From the “Sometimes You Read Something That Makes You Want to Scream ‘THIS!’ Department” I give you Sean Michael Morris:
“This is the right of agency. It does not give us power over another, but it gives us mastery over ourselves. And an education that does not encourage or facilitate this agency is not an education.”
Read and repeat. Without “Mastery over ourselves…” it’s “…not an education.”
“Agency” is one of those growing buzzwords now in education, which means that its true meaning is soon to be neutered in practice. Especially because “agency” is at the heart of everything related to serious, re-imaging-my school change. It is, I’ve come to believe, the only real measure of whether a school is truly about learning…or not.
Because it is so foundational to the work, you can already see “agency” being watered down. Students are being given “agency” over how to learn what’s in the curriculum (a la competency-based education)… or students are given the choice of technologies they use to master (as in pass the test) the content in a course (a la “blended” or “flipped” learning). More often than not, “Genius…
