Gloucester Association of Primary Heads Annual Conference 2009

Gloucester Association of Primary Heads’ Annual Conference 2009 “What does the future hold for us? ” “What is IT all about” John Abbott President, The 21 st Century Learning Initiative Supporting documentation for this discussion can be downloaded from Website: Email: UK contacts: Telephone: Fax: www. 21 learn. org mail@21 learn. org jabbott@rmplc. co. uk 01225 333376 01225 339133 6 th November 2009 Cheltenham Chase Hotel Brockworth The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. ” ANCIENT HEBREW PROVERB The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 2

“We have not inherited this world from our parents. We have been loaned it by our children. ” NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITION The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 3

“I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war. ” JOHN MILTON, 1644 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 4

“. . . The work of the Department of Education and Employment fits with a new economic imperative of supply-side investment for national prosperity. ” MINISTER OF EDUCATION, 2001 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 5

Why Education? In 1948 some three years after he had been appointed Chief Education Officer for Hertfordshire to begin implementing the 1944 Education Act John Newsome wrote a remarkable book, The Child at School, to help parents understand what education was all about. In the Introduction he wrote: “Always remember this: a child is a child first, and a school child second. ” Answering his own question, why education? , he wrote: “Education is ultimately a political issue, for it is concerned with the child’s relationship to the world both as a child and as a future adult. In other words, until you have decided what the relationship between man and God or man and other men should be, and what form of political and economic society you would like to see, you cannot tell what sort of education a child should have. ” The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 6

George Baines: Obituary in The Guardian 27 th October 2009 George was the youngest of 13 children and lost his father, a farmer, when he was four. He was brought up by his sister as their mother was disabled. He attended Newland Park Training College in 1951 -53, taught in primary schools in Buckinghamshire and was appointed Headmaster of Brize Norton Primary School in Oxford in 1962 and died in September 2009. “I am sure that teaching is an art and that teachers are artists. The teacher teaches what he is, more than what he knows, and as an artist involves and gives of himself with love. ” His children would begin the day with whatever task they wished. There was a strong sense of direction, with teachers supporting each child to acquire the six “selves”: selfawareness, self-confidence, self-direction, self-discipline, self-criticism and self-esteem – acquired in that order. The whole school community, adults and children, were encouraged to work with Industry, Integrity and Imagination. “If the three I’s and six ‘selves’ were developed well with good teaching the 3 R’s would follow, Baines believed. ” The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 7

“Classes are boring, ‘cos we don’t have to think about what we are doing. We’re just told to copy stuff down off the board or from what the teacher tells us. It makes us lazy… in fact, sorry to say this, but it’s you teachers who make us lazy. ” The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 8

I learned most not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me. St. Augustine 6 th Century The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 9

Some learning experiences. . . For all • • • The dawn of the day The ebb and flow of the tide The opening of a flower Strength and fragility Conformity and protest Permanence and transience The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 10

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"To us the sun appears to be the largest and brightest of the stars, but it is actually the smallest and the faintest. There are many billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Our planet Earth is a puny object in a violent, unbelievably vast and expanding universe. Our very existence is a consequence of stability of the sun, which has been burning long enough to allow life to evolve and flourish on our planet. It is that violent and blazing star whose light and heat comes to us from ninety-three million miles away that makes it possible for us to sit comfortably in our homes thinking about it all”. (Continued) The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 12

“That act of thought is almost as great a miracle as the universe itself. We are a submicroscopic dot in a tiny corner of a small galaxy in a universe containing billions of galaxies, but in us the universe has become conscious, has started thinking about itself. The sun is not thinking about itself as it burns; the universe is not thinking about, is not conscious of itself as it explodes through space; but we are. Something is going on in us that is as wonderful and extraordinary as the universe itself”. Doubts and Loves: What is left of Christianity, Richard Holloway, 2001 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 13

The Creation Story (Part 1) To demonstrate how late the human species arrived on Earth the environmentalist David Brower in the 1990 s devised an ingenious narrative by compressing the age of the planet into the six days of the Biblical creation story. In this scenario Earth is created on Sunday at midnight. Life in the form of the first bacterial cells appears on Tuesday morning around 8: 00 am, and for the next two and half days the microcosm evolves. By Thursday at midnight it is fully established. On Friday around 4: 00 pm, the microorganisms invent sexual reproduction, and on Saturday, the last day of creation all the visible forms of life evolve. Around 1: 30 am on Saturday the first marine animals are formed, and by 9: 30 am the first plants come ashore, followed two hours later by amphibians and insects. At 10 minutes before five in the afternoon the great reptiles appear, roam the earth in lush tropical forests for five hours and then suddenly die around 9: 45 pm. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 14

The Creation Story (part 2) Shortly before 10: 00 pm some tree-dwelling mammals in the tropics evolve into the first primates. An hour later some of those evolve into monkeys; and around 11: 40 pm the great apes appear. Eight minutes before midnight the first Southern apes stand up and walk on two legs. Five minutes later they disappear again. The first human species, Homo Habilis, appears four minutes before midnight, evolves into Homo Erectus half a minute later and into archaic forms Homo Sapiens 30 seconds before midnight. The Neanderthals command Europe and Asia from 15 to 4 seconds before midnight. The modern human species, finally, appears in Africa 11 seconds before midnight and in Europe five seconds before midnight. Written human history begins around two-thirds of a second before midnight. Story is paraphrased from Fritj of Capra The Web of Life, 1996 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 15

The Descent of Man Studies in genetics suggest that the split with the Great Apes occurred seven million years ago. At twenty years to a generation that is three hundred and fifty thousand generations ago. In all that time the genetic structure of us humans differs from the Great Apes by less than 2%. Three hundred and fifty thousand generations is, at a minute a generation, equivalent to the number of minutes we are, on average, awake for in a year. See Before the Dawn: Recovering the lost history of our ancestors by Nicholas Wade, an Englishman and Science Correspondence for the New York Times The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 16

To MEANDER. . . To follow a winding course; to wander aimlessly. A MEANDER (geographic term). . . A bend in a winding river, resulting from helicoidal flow. HELICOIDAL. . . A movement of water like a corkscrew, eroding from one side, and building up on the other; a natural process of adjusting to constantly changing conditions. HELICOIDAL THINKING. . . is dynamic; instantly reacting to changing circumstances. Over hundreds of thousands of generations the human brain has come to work in such a natural, dynamic, meandering way. The Danish Nobel winning Physicist, Neils Bohr, understood this as he remonstrated with a Ph. D student. . . “You’re not thinking, you’re just being logical”. So this lecture will, for very good reasons, be a “meander”. . . taking ideas from one place and building them up in another in response to changing circumstances, and creating new meaning. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 17

“Learning about Human Learning” — The emergence of a new Synthesis Drawn from several disciplines 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Philosophy, and later pedagogy Evolutionary Theory Psychology (Behaviourism) Cognitive Science (Metacognition) Neurobiology Evolutionary Psychology Anthropology and Archaeology Genetics Values (philosophy, purpose); Nature via Nurture The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 18

Nature via Nurture Genes are designed to take their cues from nurture. To appreciate what has happened, you will have to abandon cherished notions and open your mind. You will have to enter a world where your genes are not puppet masters pulling the strings of your behaviour, but are puppets at the mercy of your behaviour, a world where instinct is not the opposite of learning, where environmental influences are sometimes less reversible than genetic ones, and where nature is designed for nurture… the human brain is built for nurture. Matt Ridley Nature via Nurture 2003 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 19

Our bodies and minds are not of recent origin. They are the direct consequence of millions of years of surviving in Africa and adapting to the dramatic changes this continent has seen in the course of the last five million years. Africa has shaped not only our physical bodies, but the societies within which we live. The way we interact today at a social and cultural level is in many ways the result of organisational skills developed by our hominid ancestors in Africa over millions of years. Cradle of Humankind Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee R. Berger, South Africa, 2002 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 20

“You can take Man out of the Stone Age, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of Man. ” Nigel Nicholson, Harvard Business Review July / August 1998 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 21

A Short Walk through Economic History The graph depicts the growth of world population and some major events in the history of technology. The graph comes from Robert William Fogel. The Fourth Great Awakening & The Future of Egalitarianism, 2000. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 22

Evolutionary Intelligence "Human beings, together with all their likes and dislikes, their senses and sensibilities, did not fall ready-made from the sky; nor were they born with minds and bodies that bare no imprints of the history of their species. Many of our abilities and susceptibilities are specific adaptations to ancient environmental problems, rather than separate manifestations of a general intelligence for all Seasons. " John D. Barrow The Artful Universe, 1996 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 23

Pregnancy and the Developing Brain "There is no period of parenthood with a more direct and formative effect on a child's brain, than the last three months of pregnancy leading to the birth of a full term baby. The mother's emotions affect the fetus, and so do her general habits and the parent's physical environment. (Probably) half of birth defects are due to avoidable exposure to medicinal drugs, recreational drugs, alcohol, tobacco smoke, and toxic agents at work and at home. ” Marian Diamond The Magic Trees of the Mind, 1998 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 24

"We have unequivocal evidence that breast-fed children are physically stronger than nonbreastfed children, that they have greater verbal, quantitative and memory abilities as preschoolers, and significantly higher I. Q. scores during their school years. This is due not simply to healthy substances in the milk, as many assume, but also to the early motherchild relationship that breast-feeding implies. " Karl Zinsmesiter, The American Enterprise, May/June 1998 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 25

Mechanisation? Big Brother? "Almost three hundred American employers, including Aetna, Eastman Kodak, Cigna and Home Depot, now offer "Lactation Support Rooms" where female employees can now take regular breaks to attach electric pumps to their breasts in order to collect milk in bottles for their infants in day care. Some companies, aside from the 'pumping rooms', have "lactation consultants" to help mothers solve breastfeeding problems. " Original quotation in “There's No Place Like Work” by Brian Robertson, and re-quoted in “Nasty, Brutish and Short”, an article by Richard Lowry in National Review, May 2001 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 26

“Why Love Matters: How Affection shapes a baby’s brain” “Our earliest experiences are not simply laid down as memories or influences; they are translated into precise physiological patterns of response in the brain that then set the neurological rules for how we deal with our feelings and those of other people for the rest of our lives. It’s not nature or nurture, but both. How we are treated as babies and toddlers determines the way in which what we’re born with turns into what we are. ” Sue Gerhardt 2004 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 27

Research from the Kellogg Foundation, conducted in the State of Michigan, into the predictors of success at the age of 18 "[This] compared the relative influence that family, community and other factors have on student performance. Amazingly it concluded that factors outside the school are four times more important in determining a student's success on standardized tests than are factors within the school. The most significant predictor was the quantity and quality of dialogue in the child's home before the age of five. " Quoted at The White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning, April 1997 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 28

“As we build networks and patterns of synaptic connections when we are very young, so we build the framework which will ‘shape’ how we learn as we get older; such ‘shaping’ will significantly determine what we learn – it will be both an opportunity, and a constraint. The broader and more diverse the experience when very young, the greater are the chances that, later in life, the individual will be able to handle open, ambiguous, uncertain and novel situations. ” The Neural Basis of Cognitive Development: A Constructivist Manifesto“ by Stephen J. Quartz and Terrence Sejnowski, The Salk Institute, San Diego, California The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 29

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Adolescence is currently seen as a "problem" in Western Society; that excess of hormones leaves the rapidly maturing child unaware of its new physical strength, and confused as to how to direct it. While modern parents and teachers find adolescence disruptive, earlier cultures directed this energy in ways that developed those skills on which the community was dependent for its ongoing survival. In doing so it also ensured that young people learned, and practiced, what was seen as appropriate social behavior. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 31

Are Teenagers Necessary? Modern society seems to have moved, without skipping a beat, from blaming our parents for the ills of society, to blaming our children. For most of our history, the labours of young people in their teens was too important to be sacrificed – ‘schooling’ for teenagers remained a minority activity until well into the twentieth century. In fact teenagers can be seen to be an invention of the Machine Age. It was Roosevelt’s solution to the Depression years to take teenagers out of the jobs that could be done by formerly unemployed family men by requiring all early teenagers to attend High School. “But, for very many youngsters, High School, which virtually defines the rise of the teenagers, is hardly an exalted place”. “The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager” Thomas Hine, page 1 -9 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 32

Adolescence and Apprenticeship forms of learning Thomas Hine writing in 1999 on the rise and fall of the American teenager noted, “the principle reason high schools now enroll nearly all teenagers is that we can’t imagine what else to do with them. ” That is a shocking conclusion by a man who spent years studying the issue. Modern society, by being so concerned for the well being of adults tries desperately to ignore the adolescents’ need to explore and do things for themselves, by giving them ever more to do in school. It is as if modern society is trying to outlaw adolescence by over schooling children. That is not education. There is a frightening manmade hole in the desirable experience for adolescence - there are simply not enough opportunities for them to learn from doing things for themselves in a modern society. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 33

Crazy by Design We have suspected that there is something going on in the brain of the adolescent, apparently involuntarily, that is forcing apart the child/parent relationship. What neurologists are discovering challenges the conventional belief held until only a year or so ago, that brain formation is largely completed by the age of twelve. Adolescence is a period of profound structural change, in fact “the changes taking place in the brain during adolescence are so profound, they may rival early childhood as a critical period of development”, wrote Barbara Strauch in 2003. “The teenage brain, far from being readymade, undergoes a period of surprisingly complex and crucial development. ” The adolescent brain, she suggests, “is crazy by design. ” The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 34

Adolescence From the earliest of times the progression from dependent child to autonomous adult has been an issue of critical importance to all societies. The adolescent brain, being “crazy by design, ” could be a critical evolutionary adaptation that has built up over countless generations, and is essential to our species’ survival. It is adolescence that drives human development by forcing young people in every generation to think beyond their own self-imposed limitations and exceed their parents’ aspirations. These neurological changes in the young brain as it transforms itself means that adolescents have evolved to be apprentice-like learners, not pupils sitting at desks awaiting instruction. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 35

DON'T FENCE ME IN (Cole Porter) Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies, Don't fence me in Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, Don't fence me in Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you please, Don't fence me in Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle Underneath the western skies On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder Till I see the mountains rise I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences Don't fence me in, no Pop, oh don't you fence me in The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 36

Upside Down and Inside Out A possible description of the assumption we have inherited about systems of learning, namely, that older students should be taken more seriously than younger students and that the only learning that really matters is that which is formal. Overschooled but Undereducated calls for these assumptions to be reversed in the light of modern understanding about how humans learn. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 37

“Much to my surprise I can't really fault your theory. You are probably educationally right; certainly your argument is ethically correct. But the system you’re arguing for would require very good teachers. We’re not convinced that there will ever be enough good teachers. So, instead, we’re going for a teacher-proof system of organising schools - that way we can get a uniform standard. ” Verbatim report of conclusions of presentation made to the Policy Unit at Downing Street in March 1996 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 38

To remain a pupil is to serve your teacher badly. Friedrich Nietzche 1844 -1900 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 39

Traditionally, Education has often been likened to a three-legged stool, which will always adjust to the most uneven surface (unlike a four-legged chair) The Home – emotions The Community – inspiration The School – intellectual The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 40

Tell me, and I forget; show me, and I remember; let me do and I understand. Chinese Proverb The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 41

“How the well-being of British children compares” Unicef used six categories to judge young people in 21 countries Dimensions of child well -being Average ranking position (all dimensions) Dimension 1 poverty and inequality Dimension 2 Health and safety The Independent 14/02/07 Dimension 3 Education Dimension 4 Family and friendships Dimension 5 Sex, Drink, drugs Dimension 6 Happiness Netherlands 4. 2 10 2 6 3 3 1 Sweden 5. 0 1 1 5 15 1 7 Denmark 7. 2 4 4 8 9 6 12 Finland 7. 5 3 3 4 17 7 11 Spain 8. 0 12 6 15 8 5 2 Switzerland 8. 3 5 9 14 4 12 6 Norway 8. 7 2 8 11 10 13 8 Italy 10. 0 14 5 20 1 10 10 Ireland 10. 2 19 19 7 7 4 5 Belgium 10. 7 7 16 1 5 19 16 Germany 11. 2 13 11 10 13 11 9 Canada 11. 8 6 13 2 18 17 15 Greece 11. 8 15 18 16 11 8 3 Poland 12. 3 21 15 3 14 2 19 Czech republic 12. 5 11 10 9 19 9 17 France 13. 0 9 7 18 12 14 18 Portugal 13. 7 16 14 21 2 15 14 Austria 13. 8 8 20 19 16 16 4 Hungry 14. 5 20 17 13 6 18 13 United States 18. 0 17 21 12 20 20 - United Kingdom 18. 2 18 12 17 21 21 20 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 42

Education is what remains after you have forgotten everything you ever learnt in school The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 43

“I call a complete and generous education that which equips a man to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously all the offices public and private of peace and war” John Milton, 1644 As quoted in The Child at School, J. H. Newsom, 1948 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 44

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena. Vaclav Havel, 2000 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 45

There aren’t any great people out there anymore – there’s only us. The 21 st Century Learning Initiative www. 21 learn. org 46

For further information: Web Email www. 21 learn. org mail@21 learn. org Website: Email: UK contacts Telephone: Fax: www. 21 learn. org mail@21 learn. org jabbott@rmplc. co. uk 01225 333376 01225 339133 The 21 st Century Learning Initiative - www. 21 learn. org 47