Excerpt from Chapter 1

A few days later, and several further presentations having been made in different parts of the country, I boarded the plane to return to Washington.

"What's your line?" asked the self-assured businessman sitting himself down comfortably in the seat next to me. I looked up, thinking how to respond. "Well I was once a Headmaster. For about twelve years I've been a kind of educational entrepreneur trying to develop and promote critical thinking about learning in mainstream education. How we can understand the learning process better. It involves studying research coming from neurology, evolutionary biology, even from systems thinking and information technology. It ought to help us give young people a better deal and equip them to handle change more constructively. Help them to see learning as a lifetime activity which is involved with creativity, responsibility, innovation and enterprise. All that kind of thing," I said rather lamely.

"Good gracious, second only to reforming the World Council of Churches, that must be the most difficult task in the world!" He thought for a moment. "Why do you do this?"

I tried to frame my comments carefully. This was to be a long flight. I didn't want a conversation that would last for hours, but he was pleasantly persistent and obviously deeply interested. I was prepared, at least until lunch was served, to be expansive.

I talked about how I had started teaching Geography and how I had taken my students on the Summer holidays to live with the Nomads in the mountains of Iran. I told him about the struggles of being a Headteacher. Then, because he too was an Englishman who had much experience in America and would appreciate the story, I told him what I have since come to regard as my real turning point experience.

It was when the Carnegie Foundation in the United States offered to show me, back in 1984, what they said was, at the time, one of the most outstanding High Schools on the Eastern seaboard. A school of 1,100 14 to 18 year-olds, of all abilities. After two days visiting that school I had been totally amazed. I had never met such a fine collection of young people, everyone of them apparently confident, enthusiastic, sensitive and well able to manage their futures. I had asked the Principal how this had been achieved and he had grinned. "Well," he had said, "we had to get the community involved. It took the community two years to come together and formulate a very fine mission statement, but we now have this and it's very useful. It simply says that 'we believe in functional literacy for all young people; that is, the ability to feel confident of your ability to handle all your changes in modern society. That confidence comes when you know that you are able to manage your own learning and will be able to handle that throughout a lifetime. And that," he had concluded with a flourish, "requires the highest possible skills in thinking, communicating, collaborating and making decisions."

That statement had really hit me between the eyes. Was it not the antithesis of many traditional English classrooms? Did we really encourage communication skills other than those silent ones committed to paper? Aren't we English afraid of collaboration - in fact, don't we secretly believe that this is a form of cheating? And what about decision making...we don't let teachers do that, let alone ordinary pupils!

"But, for goodness sake, those are just the skills I'm looking for among my employees," exclaimed my companion almost upsetting the stewardess as she was re-filling our glasses, "that's just what industry's been trying to tell the academic world for years. Instead of listening, you continue to perpetuate a set of working practices which are counter productive to those very skills needed in employment. You teachers think that life is about working alone on some piece of academic research in an ivory tower far removed from the telephone, fax, email, the daily crisis and the need to consult other people. You just don't understand about working with muddle, nor do you accept the importance of rule-of-thumb calculations or even plain guesswork! This is the real world. These are real issues. What are you or anyone else going to do about just that?"

Lunch was served and we carried on talking. We sipped our coffee. "Let me tell you just one simple story," said my colleague reflectively "which makes the point I think you're making, and resonates very strongly with me. A very successful young high-tech businessman, well known to me, decided to celebrate the rapid development of his company by inviting 20 of his staff to a dinner. When they were having their brandy one of the team suggested it would be interesting to hear what were the qualifications each had needed for their present jobs. They went around the table. It was indeed a star-studded team with lots of PhDs. At last it came to the chairman's turn and there was a moment's silence. 'I left school at 16 with no qualifications' said the chairman. "I had to learn to survive by listening to other people, joining their ideas together, and becoming better than other people at taking risks. Basically I had to use my wits. That's how I've managed to get you lot together! You're better qualified than I, but I'm the one who knows how to use you! I call the shots, despite all the qualifications you have." My lunch companion paused and looked at me carefully. "It seems to me that we have to be very careful and not to provide people with too much education!"

"A good story," I said, "yet surely both kinds of skills are needed? It's the exclusive dependence on either which is no longer good enough. The key to the future is for every individual to know which skill is appropriate to the needs of the moment. That really is my argument - good schools alone can never be good enough to produce people for this highly unstable, yet utterly fascinating world, we have already started to move into."

The conversation - or was it the good wine and steak he had consumed? - sent my colleague to sleep shortly after lunch. He must have been tired for he slept for most of the remainder of the flight. We were already making our initial preparations for landing, and were close enough to the ground to see how the leaves were already taking on their Fall colours, when he tapped me on the shoulder. "Just you write that book. You have a fascinating story to tell. Blow a few academic cobwebs away. Give people the confidence to trust their own judgement. But please, don't make it too complicated! It's got to be so good that people want to act differently after reading it!"

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21st Century Learning Initiative

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