Humanising Education - A Conversation with Karima Kadaoui

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

The trusting in our humanity is a trust like we would trust our heart to beat, like we were— we do not think is our heart beating or not. We are humanity. We share humanity. And yes, it's an extraordinary paradox at a time of crisis of humanity to talk about trusting our humanity.

Hi everyone, welcome to this final episode of 2024. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. It's been another fantastic year on the podcast, full of amazing conversations that I'm so grateful to be part of. We started back on January 1st with Nicole Dyson on empowering and enterprising young people across Australia, and we're ending the year in a beautiful place with Karima Khaddaoui sharing in some co-reflections with me about a trustful and humanizing society that she's seeing emerging in Morocco and beyond. It became really clear to me during this conversation with Karima that the way we talk about the work that we're doing is a really important choice. This is because it sets up frames and expectations that really affect how we then do the work. So for that reason, I'm not going to say much about the incredible work that is happening across communities, schools, and government ministries across Morocco through the Tamkeen process, because Karima describes it much more beautifully than I ever could. But you can find links to the Tamkeen Community Foundation for Human Development and further details about Karima in the show notes. And I just want to end by saying a huge thank you to Karima and to all of the other guests this year, and to all of you for listening and sharing the podcast. Thank you, Karima.

It's, yeah, amazing to be able to have this conversation. I think you've been absolutely fascinated learning about Tamkine and the approach and the process and the research and the inquiry and all of these amazing things that you're doing there in Morocco. So yeah, really, really happy to be able to talk today and find out more.

I'm just delighted, been very eager to have this conversation with you, Tim Logan.

Oh, lovely. So thinking about a starting point for people that perhaps haven't heard about Tamkeen at all, maybe it's worth, could you just give a little bit of a context setting about just where you are, where this has come from, you know, for you, how have you ended up with and in the Tamkeen world? And I really want to explore what it means and some of the specific things you're doing there, but I think just to orient people, you know, geographically and conceptually where you are would be, I think, really helpful.

Well, maybe I'll start where, where the whole process is in an explicit and implicit way start or initiated is with the question. So what was the question initially? And the, the question was before 2009, actually, why despite all our efforts in Morocco, despite the means, the political will, the Human Development Index— because at the time it was very much the focus of the government— the Human Development didn't seem to improve. But furthermore, we could experience, we could see the societal phenomena that would speak human withering, that would speak societal disharmony. And so with that question, why? And that was the different founding members of Tim King came, we started reflecting our very question, we started looking at our own gaze, what are we focusing on? What is the language? Because the language I'm using today is not the language we use at the time. So what is the language that we use And what is that language telling us about us, about our own perceptions, about our own understanding? And where is that question taking a focus of attention? And we realized that very much by questioning a question, the gaze started to widen. We realized that we were focused on what we were lacking, what was missing, what was not there, and not looking at the— at widening the gaze into a broader, a wider landscape. Looking for the beauty there is in our society, looking for all those expressions of human flourishing and these expressions of harmony that are in our society. At that moment, I can say that Tim Keane revealed itself as an experience. Yes.

Beautiful. Yeah, I know it'd be great to explore what that means in different ways. But yeah, no, I love that in terms of— because I see that a lot in different ways. You could call it, I guess, a deficit frame, right? You, you know, you spot the problem that you wanna solve when we're working with young people as changemakers, or you spot the thing that you want to, to change or improve, which is often a deficit frame, right? But as you say, this, if you flip that somehow, which is not easy because we've been conditioned in many ways not to do that, but it's, there's a whole world of possibility that opens up, right?

Absolutely. And also in the language, you realize what sense of agency we're speaking from. This idea that I'm going to change something, that was very much part of the reflection. You know, if one has children, you realize that you might try to change your children or guide them in a certain way. Your children are your children. You can only nurture them, create the conditions for them flourishing. And that is very much what there is. So when the process initiated, we left that idea of we need to design something, we need to create something in order to change something. It very much took more of a softness of the gardening, and with the softness, the trust. Gardening is an expression of love and trust. You trust that seed, that in that seed there is that tree and the beautiful blooms and the fruit. And you don't grow the tree, you create the conditions. So the language, the understanding initially was an understanding of we are creating conditions for the flourishing, for the harmony. Very quickly, we realized that, well, gardens create their own conditions, and it's very much a co-creation and a co-facilitation in a certain way. And so it went from the garden, we are the gardeners and we create the conditions for the garden, to, well, we are the garden and we co-create the conditions with the garden. You know, the falling leaf, composting, enriching the soil and creating conditions for further growth. And I think with time passing by and Tim Keane being very much a process of inquiry, or being able to be characterized rather as a process of inquiry and learning and growing understanding, we realize that we are very much the garden as much as the gardener. So we are also the gardener, and that completely changed our sense of agency.

Yeah, it's so interesting to me because I definitely— and one of the things that was coming up for me a lot when I was reading and learning about your work is language. And you, you know, you're already kind of using it in, in interesting ways to frame, because the description of the thing that we're doing is a really interesting part of the work, right? Because as soon as we set choose certain frames rather than others, it invites certain ways of approaching. So I'd love to, yeah, I'm really curious about that a bit more. But if I can, you're in Morocco, I mean, just very practically, you're in Morocco, you're in Tangier. What were the kinds of patterns and things that you were seeing that initiated the question? I guess I'm just, I'm wondering a bit more about the context in which you're in that gave rise to the question. You know, what kinds of relationships were you seeing where you felt again, very conscious of the frame, but not that there were problems to be solved, but just that things where you could see need somehow.

Well, they, they have various experiences in life, and some of those experiences was very much working with the Moroccan government as advisor of Minister of Employment. So I met a lot of young people who, very qualified, could not find work. And so the despair, but also how In a certain way, society was speaking about these young people. So it was in this kind of context, the despair of young people, working with the Moroccan government, also working with corporates and in the context of consultancy and working with corporates and big corporates and medium corporates in Morocco to also to see the unease there is in corporates in terms of change management, looking for the change and trying to change the behavior of people. Again, this very forceful sense of agency and urgency. So it came from the experiences in the corporate world, working in the government, but also in the working with workers who lived, experienced infrahuman conditions of work. And really, there is something if you're told every day that you are nothing, there is something that starts sticking on yourselves. Into your cells. So to see this sense of self that was a sense of self really resting, sitting, getting buried into this idea that I am nothing, I am worth nothing. And also working in this extraordinary experience that we had in a shantytown, and one of the biggest at the time, it's no longer there now, but at the time there was which is a very big shantytown in Tangier. And I was very privileged to work with this organization trying to create conditions for the initiatives that were in the shantytown to tell another story in terms of what we can as a human being and what we can when we come together. So it was all these different contexts in the private, in the public, but also in the social sector that led to these questions at a time where Morocco, there was the launch of the National Initiative for Human Development. So there was a specific political context, an invitation for the whole of society to reflect how do we grow a society together where, um, what is for the prosperity of all. And so this was a bit the context where, where these questions came. So I'm just sharing my own experience. There were the different experiences of my friends, my colleagues, yeah, and the health sector and the finance sector. So all that came together, and this was very much in that in-between, in this core reflection, very introspective collective, but shared with all, that manifested the Timkeen. And then the circle widened, the process widened. And now it's beyond Morocco.

No, that's amazing. And I really appreciate that, just to kind of ground in the real reality of the people living there and how it comes up, because it comes from the ground, right? It comes from a place, doesn't it, in terms of these questions. And I think sometimes the language can quickly go into quite ungrounded places sometimes. You know, but I think what, what I was hearing you saying there as well, really connected with the idea of humanizing, because as you say, even things like human development, these frames can be quite dehumanizing actually. You know, they're often coming from quite scripted paradigms of control about progress and linear ideas of how do we get from A to B because we know we want better human development for everyone and what your provocation feels like, and as you, as you know, on your website, you talk about your Nia as humanizing society. So maybe could you just speak about that a little bit in terms of what does that word humanizing mean? And also what's, what's this idea of Nia? Because I think there's something really precious there as well.

Yes. Well, the, the Nia is very much the intent of the heart. It's very difficult to translate. And don't you— it's very difficult to say this is my Nia. Also, it is very much in what I say and how I interrelate and what I do that we express this Nia. So there's a, there's a lot of beauty in the Nia, and we all have a Nia. And, and it's beautiful when our Nia is confluent, and it allows for, for emergence, it allows for renewed energy. That allows us all to grow together and to flourish together. So Nia is, um, has an extraordinary energy in it.

Um, can you mind if I just ask one of the— do you know Carol Sanford? I was talking to Carol Sanford about essence and essence in contrast to purpose, because everyone's obsessed with purpose, right? Find your purpose. But she was talking about this idea of essence, that it's like you don't choose it, it almost chooses you, and It's something you participate in. And I just wonder whether there's a connection there with this idea of niá.

Yes, yes, I can really relate to what she said in terms of you don't choose it. You embody, niá is part of you. And when you find a way to express it, it's an extraordinary, joyous flow of life that you experience. Very often, we can do things and express things, and it's you don't feel that joy, you don't feel that you're alive, you don't feel— and maybe that creates a certain disconnect. And the word essence is very important, the word essence. And this is very much— we talk about the essence of Tim Keane. Yes, definitely.

It's an interesting word, isn't it? Because it's also problematic for us, you know, with classical philosophy and the essence of something and the, you know, this idea, and it's come into identity conversations about who is, you know, the essence of certain categories of people. So, you know, it becomes Wrapped in different discourses, let's say. But I think there's something, again, it's a felt sense rather than a kind of something you just decide on one day in this really agentic moment of like, I'm gonna set my own purpose, or I'm gonna, you know, it feels very different to that. So I haven't yet understood where it fits and sits in an educational conversation. I think it's a really important thing when we are working with young people to help them understand, you know, this relationship somehow that they're participating in with the context they're in and what they're invited to do. And I don't know, it's, it, it always feels really interesting to me that it's, it feels like a new language that many people are starting to speak and they're stumbling and they don't, including myself, don't quite know. And it's really difficult because I think we've been conditioned into so many of these kinds of much more linear kind of logical frames of this is how it will be and this is how we take control of a situation. This is who we, you know, this This is me in relation to this thing I want in the world. And all of these just quite transactional ways of being that we've been, I shouldn't say we globally, but many people, particularly in the weird countries, you know, who have been socialized and conditioned into a much more Western individualistic frame. I think there's a lot of conditioning there that it's quite difficult for people to see outside of.

There is this, I'll quote René Char, she's a French poet who's saying, and the words will surge that know about us, but we still ignore about them. So not to panic when we cannot find, understand the words that we're speaking, because those words become mirrors in which we can reflect our experiences. So as you look, we are looking for words to resemble our experiences. And those words then become a mirror to grow the understanding of our experiences. It's very much a logopoetic process. So when we today, right now together, like trying to reflect essence and niyyah and purpose, this reflection, this co-reflection allows us to widen our possibility of thought, especially when you bring more than one language. Actually, this is, we have 7,000 languages in the world and there's so much richness, there's so much wisdom in languages. That each language has been able to apprehend, to grasp reality and its grammar and its vocabulary and its semantics in a way that other languages have not necessarily done in the same way. It is so extraordinary to be able to explore that together as humanity. And then again, there is something extremely joyous and elating in that very process because we can feel in our very beings and becoming That widening of the gaze and language as a structure that can limit us, really limit us.

Absolutely.

Suddenly becomes, when it's reflected from lived experience, frees us, liberates us in an extraordinary way and widens that field of possibility of thought and imagination. And it's the same challenge as for imagination. How do I imagine something that I haven't experienced, seen, heard, before. But we have this possibility when we come together and co-reflect, but again grounded, as you're saying, from lived experiences. It's not an intellectual exercise, though it's a process of understanding. It's very much an embodied understanding. Understanding is not only cognitive, it's also sensory, motor, emotional. So it's the whole. And if my understanding grows, well, it's the way I see life and the way I understand my inner cosmology also that suddenly transforms. The word understanding is so interesting because it conveys the relationship, human understanding, and that process of embodied cognitive, emotional, motor, and sensory understanding. In French, it's compréhension, cum together, prehension, which is to grasp reality together. In Arabic, stafahum and safahum is also both. And I would be fascinated to see other languages.

It's true.

The understanding that we have is completely intertwined with the human, the relationship with the other. And why do we learn if it's not to understand? And now I'm quoting Bergson, another French philosopher. We learn to understand Right?

Yeah, completely. I've always thought, because it's interesting as well, in the English version of understand, it's very embodied because you are, I mean, quite literally, you're standing under something, you know, there's a sense of embodied connection. And yet, there's also a disconnection somehow. But yeah, anyway, a rabbit hole.

But you know, Tim Logan, what under and understanding etymologically means, the root, it means under, that under means the between, standing in the between.

Okay, interesting. I didn't know that.

Yes. And then suddenly there's an extraordinary meaning there that is conveyed in the word compréhension, comprehension, or tafahum in Arabic, which is that between of our understandings.

Amazing. And you You've used this word a few times, co-reflection, and that felt like a really important— when I was reading, so that I'll share it in the show notes, but the paper, Realizing Metamorphic Transformation in the Mirror of Tam Keen, great title, but I'll, I'll share the paper cuz I think that's a really interesting overview. But again, in that there's a lot of this idea of co-reflection. And so maybe could you just speak a bit to how would that come in quite a bit more practically into the way that you're working in community with people? What, what does that look like, feel like? As some kind of a process?

Well, again, it goes back to the question. What is the question of the community? Whether the community is a school or neighborhood or village or the Ministry of Education, it is a question. And then we do not rush into finding answers, but rather stay with a question and play with a question, reflect the question together, experience together that question by creating experiences where we rediscover each other in a different way. So the question is fundamental to the process. And maybe going back to language, responsibility in Arabic, mis'ulyah, its root is sa'ala, to question. Isn't it so interesting?

Ah, interesting.

That my responsibility is to question. So going from the question, and experiencing this experience with different community members comes a moment where we realize that we are living the answers. Because as we are co-reflecting, there is this gratitude of coming together. Everyone has his place, every thought is important, every emotion is important. Hierarchy dissolves, we sit in a circle, we take away tables. So in this moment, in this co-created place-time, and that between emerge the not yet thought of and the not yet imagined. We re-prehend ourselves in our humanity and the humanity of the other. This is why we, in suffusing this co-reflection, this co-creation, this co-imagination, this inquiry and this learning and this understanding, there is trust. There is a beautiful trust in our humanity that is watered, and that waters this process. And that trust in humanity is another way to talk about love.

That's so interesting to me, because in the paper, there's a really interesting moment where you're describing the Tamkeen process. And it's like the first half of the sentence is totally, you know, everybody's on board, right? All of the systems thinkers and the the researchers, everybody's on board with experience-based, relationship-oriented, co-created process of inquiry, learning. Fine. We're like, everyone's fine with that. But then as soon as you get to the second part of the sentence, which is about trust in humanity, as you've just said, right? Trusting human potential, trusting humanity, realizing the essentiality and existentiality of love. And it, it, it reflects in the paper that that's where many people struggle.

Wow.

Yeah, it goes right, it goes really deep, right? Because I do think we struggle to trust the humanity of ourselves and of other people.

Yes, yes. And yet we trust, we are able to come together and sit in a circle.

Yeah, that's true.

So how do we just speak about that, reflect that, experience that? And with that core reflection, we water that, we nurture that. The trusting in our humanity is a trust like we would trust a heart to beat, like we do not think, is a heart beating or not? We are humanity. We share humanity. And yes, it's an extraordinary paradox at a time of crisis of humanity to talk about trusting our humanity. There's humanity semantically, expresses the meaning of compassion and love. When we say humanity, when we see something beautiful, a gesture of generosity, of giving, we say, ah, humanity is not dead. This is humanity. It's something, and this is in all cultures. We recognize it the same way we recognize a sunset or sunrise. Also, which is so interesting, is that etymologically the root of humanity is "hum," and "hum" means Earth is the home of human, the home of humility.

Humus and soil and yeah.

Soil, exactly. So when we speak, talk the language of humanity, we say humanity, we're actually talking about how we are connected to ourselves, to each other, but also to our natural world and to the whole in a way that is beyond our conscious grasp. Yet it is in our language.

Yeah, but I would, I would also say that it's much easier. I mean, this is like stating the blinding obvious, but it's much easier to see that in people who we feel already connected to or are like us or a part of our in-group, or, you know, however you wanna say it. It's much more difficult to trust the humanity in people who have wildly different philosophies or views on the world or morality or whatever, you know, however you might describe the other, that othering move. We saw it last week with the US elections. That's all humanity. Are we trusting humanity in all sides of that process in the United States right now? It's much easier to see the humanity in the people who are in your blue team or your red team, or rather be able to expand and see the whole and the humanity in people that really fundamentally disagree with We have seen and we're seeing every day terrible images of mothers or fathers holding up their dead children saying, please see them as human beings, see them as your own children.

And that is heart-shattering. That is the most extreme violence where in that total despair, the feeling that we are not even considered as human And yet at the same time that there is this abomination happening that some try to justify in Gaza or elsewhere in the world, we are seeing extraordinary expressions of humanity, Tim.

Yeah.

We are seeing doctors who refuse to leave and who are giving their own lives to save the lives of their patients. We're seeing neighbors who are digging into the rubbles for hours and hours and hours to find the children of their neighbors. We are seeing people who are with extraordinary courage and determination who say, we will come to try to protect and save and bring food and bring water to people who are being starved. So at the same time that we're seeing abomination that we are witnessing, and it's livestream, in the witnessing we dissolve in what is happening. We are part of it. Because we are witnesses. But let's widen the gaze again and to see the whole. So I will go back to what one young man in a neighborhood community with whom we grew an extraordinary partnership and relationship, deeply human relationship, who when he was asked, so you're saying before Tim Keane there was violence and now there is love? And he answers, no, before there was love And today there is love, but before we did not express love with love. And there is an extraordinary compassion. This is an expression of a sense of self resting in love. We embrace all, recognizing that humanity is there, but how do we learn together to express our humanity with and in our humanity? And that's what we are entrusted with. Our humanity entrusts us with humanity. So when we say it is hard to trust others, maybe when I said earlier that the trust we talk about is this trust of the beating of the heart, you know that your heart will stop beating one day, but you still trust. And this is that kind of trust. So if I trust my humanity, then I cannot not trust somebody else's humanity, because then the sense of humanity is far greater than my finite self. The sense of humanity just connects me to much wider to my limited self.

Yeah, beautiful. Absolutely. And it, it's really hard to retain that insight when we're swimming in the normal, you know, the kind of the standard model, the standard institutions that we participate in that frame our lived experience. And, you know, it's really easy to forget that, right? Really easy.

Yes, it is. It is. But this is what is so beautiful. The compassion that you're speaking right now, it's easy to forget that. So when it is forgotten, that's what we do when we come together. We become mirrors of one another and remind each other. And there is no judging and there's no pointing fingers. And with that compassion, we are able to experience the meaning of trusting our humanity.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, that struck me as you were speaking earlier about it, because it's not something you can instruct somebody to do, right? To trust humanity. It like, it has to be, I mean, in all of this work, it feels very strongly, it has to be a participation in the process. It has to be a felt sense, like a lived experience. Otherwise it just kind of glides off the outer surfaces, you know, it's just, doesn't go anywhere. It's like, but then you feel it and then you, you experience it as part of the circle and it, you know, as part of the co-reflection, it's like, oh yeah, okay, this is a reminder of this thing. Yeah, I've, I knew that all along. I knew that thing, but I had forgotten it. Or, you know, it's, yeah, it's something feels very importantly experiential.

So, and, and you know, there's a, there is, um, a psychological phenomenon when a human being uses a sense of proprioception. So if I have my sense of proprioception, allows me to— if I ask you right now, can you point to your nose? Can you point to your nose?

I can, yeah.

Now we're pointing to our noses, right? We don't need to think about it. But if you lose your sense of proprioception, you cannot. You need a mirror. To be able to do it. And that takes us back to the mirror. Humanity, because it's not— it's what defines me in my finite self and connects me and my much wider self to the other, to our natural world and beyond. It's losing that sense of proprioception. Where is it? What is it? How do I actually experience it?

Yeah.

And this is where comes all this, all these conversations and rhetoric and discourse about separation But it is extraordinary, and this is what we have experienced in the last 15 years, how little we need when we come together to actually feel this deep connection in the mirror of each other. And by reflecting that experience and looking for the language that resembles that experience, we are able to grow the sense of humanity, this sense that's proprio— humanity proprioception.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. It's a kind of really deep orientation.

Yeah. And this is a young man in a high school who told us, well, when the soul meets trust, it expresses itself. When the soul does not meet trust, it hides away. That was his way of expressing his experience in his school.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Could just, I would really be really curious to hear and share with listeners, perhaps you could just describe a couple of ways this has shown up. This Tamkeen process has shown up in educational context, cuz you referred earlier to working with the Ministry of Education and I know you've been in communities, in schools. And again, I, I often have this moment where there's a kind of, how does this connect back to the very clear and ordered lived reality of people working in traditional schools all over the world right now?. And so there's a lot of work to be done there about, you know, helping those institutions change in important ways. But I just, I think, like you say, we need very little. So what is, when this comes into a space in an education, supposedly educational context, yeah, perhaps you could just describe some of the things you've seen and how that has manifested.

Hmm. I, I can share maybe 3 stories, short stories.

Please.

Yeah. The first story is in a teacher training process. So we were very much involved in the teacher training here at l'École Normale Supérieure of Tétouan. And all the processes were forms of workshops. So we would sit in a circle with the teachers, very experiential. And it was learning to learn, to co-create conditions for learning with the learners, with the students. So we were experiencing that ourselves in that process and growing and nurturing the love love for learning and for teaching. So I remember as we were having a break, one of the students came and he was of a certain age. He already had children. He came from down south of Morocco and he tells me, "I struggle a lot. I cannot communicate even when I'm friends. I'm not able to share, to talk, and I want to be a teacher. I really want to be a teacher, but I struggle. I cannot communicate." And I said, "Well, yes, when you don't communicate, when you don't talk, what do you do? He looks at me, he says, well, I listen. I said, well, it's harder, much harder to learn how to listen than to talk. And then he wanted to convince me how bad, you know, what a failure he was. And he says, but you know, when I was a kid and I was in this school, there was a competition, and whoever had the answer to the quiz had to run up on stage and give the answer and then would get a prize. And in my school, no one had the answer, and I did. So I turned around and I gave it to the boy who was next to me, and he ran up to the stage and gave the answer, and he got the prize. And he looks at me, and I said, but do you realize what you've done? And I said, you've given the answer. You could have kept the answer, but you gave it. That is so beautiful. There was an extraordinary expression in The other students arrive. We were like a large group of students sitting in a circle, and as we are initiating the process, so it was pedagogical communication courses, he suddenly stands up and he says, "May I?" And he tells us a joke and we laughed so much. It was such a fun— I can't remember the joke. I just remember how much I laughed. And we laughed so much. He sat down with an extraordinary expression in his face. The following week he came back and he says, "Professor, something changed." And I saw it in his eyes. And he saw that I saw it in my eyes. And that was enough. When he became a teacher, the first thing he did, he called me. And I'm so grateful, so, so grateful that I have met this extraordinary human being that today is a teacher, and I have no doubt he's an amazing teacher. Yeah, so that is the first story. The second story, I'm leaving this school, it's actually called the New Generation School, is for students who have dropped out of school, so teenagers. And I'm working with the inspector of the education system and the head of the pedagogic service of the province governance body of education, of the education system. And they tell me we are expected in another school. And I said, but are you sure? This is really late, it's 7 PM. Says, no, no, we are really expected. So we go to the other school, and who do we meet? We meet the director, the principal, and the teachers. And, and they said, we really wanted to meet you— so me and the Spectre— because we have major challenges in our school. And they started talking about the challenges, the violence, the difficulties of the neighborhood. And, and by then it was past 7:30 PM. And I was listening with my whole being, and when they finished, they turn around and they look at us, and I said, you know, I really heard what you're saying and heard the pain, but I can see the light in your school. Noor, they look at me and said, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, it's almost 8 PM and we are here sitting in your school the director, the principal, the teachers, and you're trying to figure out together what can you do for your school. That is extraordinary. I see the Noor. Now please, can you share with me the light that you see, the beauty that you see, even if it's very small? And then, after a moment of silence, they start talking and sharing. I love my students, said a teacher. And they love me. And then another, the director said, the principal, we have a very good teamwork here going on. And so it's the same school and not the same school. Yeah, at the same time. And then the third story, the third story, I was very, very honored to be part of this process of training of facilitators for the transformation process of the education system. Facilitators, they're called the reference facilitators, that they're the head of the services, pedagogic services of all the provinces and all the regions. Facilitation, beholding, an essence and a spirit. This is how it is spoken. And I remember, as that was the second time that we were going to meet, and we said said the first time, what are your questions? And there were so many questions. And when we met again the second time, the question was, what are your questions? So everyone writes their questions. And then we said, what surprised you? You experienced this experiential training process. We call it facilitating the facilitation. And we did this with the members, a team of the Ministry of Education who who have an extraordinary facilitator heading this program and with the university, Mohammed VI facilitators. So within this process, we asked, what surprised you? So they were writing down what surprised them. I said, what manifested? What emerged from this facilitating that you have facilitated? So they wrote down the different manifestations. I said, what are openings? What are those apertures from which you can see the light? You can see new fields of possibilities opening. Yeah. And then they wrote all the openings. So before we explored the questions and saw that the questions they had are no longer questions, and they said, now we understand when you were saying, when you were saying, we're not going to answer the questions, we're going to live the answers to the questions. Those, some of those questions These were very important questions. They seemed really challenging questions, and they're no longer the questions now that we've experienced the experience of facilitating the processes in the education system. We left to the end. After exploring the manifestations and the surprises, we did not go to the openings. Before the openings, we said, okay, now a miracle happened and our education system has become that education system we all dream of. Can you please tell me? You don't know that miracle happened. You come to work, no matter where it is, either you go to a school or you go to the directorate, the provincial directorate, you go to work. What is that thing that makes you understand what you feel, what you hear, what you see that makes you understand that the miracle happened? So everybody, it's not an easy question, writing the answer. And then we got two billboards and put all the miracles the miracle, and then we brought the openings. What they experienced and co-reflected together that these are the fields of possibilities, you know, that we see the light coming through, that are opening. And when they looked at the miracle and they looked at the opening, and this was with 3 groups, 94 people, they looked at us and said, we're starting to live the miracle. We're not doing something to transform, we are experiencing the transformation. And that is what we call metamorphic transformation. Because in that expression, that process of transformation is very much expressed as a humanizing education system. Ensenet el mando ma tabawiya. The language did not come from us, from me or from our team. The language came as an expression that resembles the experience in a school. And we shared that story, and slowly, slowly, that language started to grow. Beautiful.

It's completely amazing. It's funny because it's— I was just even this morning just getting a podcast ready for next week with an amazing psychologist in Australia, Helen Street. And in that conversation, we were talking about just the quality of the experience of learning, of being in a school, and it's so rarely brought into the conversation, the actual, the experience of experiencing being in a school and learning. And it is so resonant, it feels with what you were just talking about, just that where if we put, we constantly put off this like, oh, in, in the future there will be a transformation or there'll be a change or this will shift or, but living it like actually shifting perception so that you are experiencing it. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating. Really fascinating. And, and it feels like a distant land, I think, to a lot of people, except it's not. It's like it's right there cuz we do it all the time in other moments of our lives, right? But we somehow there's this distance that we bring into this educational process that we have strangely constructed. Yeah. Fascinating.

Mm-hmm. Uh, for me it is absolutely wondrous actually to to, to witness and to experience this process of emerging humanizing education system. But what is beautiful is that when we talk about a humanizing education system, every step in the direction of a humanizing system is the direction itself. So every moment is an expression of a humanizing education system or humanizing society. We are experiencing the future in the present. You know, in Arabic, we don't conjugate in the future. What we do is that we bring a letter and we add it to the verb in the present, and that letter is the letter S, sin, and is the letter of Salam, of Silim, the letter of peace. This process, the Temkin process, is very much bringing the future in the present. So we're no longer running after something, projecting ourselves and forgetting to be in the moment. When we're not in the moment and not connecting, how can I grow in understanding, human understanding, and grow my embodied understanding if I'm not connecting at a deeper level? It is extraordinary to see how an education system is able to create the institutional conditions conditions for an organic emerging process to happen. And that can only happen with the trust of the members of the education system that we will recognize and realize the beauty in the system. And by realizing, we realize it. That again is the beauty of the language.

Exactly. Oh, it's, it's totally inspiring to hear that it's happening. You know, that's what I love about this so much is that it's it's, you're doing it, it's happening, it's there. You know, so often these conversations about education and change and transformation feel off in the future and distant and one day we'll get there. And, but it's, it's here, like it's happening in, despite, with connected to all of the current contexts and institutional frames that we already have. Yeah, it's really an important kind of recognizing, I think, that it's happening. I mean, in Morocco, it's happening. It just makes me want to come and, yeah, come and see it.

It's happening in Morocco and it's happening elsewhere. But where do we focus our attention? Where do we shed the light on the light to be able to see? I mean, it is— there's so much happening everywhere, but we tend to look, focus on what is not happening, what we need. And not looking at what is actually happening. And let's find the language for this. Let's grow in understanding. And that gives us the courage. It allows for the energy to start flowing. So funny that again, I keep on going to different languages because it is so rich. You know that in workshop in Arabic is warsha. Warsha, the root is rasha, is to spray like the spray of the cloud.

Okay. Yeah.

The rain or the spray of the eyes, the tears. So to spray, what are we spraying in these workshops? What are we watering? So suddenly the workshop does not become something mechanical, but it becomes much more organic. And my tears are there to water the heart. So in that grief, it can be held with the gratitude that we are willing together to meet to co-reflect and to, to ask the question, where is the light in a system, in a school, in a community? Then you shed light on light, starts diffusing. And also the reality of any system is that you have so many currents and streams, and some seem to be opposite, but the strongest stream, the strongest current that feel that it is opposite and pulling in the opposite side of a humanizing education system will behold this stream that is yearning for confluence. All streams and all currents look for confluence. They all seek for the ocean. And that is very much what we experience. So no panic. You have to say, oh, but this is like completely the opposite. No, because Tim Keane is not the what. Is the how. And Tzumk'in is not contextually defined. It's very much how water takes all shapes, because it takes us to trusting our humanity. So it's not in a context, or in a certain culture, or in a certain sector. It's very much recognizing the beauty there is that we behold.

Yeah, absolutely amazing. And it's really interesting to me, so much language is coming up in this conversation, but in previous conversations questions I've been having as well, because it feels like there's a searching for some new language that describes— or maybe it's ancient language as well, but different languages to describe the thing that we know is there, you know. Because it's quite often there's a sense that it doesn't exist if I can't describe it, I can't say it, I can't communicate it to someone else. And there, yeah, just in lots of conversations, it feels like there's a reaching around for different kinds of language. And even in one of the other papers I was reading connected to your paper, Ray Ison talks about the praxis of co- with Louis Klein and others, the praxis of co- and that, the idea that we've got all these words now coming up with co-. I mean, you've used many, right? Co-creating, co-reflecting. It keeps coming up now that, that we just put this co- on the front of, as a prefix onto many words because we are reaching for this new kind of language that describes the thing that we know, you know, the thing that we do anyway, but we want more of somehow, or there's a hunger for, or it's— yeah, it's fascinating to me.

And it is very important to go back to what we were sharing at the beginning. We were talking about the gardener and the garden. Tim Keane, this is why we talk about the mirror, and you see that the mirror comes back, that the system transforms itself. It's a self-facilitator. Facilitated process. We co-create and we co-facilitate the conditions with the system for the system to self-facilitate its own process of transformation. So this takes us to another form of agency, sense of agency. So it's not us doing something to, this is very much co-facilitating self-facilitated processes with our partners, the partners being a village, or education system, or the higher education system, or the Youth and Culture Ministry of Morocco. And what is so fascinating is that then systems start reflecting in one another, becoming mirrors for one another. And this language that is growing in a system, and that is spoken in a system, suddenly resonates beyond the system. Now we're having at a regional level other directorates coming from other ministries we would like to co-facilitate with you, for you to co-facilitate with us, but it is their self-facilitated process of transformation.

Yeah, no, and the other thing that I think that is really interesting about that is the breaking down of some of the siloed ways that we have historically divided up ministries in government or sectors within society. We deal with education separately from health or from community or from, and if you've got this interweaving as the, you know, they're mirroring each other and connecting. That feels interesting to me as well as you start. Yeah. As we learn that they clearly, they're not, they cannot be separate, but we have somehow artificially separated them, but they want to come back together somehow, you know?

Yes, yes, yes. And the same happens between the school and the neighborhoods. In which they're embedded in and the villages in which they're embedded in.

Yeah.

We are seeing how these distinctions are dissolving, how young people who are co-creating initiatives, community initiatives, community models, are co-facilitating those processes of transformation with the school and with the families. So there's no longer the institution, the school, and the neighborhoods, uh, the villages., but it's very much a community-based learning and understanding ecosystem emerging, suffused with that trust and that love.

Yeah. Ah, so good. Thank you so much. I mean, it's, I know there's, there's still a lot of resistance out there to this kind of language as well, which I, I just wanna kind of bring in. It's, it's interesting to me that it really doesn't resonate with everyone. You know, there's still a lot of people who want things that are more more certain or programmatic or clear or grounded or something. I don't know what it is exactly, but some of the— I mean, I see it with the work with Nora Bateson, and, you know, there's still a sense of it's too abstract, it's too up in the clouds, I need something I can grab hold of. And it's— I don't know, I just wanted to bring that in because I recognize it a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please.

I really feel that when we feel resistance, It's our own resistance that we feel. This process is organic and emerging, yes, but it's within a governmental program. There's a roadmap, there is a vision, there are programs. So it's very structured, right? This is an institution, but within the structure, when there is trust and we are allowing for the different context for that program to take the shapes that are adapted, that emanating from the potential of that context, be it a directorate or school or village or specific region, that is when the process happens. This is what the Minister of Education asked me, how do we create conditions for an emerging and organic process that you're talking about, Timki? And we did not have the answer, but we lived, we are living the answers.

Yeah.

But what happened there is that there was trust. It all came from trust. And that takes time. Yes. Yeah. And yet do you have a political mandate? Well, you don't necessarily have that time, but when you don't have the time, you learn to take the time. So there's within all these programs, it doesn't matter what program, what project or what framework, it is the how. And that how beholds this essence of trusting our humanity and love. When it beholds that essence, then what emerges is an expression of that trusting our humanity. Then we do have education systems that reflect and express our shared humanity, education systems that are not creating future generations that learn that it is okay to destroy our planet and to destroy each other for the sake of proving that we have value, that we have a stronger GDP, that we have a biggest army, or because we are superior in terms of, I don't know, culture or whatever. That no longer is there. Because if we look at education systems today, we cannot talk of any education system that is successful If the education system is successful, then we do not have what we're having today, a process of destruction, of self-destruction of humanity, of the ecosphere that is sustaining life, and of our fellow living beings with whom we share our planet.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I actually think it's founded on a deep mistrust of each other. And so I think the education system as it's currently been structured is is profoundly based on a mistrust of our humanity and a mistrust of each other. Because the best we can do is just teach some knowledge and some skills, and we don't, but we don't deal with the question of our humanity because it's, that's, you know, that's just a given. It's our state of nature. We are unreliable, we're selfish, we're blah, blah, you know, all of these things which we've been somehow for some reason taught to believe. Not everybody, but you know, there is a dominant narrative that we shouldn't trust other humans. And so, yeah, that's why I think this work is so important and interesting. And yeah, no, thank you. I'd love— I just thank you so much for sharing about it.

A last story. Yeah, please share the story with the future teacher. Said a story in a school, and I shared the story of the governance, the emerging governance process that is happening. I will share a story of a student. There's a group of students who called me and said, "May, could we come and see you?" And I wasn't at the office, so I invited them to come over to the house. And they had just experienced the Model United Nations in their school, but the Model United Nations was facilitated, Timkeen, so everything was consensual. They would take decisions, 200 students together, coming together to take consensually decisions. That was amazing to be able to witness that and how they did it. We were were so impressed. He came and he told me that, particularly this student, he says, you know, I've seen the light in myself, and now that I've seen the light in myself, I want everyone to see the light in themselves. And if I'm able to do that, then whatever that person is gonna do, achieve, fulfill in their life, I will be part of it, even if I don't know what they've done.

So I mean, I, yeah, I feel it. I absolutely feel it. I think it's so true. Thank you, Karima. We'll have to wrap it up, but thank you.

Thank you, Tim. Thank you very much.

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