In a collaboration between educators from the University of Leuven — who recently organized a conference on the future of schooling — and the ATTC school leadership program, this is a special series of Leading Education with Heart and Soul about the grammar of schooling. 

Each episode explores one or two key dimensions of what constitutes the fundamental “grammar” of schooling. 

This time, we ask: can we have, imagine, or create a school without… language and class? Guests are Jorge Larrossa Bondia and Jan Masschelein, and these are their thoughts:

• Writing puts spoken language at a distance and allows us to reflect on spoken language to deepen our thinking. School provides the time and space to slow down, write, and rethink.
• At school, it’s not about saying what you think, but thinking about what you say. It’s also not about which language is dominant, but how one relates to language.
• Language is a real problem, it is a way of engaging with real worlds, like mathematics and Latin. Learning a second language gives the experience of what language means and does.
• Language is not merely a tool for communication. It is a practice rooted in love and curiosity, like philology, the science of language as love for language.
• There are three ways to think about class, our second dimension: as a physical space, as a random grouping of students, and as a space that enables freedom and equality — a collective of learners, not individuals with fixed identities.
• Both school and class exist to nurture worlds. When they become too focused on teachers, students, personalization, identification, or “natural development,” they loose their essence.
• You can pedagogically redesign class, but not as learning environment or learning accelerator.

This podcast has been made possible through the support of the ATTC School Leadership Program, the educational consultancy School Matters, and the retreat facility The Valley of the Good Life.