The School Was Built For

Imagine a staircase. Each step is as high as you are. You can’t use your legs to climb it - you’ve got to use your hands, your arms, everything you have. You might even need rope or need someone else to help you. As you excruciatingly climb each step, you hear someone else coming up behind you. This person isn’t grunting and panting like you are. They are walking up each step freely and without any help. And then you notice that more people start walking up the stairs just as seamlessly as that other person. And you think, Wait a minute! This isn’t fair. Why do I have to work so hard to climb this when everyone else has it easy?

Because it was built that way - it was built for a certain type of person with a certain type of ability, with a certain type of privilege.

Many of our education systems were built for certain people with certain privileges, abilities, conditions and rights. And unfortunately, they’ve stayed that way.

How do you tell a child to climb harder? To reach further? Or even worse, to tell them that they don’t have the right to climb those steps or even to reach the top.

For many children who have various backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, traditions, countries, faiths, genders or abilities, this is their every day at school. Maybe the step was built too high or the person to help them didn’t care or the other children passing by pushed them down. The unspoken and spoken ways in which children face opposition, discrimination and lack of care from their peers and sadly, sometimes their educators, creates isolation, fear and perpetuates more stairs being built just like the ones they cannot climb.

One may argue It’s not our fault the stairs were built that way. They can go find another staircase that fits them.

There is no other staircase. And while it may not be our fault, it is our responsibility to rebuild those stairs, making them accessible for everyone. What was built is excluding what matters: every child accessing inclusive, safe and kind education.

As a mother, I am always examining how to communicate the world to my son. If I’m honest, the idea of telling my son that what has been built, is not for him, would be painful. “The stairs weren’t made for you, son. You’ll have to climb them and climb them alone. There may be a few people who might help, but you’ll have to climb it no matter who is there. People might push you down, make fun of you for how you try to get up the stairs. Many will ignore you. But you still have to climb.” This is my privilege and not the privilege of others - and it’s not right.

How many mothers, fathers and caretakers say this to their children? Before going into the doctor’s office, before dropping them off at school, before they meet friends at the park? There are too many who do this here. And it’s not right.

I believe that many of us don’t want it this way. We want a better, kinder and safer future for our kids. And we have to begin transforming the stairs to make our schools accessible, safe and kind for all children. Maybe there are ramps beside the stairs. Maybe we create giant slides or railings or add safety nets.

Maybe the way to rebuild these stairs lies within our own compassion and creativity. And maybe transforming the systems begins with us transforming the way that we see them.

There are ways to make our schools and educational spaces kinder, safer and better for all of us. When we normalize the need to transform, when we accept the reality that a lot of children aren’t equal in our classroom, when we connect ourselves to the limitations the systems have created, we can not only unearth healing and restorative education - we can begin to see an incredible mosaic of magic in children unfold. And that is a system worth building.