are programmatic elements like Mission, Values, and an holistic approach – these are huge and I have written about them at length in the past – but I have also been wondering about the way autonomy seems to mean not just independent, but independent of others. Educator Alfie Kohn recently quoted anthropologist Clifford Geertz as addressing this head on, when he wrote that however [obvious and compelling] it may seem to us…our conception of the person as a bounded, unique… center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action… is a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures.

Geertz’s point is that our focus on individuals is a recent one, not shared by most cultures, where, historically, the collective group identity has traditionally been most important. Not focussing on individuals seems a challenging idea, as it’s such a fundamental part of western society – but at the same time it’s obvious that we all develop our individual traits by interacting with the people around us; profoundly with our parents in infancy (for better or worse) and then with family, friends and society in general. This social nature of development and learning is widely recognised * – but remains at odds with many social norms – not least, as far as schools go, the focus on individual achievement, and individually-focused assessment instruments such as examinations. With a narrow focus on self, rather than on groups these may be well suited to building autonomy, but it seems to me that for agency, students need to look more broadly to locate themselves in relation to others. When I contrast what students can achieve individually with what students can achieve in their group service endeavours, peacebuilding conferences, sports teams, musical performances, dance and theatrical shows, it seems clear that while students can develop autonomy as individuals, if we really want agency then we need to move from this narrow stance to a much more socially-focused one. We already know this from so many areas; the challenge is now to apply it to the academic sphere (as we would in a work environment). 

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* An example of the casual contempt for others that can generated by focussing only on oneself is memorably captured by the exchange between Peter Lorre’s and Humphrey Bogart’s characters in the movie Casablanca:

Lorre: You despise me, don’t you?
Bogart: If I gave you any thought, I probably would