Chapter 18: A Reflection On Colonial Classrooms And A Prayer For Messiness

In writing this chapter, we took several detours using the format of a dialogue. As opposed to the dominant formats of an academic text, we have tried to retain the everyday and the living in the form of a conversation. It is free to travel in directions that one's life and affective realities take as well as thoughts that form bridges to connect a diverse set of influences: literary, autobiographical, political, affective; hence, more broadly experiential. The experiential is pedagogical in the sense that the life of a being is meant to experience itself, think and reflect on itself for the pursuit of an embodied sense making. We model this chapter after how we imagine learning to take place and the kind of conversations that could constitute it in order to arrive at Pedagogies of Messiness. As a part of our understanding of Pedagogies of Messiness, we assert that learning is a task inseparable from living and should, for educational institutions, be treated as such. This reflects in how we locate lacks in contemporary classrooms and how we try to meet those lacks. We let this dialogue unfold in the rhythm of authors living their own lives and thinking together on the questions, uncertainties and experiences that press themselves upon their consciousness.