Laura: Sophia, what’s one of the most praised qualities in a student today? Sophia: Oh, easy. Grit. Resilience. The kid who overcomes everything, who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps against all odds. We love that story. Laura: Exactly. But what if I told you that our obsession with grit is actually a dangerous distraction, a way to praise children for surviving a system that’s designed to break them? Sophia: Whoa, okay. That flips the script completely. Where is this idea coming from? Laura: It’s the central argument in a powerful, and I’ll say, highly-acclaimed book called We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Dr. Bettina L. Love. Sophia: That title alone is a statement. We Want to Do More Than Survive. Laura: It is. And Dr. Love isn't just an author; she's the William F. Russell Professor at Columbia University's Teachers College and the founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network. She’s on the front lines of this, and she argues that for Black and Brown children, our education system isn't a place of opportunity, but what she calls an "educational survival complex." Sophia: Okay, "educational survival complex"—that's a heavy term. What does she mean by that? It sounds… bleak. Laura: It is bleak, and she argues it’s by design. It’s this entire ecosystem of policies, practices, and mindsets that are not about helping dark children thrive, but about teaching them to endure injustice. Think about it: zero-tolerance policies, metal detectors, underfunded schools, and then we top it all off with programs that teach "grit" and "character." Sophia: Right, the very things we started with. Laura: Exactly. Dr. Love uses this absolutely chilling analogy. She says it’s like The Hunger Games. We throw children into a rigged arena, filled with systemic racism, poverty, and trauma. Then, when a few of them manage to survive against all odds, we celebrate their grit, hold them up as examples, and ignore the fact that the game itself is designed to kill them. We never question the game.

Sophia: That Hunger Games analogy is… horrifyingly perfect. It reframes everything. So when we praise a student for their resilience, we're essentially celebrating the fact that they survived the arena, not questioning why they were in the arena to begin with. Laura: Precisely. And she uses the tragic story of Trayvon Martin to illustrate this. Here was a seventeen-year-old boy who, by all accounts, had social and emotional intelligence. He was on the phone with his friend, he recognized he was being followed by a "creepy White cracker," he was aware of the danger. He had the very situational awareness we claim to value. Sophia: But it didn't save him. Laura: It couldn't save him. Because his individual character, his "grit," was irrelevant in the face of what Dr. Love calls "White rage"—the systemic, violent reaction to Black ambition and existence. George Zimmerman didn't see a kid with character; he saw a "suspicious" Black man, and the system ultimately validated that view. No amount of grit can protect you from a system that has already decided you don't matter. Sophia: And the schools are part of this system. They’re not a safe haven from it. Laura: They are often the training ground for it. She points to the absolute crisis in school support. The American School Counselor Association recommends one counselor for every 250 students. But in states like Arizona, the ratio is a staggering 924 students to one counselor. In California, it's 760 to one. Sophia: That’s not a support system; that’s a statistical impossibility. How can one person possibly provide meaningful guidance or mental health support to nearly a thousand kids? Laura: They can't. So instead of getting therapy, support, and healing for the trauma they face both inside and outside of school, students get discipline. They get taught to be compliant. They get taught to have grit. Sophia: But hold on, isn't teaching resilience a good thing? I mean, the world is hard. We can't just tell kids the world is broken and leave it at that, can we? It feels like we have to give them tools to cope. Laura: That's the crucial distinction Dr. Love makes. She's not saying resilience is bad. She's saying that focusing on it instead of fighting the oppressive conditions that make it so necessary is a profound injustice. It’s an act of complicity. It’s like teaching someone to be a better swimmer while you're actively holding their head underwater. The problem isn't their swimming technique. Sophia: The problem is you're drowning them. Laura: Exactly. The goal of abolitionist teaching isn't to create better survivors of injustice. It's to eliminate the injustice itself so that children can simply be children, and can use their energy to learn, create, and dream, not just to survive.

Laura: And that’s exactly why Dr. Love argues we can't just look at racism as a single, monolithic force. The system's violence is more complex, and to see it clearly, we have to use a tool she insists is non-negotiable: intersectionality. Sophia: Okay, "intersectionality" is a word we hear a lot, and I think many people nod along, but they don't really get it in their bones. Can you break down what it actually looks like in a real-life situation, like in a school hallway or a doctor's office? Laura: Absolutely. Dr. Love gives some incredibly sharp examples. Let's start with the story of Anita Hill in 1991, accusing Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Thomas, a Black man, famously called the hearings a "high-tech lynching." Sophia: I remember that. It was a powerful, racially charged defense. Laura: It was. And it worked. It forced America to see the situation through the lens of race, but only male racial suffering. It completely erased Anita Hill's experience as a Black woman. Her identity at the intersection of being Black and being a woman was used against her. She was painted as a traitor to her race, trying to bring a Black man down. An intersectional lens would have allowed us to see both the reality of racism and the reality of sexism and Black women's long history of sexual trauma. Without it, her truth was invisible. Sophia: Wow. So her identity wasn't just one thing or the other; the combination created a unique trap. Laura: A unique trap. And it happens everywhere. Dr. Love points to pay discrepancies in the medical field. The data is just stunning. Male doctors make about $20,000 more a year than female doctors. That's sexism. White male doctors make about $65,000 more than Black male doctors. That's racism. But what about Black female doctors? Sophia: I'm almost afraid to ask. Laura: They are at the bottom of the pay scale. They make $25,000 less than White female doctors. Their pay isn't just a reflection of their race or their gender; it's the compounded, crushing weight of both. That is intersectionality in a paycheck. Sophia: And this plays out in schools every single day. Laura: Every day. This is maybe the most heartbreaking example in the book. Black girls are suspended from school at a rate six times higher than their White female peers. And research shows it’s not because they misbehave more. It’s because of racist and sexist stereotypes. Teachers often perceive them as "loud," "defiant," or "disruptive." They are subjected to what's called "age compression," where they are seen as adults, as Black women, and are stripped of the grace and innocence afforded to other children. Sophia: They never get to just be girls. Laura: They never get to be girls. In 2012, in New York City, fifty-three Black girls were expelled. The number of White girls expelled? Zero. Sophia: Zero. That's not a disparity; that's a different reality. It’s like you said, a multiplier effect. The system has different weapons for different combinations of identity. And if you don't see that, your solutions will always miss the mark. You can't have a program for "at-risk girls" that doesn't understand how race changes that risk entirely. Laura: You can't. And that's why Dr. Love says any policy discussion—whether it's about arming teachers, school discipline, or curriculum—that doesn't include a racial, gender, and disability analysis is not just incomplete; it's dangerous. It will inevitably harm the most vulnerable.

Sophia: Okay, this is all incredibly heavy. The system is a 'Hunger Games,' it's intersectionally unjust... It's easy to feel hopeless. Does Dr. Love offer any hope? What's the alternative? Laura: She does. And it's a radical hope. The alternative isn't another reform, another program, or another acronym. It's what she calls "Abolitionist Teaching." Sophia: Abolitionist. Like, abolishing slavery. That's a big, historic word. Laura: And she uses it intentionally. She argues that just like the abolitionists of the 19th century, we need to be engaged in the work of tearing down an oppressive system and dreaming a new one into existence. Abolitionist teaching, for her, is a way of life. It's rooted in the rebellious spirit, the imagination, the creativity, and the love that fueled the original abolitionist movement. Sophia: So it’s not just a teaching style, it’s a political and ethical stance. Laura: Exactly. It’s about creating what she calls "homeplaces" in schools—spaces of joy, healing, community, and love, where students' full humanity is affirmed. It's about teaching the hard truths of injustice while also engaging in what she calls "freedom dreaming." Sophia: Freedom dreaming. I love that phrase. What does it mean? Laura: It's the radical act of imagining a world that doesn't yet exist. A world free of injustice. She quotes the writer adrienne maree brown, who says, "All social justice work is science fiction." We are imagining and building a world we've never seen. For an abolitionist teacher, this means their classroom becomes a laboratory for that new world. Sophia: That's a beautiful and powerful idea. But does it work in reality? Are there examples of this? Laura: There are. She points to the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona. In the late 90s, community activists pushed for Mexican American studies classes. The results were incredible. Students who took these classes had higher graduation rates and college enrollment. They felt seen; their history mattered. The school became a homeplace. Sophia: And let me guess, the system fought back. Laura: Of course. In 2010, the state of Arizona, in an act of pure White rage, banned the program, claiming it was "anti-American." But the community, the teachers, and the students fought for ten years. And in 2017, a federal judge ruled the ban was unconstitutional and discriminatory. They won. That, Dr. Love says, is what abolitionism in education looks like. It’s a long, hard struggle, but it’s a fight for the soul of education. Sophia: So it requires more than just being a good person or a well-meaning ally. Dr. Love uses another term that feels much more active: "coconspirator." What does a coconspirator do that an ally doesn't? Laura: An ally might stand with you. A coconspirator is willing to get arrested with you. She tells the incredible story of Bree Newsome, the Black activist who climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina State House in 2015 to take down the Confederate flag. Sophia: I remember seeing that footage. It was an amazing act of defiance. Laura: It was. But here's the coconspirator part. A white activist named James Tyson was with her. His job was to wait at the bottom of the pole. He hugged it, so that if the authorities decided to tase the metal flagpole to stop her, they would have to tase him, a white man, too. He put his body, his privilege, on the line to protect her while she did the work. That, Dr. Love says, is coconspiracy. It's shared risk. It's solidarity in action, not just in words.

Sophia: Wow. That story about James Tyson... that's what she means. It’s not about feeling guilty or saying the right things. It's about what you are willing to risk to dismantle the system. Laura: Exactly. And I think that's the ultimate power of We Want to Do More Than Survive. It refuses to let us off the hook with easy answers. It rejects the comforting narrative of grit and incremental reform. It says the entire structure is the problem, and tinkering with it is not enough. Sophia: The goal isn't to make the Hunger Games a little more fair. The goal is to burn the arena to the ground. Laura: And to freedom dream a garden in its place. A place where children don't have to be resilient warriors just to get an education. A place where they can be joyful, be creative, be loved, and be free. The book's core message is a demand to stop asking, "How can we help these kids endure an unjust system?" and start asking, "How can we build a world where they don't have to?" Sophia: It really forces you to ask: in my own life, in my work, am I just helping people survive a broken system, or am I trying to change the system itself? That's a tough question. Laura: And that's the question Dr. Love leaves us with. It’s a call to action for all of us, not just educators. We'd love to hear what you all think. What does 'freedom dreaming' look like for you in your community or your work? Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.