“This Is Air”: Reframing School Through the Metaphors We Live By

Source: Adrian Neibauer, “This Is Air: Understanding and Changing the Way Teachers and Students See School,” February 16, 2026.

🎯 The Core Question

How do students actually see school?

In “This Is Air,” Adrian Neibauer reflects on returning to the classroom after the pandemic and confronting a painful truth: many students no longer view school as a place of curiosity, growth, or meaning. A doodle left on the floor—“Hell = School”—forced him to reconsider not just instructional strategies, but the deeper metaphors shaping how students understand education itself.

For educators and school leaders, this essay is less about reform initiatives and more about perception. It challenges us to examine the invisible conceptual metaphors that structure daily school life.

Adrian Neibauer, “This Is Air: Understanding and Changing the Way Teachers and Students See School,” February 16, 2026.

🧠 The Pandemic Didn’t Create the Problem

Neibauer admits that before returning to the classroom, he was an enthusiastic instructional coach immersed in Silicon Valley rhetoric—“disrupt the status quo,” “move fast and break things,” and tech-driven innovation. He envisioned iPads, augmented reality, and STEM transformation.

Then came the pandemic.

Remote learning exposed fragility: disengagement, social-emotional regression, loss of peer bonds, and widespread disillusionment. Yet Neibauer argues that COVID did not create students’ dissatisfaction—it magnified an already growing sense that school lacked meaning.

The cracks were there before: declining enrollment, tightening accountability systems, over-standardization, boxed curricula, and relentless testing pressures.

The pandemic simply lifted the veil.

🗣 Why Metaphors Matter

Drawing on David Foster Wallace’s famous commencement speech This Is Water, Neibauer explores how metaphors shape perception. Linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors structure how we understand reality itself. They are not decorative—they are conceptual frameworks.

Consider common school metaphors:

• School as a Garden – Teachers nurture seeds of growth.

• School as a Factory – Students move through standardized production lines.

• School as a Prison – Mandated compliance, bells, surveillance, zero tolerance.

• School as a Business – Students as products, parents as customers.

Each metaphor subtly defines roles, power dynamics, and purpose.

If students internalize school as prison or factory, disengagement becomes rational.

If teachers internalize school as business, quick “silver bullet” solutions become attractive.

Metaphors, Neibauer argues, are “closer to emotional reality.” They influence whether students see learning as liberation—or confinement.

👀 How Today’s Students See School

Neibauer contrasts his own childhood metaphor—school as pathway to success—with what he perceives among Generation Alpha students. Many view school as forced compliance disconnected from real life.

Growing up immersed in TikTok, gaming, and algorithm-driven dopamine cycles, students experience time differently. Abstract concepts like “education” feel distant. The question “When will I ever use this?” reflects not laziness, but a crisis of meaning.

Meanwhile, schools have unintentionally reinforced transactional metaphors:

• Reading as skimming for multiple-choice answers.

• Writing as interacting with AI tools.

• Learning as test score recovery.

Students notice. They recognize when school becomes a rat race.

🌬 A New Metaphor: Learning Is Air

Neibauer ultimately proposes a new metaphor:

Learning is air.

Breathing is constant, essential, often unnoticed. You can breathe unconsciously—or with awareness. At times, breathing is labored; growth feels strenuous. But stopping is not an option.

Learning, like breathing, sustains human life. It is not preparation for life—it is life.

Drawing on actor Ethan Hawke’s reflections about art, Neibauer reminds us that meaning becomes urgent during heartbreak, loss, love, and confusion. Education equips students to navigate those human experiences. Poetry, novels, debate, live performance, scribbled marginalia—these are not luxuries. They are sustenance.

When schools reduce learning to test preparation, they shrink its oxygen supply.

🏫 Leadership Implications for School Leadership 2.0

For principals and instructional leaders, this essay invites deep reflection:

1️⃣ Audit the Metaphors in Your Building

What language dominates staff meetings? Bus drivers? Data pipelines? Customer satisfaction? What do those metaphors imply?

2️⃣ Reclaim Meaning

Are we communicating that school is preparation for employment—or preparation for conscious living?

3️⃣ Restore Rich Experiences

Whole novels. Debate. Art. Deep reading. Writing by hand. These experiences cultivate awareness and endurance.

4️⃣ Stay Conscious

Wallace warned against default settings—living on autopilot. Schools, too, can operate on autopilot. Intentional metaphor shifts can rehumanize learning.

💡 Final Reflection

If students see school as hell, reforming schedules or adding technology will not fix it. Changing metaphors might.

School is not a factory, prison, or startup incubator. It is not a customer service center.

It is oxygen.

Learning is the air we breathe.

And our work as leaders is to ensure students can feel it.

Original Article

Source: Adrian Neibauer, “This Is Air: Understanding and Changing the Way Teachers and Students See School,” February 16, 2026.

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com