2023 was a weird, complicated, heavy mess of a year.
At first glance, all of that garbage that we had to deal with seems to be rooted in the fact that people suck. Respected community members abuse their status in horrific & inappropriate ways. Professionals go around speaking as if their ability to pass a test is more valuable than the hard-earned expertise of others. Mediocre middle-managers worry more about propping up their image to compete with other mediocre middle-managers over stuff that doesn't really matter instead of supporting & celebrating the real accomplishments of those who work for them. Small-minded leaders act primarily to make sure everyone knows they're important & in charge & have to be respected, consequences be damned.
All of this is, of course, made more complicated since all of this is going on inside schools & other youth-serving organizations, with real consequences for the kids who are supposed to be the focus of all this work and the people who enable them.
But the thing that stuck out to me as I reflected on... all of that is that these aren't just people problems - they're all trust problems.
It's trusting systems over our kids. And how most of our kids - and most of us, really - were raised to trust systems, including the authority figures placed over them by these systems, over themselves and reality as they see it.
When we teach our kids that it's impolite & disrespectful to complain about adults, it makes it so much harder for them to speak up and for others to take them seriously when adults legitimately mistreat them.
When we raise our kids to believe that their "no" is less important than the "yes" of an adult, that makes them significantly more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
When we don't take concerns about the professionals we entrust with our kids' education seriously, that sends a message that their education doesn't actually matter.
When we allow leaders to celebrate accomplishments while sidelining the people who put in the work, we tell our kids that they don't actually need to be good at anything - they just need to be able to position themselves correctly to make it look like they are.
When we brush off complaints from our kids about having to deal with difficult people because they're going to have to deal with difficult people throughout their life, you make it OK for those difficult people to never improve and continue being a thorn in everyone's side - and sends the signal that it's OK for that kid to grow up to be a problematic person themselves.
This is the danger of staying in the Unilevel Loop of Increasingly Uncomfortable Stagnation. We learn to prioritize external authority over our own internal compass, to avoid conflict and discomfort in favor of maintaining the status quo, to seek social validation over personal integrity, to follow the path rather than grow organically, and to value appearances over substance. Were I more cynical, I might even suggest that this is exactly what a lot of these adults want from the kids they work with, so they actively work to keep the kids in their charge from growing out of that mindset to protect their own unhealthy, fragile egos.
Systems are great, don't get me wrong - I've built a career around helping people understand & develop information systems. But a crucial part of systems work is understanding that the universe is complicated & complex. We can't model everything, can't make rules for every conceivable scenario, can't enforce policies around behavior that we don't know about, and can't fully predict the impacts of any change within the system. It doesn't matter how many safeguards we put in place, how long the handbook gets, or how much training we make people sit through. The universe will inevitably find a way to sneak something through the cracks - or people will just find a way to work around the system. All we can do is use the information we have available and be ready for the unexpected - and that all comes down to trusting your people, being trustworthy yourself, being supportive when people bring concerns to your attention, being willing to adapt and change, and being ready to step in and take action when things go wrong. Because at the end of the day, the people are what matter, not the systems.
So don't just tell your kids that you trust them - show them that you trust them. The next time they complain about an incompetent teacher, creepy coach, or off-putting family member, take them seriously & do something about it.