Teaching Hope as a Discipline
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There’s a phrase abolitionist organizer, archivist and educator Mariame Kaba often shares. She says, “Hope is a discipline.” I have returned to this idea - and struggled with it - again and again since the pandemic began. With our systems crumbling, people dying by the thousands, and the government unwilling or unable to help, it is difficult to feel hopeful. This is precisely what Kaba means, I think.
Hope is not just sunshine and positive thinking. It is a concerted effort to imagine a better world, and to continuously reach for it. It is also a discipline that oppressed communities have cultivated for generations out of necessity in the face of dehumanization and genocide. I remember this sometimes when I find myself, a white man with many privileges, wallowing in despair or anxiety.
Thinking of hope as a discipline, like math or painting or writing, raises the question for me: Are there ways hope can be taught? How might educators teach hope alongside other academic and social emotional skills? It is an urgently needed skill today.
On the one hand young people may not need much instruction in hope as a discipline. In many ways they are inherently good practitioners of hope. If a prerequisite skill of hope is imagination, young people are generally better at imagining new possibilities and solutions than grown ups.
And yet, young people are clearly suffering during the pandemic. Young people have fewer pre-pandemic memories to draw upon for comfort. Depending on the age, visualizing a post-pandemic future may also be difficult.
Drawing on conversations with friends and other sources of learning, here are some ways I think we might teach the discipline of hope.
The Joy of Learning
In the face of so much death and destruction, creation and innovation serve as possible antidotes. Lately it feels like so much of our world is dying or constricting. Our minds offer the space for endless exploration and creation. They are truly miraculous when you think about it. Each new concept we learn or generate is like a miniature Big Bang.
Learning can be an escape, like when we enter into the world of a rich text, or get lost in thought tackling a challenging problem. Learning can be a source of connection, for example when we discuss, debate, or collaborate with others. Learning can also help us to imagine new possibilities.
To generate hope from the process of learning in this way, joy is a crucial ingredient. We can develop joyful learning through engaging, practical, and relevant experiences. We should also help young people reflect on and make sense of their learning experiences. Asking young people what they love about learning, what they love to learn about, encouraging them to see learning as something that happens whenever a new experience is encountered (rather than a process that is forced on them within the school walls). By helping young people seize control of learning as a positive force in their life, they can return to it as a source of hope.
Building Relationships
One major source of hope for me since March 2020 have been stories of mutual aid. When the government failed to protect people, community-led efforts - some pre-existing and some brand new - emerged.
When I feel hopeless, I try to remember that I have the power to help other people. Even if it’s just knocking on my next door neighbor’s door and asking if they need anything. Likewise, I have felt hopeful when I received care from loved ones when I needed it. Hopelessness and isolation feel deeply entwined to me. Hope and community are as well.
Young people should also experience the empowerment that comes from community care. There’s so many ways they can practice this in school. They can help a classmate by explaining a concept or comfort them if they’re sad. There are also ways they can help their school or larger community too. They can read with younger kids or elderly people, help clean up the cafeteria or the park, or plant seeds or care for plants in a garden.
Offering kids the chance to connect with others through helping them (and receiving help) is a way of teaching a basic premise of hope: There is always something each of us can do to make the world better.
Context and Counternarratives
Another helpful reminder for me recently has been that the catastrophes we are experiencing are not new. I don’t just mean that pandemics, natural disasters, and political repression have happened before in human history. But also, that the particular challenges of this moment are the result of an accumulation of events. At first this can actually feel demoralizing. It’s as if we collectively chose to ignore the warning signs until we arrived in this moment of emergency.
Alternately, it takes pressure off to solve each crisis immediately. It has taken decades, probably longer, to reach this point. We must respond with an equally organized and sustained effort.
Our task then is to begin the work. Or rather I should say continue the work. Because there’s another key fact that emerges from looking at the larger context of covid, climate change, and authoritarianism. As long as there have been powerful interests crafting systems of exploitation, there have been communities fighting for a world of communalism and mutualism.
There is a tremendous amount of wisdom available for us from the Black Freedom Struggle, indigenous communities, labor organizing, and other histories of resistance. Teaching young people these stories of resistance offers a blueprint for hope in the face of oppression. These stories tell me, “You are not alone in this moment. Others have experienced similar catastrophes or worse, and they have always found ways to care, fight, or rebuild.” This is a message our curriculum must offer.
Like any other discipline, teaching hope requires practicing it ourselves. While I often struggle with hope, I remind myself that feelings of hopelessness are neither unreasonable nor a personal failure. They are a natural reaction to the massive human suffering we are witnessing. There are also times when I feel immobilized by the news. Media narratives and social media algorithms often emphasize the tragic, while obscuring stories that might foster hope. I ask myself then, who is served by my hopelessness? Not me. Not my community.
Instead, I try to remind myself of Mariam Kaba’s words. And if hope is a discipline then it takes practice to master. Now is a time for all of us to practice together.
What are some ways you practice hope? Leave a comment to let me know!
Other Recent Writing:
[Substack] Imagining Intuitive Policymaking
[Blog post] How to Quit Teaching in 2022 (Part 2)
Recommendations for reading/listening/watching:
Movement Memos with Kelly Hayes - “Bree Newsome Bass: Capitalism Has to Collapse”
Thank you, Ruben. This was soooo timely, I can’t believe it arrived this morning. I am in a “Bustin’ Bias” group of women. At last night’s session, among other things that were discussed, was people’s feelings about Hope. Some of us were very hopeful, while others (me included) have been feeling less so. When I had Barry read this, as a former high school teacher, the one thing he thought could be added is to include Choice as a form of empowerment.