I’ve been reading a collection of essays by the anthropologist David Graeber (who died in 2020) entitled The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. 

The full quotation that inspired the title is “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

What Graeber shows in his writing is that it’s not just that we “could” make the world differently, —over and over again, our ancestors have done so. In the opening chapter of their book The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and his co-author, archeologist David Wengrow, pose a series of questions that, when I read them, upended my view of the world:

What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such? What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?

In the rest of the book Graeber and Wengrow describe societies that changed their political system depending on the season, enormous ancient cities with little to no social hierarchy, systems of hospitality that meant that ancient people could walk across an entire continent and be greeted as family wherever they went—a dizzying array of social structures that make our contemporary sense of what’s “politically possible” seem embarrassingly narrow.

Those of us in education will see an alternative reading of the words “from the beginning” in that quote. Graeber and Wengrow are referring to “the beginning of humanity” but it’s also true from the beginning of every single human. Children are universally “imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures,” and they approach the world as if “it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently,” until adults teach them to stop thinking that way.

But to reiterate Graeber’s point that “we make the world,” it doesn’t have to be this way. The writers in this issue of Unboxed provide some signposts for how educators can go about “making the world differently.” Jeff Govoni kicks off this issue by writing about literal “making”—the power of construction projects in elementary school. Aneesa Jamal shares a strategy for helping students reconnect to their questioning abilities, Michelle Jaconette has suggestions for how to launch inquiry-rich lessons, “Dr Project” has ideas for helping students critique “models” and make high quality products, and Brad Blue offers advice on how students can curate their own work after a project. Robert Talbert and Sarah Strong both share ideas for making assessment meaningful and student-centered. And Elizabeth Brown, Paula Espinoza, and Amber McEnturff share stories and strategies that challenge us not just to help students “make the world differently” but to do it ourselves, starting with the schools where we work. Remember, the future is ours to shape—let’s get going on it together.

Stay curious, my friends

Alec Patton

Editor