Education for the Future: Child Agency

Education for the Future: Child Agency

To give children agency in the enactment of their lives, including their childhoods, is to grant them a mind of their own, to allow them their own will, and thereby to acknowledge their self-efficacy and personal control. Children are (can be) active in creating meaning in their lives. Children are (can be) not only recipients of knowledge but also creators of knowledge.

This is how we get to the critical thinking and self-motivation we so want to develop and see in our youth. This is (will be) education for the future.

It's not going to happen in classrooms with rows of desks and a teacher standing in front. It's not going to happen with pre-defined curriculum. It's not going to happen with standardized testing. It's not going to happen where children are judged, tracked, and graded. It's not going to happen where children live with stress, anxiety, and fear of artificial consequences. It's not going to happen where children are required to conform to a norm.

It's going to happen here.