Kermit O

Former teacher turned school abolitionist. Working at the intersection of land, food, and climate justice. Light brown. Unapologetically Black. Punches up.

The Dangerous Delusions of Self-Directed Education

by Kermit O
In our “free” society, schooling became a replacement for the development of material and social skills young people once learned in community, through apprenticeship, through experience with the natural world. In order to maintain schooling as an institution, these young people’s needs are provided for by parents, by the state, other external agents, and further ... Read More

North Philly Peace Park and the Continuum of Black Struggle

by Kermit O
All the things that North Philly Peace Park is, and will become, are part of a continuum of collective dreaming, striving, and will toward self-determination: the heart of all Black struggle. The life of Black people in this country has always been defined by the tension between our demand for sovereignty, and the violent refusal ... Read More

ADHD, Organizing, and the Tensions of Hunter’s Mind

by Kermit O
Hunter's Mind — or ADHD if you must — allows me to glimpse both the underlying systems that reinforce domination, and the ley lines along which alternative lifeways might be built. The utter soup that is my mind under capitalism requires serious organizational structure in order to even function. And so my thoughts naturally gravitate toward ... Read More

The Cynical Manipulations of the Gatekeeper

by Kermit O
Even as Bill Gates writes books laying out the "solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need", his cynicism prevents him from actually believing any of it. Not only does he have no faith in people to muster the collective will to prevent climate catastrophe, he has neither faith in corporations to abandon their centuries-long ... Read More

From COVID to Climate Change: Herd Immunity vs. Institutional Distrust

by Kermit O
Whatever technologies, models, and organizational structures we develop, to orient ourselves toward social and economic justice, we must also make space for the unwilling and the unable to be independent, self-determined, and safe. This means insulating them against the violent death throes of our system of capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism, as we replace it ... Read More

Net-Zero to Net-Positive: Toward a Real Education for Sustainability

by Kermit O
The moment demands a mass mobilization of people and collective will. Which means bridging gaps: in knowledge, resources, understanding, and empathy. In our conversations, and in our work around sustainability, we have to integrate those things which support and affirm our rights to healthy, dignified lives, so we even have the capacity to take on ... Read More

One Educator’s Journey to Personal and Collective Liberation

by Kermit O
At the end of last year, I published an article in the journal Transcontinental Human Trajectories, my first “official” publication. It is mostly a personal narrative — and I do mean personal — but it also lays out much of my educational philosophy, and sketches my initial trajectory from a school teacher to more of ... Read More

Free Speech, Cancel Culture, and the Miseducation of Cousin Miles

by Kermit O
The constraining of ideas to the "median" seems to be rooted in white USAmerican norms of white upper/middle class "decorum", specifically the pressure to avoid conflict, or rather, to avoid any public appearance of conflict. Those who benefit from the status quo (and those who aspire to) — by virtue of social, economic, or political ... Read More

New Perspectives, Same Voices: The Echo Chamber of Education Reform

by Kermit O
That whole time, there were other voices, on the margins of academia and the political sphere - pushed there by the relentless power of the status quo and those who uphold it - who were already making the case Nick and Diane only just came to understand. There were teachers who understood it, even if ... Read More