Transaction? Or Restoration?

Home Design for the Post-Covid Pandemic Age

Regardless of the feasibility or merit of this particular proposal for post-Covid housing design, it brings up a hot topic for me.

We can think of our work as strictly transactional (e.g. I’m an architect and I design homes to people’s specifications in exchange for a fee in order to make a living) or as restorative (I’m an architect and I develop housing solutions that cultivate vibrant communities or that are more affordable or that are safer in natural disasters or that are more ecologically sustainable -- and I earn a living by doing so).

Here’s where I’m going with this: schools -- especially Christian schools -- should purposefully help students to imagine their future careers (and, in fact, all their work starting now) as restorative rather than merely transactional. For a Christian school, this means inviting students to ask, “in what ways can this kind of work serve to advance God’s restorative purposes in our world, cultivating justice and shalom and radiating His goodness and beauty?”

It’s easier said than done!

The Work: In most schools, every piece of student work is thought of in rather crass transactional terms. “Why must I do this?” “Because it’s worth 15% of your grade.” In this way, we implicitly teach students that their work is strictly transactional in nature, without inherent purpose or value, setting a pattern for future work outside of school as well. We need to rethink assessments and grading, inviting students to deepen and demonstrate their understanding by undertaking work that matters in some authentic context. This approach is complex and difficult...it’s also essential if we want students to really wrestle with what they’re learning and to begin to discover what restorative work looks and feels like.

The Journey: We need to rethink and reform how we conceptualize and talk about the educational endeavor. Do this work, so you can get good grades, so you can get into a top college, so you can get a lucrative job: it’s the unspoken but universally understood narrative of schooling. It’s the fruit of a million quick conversations, thoughtless comments, and poorly conceived systems and ceremonies. And it’s hard to weed out. Can we as educators imagine, articulate, and live out a vision for schooling that leads somewhere beyond personal ambition? Can we even honestly answer the question “why are we studying this?” Until we can, the crass myth of self-promotion will loom over the student experience.

The Purpose: “College and career preparation” is the de facto mission statement of most schools, and it’s insufficient. The student experience flows from a school’s culture and design, both of which flow from the school’s ultimate purpose. What do we want, ultimately, to accomplish with our students? And what would a school look like that was designed around those purposes? The answers may be unconventional, but they will surely be compelling!