There Are Only Lines

It has been a good school year if you see and understand the world in new ways — teachers, students, the entire community of learners — as a result of time spent together. In intentional democratic spaces of learning, whatever we thought would be the limit, the students immediately cross that boundary. Wherever we thought students would stop, they didn’t.

They were lifted higher.

Returning to the Concept of Rhizome

A rhizome is a complex plant, such as a potato, iris, or bamboo, with a horizontal root system. Rhizomes have no seeds nor trunks; rather, they shoot forward stems in all directions and multiply when a part breaks off and grows again, each in slightly different directions. The concept of the rhizome offers us a widening view of learning (individually and as a group) as assemblages of all we have learned, related but also distinct.

The concepts of the rhizome is invaluable when describing how things can often be more complicated and intertwined than common sense recognizes in learning paradigms. The rhizome offers a generous view of learning; one that sees growth as distinct, released, opportunistic, and seeking connections through multiple entry paths. At points in which there are breaks (most often related to failures), even if shattering, learning rebounds and start up again on old or on new lines, growing the learner in new directions. How true this is of learning?

Let’s consider the individual and collective nature of learning as rhyzomic. The singularity in which each student learns is self-organizing and falls into place through a myriad of connections to other things sought. It is the individual that then forms into an authentic group of learners. Uniquely, groups of multiple learners are defined by the outside, not by the direction of a teacher but by a more abstract line; a line of flight or deterritorialization according to which each learner changes in nature and in connection with other learners. This vision of an interconnected world that values individual singularities, in turn, can now change how we act in the world — in and beyond the classroom.

What then is our role? As a teacher, a rhizomatic perspective inspires us to deconstruct the fractures within more traditional learning systems and accepted ways of learning. A rhizomic culture of learning is anti-hierarchical and decentralizes ownership of the learning. Unlike a tree where each point can only be connected in a strict, vertical direction, the rhyzome (let’s say the learner) must establish connections with other shoots in order to grow. Knowledge is decentralized and learning self organizes through connections and meaning making that create spontaneous order. The teacher in newly important to this process, and in building a classroom culture freely admits the beautiful complexity of the human experience of each learner, and thus, the sheer ambiguity of the learning as it evolves — learning as having no beginning nor an end.

It’s not that the teacher sees clearly, but rather that the teacher now sees differently; embracing unpredictability, connectedness, messiness, study, and the many directions learning takes in an emergent and enlightened learning landscape.

Lifelong learning IS a rhizome. And if this is a desired outcome of education, as is often stated, it requires a rhizomatic approach and sensitivity on the part of the teacher.

Democracy as Ethos and Urgency

The structural metaphor of the rhyzome is deeply symbolic of a democratic ethos. In the traditional ‘tree’ metaphor of learning, knowledge is grounded in certain and firm roots, leading to the development of a steadfast trunk from which all previous forms of knowledge must be generated and flow. Deleuze and Guattari (1980) disrupted this idea. They argue that:

‘Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order. … There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines.’ (ATP, 7- 8)

In realized democratization of a learning, there is a flow of information and opportunity for interconnection, led by the learner. Autonomy is collective and is actualized through links with others — links that are local as well as global. The rhizomatic model alleviates the need for external validation of knowledge, either by an expert or by a determined curriculum. Might community be our curriculum in a democratic learning environment? Students are already learning rhizomatically in their world outside of school. Maybe they can be our teachers.

We have too often conflated learning with schooling. It’s time we conflate schooling with learning.

Lines of Flight

My hope is that this year your intentional focus on democracy in learning elicited some level of change (growth) that will continue to be dynamic and transformative in replacing the prevailing static and equilibrium-based concepts that have a grip on what learning should look like. As with learning, change is also rhizomatic in nature, as well as democratic. Evolutionary change does not occur in a linear manner but requires patience and trust in breaking away from the status quo by being fully present as co-learners in teaching and learning moments.

Transformative changes in practice requires an unbounded exercise in experimentation in finding your way. There are only lines in democratic learning — lines of flight; lines that take their own direction, break, rebound, transform, and proliferate. There is no beginning or end.

Agency emerges between elements in a network. Stay connected in this work of transformation. And stay brave.

As you close this school year, I hope you see and understand the world in new ways — whatever YOU thought would be the limit, you immediately crossed that boundary — wherever YOU thought you would stop, you didn’t.

And that you were lifted higher.

#diveinwgsd