Young People are Reclaiming their Education and Making New Worlds Possible - A Conversation with Zineb Mouhyi

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

When we talk at Youth By Youth about youth education activism, we say like the best education you can get is challenging the system because all of the rest of your life is going to be around challenging, composting, rebuilding new systems. You're going to be world makers and you're going to be hospicing a world and systems that no longer serve us as a collective.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me again for this week's episode. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. It feels increasingly clear to me that all of us involved in education, from young people to teachers to leaders and policymakers, are being asked some really tough questions in these current times. Are the systems and institutions that we're working and learning in still serving us? In fact, did they ever? And what are we being called on to do differently? This week I had such an enjoyable conversation with the amazing Zineb Mouié, who is the co-founder of Youth by Youth, a global organization that she set up with Valentina Rahman to convene action around transforming education systems, but in a way that centered relationships and didn't exclude the core of these systems, the primary constituents that they were seeking to engage and serve, the young people themselves. Zineb is also the co-founder of the Weaving Lab, an international NGO and community of weavers learning together how to interconnect people, projects, and places to form thriving system. And prior to that, she was a policy and partnership development officer at WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education. You can find links to all of Zineb's work in the show notes. And please don't forget to like and subscribe and share the podcast with others you think might enjoy it. Thank you so much, Zineb. Really amazing to be able to have this conversation. There's a lot of connecting points, it feels, between our work in all sorts of ways, from an educational kind of lens, from a youth lens with all the amazing work you do, with all of your weaving work that I'd love to talk to you about as well. But yeah, just fabulous to be able to meet and have the conversation. Thank you.

Sim, thank you for having me, and I'm excited for it.

Amazing. One of the things that struck me when I had listened to some of the other talks you were giving was about this idea of absurdity that young people are living with and in, and this strange moment in all sorts of ways, long moment perhaps that we're all living through. It's time, strange time to be a human on planet Earth, but also very strange time to be a young human on planet Earth, I think. So maybe, yeah, just to kind of lay some of the foundations perhaps for some of the, the work that, you know, you're doing, maybe could you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, I think the thing that comes up for me when, when we bring the notion of absurdity is I'm not sure if you're familiar with Guy Debord's work, La Société du spectacle, it's called. So it's essentially like this view that we are in a world of images that is actually designed to separate us from our reality and designed to promote a form of conformity, isolation, and lead us to be consumerist above all. And so this, it's this notion that like we're flooded with images. That make us move into a passive form of consumption rather than participation. And I think this is true more than ever, although Guy Debord was a philosopher in France in the '60s and was huge in actually promoting the 1968 student movement. Okay. And so to me, it's essential to actually, like, when we talk with young people, to make them see that, like, the spectacle they're a part of there's different ways to engage with it. And a lot of the protests or rebellion that can happen happens on the theater that is set by the people who are putting the spectacle on. So you can end up being like an actor within the spectacle without realizing that you're actually yourself are being commodified and co-opted and your actions are actually just part of that world of images. So I think when talking with young people, it's essential to actually make them take a step back and realize, like we talk at Youth by Youth about what we call like conscious activism. And so it's this notion that you actually need to take a step back to be conscious of the theater that you're a part of to be able to step out of it and for your actions to be taken from a place that cannot be co-opted as easily by the current system. 'Cause it's really the commodification of rebellion And the game of ego, especially in youth activism where young people are being made into like little heroes here and there that like are seeking awards, it plays into the same system. And so it's not actually leading to any change. So I, I think, yeah, like this is, this is a fundamental piece that we try to make a lot more visible in our work.

Yeah. No, that's interesting. And I guess the thing that comes up for me around that is like maybe more in an educational formal educational setting is the kind of absurdity of the game A, you might call, you know, the success narrative of do this work, get these grades, get these qualifications, do, you know, the pathway to success that's being sold. And at the same time, those young people are living with kind of swimming in this incredible turbulent sea of information, disinformation, and talk of crises everywhere. And I find that an interesting, there's almost some absurdity there. It's how do you live with both of those things as a young person?

That was actually exactly my own story of getting out of game A, if you will, of just at some point, like my undergrad was in business initially. And at some point I'm, I kind of had this moment of stepping out and being like, I'm being taught how to be successful and how to be at the top of a pyramid that just steps on everyone below me if I get to be successful. And also like I'm contributing to the creation of a future that I don't want. And I think for young people in particular, they've been taught about climate change and about the polycrisis very young. So there's a sense of what am I learning this for? Because you're telling me my future is in danger, but you're also telling me I need to be successful within this model that is destroying my future. It just makes no sense.

Yeah, absolutely. And what are you seeing in your communities with Youth by Youth and elsewhere? What kinds of responses are you seeing young people having to that absurdity?

Oof, there's a range there. And I think we're seeing definitely a lot of mental health crisis, a lot of anxiety, a lot of numbness and passivity. And I think that's quite warranted given the situation. And at the same time, it feels like this is exactly why we need spaces where we can actually focus on listening to one another and creating spaces of sanity, like in the way that we can say, are we seeing the same thing? Like, is this normal? And validating each other's emotion in that so that we can start moving through the complex emotions that we're holding, and so that they can stop paralyzing us in the way that I think is happening a lot with young people. So I think kind of the remedy to that in a way is holding each other in community and creating spaces of relationship and listening and care so that we don't have to feel like we're holding it on our own because it's a collective experience that is meant to be felt individually in order to paralyze us.

That's amazing. Yeah, I know, absolutely. And I would love to ask you about the amazing pedagogical approach that you've come up with as part of the Wot Youth By Youth work to lead young people through that, but Maybe just before we get there, the other thing that I guess I participate in and I'm also seeing is also the increasing injunction to young people to not be passive and to take action. And I guess that's part of what you're saying about this kind of activist, sometimes hero activist narrative, which is dangerous. But what, I mean, where do you see that a lot of changemaker language, you know, like be the change, all of these kinds of really well-meaning opportunities being presented to young people to actually generate some more meaning in their own lives by taking action around an issue that they care about. For example, I mean, we do that with Festival of Hope, right? That's a big part of what Festival of Hope is about. So yeah, I'm just, you know, interested in how do you see that playing out in different ways?

I think that the youth space is, yeah, like riddled with this, like the culture that it seeps in, which like is the culture of productivity and action and show what you've done. And I think it can be important, but to me, action is the last step of the process. You cannot actually take conscious action unless you've actually started with fully having a picture of what's going on that is clear enough that your action is not just busy work. And I feel like a lot of the time there's this sense of like, oh, Gen Z is gonna save us. The hope around, you know, like cultivating this false sense of hope, which to me is like actually at the end quite harmful because a few years down the line, I think a lot of young people realize like their work might have been meaningful in some ways to them at some point or another, but they haven't changed the roots or the structure that creates the problems. And I think that's true of a lot of people that I know in the social sector. That have spent decades serving communities, all of that, to find that like after serving thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, that the problem that they're dealing with only is getting bigger and bigger over time. So we don't want that sense of frustration and ultimately burnout and for people to actually sign out of the social sector eventually because they have that experience over and over again. And really start with— and I think that's, that's where the pedagogical approach comes in. With actually making sense of things in a way that's deep enough.

Yeah. So let's, I love it as a framework. I think it's so powerful. So let's lay it out for people. And then I'd love to also just give a bit of context setting for people. And maybe we could do that afterwards, but in what kinds of spaces is this happening? But yeah.

So the pedagogical approach is a 3-step process. That's what is, what if, and what now. What is really is focusing on, on sensemaking. And so for me, there's several dimensions of sensemaking. I think it's really important when you start with a question that you care about to actually make the frame clear enough that you understand the dynamics at play that enter into it. But I also think sensemaking involves like actually senses and the way like our sensefulness informs us. So there's also that dimension of the self within sensemaking. So in a way, for me, sensemaking is both the most personal dimension, but also the most meta dimension. And from there we move into what if, which is radical imagination. And there I think we know that our education kind of harms our imagination over time. And a key piece for me of reclaiming our education is reclaiming our capacity to imagine. So a lot of the time, as we were saying, when we move into action, we are like, this is the problem, this is the solution. And actually, like, there needs to be a step in between that says like, Well, this is the world I wanna live in, and what kind of solution would actually enable that world? And like go into a sense of expansive imagination where we start creating spaces where we feel like that's the kind of world I wanna live in, that's the kind of emotions I wanna feel on a daily basis. And from there, can we bridge the gap between what is and what if? So What Now is really taking that action from a clear understanding. And like the most beautiful visions that you can possibly muster. And then yeah, what now is really both our capacity for personal action and our capacity for collective action. So weaving change with others, knowing that the challenges that we're dealing with are so immense that there is no such a thing as the hero model of the person who's gonna find the perfect solution that's gonna solve it, but rather all of the ways that our actions can get connected with one another and create that sense of momentum towards change.

Beautiful. I mean, it's beautifully simple, but as you've just described, there's so much amazing complexity built into that process. So maybe just a couple of reflections. I think I love what you're saying about sensing in the what is stage, because for example, I remember hearing Daniel Schmachtenberger talking about the quality of our sensemaking is only as good as our sensing, to paraphrase. But it's true. So often we jump to the propositional reasoning, calculating how, you know, weighing up the different aspects of this problem in inverted commas and what we might do about it as though that's the sensemaking that needs to be done. But actually there's probably 90% of the thing is this sensing around how do I feel about this? Or how is it coming up for other people? Or, you know, whatever, not even questions that you can't even necessarily put into words.

Yeah, I think there's the notion that sensemaking only happens in the mind, whereas like, we make sense of things with our entire being. So taking into consideration our cognition is obviously super important, but also our actually like embodiment really matters quite a bit to be able to say, I understand this in a felt way.

Yeah, which is again, not given the credence by the more mainstream paradigm, right? Whatever you wanna call it, but, or the educational paradigm or whatever. And the other thing I think is vitally important is the collective aspect of sensemaking. You know, we, we very rarely do it on our own. I mean, there is an important individual piece, but as you say, there's, there's so often the thing that is needed is many, many, many perspectives felt and, you know, reason different types of qualities of perspective on the question that we're asking. Otherwise it's work of the middleman. Which is monoculture, right?

Exactly. Making sure that sense-making doesn't happen on just an individual level.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think you're putting the finger right on others here, which is why the methodology that is over our pedagogical approach is the methodology of weaving. So then there's an overlay between how we actually then bring interrelation and the pedagogical ways how we move through our questions.

So maybe, I mean, maybe you could say a bit more about weaving specifically, but could, could you perhaps do it in the context of what kinds of spaces are you using this pedagogical approach with young people? Where, you know, where and how and when, and, you know, just some of the practicalities so people can get a bit more of a sense of the work that's happening. And around this idea, I mean, one of the core ideas of, as I've understood of Youth by Youth is young people reclaiming their education. Which you said earlier, but I think is such a powerful idea that it's not about transforming education somehow, it's about young people actually reclaiming their education.

Yeah, I think those are two very different questions, so I'll address them kind of separately.

Yeah, please. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah, go for it.

So the main way that we actually bring this pedagogical approach in our programs at Youth By Youth is with the Weavership. So that, that is a 10-month-long capacity building program in a way, or a form of fellowship. Where we bring young people to learn what it means to weave. And so weaving is, is for us kind of like, for me, I see it as an art form of moving us out of separation and into connection. We define it as the practice of interconnecting people, project, and places in ways that are synergistic and purposeful. Really, it's how do we move out of the paradigm of separation and into the paradigm of intra-being? And so how do we move out of competition into collaboration? Out of learning alone into learning together, and out of only using thinking to actually embodying. So those are kind of the main shifts that we foster through the practice of weaving. And so yeah, there's, there's like a fundamental belief that's baked into this, that centering relationships and centering relationships not just with one another as humans or as changemakers, which also really matters, but centering relationships with our place, with ourselves, with the non-human world, with all of life, is how we start to reclaim our education because we start to reclaim our belonging to life, our belonging to an intelligent, beautiful, animated, loving universe, which I think once you start moving into that paradigm, there's something special that happens that cannot be taken away from you because then whatever is being taught to you in what we call the colonial education model, which essentially teaches you to accept and reproduce our imperialistic system through teaching you separation cannot actually affect you anymore. Maybe you can learn from it, but your education then becomes so much more expensive because your belonging to place, to yourself, to your communities, and to, to life, to the universe.

Fascinating, isn't it? Because it makes me think that it doesn't just teach you the separation in a propositional way. It like, you experience the separation and therefore what you are doing somehow is, and many other people, but what you're doing amazingly is countering that with a different kind of experience that, as you say, centers relationship. And that's, that's fascinating because I, I speak and, and think a lot about relationship. But often it's seen as a separate thing from the work or from, you know, the thing that people are doing, the productivity moves that they're making to be part of the whatever, to earn the wage, to, to get the grades, to do the thing. The relationships are a nice to have, but they're not the work. Whereas this idea of centering the relationships, I think is, is so interesting and so important because it does something different, right? It, allows something else to develop that's a different, has a different quality or a different feel.

Yeah, that's exactly that. It feels like if what we're trying to actually enact is a change out of a system that's not working for us, the, we could call it capitalist modernity or the industrial system, and into a system that actually serves life, then like, how do you do that? You know, like to me it's by changing our, our worldview. Fundamentally. And so it's, if we've been embedded in a system that is based on the logic of separation, how do you create new experiences that don't just give you, you know, the words around let's move from the logic of separation to the logic of interbeing, but actually the experience of being in a place where you can experience that sense of interbeing and relationships and care. And so I think that also brings up the notion that, that we need to center prefigurative ways of organizing, that if there's a future that we want to call into being, then we need to actually live it today. That's how we call that future into being, not by abstracting it or strategizing how it might happen, but actually giving us a felt experience of it that then creates that sense of resonance and momentum that can make it happen. Like, that's what, to me, how you bring emergence into this process without controlling it, because you can't control the creation of a paradigm change, especially this paradigm change. So yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, this is, this is beautiful because it's, I mean, it's so much of what I and we are exploring through the podcast and through other things. And I mean, I have so many questions around it because part of me is like, it's quite uncomfortable with the idea that there are certain people saying that we need a paradigm change and a different logic and a different, and then that challenges perhaps what the way I've been conditioned and raised into a certain cultural way of being and knowing. And yeah, so there's, there's an interesting challenge to that, but there's also a discomfort that I have around, I don't know quite what it is. It's like being led somewhere else, being told that there's a different paradigm that we're going to. And I think sometimes for me, that's where we end up in some of these strange, slightly more culty dynamics where you have spokespeople for the paradigm change, And then there's, there's a followership around that as though someone's figured this thing out.

Yeah.

And I guess I'm just expressing some of the things that come up for me around this, all of these conversations around paradigm change. And, and some of that will be a resistance from me and my own conditioning, of course. But others, you know, there's still, I think, other legitimate questions.

I'd love to explore them. Yeah, that's for sure. But I think what this brings up for me is that when we're talking about a paradigm that actually values and respects and gives us our role as humans as responsible for being stewards of life in all its forms. What we're talking about is not like, there's this one paradigm and this is how you get to do it and we're going to teach you how to do it. But really seeing that, like, I think there's an author that I love, Linda Kikiewicz, that expresses it very well, which is like, right now our logic is there's an above and the below. And that means that the above gets to be above at the expense of the below. And what we're trying to move to is a side-by-side. And when you move to that logic, you're not saying we're side by side, but my solution's better than yours, but actually we're side by side and all the different ways that we wanna be together actually are valid. And there's a, a quote that I wanna mention that I feel maybe gives that idea very well, which is, when people think the same idea and move in the same direction, that's a cult. When people think many different ideas and move in one direction, that's a movement. And that's Laurita Ross, an American, African American activist.

Yeah. Nice. Because it's, it's that diversity of perspectives that, that we were talking about earlier in the collective sensemaking that I think sometimes does get lost when you get this. Maybe it's part of the capture of the movement towards in the more commodified consumerist system where there has to be an answer that you can package up and sell and, you know, and build a community around. But actually it's one of the things I think about all the time is like really sitting with and holding that genuine diversity of perspectives is an incredible thing, but it's very, very difficult to do. I mean, we talk about we want it for our young people, but it's an incredibly difficult thing to do when you're talking about genuinely different diametrically opposed views about life, people's bodies, you know, the world, nature, etc.

I think, you know, this is where like our conditioning comes into being because it's our conditioning that there is one system to rule them all, you know. And this is what is so harmful about it. Like this is the creation of those monocultures that then lead us to actually like disrespect life, like disrespect life in all its forms, human, non-human, cultures, languages, all the ways that we're meant to be present on this earth get collapsed down into this one system. And I think that's exactly to me what reclaiming gets to, like reclaiming the beauty of our diversity, reclaiming that we're equal because we're different, reclaiming the fact that each of our place holds different species, knowledges, ways of being, that is the best way to honor and be in place, you know. So it's also where, you know, we're not talking about just like ideas living in the ether, but where they are contextualized to place. And I understand the challenge because like at Youth by Youth, we work with lots of young people who have different visions. And sometimes I'm like, that's not how I see the future of education, but that's not about how I see the future of education. It's about how we all get to say first, this is how I want to be. Learning, and this is what I can do to feel my own power and my sense of agency within my own learning and actually have the agency and power to, and responsibility to bring my gifts into my community, to be in relationship with people that are in my community and design things that we collectively think is what we need in this place in this time.

Yeah, no, amazing. And talking of, you know, rooting it. How does that happen? Because I know you invite young people to kind of create circles and spaces and different— so yeah, maybe you could just say a little bit about the practicalities of how you're helping that to come into being and how young people are taking it.

Yeah, so the way that we do it is through the creation— we encourage young people to create Glocal Hubs where they are. We call them Glocal Hubs because they're locally anchored and they're the ones that are bringing diverse stakeholders into conversations. Around some of the things that they feel the sense of care and concern about in their community, but they're also globally connected in a way that there's solidarity between them and sharing of learning between them. So if you were to really draw it, you have kind of that circle that moves between the local and the global in a way that all the people locally can be informed by what others are doing where they are, but they make it contextually relevant to where they are. And at the moment, we have local hubs only on the African continent, in Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Cameroon. And we're, we're looking to continue that expansion and, and starting mostly with the Global South. But it's our dream to have local hubs all around the world that are communicating with one another, sharing insights, and that are led and driven by young people who have been through the Weavership program to have the capacity to weave their global hub. Where they are locally.

Amazing. So there is a sense of, or more than a sense, there is an aspect of the work, which is somehow capacity building training, although I don't like that word, but you know, it's an interest, it's something I, again, it's a big question for me. I mean, I think there is a role for helping young people to learn things they don't know yet how to do. And that is the educational interaction somehow for me at a deep level, at a timeless level, in a way there is a relationship there of guiding and supporting into a new set, into a new world, a new set of competencies, new set of skills, whatever, again, whatever you want to call it. Maybe you could say a bit about what's that kind of process for young people? How are you supporting them to learn that?

That's, that's a very good question. I think there's, we love to experiment with ways of learning that differ. So I think especially when we're thinking, you know, an online program for us, it's quite important. To not fall into, let me tell you what you're supposed to know, because then that would go completely against the kind of experience we want to be building, right? So we play with a lot of different kind of like experiential modalities of learning, which can be quite tricky online, that's for sure. But also it brings a lot of creativity to think like, how do we create an embodied experience online, you know, in like an embodied space? And we also kind of create a support around each young person. So each person kind of is encouraged to design their own learning plan. So as part of that reclaiming of learning and have different layers of support around them, they have buddies, so kind of support that are the same age group.

Yeah.

Uplifters, which is our ways of creating intergenerational allyship. So we call it uplifters rather than mentorship because we're recognizing that learning moves in the direction. It's a way of uplifting the person, cheering them up into who they want to be becoming and calling that into them. And then the community themselves, when we meet, has some pieces that are specifically around care and support, like in the way that we organize a space where there's always check-in, check-outs, smaller group conversations, ways to make sense of what we've been learning that is more than just passively receiving.

Amazing. And I did want to ask you about that, the allies and the elders question, because I think that's something again in our work that is interesting and speaks to what you were saying earlier about this common trope that Gen Z are gonna save us all. And you know, the, the young people have the answers to the challenges and clearly that's not accurate, but it's also a disservice, if not an abuse of young people to have to clean up our mess, right? To put it bluntly. So very frequently there's a question for me about what's the role of Gen X, boomers, you know, all of the other generations that have actually had their hand on the steering wheel for quite a lot of this mess that we're getting ourselves into climate-wise, et cetera, and all of the good things that, you know, have come as well. So there's a, yeah. Question for me there about what's the role, the uplifting, I hear you saying, but is there anything else you would say about the kind of, yeah, the allies and the elders? I'm sure there is.

There's a lot of things that I think I feel is very important to actually mention for older generations to take into consideration. The first one is actually just building relationships that are authentic and horizontal with younger people, where they're actually listening for the purpose of just listening and creating space. And centering that form of relational just care, like actually just care, you know, like I care about you, I see you. And I see this as a form of trust building between generations. I think it's fair to say that young people have had a significant breach of trust from older generations. They do have this sense that what is this that you're leaving me with? What am I supposed to do with this value proposition that you're putting in front of me? And so just having this sense of actually caring kind of goes into the process of building trust. I also think it's extremely important that adults that have been in the area of like education, social change, trying to affect the future positively, share what they've been doing and share their mistakes. Because I think that one way that education is set in a way is to stop intergenerational transmission, to interrupt it in a way that we can't actually get the lessons from the past generations. So in a way, we're bound to kind of retry the same strategies and tactics that past generations have tried and not go beyond what they've done. So really, in our Uplifter relationship, we focus on, for instance, having a lot of older generations that have a lot of experience with social changemaking, that are weavers in their own rights, and that are sharing all the things that their years of experience have showed them. Hasn't worked for them so that like young people aren't bound to just make the same mistakes. We need to be able to move up in the way that we're doing things. And yeah, as I said, I, I just really think it's, it's a strategy of the colonial education system to interrupt intergenerational transmission, to limit our power, you know.

It's fascinating, isn't it? Just on that point that actually quite a lot of people would say that's what education is. It is the process of intergenerational transmission. So maybe, and I, I very much, I think I agree with you, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you mean by that. How has education in this colonial sense interrupted intergenerational transmission?

I think if you're taken out of your community and out of your family structure to learn what has been defined by a top system to transmit what society supposedly values, then this form of separation of school and life makes it so your learning is decontextualized. So it's decontextualized from place, from relationships, from community, and obviously from the transmission of what the generations before you have experienced. Because like maybe there is a form of transmission, but it's a transmission of the kind of knowledge we've deemed everyone needs to have for reasons that I'm still not sure I understand.

Yeah.

Or yeah, like I criticize more than understand at this point.

Yeah. I guess the counter to that is that the collective knowledge or, you know, identity transmission that's happening intergenerationally is nationalistic based on, you know, the country you live in or, you know, you learn that country's history or, or whatever, or religious. And so, I, you know, I think clearly that has been a feature, but I very much hear what you're saying. About the decontextualization from relation. Again, it's like from a relationship, right? It's like it doesn't matter how you are in relation with the person teaching you. It's just a question of learning the songs of that country or the folk traditions of, in a transmissive way, in a, in a propositional way.

More than just that. It's like in a way that is meant like the modern schooling as an invention was meant to create national identities.

Right.

So it's, it's a way of controlling, homogenizing, and creating a form of assimilated identities that cannot as easily challenge the nation states, like the, the structure that upholds this monolithic system that we've been talking about, which is the system of capitalist modernity, which is this economic system that fundamentally separates nature and humans and the rest of life. With the notion that this is how we enable the endless accumulation of capital. So if you want, that's why I'm saying like colonial education is at the center here in our understanding, because colonial education is essentially education with the purpose of bringing people to accept and reproduce the dominant imperialist system of capitalist modernity. So if we talk about that as like, for me, there's no conversation about transforming education or even less reforming education, that's for sure. If you don't actually start with what's the purpose of education, what was modern schooling designed to do? And once you start to see that, you're like, for me, the purpose of education is serving my wellbeing, the wellbeing of my communities, and the wellbeing of the life that I'm a part of. And that's quite different from what the colonial education system has been set up to do. So for me, like when the conversation around education is like, What do we change aesthetically around that core? As long as you're not changing the purpose, it will be designed around that purpose. Like whatever it's meant to do will continue to place the driving force that animates it.

And I mean, in a way, then we're back to the absurdity that young people are living with, right? It's when they're seeing that and they're feeling that and they're feeling something different and they're hearing these different stories. But it, you also said something to me in our previous call just that was, I found completely beautiful, which was And I didn't actually find who said it, so maybe you can clarify who said it, or maybe you said it, but that the revolution, that the revolution is the flowering of everyday life.

The revolution will be the flowering of everyday life. That was used in the 1968 student movements. So it wasn't the quote, it was actually a slogan.

Okay. I mean, that felt to me when I first heard you say it, but reflecting on this conversation today. That feels like it really says something about— there's something very everyday about the thing that we are talking about here, right? Centering relationship. And it's so core to the everyday of living and being human and in community and all of these things.

I think it, it brings up the notion that, you know, this new paradigm that we're trying to bring in is not something that we're gonna design how we get there. But it's by living it, by actually saying like, that's why for me the notion of reclaiming is so important, that by reclaiming our education, who we are, our communities, our relationships, that we're already living it. That's already a way of saying, well, I'm not actually subscribing to your model. I'm living my life in a way that is wholesome, where I can bring the different pieces in a whole rather than separate all the pieces in a way that is gonna fragment my very being. And life can be so much more beautiful. When it's lived that way. And I'm not saying personally that I'm there, you know, it's also like recognizing that as long as we're tied with this current system and we live within it, it's pulling us constantly. And there's— it's the work of everyday life to say like, how do I choose to live this moment differently? How do I actually center what I perhaps cognitively understand but not yet embody?

Yeah, and it's so interesting as well, because for me that that everyday life, that the things that we've been talking about, you know, the beauty and the, the, just the incredibleness of life itself is also present in the colonial education system, in all these spaces that we're talking about. And so that's one of the real challenges, I think, of any kind of change in relation to education is that there are amazing generative relationships that happen despite the spaces that have been constructed. Interested in this industrial colonial frame.

That's the beauty of it, you know, humans will human, you know, like there's a sense of like, relationships are who we are, like, we can try to cheat ourselves out of that, but we'll always tend towards that. And I think you're using the right word here. It's like, despite this, and I don't want our young people and I think, you know, like I have now an 8-month-old child and I think about his future and I'm like, I don't want him to have moments that are despite the system that is trying to stop those moments and this flowering of life, you know. So how do you design for the flowering?

I love it. Exactly, exactly. And we, because we settle, I think we settle. I do it with my kids, right? I settle for what is available. And I hate the fact that I frequently have the conversation with my own children that, well, you just, you know, you have to suck it up, deal with it. That's like that's just the reality of school and it's not some naive idealistic Rousseauian pipe dream, I think either. And that's bloody Rousseau who's a, you know, European man saying this, right? This is like something qualitatively different that is so much more enriching and generative. Yeah. I just love that phrase, the flowering of everyday life. It just, that feels also more possible. Yeah. Because it's in, it's something we can, somehow find spaces despite the system now, not in 50 years' time when we've transformed education, but now.

Yeah. And there's, there's something I wanna add about this with this notion of settling. To me, there's this recognition that young people are inheriting a lot of rotten systems. And so education's one of them. And that's why when we talk at Youth By Youth about youth education activism, We say like the best education you can get is challenging the system because all of the rest of your life is gonna be around challenging, composting, rebuilding new systems. You're gonna be world makers and you're gonna be hospicing a world and systems that no longer serve us as a collective, or I would argue have never served us, served us humans, you know? So this notion that like the best education you can get is challenging your education system. That there's power in just saying, what are you seeing that you want to actually take responsibility for and change? Because you have this calling inside of you that makes you say, I cannot actually stand that. And by doing it, you're learning everything you need to learn that you're going to be reusing over and over again in all of the old systems that need to be transformed in the rest of your life. That's relevant education. That's the education you need to get.

100%. No, I love it. Absolutely. And the only final question I would ask in relation to that, that I, I just would be curious to hear your thoughts on is, will it always be like that? Or is this in relation to this particular moment and however long this moment is, right? Maybe it's 50 years, maybe it's 100 years, maybe it's 500 years, but it feels more and more frequent, these conversations that are happening now. But I wonder, will it always be that young people's best education is challenging the system. Because the danger for me in that thought, the negative of that, that it's not, is that it's a utopian ideal that they're essentially trying to build something better than we have now. While part of me very much agrees that that will be great, I'm also quite nervous about utopias.

Yeah, I think I personally don't resonate with the word utopia that much. I think the word protopia maybe works better.

What is that? I've not heard of that. What's that?

Protopia is the notion that there is never an end state where things are beautiful and perfect, but you're constantly moving in the direction of better within the system, like within the society that you're trying to create, like, and create the dynamics that enable people to move towards that sense of adapting and creating the conditions that continue to serve. So there's no end state is the notion of, of Protopia. It's a movement rather than this is what we're trying to get to. And once we get there, we can all rest.

Exactly.

Which is, yeah, like gets me to this addressing your question, which is I don't think it's necessarily always gonna be the case that their best education is challenging their current education systems or systems around them. But I do think that, I guess that a Dewey quote comes to mind, which is the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's power. By the demands of the social situation in which, uh, they find themselves. So it's always going to be what's going on around me and how do I express my power to be a part of this relational web of life in a way that makes me express my gift, what I have to offer in this time and in this place. That's always gonna be the case. Now, contextually, in this time, in this place, what's needed is, I would argue, not making it better for future generations, but dismantling what we have in a way that we can actually take the lessons of this current system, not throwing everything of it. And in a way, like, it's this beautiful opportunity to be worldmakers. Right now, I think we're bringing seeds of different worlds, not one world to replace another world, because that wouldn't work. But actually, like, this notion that many communities, not just individuals, are invited into worldmaking. And into hospicing, not into bettering and reforming and improving. Those words personally no longer resonate for me. I don't want better for my child, I want completely different. Whether I'll get to see it in my lifetime, I'm not sure, but at least I know that this is what I want to put my life energy into helping to put into life. That doesn't necessarily mean there's like unbounded optimism towards that, but I think the most— the more people can start to put their own life energy into the future that they want to see come true, the more we make the chances of that future happening real.

Yeah, absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for all of this and all of the amazing work.

We didn't talk about the Weaving Lab, but, um, just maybe a quick word about the Weaving Lab. The Weaving Lab is a community of practice for weavers. So simply speaking, it's, it's where people who are trying to do this work of putting relationship at the center of social change come together and share practices, case studies, challenges, stories, because we're at the beginning of learning what it means to do this work. I have no, you know, pretension to say like, this is how it's done and we're gonna teach you how it's done. But this is what we're experimenting with. What we're seeing is working in a specific context that might or might not be useful in your own context. But it's only by actually creating these communities of practice that we can start learning what it means to be weaving, you know?

Yeah. And yeah, embodying the things that we say we want as well, I guess, doing the thing that we say we value.

So, precisely, precisely. And having the communities that hold us into that.

Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You're doing it in, you need, yeah, it's really challenging work. I think this is, you feel lost a lot of the time, or I do personally.

Undoubtedly.

Thank you, Zeynep. Just beautiful. And yeah, no, I so appreciate everything you're doing and this beautiful conversation.

Thank you, it was a pleasure having it with you.

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