Other people's hoops.

The subject of agency came up in conversation yesterday, and its importance has stayed with me, rather like a stray dog looking for company.

In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. ... One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. It is different to power, which we can acquire with difficulty, and lose easily. Agency is ours and no-one else's.

Although, in principle, we can always exercise agency, our culture makes it hard. From the earliest days in school, we are taught to sacrifice agency for conformity, colour inside the lines, turn up on time, and behave.

The school and the culture separate the head from the body. They tell the child to think without hands, to do without head, to listen and not to speak, to understand without joy, to love and to marvel only at Easter and Christmas.

From "The Hundred Languages of Children" Loris Malaguzzi.

And when we finish school, often…