Dignity (etymologically, ‘a state of being worthy’) is essential to the process and purpose of education. Yet, our societal narrative has lost the plot in terms of what boxes need to be ticked and how many ‘followers’ need to be clicked- in order to be worthy. It is not only the prerequisites to dignity that are pathologically constructed, but also the timelines. This is most evident in schools, where teachers report to having ‘no time to teach’ as they are so busy jumping through administrative hoops and stuffing a vast curriculum of facts into the heads of young learners for them to pass the next test, and for their school to maintain an ‘outstanding’ rating . […]
