School doesn't revolve around YOUR kid: let's bring back a collective approach

I think schools have spent the last couple of decades tolerating, enduring and exacerbating an individually obsessed model.

It’s been a relentless shifting of the needle toward individual plans, individual needs, individual gripes, individual preferences and individual focus.

It's resulted in exhausted school staff who are constantly attempting the impossible and collapsing in an exhausted heap of constantly feeling like they’re failures. They’re not failures. None of them.

I think a school is a collective noun, not an individual’s vending machine of service. I think parents should feel privileged to send their child to your school – a special place designed for that child to grow as a learner and a citizen if they make an effort.

I think we need parents’ support and the insistence that they drop their transactional approach to schooling. School does not revolve around YOUR kid. Modern, professional schools are designed, built and operated for OUR kids.

I also think we’re very close to a point where one more individualistic intervention, imperative or compliance might topple us collectively off the cliff anyway.

So, why don’t we just jump together of our own accord? Let’s leap into the abyss of collectivism, progress, imperfection and authentic job satisfaction.

The great part is that a collective approach to schools isn’t new or brave. It’s roughly how we built schools before we turned them into individual need meeting factories.