Wonderland

Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach,
And those who can’t teach, teach teachers

I heard this cheerless ditty many times while working as a London schoolteacher – largely from people in other professions, although it was embraced with some humorous and self-deprecating resignation by my colleagues.

It echoed around my being, inspired some sense of shame, and prompted me to explore many aspects of my art in greater depth – writing, acting, music, editing: all of which have become important arteries of my existence.

It has made me explore my insecurities as an artist and as a woman, and has led me to *embody my art in my life*, to *nurture the artist of my soul*, and to *live with a boldness and a color* that has sustained and

inspired me,

                            and challenged and broken and healed me, in perpetuity;

spiraling ever outward,

and up,

while planting roots that run deeper and deeper

with each

passing

year.

Yet, wherever I go with my art, it all, always, without fail, flows back into the *jugular of my being* – teaching.

That is, holding the space, sharing the vital newsflash that YOU CAN DO IT, YOU ARE POWERFUL, YOU ARE MIGHTY, YOU ARE ENOUGH, YOU ARE PERFECT AS YOU ARE, YOU ARE HOME, and inviting young people to allow the power and majesty that they inherently possess to flow forth and take them on the journey of a lifetime.

For that is life.

So, I am thankful for the lessons and the wisdom offered by this disempowering ditty, although I urge others with the burning call in them to teach young people to disregard this rhyme as bitter, harmful tosh.

However, I can say that it stoked my fires of inquiry, and allowed me to quest through many a terrain; before finding my truth, and recognizing and claiming my worth, with an unapologetic vigor that smashes world-views and challenges stuck-thinking with the blink of a seeing eye.

I have always been one to learn the hard way, and, as I said, I would urge all beginning teachers to disregard the message, primarily as it convenes the first rule of the code of Free Living: Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Tells You Who or What You Are, or How To Live. (Especially if they are lessening your worth).

So, in that spirit, feel free to disregard all and everything that I say. Apart from the part that you are powerful beyond all measure.

Moving forward, I have re-purposed the ‘Those who can, do/Those who can’t, teach’ pearl of anti-wisdom, and changed it to this:

Those who can do, teach.
Those who can teach, teach.
Those who can teach, through teaching, teach teachers.
Teaching is the seed that falls from the fruit of experience.

I would also like to add that, *those who can’t teach, often teach anyway*, and in so doing, often cause more harm than good.’

I feel the harm that poor, dogmatic, disempowering, domineering, mindless, unconscious, lazy, and disrespectful instruction does to the soul of the growing human being, is probably the root of the bitterness that leads to the adherence to the original ditty of discussion.

Bad teaching sucks.

Being taught badly is offensive to the soul and the mind of the young being.

‘Being taught badly’ translates simply as, ‘learning to internalize the tools of oppression, so that we may regulate and limit ourselves to serve the needs of the dominant group/groups; to collude in our own oppression, without conscious agreement’.

The result of being taught badly is a population that consists of humans who do not truly know themselves; humans who do not know their own worth; humans who have become accustomed to dimming their own lights; humans who live in fear, anger, frustration, disappointment, monotony, repression, mediocrity, suffering, and extremes.

And remember always – *Hurt People Hurt People*.

I don’t need to tell you that we do not need this in the world.

This model has not been working. It has never worked.

We are so much more than this, and we have to actively learn that we are not what we truly are in order to create this unwell reality.

We are already enough. And our enough, together, is enough to create the reality that reflects our highest and most magnificent good.

I am not going to embark on a treatise into the Sociology of Education, and my particular standpoints therein.

But research it.

Schooling, as a tool of social reproduction, has most benefitted those in society it is designed to benefit – those who already win.

And schooling successfully holds back those who are required to fail.

Those who fall in between these two groups, serve to make up an awkwardly homogenized (yet ever sub-divided) mass of status-quo perpetuating, unwitting servants to the machine.

And, yes, there are always exceptions, *bright stars* who ‘succeed’ against the odds. Exceptions to the rule, not proof of a different rule.

And what does it mean to ‘succeed’ in a system that is designed to disempower and enslave the majority of the world’s population? It means to come out on the ‘winning’ side. Or, at least, to feel like it.

Yet, none of us truly wins in a game that encourages the loss of the soul, the ensnarement of true freedom, the suppression of instinct, and the commoditization of nature in all her forms (including ourselves and our labor).

Resist!