A husky's quest for identity

Photo by xlinnea from Imgur

Tally's a husky who was brought up by cats, and now she acts like one. Check out these photos of Tally, and you'll see her striking different feline poses just like a pro. This is not the first story of its sort, but it had me pondering about the power of social conditioning. What if you take enough huskies out of their "normal" environments and throw them in with the cats, will they start to tuck in their legs and tail when they lay down or even enjoy playing with cardboard boxes? Would such experiment change our perception of huskies and what they're capable of? If we let this experiment happen for long enough, would we eventually start to forget that huskies were "built" to endure extreme weather conditions and can be agile yet resilient, out there in the vast wilderness.

The huskies turned cats scenario is far-fetched, I know, especially if we take into consideration the important role that nature plays in the development of any living creature. Yet, just like Tally's, we've heard of stories of children who were brought up by animals and who adopted their behavior. Too often, we underplay the power of social conditioning, especially when dealing with children and teenagers.

The fact is that we all have our fixed notions of what adolescents are naturally capable of doing and not doing, and we condition them based upon those beliefs. We'll say that adolescents can not handle autonomy, so we deliver learning to them instead, and do all the thinking for them on how to go about finding the answers that we've created for them. And we don't realize that it's that very approach that is stifling autonomy in the first place because we're conditioning students to think within the limiting confines of what we call best practice. And why do we do that? Because we, in turn, have been conditioned to think and act in this way through that same system and sadly, that's all we know.

But just as some environments can stifle autonomy, others can stimulate it. This semester, I've seen my kids push boundaries. Equipped with only an overarching question-- how free are you?--and their own ingenuity, they were able to create their own projects from scratch. They're breaking down the classroom walls and going out in the field: they're pitching business plans to local supermarkets which will allow artisanal fishermen to receive a fair price for their daily catch; they're interviewing taxi drivers and experts to learn about informal economics and how it's saturating this sector; they're writing children's books and negotiating with local bookshops so that they can finance their undertaking. This came with many iterations and students have felt overwhelmed at times by all the uncertainty. But they're blossoming and it's been great for me to witness that process.

So let's go back to that "what if" scenario I started this post with. Wouldn't it be a pity to live in a world where all huskies were reduced to laze around the house playing with a yarn ball or hiding in a cardboard box. "That's extremely unlikely," many of you will say. Fair enough. But what if I applied that same example to children and adolescents. Would it be so far-fetched then?