Why Are Schools So Afraid of Conflict?

Most people think a good classroom is a quiet classroom.

Students are seated. Everyone is polite. Nobody argues. Nobody challenges the teacher. The lesson moves smoothly and efficiently from beginning to end.

But what if that vision of education is actually limiting learning?

One concept that challenged my thinking comes from Tema Okun's discussion of White Supremacy Culture, specifically the characteristic she calls Fear of Open Conflict.

According to Okun, institutions often respond to discomfort by avoiding conflict altogether or blaming the person who raises a difficult issue instead of addressing the issue itself. This can show up as an emphasis on politeness, discouraging emotional expression, or treating disagreement as a problem rather than an opportunity for growth.

At first glance, avoiding conflict seems positive. Most educators want classrooms to feel safe and respectful. The problem occurs when "keeping the peace" becomes more important than honesty.

In schools, students regularly encounter topics that are complicated and emotional. Discussions about race, immigration, poverty, language, gender, identity, and inequality often evoke strong feelings because they are connected to students' lived experiences. Yet many students quickly learn that certain conversations make adults uncomfortable. As a result, they may stay silent, avoid asking questions, or learn to hide parts of themselves in order to maintain harmony.

This has consequences.

When students learn that conflict is something to fear, they often miss opportunities to develop critical thinking skills. Real learning frequently begins when we encounter ideas that challenge what we already believe. Discomfort is not always evidence that something is wrong. Sometimes discomfort is evidence that growth is occurring.

As a teacher, I have noticed that students are often more willing to engage in difficult conversations than adults assume. What they need is structure, guidance, and a classroom culture that allows disagreement without disrespect. They need opportunities to ask questions, make mistakes, revise their thinking, and learn how to listen to perspectives different from their own.

This does not mean encouraging hostility or creating conflict for the sake of conflict. Instead, it means recognizing that respectful disagreement is a valuable part of education. Students should learn how to support claims with evidence, how to challenge ideas without attacking people, and how to engage with complexity rather than searching for easy answers.

Fear of conflict also affects teachers. Many educators feel pressure to avoid controversial topics because they worry about complaints, misunderstandings, or administrative consequences. While these concerns are real, avoiding difficult conversations can unintentionally communicate that some experiences or perspectives are not welcome in the classroom.

Hopeful and transformative education requires something different.

It requires creating spaces where students can think critically, speak honestly, and wrestle with difficult questions. It requires helping students understand that disagreement is not a threat to community. In many cases, it is the pathway to deeper understanding.

Education should not simply teach students how to comply with the world as it exists. It should help them imagine how the world might become more just, equitable, and humane.

That work begins when we stop treating conflict as something to avoid and start viewing it as an opportunity to learn.

References

Okun, T. (2021). White supremacy culture: Still here. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info

Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in social justice education. Teachers College Press.

Spring, J. H. (2018). American education. Routledge.

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain. Corwin.

Dear Old Nia.. Explained

"Dear Old Nia" captures the reconciliation between my present self and my teenage self, a moment of healing and connection that I’ve often longed for. This piece is about self-evolution—a theme that resonates deeply within me—as I reflect on my journey of growth and healing.

click the picture below to purchase the print.

In the background, I’ve included elements from my past: old photos, shows, and albums I once loved, objects from my room, the painting "To Cry Rivers and Oceans," and even my mask from the painting "Girl Behind the Mask." These items are markers of the challenges I’ve faced, visual reminders of the wounds that, though healed, have left scars. 

Reference to "To Cry Rivers and Oceans," below.

Reference to "Girl Behind the Mask." below.

The dialogue between the two figures reinforces the importance of continuity and self-compassion. I spent far too long beating myself up for the mistakes I made as a teenager when in reality I was young and just learning how to do everything. I needed grace. I needed someone in my life to tell me that I wasn’t too much, that I wasn’t too weird, and that I was fine as is. I needed someone to see me.

On top of that, I wanted this piece to deeply reflect how being a weird Black girl can oftentimes be an isolating experience. When it came to growing up in Ohio, I went to predominantly Black schools and I was made fun of for being outside the bounds of what “Blackness” looked like to my Black peers. To be from Compton, to have a father who was in and out of prison, to like poetry and art, to wear eccentric clothes and do outlandish makeup wasn’t within the bounds of the preferred Blackness to my peers. Out there every Black person’s parents went to college, everyone played sports, everyone had logical dreams, had clean-cut and natural-colored hair, and everyone wore things like Jordans, ripped jeans, and maybe a graphic t-shirt. That was what respectable Blackness looked like to the collective. 

It seemed like individuality was a rebellion against being Black which ultimately was preventing us as a collective from autonomy, from existing as a spectrum. It seemed like throughout history  and present-day time we always saw Blackness as a confinement and never something that we could exist freely within the context of. I was weird, I was into Paramore, I loved having funky-colored hair, but I never saw myself as anything other than Black. I was existing and exploring my identity as an African American.

Overall, the piece is a poignant exploration of identity, growth, and the tender act of caring for one’s past, making it not just a self-portrait, but a visual narrative that invites others to consider their own journeys of self-acceptance.

click the picture below to purchase the print.

Finding Yourself in Wonderland

As a young girl, I always imagined myself older. The way I’d look, the way I dressed, and what I would do as my career. 

As a 23 year old woman all I want to do now is reconnect with that little girl. I wonder oftentimes if I live up to what I wanted to be. 

I made this piece not knowing how I wanted it to turn out, but I knew what I wanted it to say. A multitude of things. 

I am just a woman, 23, always burdened with the feeling that if I am not spending every minute of my life working toward my success that I am a failure.

Always feeling like I am running out of time if I don’t accomplish everything by 25. 

Always feeling not enough, because of the wounds carved into me as a little girl that would just scab and then get reopened by everyone else until I was old enough to internalize those things and inflict that pain on myself.

and now that I am older, I do everything in my power to reverse that trauma. To nurture those wounds from my younger years.

To speak life into that little girl, to do the things she enjoyed, to live in the worlds she created.

Like Alice in Wonderland (the live-action).

as a child, I always watched these wacky movies. Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Spy Kids, any princess movie, Coraline, and Alice in Wonderland (both movies). I loved the most insane and visually stimulating things. 

as I got older I began to escape there. 

Escaping became my way of living. I smoked. I read books. I watched my familiar shows to develop a sense of consistency and comfort in my life. I drew pictures. I painted. I lied. I couldn’t decipher my dreams and the days I lived in. I curated my own world within isolation. I found comfort within my mind and away from others. I found comfort in taking surface-level care of that little wounded girl that still lived inside me.

 And maybe getting sick put things into perspective, or maybe my period of doing nothing forced me to face myself, but I realized that my ambition, my surface-level self-care, my indulging in the media I loved as a child wasn’t healing me. It was pacifying me. 

So the little girl, she looks up to me because I am everything I always wanted to be. 

And just like how the little girl couldn’t understand why the older women in her life were never satisfied with who they were (because she always wanted to be like them), she cannot fathom why she got older and is now placing myself within that same pattern. 

Because the older version of herself is everything the little girl always wanted to be.

She is beautiful, she is kind, she is loved, she is successful, she is helpful, she is stylish, she is intelligent, she is talented, and she is so many things that it would just be conceited to name them all. 

And the little girl just hopes that one day the older version of herself will stop looking at that clock and look at her and realize that she is already everything, and there is nothing to fix, or improve. 

That she is already perfect, that she is already worthy, that she is perfectly made in the image of God, and that anyone who says differently is a liar.

(Because nobody is more honest about being impressed than a six-year-old).