The Initiative is aiming to broaden the range of media on this site. We started in August 2008 with a radio interview that had been broadcast in Melbourne and continue with a series of podcasts on various topics. Links on this page can be listened to within your web browser or downloaded to your computer or MP3 player.

October 2008
Podcast

Interview with Neil Richards, Principal of Atlantic College. Neil discusses the unique mission of Atlantic College and the United World Colleges, shares his passion for service and explains why so many aspects of learning cannot be quantified in examinations.

August 2008
Podcast

Interview with Leigh MacTaggart Richter, an 18-year-old Canadian, whose mother, Heather MacTaggart, co-authored (with John Abbott) Overschooled but Undereducated: Society’s Failure to Understand Adolescence. Leigh spent the summer at the Initiative offices in Bath, England, writing (amongst other things) a young persons’s take on the ideas discussed in Overschooled but Undereducated. She talks here with David Abbott about the challenges of being an adolescent.

Radio Interview

Listen to John Abbott discuss the challenges of adolescence with Richard Stubbs of 774 ABC Melbourne. John draws heavily from his new book Overschooled but Undereducated: Society’s Failure to Understand Adolescence to explain why adolescence should be seen as a time of positive development, and not a pain to parents.