Harm reduction in education
Moments and points of disruption
Many days, harm reduction feels impossible. Rather, it feels impossible on any scale that would have a noticeable impact, but then I am reminded that hope is a discipline, and requires action, regardless of my feelings. Today that discipline looks like writing about harm reduction in education, so here we are. I’ve been talking about harm reduction in education for a while now, but not in a concrete way. I consider trauma-responsive (TR) teaching a harm reduction strategy, but organized education causes harm both inside and outside of the classroom, so it’s time to be more specific.
I borrowed the concept of harm reduction from the National Harm Reducation Coalition (read the original principles) because TR practice is about reducing learning-based harm and educational trauma. Harm reduction, as a movement, arose from a need and desire to respond drug use in a way that centered the care and dignity of the people using drugs. Harm reduction in education is, necessarily, quite different in both process and practice but shares a similar desire to center care and dignity, ending or transforming cycles of educational trauma.
For this initial attempt, there are still seven principles. When possible, I kept the adaptations close in purpose to the original, because the originals are so thoughtful and well developed. There are likely gaps, but they give us a good starting point to consider our current state, how we want to move forward, and our vision for the future. We cannot move forward, expecting to create something new, until we acknowledge where we are now and how we got here.
I left these in the same order as the originals.
Accept that learning-related harm is inevitable but we can work to reduce its impact in our formal teaching and learning spaces.
Interacting with other people is always a risk. We inevitably hurt each other, even when our intentions are good, but that hurt doesn’t have to be endless or unresolved.
Understands that both educational trauma (systemic) and learning-related harm (individual) are complex and multi-layered, but clearly exist on a spectrum of lesser -> greater lasting damage.
Harm in learning is a possiblity for everyone, but certain people are at greater risk in our current systems. Understanding any spectrum of harm is nuanced, and part of this work is coming into that understanding with generosity, not competition.
Establishes strengthening our ability to learn with and about each other as a criteria for creating and evaluating education policy.
Establishing learning about each other as the center of educational policy seems unimaginable, but I think we need to try. In its attempts to be fair, our current system and its policies have flattened the conversation about need, assuming everyone comes to education with the same needs, an assumption that is wildly incorrect.
Our challenge is to imagine how learning about ourselves and others could be the center of a policy making process, and inform both its purpose and implementation.
Calls for non-judgmental and non-shaming approaches to providing training and services to educators as they work to unlearn harmful behaviors and tend their own wounds.
Shaming people who are trying to learn will always fail, in multiple and spectacular ways. How we bring people along is as important as the vision we want to create, and harm reduction must be present in that journey.
Ensures that people who have been most harmed by education, both systemically and individually, have voices and decision-making power in the creation of educational policy and programs.
We have all been harmed by education, but to greater and lesser degrees. People who have experienced the most harm and have been historically silenced must be part of all transformative and visionary processes.
Seeks a balanced learning environment that does not prioritize or center a specific type of learning or teaching, but centers shared accountability for learning with and about each other.
Our current system prioritizes Euro-white ways of understanding and interacting with information and in relationships. A transformed system of education would equally value and prioritize the full spectrum of approaches to creativity, information, our environment, and each other.
Recognizes that the realities of systemic oppression, social isolation, the spectrum of trauma, and other inequities affect both people’s vulnerabilities, and their ability to learn at their highest imaginative capacity.
Humans are learning beings. We learn all the time, regardless of our circumstances or environment. The purpose of trauma-responsive education and harm reduction is to give us more options; to connect more fully with our extensive array of gifts and talents and imaginative capacity in the service of life, expansion, and evolution.
For those of you interested in the future of education, what do you think about harm reduction in education? Where should we begin? What are we hoping will happen? Who do we want to be in the process? I’d love to hear your thoughts ♥
