The systems of international education we know today are not neutral. They are rooted in inherited frameworks that trace back to the Enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries. These frameworks, born in Europe, continue to shape what counts as “knowledge,” how progress is measured, and who is imagined as the ideal learner. Universalism, rationality, meritocracy, and individualism still permeate curricula, policies, and classroom practices.
Yet the Enlightenment was paradoxical. While it advanced ideals of liberty, reason, and progress, it also created hierarchies that excluded vast swaths of humanity. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, described Enlightenment as “humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity” — but his writings also included deeply racist classifications positioning white Europeans at the pinnacle of civilisation (Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 1798). The same moral code that proclaimed human rights was used to justify colonisation, enslavement, and the pillaging of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
These are not just historical abstractions. In education today, Enlightenment legacies are alive: universalism that minimises difference, individualism that pits students against each other, and progress narrowly defined by academic achievement. These frameworks allow schools to celebrate “excellence” while quietly reproducing othering and systemic exclusion.
Looking Back to Look Forward
Globally, we see both resistance and regression: the rise of fascist movements, a backlash against diversity and inclusion, and censorship of histories of racism and oppression. At the same time, urgent global challenges — climate collapse, forced migration, deepening inequality — cannot be solved with individualism or exclusion.
Middle schools are uniquely positioned at this crossroads. Young people in these years are forming their identities and asking who they are and where they belong. If we continue to offer them only frameworks of the past — rationality without empathy, progress without equity, universality without nuance — we risk preparing them to uphold systems that do not serve them or the world they will inhabit.
What we need is a new Enlightenment for education: one that is anti-racist, feminist, anti-ableist, queer-affirming, Indigenous-honouring, and deeply relational.
Witching in Education
In the Czech Republic, where the ELMLE conference will gather in Prague, history reminds us of the silencing of women and those who lived outside patriarchal norms. Across Central and Eastern Europe, witch trials persecuted women whose knowledge, independence, or difference was deemed threatening. These histories echo the Enlightenment, where ideals of reason and progress were tied to white male voices while others were cast as irrational or expendable.
Today, “futures thinking” dominates educational discourse — yet the voices most elevated in this space still belong predominantly to men. When men project into the future, they are lauded as visionary; when women do, they are too often branded ambitious, intimidating, or irrational. Invoking “witching” in education is a metaphorical reclaiming: a call to project futures while centering perspectives once silenced, disrupting systems of power, and rooting education in relational, equitable ways. Our students deserve nothing less than educators bold enough to conjure just, inclusive, and humanising futures.
From Cabinets of Curiosity to Communities of Care
The Enlightenment’s “cabinet of curiosities” provides a vivid lens. These collections displayed artifacts, animals, and even human remains taken from colonised lands, framed as celebrations of curiosity and discovery, yet reducing living cultures and beings to objects of spectacle. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called human zoos were staged in European cities, including Prague, where African men, women, and children were put on display. Curiosity became exoticisation, appropriation, and othering.
Schools risk echoing this dynamic when diversity is treated as a showcase rather than a structural commitment. Flag parades, cultural days, and food fairs may look celebratory, but if they exist without dismantling inequity, they reduce students’ identities to spectacles. Instead of cabinets of curiosities, we need communities of care: spaces where difference shapes school life and students’ identities are honoured as integral, not performative.
Redefining Universality
Universality — the belief in universal truths, rights, and progress — is another enduring Enlightenment legacy. Too often, universality was defined by a small group and imposed on others. True universality cannot mean sameness or assimilation.
Targeted universalism, developed by john a. powell and the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, offers a path forward. It begins with a universal goal — for example, all students thriving — but recognises that different groups face different barriers. Each group may require targeted strategies to reach the shared outcome. True universality means every student has what they need to thrive, even if the supports look different along the way.
For international middle schools, this means asking: What does each student need to feel belonging, learn deeply, and lead courageously? How do we remove structural barriers that hold some back while privileging others?
Rethinking What It Means to “Do Good”
During the Enlightenment, European men defined “goodness” in ways that aligned with their own values, often weaponising morality to justify conquest. Charles Mills argues in The Racial Contract (1997) that ideals of justice and equality were never meant for all — they were racially exclusive.
In education today, we see echoes of this when inclusion is treated as benevolence rather than solidarity. Doing good cannot be about bringing students into existing systems on our terms. It must be about changing the systems themselves.
Goodness isn’t a permanent state but something we create together — it’s the sum of how we keep showing up with accountability, humility, and transformation.
Practical Steps Toward a New Enlightenment
- Interrogate and decolonise the curriculum
Audit whose knowledge is centred and whose is absent. The ISADTF’s Humanising Pedagogy reminds us that learning and teaching is never neutral — it either reproduces exclusion or cultivates dignity, belonging, and shared power. Make space for historically marginalised voices, indigenous histories, and multiple knowledge systems, and ensure students’ lived experiences shape what is taught. - Rethink success and assessment
Move beyond narrow academic measures. Value collaboration, empathy, creativity, and contribution. Design assessments that honour multiple ways of knowing. - Reimagine school culture and policies
Examine who current rules serve and who they marginalise. Build systems of accountability where power is shared across staff, students, and families. - Ethically renew international education’s promise to students
UNESCO’s Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (2021) calls for education to emphasise cooperation, solidarity, and collective well-being — preparing learners to build inclusive and sustainable futures. - Embrace targeted universalism in practice
Set universal goals for belonging and thriving, but design targeted strategies for different groups of students. Equity means ensuring everyone has what they need to flourish. - Prioritise ongoing reflection and learning
Commit to professional development that engages bias, privilege, and systemic oppression. Make space for discomfort as part of growth.
Why This Matters Now
Students are watching. They notice contradictions between what schools claim to value and what they reward. If we continue relying on frameworks rooted in outdated Enlightenment ideals, we leave them unequipped for the crises of our time.
But if we embrace curiosity not as spectacle but as solidarity, compassion not as charity but as justice, and courage not as bravado but as transformation, we can cultivate citizens ready to build something new.
A Call to Witching
The Enlightenment was never universal — but the next Enlightenment can be. It will be defined not by a few men in salons and academies, but by communities of educators, families, and young people daring to imagine otherwise.
Perhaps what we need is not another age of reason, but an age of witching: reclaiming knowledge, power, and perspectives that patriarchal and colonial systems sought to suppress. If the old Enlightenment placed people in cabinets of curiosity, the new one must build circles — or covenants — of belonging. If the old Enlightenment universalised through exclusion, the new one must universalise through equity.
This is how we cultivate curious, compassionate, and courageous citizens. This is how we reimagine education for our time. And the future begins now.
References
Aow, A. (2022). What it means to be and do ‘good’. Council of International Schools. https://www.cois.org/about-cis/news/post/~board/perspectives-blog/post/what-it-means-to-be-and-do-good
Blanchard, P. (2008). Human zoos: Science and spectacle in the age of colonial empires. Liverpool University Press.
International Schools Anti-Discrimination Task Force [ISADTF]. (n.d.). Humanising pedagogy guidelines. International Schools’ Anti-Discrimination Task Force, Humanising Pedagogy Committee.
Kant, I. (1798/2006). Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (R. B. Louden, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.
powell, j. a. (2020). Targeted universalism: Policy & practice. Othering & Belonging Institute, University of California, Berkeley. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/targeted-universalism
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. (n.d.). Slavic witchcraft: A living tradition. Smithsonian Folklife Magazine. https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/slavic-witchcraft
UNESCO. (2021). Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/social-contract-education
You can join Angeline in her pre-conference workshop, “Leading Inclusive Change: with Compassion, Connection and Collaboration”
Angeline will facilitate two session topics during our main conference:
- Humanising Pedagogy
- Becoming a Totally Inclusive School: the Role of Language
Angeline is an international educator, author, consultant and pedagogical leader. She has undertaken multiple roles within schools, as a teacher, curriculum coordinator, accreditation coordinator and professional learning and development coordinator. Angeline leverages these experiences to support collaborative learning communities with enhancing inclusive mindsets and systems, designing humanising pedagogical approaches and achieving shared inclusion and intercultural goals. Angeline is an advocate of intersectional inclusivity, coaching, concept-driven learning and teaching and contributes as an active citizen on social justice issues through her advocacy across multiple networks and work with the Council of International Schools. Her co-authored book, Becoming a Totally Inclusive School: a Guide for Teachers and School Leaders was published by Routledge in November, 2022.