Since there have been many educators over the past 100 years who have outlined the means for developing self-directed learners, capable of learning how to achieve competence in whatever they do; and there have also been many individual schools, public and private, which have successfully implemented these ideas and approaches; and many thousands of individual teachers who have accomplished the same with their own students …. with all this being well documented, why do we still find the majority of students losing their love for learning while becoming passive test passers?

A strong case can be (and has been) made that this passivity and lack of independent thinking suits the ruling class. That’s too simple.

Others point to the bureaucratic structures that surround and manage education. Hannah Arendt used the phrase “the banality of evil” to capture the degree to which a bureaucracy gathers, ships and kills millions of unwanted people with the same degree of task-orientation and managerial efficiency as running any governmental department’s tasks. Is it any less evil to negate 2 million years of human evolution and the incredible brain potential that has resulted? But blaming bureaucratic insufficiencies is also too simple.

Leon Sheleff explored the love-hate relationship one generation has with the one that follows. (Generations Apart: Adult Hostility to Youth, 1981)

I could go on and on and on this way. Or just compile the ever-expanding list of education expose books. My own conclusion: all of the above.

VIII. A Plan for Global Renewal: widespread and long-term

This plan is based on the fact that our education systems and places of teaching are divided into many thousands of school districts and state/provincial education authorities, and private and public post-secondary institutions now joined by a fast growing plethora of internet offerings. All this operates under a multitude of budgetary/funding systems and career paths. Thus, whatever is initiated, must happen in a large enough proportion of jurisdictions and activity centres that it has the potential to become self-generating.

From one, or a consortium of foundations, assemble a budget that would fund two types of individuals who would be paired up: a brilliant and effective educator to be paired with an equally brilliant and effective fund-raiser. These 50 – 70 pairs would be provided with a 10 – 15 year income commitment for the promise that they would devote these years to educational change processes in an integrated way. That would have the effect of strengthening each individual by having her/him work as part of the whole foundation-funded group. It also recognises that every school, school district, and higher education institution is an entity onto itself and will require site-specific initiatives. It links top-down and bottom-up approaches in a mutually-reinforcing symbiosis.

The cost: for 50 pairs at an average of $100,000 per year: 10 million dollars per year. Considering the wealth of the top 20 foundations, that is truly a pittance. There would be excellent PR value for the foundation(s).

It has become a truism that there is nothing more grassroots than changing education. It has to happen school-by-school, university-by-university, state/province and country-by-country. . But by forming a large distributed group of talented change agents, anointing them with selection by a wealthy foundation(s) with predictable media coverage, using the fund-raising partner to further multiply the resources for local actions ….. by assembling this kind of massive input, working globally in a co-ordinated fashion, for 10 – 15 years, we may finally get over the threshold for achieving the widespread and lasting educational change that our world so desperately needs.

IX. Alternatives and/or Additions to the Above Strategy

1. Assemble a list of educational renewal activities from all around the world. Use email to link up, collaborate, document, publicise, etc. Use an action research approach for documenting and evaluating.
2. Develop strong workable links amongst the World Bank (and Regional Banks), OECD Education and the U.N. system: Unesco, WHO, FAO, and their Regional offices for a 10 Æ 15 year plan with the doers designated and adequate funding committed/redirected.
3. Assemble a consortium of major foundations, that operate nationally and globally, for a 6-9 day conference that builds on pre-conference papers and an email listserv for a 10-year plan that enough of their Boards can commit to within 3 months for initiating the programme. Or, pre-arrange for teleconferencing with their Boards for a 1-2 day decision process near the end of the conference for Foundation representatives (mostly Presidents and/or Education Sector heads).
4. Obtain a 10 year commitment from one very large foundation to work aggressively in a 30 percent sample of carefully selected countries where the current national milieu seems ready and willing to cooperate in the reality-based life-span learning systems advocated here and supported by good science.

X. A First Step

To move from paper to planning and action, a 4 – 6 day action planning workshop is proposed. The details will depend somewhat on the initiating agency(ies) and the funding source(s). The University of Victoria, with it’s Centre for Global Studies, Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives and Unit for Research and Education on the Convention on the Rights of the Child plus individual Professors withi International experience has the competence and infrastructure to serve as the organiser and host.. If a large proportion of participants are from abroad, however, Vancouver may be a better location. Participants would be selected for their previous experience with the learning assumptions and educational approaches outlined above. ( It shouldn’t be necessary to reinvent the wheel.) CIDA’s new Framework for Action offers interesting possibilities for funding with potential longer-term consequences.

XI. Conclusion

There is nothing particularly original in this paper. It owes much to thousands of educators over the past 150 years who understood the processes of learning and how to translate that into effective schooling. What has driven the reading and writing processes is a sense of desperation ….. of time growing short. In talking with many people who have come to the same conclusions about the problems, the response that I’ve heard over and over again:education is hopeless. But there are many efforts for educational renewal that demonstrate the opposite. This plan is one way to respond. There are many others equally valid. What’s critical is to get started now in a long-term global approach with human, institutional and financial resources sufficient for the challenges.

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