What would education actually look like if…
We listened to young people?
I keep thinking about what education would ✨actually ✨look like if we listened and learned from children and young people…
Not managed them.
Not assessed them to death.
Not talked about them in rooms they’re not allowed in.
But listened.
What if we asked children & YP’s:
What helps you learn?
What makes you feel safe?
What shuts you down?
What support actually supports you?
And then… here’s the crazy wild bit…
What if we believed them?
Because right now, we talk a lot AT children & young people.
Especially SEND children.
And we use words that sound supportive but quietly causes great harm.
Like resilience. 🤮
Honestly, I’m bored of that word.
Our children are bored of it.
And frankly, it’s lost all of its original meaning.
Resilience:
1.The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2.The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
Except this isn’t difficulties that our young people are able to ‘spring back’ from. These are difficulties that are causing real trauma.
How do I know?
My son is diagnosed as suffering from School CPTSD.
That should not be a ‘thing’!
When we tell struggling children they need to be more resilient, what they hear is:
You should cope better,
Your distress is inconvenient,
This is your job to endure,
That isn’t resilience.
That’s shame.
SEND kids are already resilient.
They are navigating environments that were never designed for them.
They are masking, adapting, surviving, translating themselves constantly.
They don’t need more resilience.
They need more safety.
More flexibility.
More choice.
More voice.
Listening to children would mean accepting that some environments don’t work for them.
That pushing through isn’t always growth.
That rest, autonomy, and trust are not rewards to be earned but foundations for learning.
A system that truly listened wouldn’t ask:
How do we toughen them up?
It would ask: How do we reform the system?
Because support that actually supports doesn’t demand endurance.
It creates conditions where children don’t have to be brave just to get through the day.
Once again for the people in the back-
Our kids don’t need to be fixed.
The system does.
In Solidarity,
Lizz xoxo
