Community, Total Inclusivity and the Power of Knowledge
Dr Rob Power
"Total Inclusivity means recognising, valuing, protecting and nurturing diverse identities, including those of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, age, religion and language."
Whitehead, S. (2022-forthcoming) Total Inclusivity at Work. London: RoutledgeCommunity, Total Inclusivity and the Power of Knowledge
By: Dr Rob Power
In the process of writing this article, writer, philosopher and activist bell hooks died aged 69 at her home in Kentucky on 15th December.
Education and community remained at the core of her ideas, underlining the absolute necessity of cultivating inclusive cultures in which everyone can thrive, and to which everyone belongs.
Given the impact of contemporary events which have helped shape the communities in which we live and work – the killing of George Floyd, the #metoo movement, Everyone’s Invited and health inequalities caused by the pandemic – it is vital that much more is done to place Total Inclusion at the centre of our lives.
“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.” bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
The world is changing
The need for governments, businesses, schools and universities to eradicate racism, misogyny, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and unconscious bias is now immediate, fuelled by the activism of a younger generation who are much more likely not only to embrace diversity, but demand it.
But where does the journey towards diversity, equity, inclusion and justice – Total Inclusivity – begin?
Recent actions – and reactions – of global leaders to social justice movements would indicate that attitudes in the upper echelons of power will be slow to change. As documentary film-maker Adam Curtis explained in a recent interview for Time magazine, society has been designed around the individual [1]
It is a society in which people increasingly feel anxious and uncertain.
Realising the value of Total Inclusivity will lie, not in expectation of ‘top down’ change, but in the capacity of enlightened leaders, educators and young people to build Totally Inclusive communities.
This sounds like an almost insurmountable task.
As social justice movements have encroached into public spaces, mass support for popular action has been met with cynicism and disparagement.
Take, for instance, the reaction to student-led protests at the Pimlico Academy, London, in March 2021. Responding to changes implemented by Headmaster Daniel Smith on the wearing of hijabs, jilbabs and hairstyles, 1,500 pupils signed a petition against the discriminatory regulations. On Wednesday 31st March, hundreds of students gathered in the main grounds holding “Black Lives Matter” banners amid chants of: “We want change.”[2] There were also calls for Smith to be sacked. Graffiti written on concrete perimeter walls read: “White schools for brown kids are u mad” and: “Pimlico Academy … run by racists … for profit!!!”.[3]
The protests were widely reported in the British press. One national tabloid condemned student actions as ‘mutinous’ and ‘divisive’, with reports of the incident quoting Members of Parliament who labelled the situation ‘bizarre and ridiculous’.[4] Students were later argued to have been ‘inspired by Marxists’.[5]
The stamp of official disapproval arrived in June, with the school’s ‘outstanding’ rating downgraded to ‘good’ following a visit by Ofsted inspectors, who stated that there had been a breakdown of communication between the school's leaders and staff.[6]
It is telling that Ofsted’s findings emphasised the failings of the school’s senior leadership. Nothing was said of the many teachers that joined their students in solidarity against prejudice. Nothing was said of the fact that Black, White and Asian students of all ages stood together; that the protest was self-organised.
In official terms, the actions of the pupils were disruptive. School leaders had lost control and failed to establish a framework that maintained order. When seen through the lens of Total Inclusivity, however, the power of collective action displayed by Pimlico Academy pupils should not be understated. Not only did community actions set an example for organisational leaders to follow (the Union flag was subsequently removed after the protests and the headmaster later ‘stood down’ from his post), but their advocacy of Total Inclusivity set an important precedent.
“When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”
bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
Community begins and ends with Total Inclusion
In our efforts to create engaged, active, learning communities, the fundamental principles of TI must lie at the heart of every decision we make. From the rules of conduct and codes of behaviour, to the language we use in our schools and classrooms, to the curriculum that we teach. We must approach these issues with a Totally Inclusive mindset, one that compassionately listens, but avoids knee-jerk responses to efforts to compartmentalise the interests of our community members.
In recent times, it has become all too easy for school leaders to ‘show awareness’ of diversity by implementing one-off, stand alone, modules into (invariably) History or English curriculums, or through catch-all professional development days on ‘racial awareness’.[7] Such initiatives are championed in the name of diversity. Yet their impact is unambitious and temporal. They not only merely serve as box ticking exercises, but give rise to a culture which places initiative for change in just a small handful of influential individuals.
If Totally Inclusive change is to take place, it must be totally inclusive. It must involve a broad, coordinated, approach at every level of organisational operation, from staff recruitment to teaching and learning, to marketing and outreach.
It involves listening without judgement. It involves asking questions and seeking solutions. It requires the involvement of young people as agents of change. It demands the questioning of existing curriculums, knowledge bases, pedagogies and ‘ways of knowing’. It demands breaking down disciplinary barriers and opening scope for transdisciplinary collaboration. It hinges on the faith of leaders who believe in the power of their advocacy, and faith in the capacity of young people to thrive best in the environments that they have proactively created.
“Education as the practice of freedom affirms healthy self-esteem in students as it promotes their capacity to be aware and live consciously. It teaches them to reflect and act in ways that further self-actualization, rather than conformity to the status quo.”bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
The power of knowledge cannot be underestimated
As educators, knowledge is the fuel that powers the engine of our schools and universities. It is the currency that enables young pupil to buy exam results and university places. It is the foundation of national culture. And yet, little scope is afforded to consider ‘why we know what we know’ or even ‘why we have to know this’. Even less focus is placed on the broader implications of knowledge accrual and the extent to which it preserves, and in some cases reinforces, dominant power structures which obfuscate meaningful realisation of Totally Inclusive communities.
It is perhaps no coincidence, for instance, that students at the Pimlico Academy felt utterly disenfranchised from their learning community given the school’s emphasis on a ‘traditional education’ and ‘Great Events and People from British History’.[8] At a school in which 35.9% of pupils do not speak English as a first language, it is no wonder that the curriculum ethos of Future Academies – the school’s governor – seemed irrelevant and exclusionary.[9] Further examples of the impact of knowledge exclusion are numerous.[10]
Understanding that ‘knowledge’ can preclude the building of Totally Inclusive communities is one thing, but working towards breaking down these barriers is another. Part of the remit of Powerful Histories, a social enterprise founded in April 2020, is to support school communities in recognition of this objective. The Local to Global Project, a transdisciplinary project which engages young people in community-centred research, has served as a powerful vehicle in establishing the foundations for future change.
Through the research of stories and experiences within local communities, participants position ‘local’ histories in the context of global interactions. Confronting the past in this way not only engages young people in the writing of their history – that is, uncover histories hidden from mainstream narratives – but allows participants to create knowledge to both inform and shape organisational cultures and community perspectives on equality, inclusion and justice. The project is delivered by project mentors, often students who have themselves undertaken Local to Global research. These linear mentorships open scope for the development collaborative partnerships between participating organisations.
It is crucial that young people are not only involved in the journey to build stronger more inclusive communities, but that they see tangible examples of the ways in which their work leaves a lasting legacy. Whilst this article is as much about foregrounding the importance of community – the role of young people in building it – it is as much concerned with drawing attention to some of the wider issues which we must consider in achieving Total Inclusion.
As educators, we are faced with an ever-changing landscape of shifting priorities.
How active we are in being change is often thus contingent on factors that lie outside our remit of influence. As much as we are constrained by exam syllabi, performative cultures, league tables and student numbers, we must not lose sight of long-term objectives to empower young people to shape the communities in which they live and work.
Our role might not be to ‘lead the way’, but we can certainly pick up the torch to show young people that a brighter future lies ahead.
By: Dr Rob Power, Founder and Director of Powerful Histories (powerfulhistories.com)
references
[1] https://time.com/5941744/adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/31/pimlico-academy-pupils-stage-protest-over-discriminatory-policies
[3] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/pimlico-students-muslim-national-education-union-pimlico-academy-b927533.html
[4] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9422507/Students-Pimlico-Academy-London-stage-protest-racist-uniform-policy.html. See also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9429185/Pupils-staged-protest-racist-Union-Flag-need-taught-history-say-MPs.html
[5] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9433699/Marxists-exploited-Pimlico-Academys-students-Union-Flag-uniform-protest.html
[6] A copy of the report can be found here: https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50169538
[7] More broadly, questions might also be asked of the high-profile organisations campaigning to integrate black history into ‘every school curriculum’.
[8] https://www.futureacademies.org/about/curriculum
[9] https://www.locrating.com/schools-Pimlico-Academy-0urn135676.aspx
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/31/birdwatching-is-not-just-a-white-thing-flock-together-london. See also Dawson, E., ‘Reimagining publics and (non) participation: Exploring exclusion from science communication through the experiences of low-income, minority ethnic groups’, Public Understanding of Science, 2018, Vol. 27(7) 772–786, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963662517750072.
See also:
Aow, A. Hollins. S. and Whitehead, S. (2022-forthcoming) Creating A Totally Inclusive School. London: Routledge
Whitehead, S. and O’Connor, P. (2022-forthcoming) Creating a Totally Inclusive University. London: Routledge