Saturday 2 October 2010

20/20 Vision? Re-spect the one eyed jack in the hand of the blind

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A one-eyed man in the land of the blind says Jack of Diamonds' a hard card to beat ...

So I'll lay some 2010 cards on the table now to clarify some of the key points we'll need to get right if we ever want to achieve 20/20 vision:


Leading
: the best metaphor here is not driving the train but leading the dance: weaving ideas and practices with your colleagues, enabling them to move smoothly with you as a unit, ensuring space for all participants to move effectively, and above all ensuring that the whole organisation is dancing in time and to the right tune.

People
: including all people means including colleagues, clients and all those who will be affected by developments. You include them all by engaging them in the dialogue of transformation.

Problem solving
: There is no such thing as a root cause. Nothing has a single cause. Everything that happens is due to a unique combination of complex dynamic factors. The Chinese language does not encourage Western ‘causal’ thinking, but rather it encourages people to think in terms of connectedness: instead of asking ‘what causes X?’ they ask ‘what complex of things tend to happen together in time?’ Think in Chinese!

Organization
: The real value network and eco-system of any organisation are rooted in its people and communications. They are heterogeneous. They are information doorways, and behind each door are paths leading off in many directions. Unlocking the network doors demands thinking beyond them to the paths you need to use, and which extend beyond your organisation itself

Contribution
: Inclusion is recognition of the principle of connectedness that governs the world. Don’t just listen to words, but to tone and timing too, and note the spaces between the words. See the shapes of spaces between the objects, they are anti-matter. Most of the universe is made of anti-matter. Most problems and solutions occur there. Learn to use it.

Strategy
: clarity is king, but the queen is veiled and harder to see (another reflection of anti-matter). Be as clear about what you don’t want to do as you are about what you do want to do. Also bear in mind the possible pitfalls of language. Native American languages don’t allow them to say ‘this is right’ or ‘that is wrong’, instead they say ‘I call this right’ and ‘I call this wrong’. Think like a Native American and ask why you call this right and that wrong.

Measurement
: When an animal dies it loses a small amount of weight due to the cessation of movement. This was once thought to be a sign of the soul leaving the body. Energy is mass and so it has weight as well, and like the soul it cannot be weighed in living beings; we can only measure its indicators. But the signpost is not the thing signified. Vitality is the key thing we need to measure but being a quantum object it is intangible. Learn from quantum mechanics: we find what we measure for. And learn from psychology: we measure for what will affirm our hopes or fears. We must measure our measuring!

The Market
: The market is fluid, it is only defined by the routes to and through it. Our hands cannot corner water, fingers are made to leak. But they can splash, swim, cup and build channels.

Thinking
: What makes us human is the ability to think about our thinking. Using that should make us more human as well as more successful.

Innovation
: The highest we can aspire to is simplicity. If design, systems and integrative systems seem to make things more complex they are faulty. The greatest innovations are always simple and seem obvious: think ‘wheel’.

Engagement
: More than inclusion of contribution, engagement is about inspiring hearts and minds.

Operating
: The wheel needs a surface to roll on. Including all parts in operations means including those that are acted upon as well as those that act.

Ethics
: Look at yourself and see the human race, look at your home and see the planet.

Experts
: The fool is the expert of foolishness, the wise person is the expert of knowing their limits.

Partnering
: This must always be between equals, yet no two people are fully equal. We must start by defining the salient ways in which partners are equal and this will suggest the scope for reciprocal enhancement and benefit. Every pair of feet is slightly odd, one may be longer, the other broader, one straighter the other higher, but we need both to walk.

Ability: Integrating human and machine is the big trick. Six million years and we’re still struggling to unite male and female. But it’s worth all the effort!

Connection
: You are not a self among others. We are one. Imagine the cells of your right hand thinking of themselves as individuals. Silly cells. Together they rise and together they fall.

Alignment
: The arrow flies to the bullseye only if all the feathers are tightly bound together.

Best practice
: This a cultural construct. And culture is not static. You cannot put your foot in the same river twice. All statements of best practice are historical documents, by the time you’ve written it down the world has moved on. To get ahead of the curve you must read the river, think how the meander will shift, and stake your claim on that spot. Don’t copy the standards of others; nail your own colours to the mast!

Globalism
: The West does have it right! But only a quarter right!! The North, South, and East each have the other three quarters. Use the languages, concepts and stories of all four quarters and you gain the legacy of all human understanding.

Sunday 20 June 2010

FAST-TRACK ACADEMY: PATHWAY TO PARADISE OR PERDITION?

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The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. (Winston Churchill)



The flagship of Britain’s new right-wing coalition government is its education policy. A central theme here is an offer for schools designated ‘outstanding’ to be fast-tracked to independent academy status.

Over the past few days I have been interviewed twice by BBC journalists: What do I think of highest achieving schools being encouraged to break away from ‘Local Authority’ support and take up central government’s offer of fast-track to new independent academy status? Would I mind making my views public?

Are You Kidding?! Me? Speak out?? Ok, if you insist; as my arm’s in a twist:


1 – One size does not fit all – each case must be taken on its merits. Generally I am in favour of a non-uniform school system that reflects the diversity of pluralist society. Independent academies can be a very good thing and I personally welcome this government’s widening the ‘gene pool’ of models for 21st century schools (whatever its motivation). But as always, it’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it!

2 – The proposed fast track system threatens to be socially divisive, increasing polarities of wealth and opportunity in a Britain already rent with dangerous divisions.

3 – There is only a finite (and shrinking) national education budget. The new academies will be given big start up budgets and will be allowed to set their own budgetary requirements. They will be allowed to hire as many staff, and to pay them as much, as can arguably be justified. And the government will foot the bill, out of the finite and shrinking national education budget. It hardly takes a genius to see that schools which are not judged to be highest achieving, typically schools in deprived areas will lose out on funding.

4 – A lot of the schools judged as highest achieving are in more privileged areas rather than the rougher ones. What has been packaged by an ideologically driven government as ‘rewarding excellence’ is, in many (but not all) cases, no more than rewarding privilege with even more privilege – and all at the expense of the most vulnerable and underprivileged and, of course, of the punchdrunk tax payers reeling from the flurry of blows to their economic and social wellbeing.

5 - Schools not judged ‘outstanding’ will remain under Local Authority support.

6 - Local Authorities have teams of experts in all aspects of education and schooling. Their expertise is as good as it gets in the UK (i.e. roughly middling to high in world ranking). The roles they have played in helping support schools to achieve ‘outstanding’ status is not acknowledged enough.

7 – It is assumed by central government that the new academies will use specialist expertise from other sources, a leaner and sharper breed than those working for local authorities. But the fact is most private education consultants are either ex-local authority ones now working for big consultancy companies, i.e. the same breed who have defined local authority models and professional teaching cultures till now; or they are academics whose knowledge of social and cultural problems in education is based on a life lived at a safe remove from the real world. Troubleshooting hotshot freelancers like me who risk their neck every day and have done so most of their lives, - man of the world man of the people - shotta from ten, never gone wide, turn to the pen when I hit my stride - are as common as pink string bikinis at the Teheran Lido.

8 – But my biggest criticism is that those fast-track academies which actually do serve a socially advantaged client base are short-selling their core purpose and selling their souls. Perhaps they should remind themselves of Jesus’ teachings – unless they presume to know better!

For the devil -

- whoops, silly me, I mean the government, everyone knows the devil is red –

- For the government, very blue with a yellow streak, is appealing to the weaknesses and frailties of human insecurity, tempting select schools with offers of worldly power and glory.

Actually, the Tories did the same under Margaret ‘no such thing as society’ Thatcher.

For a privileged school to accept the government’s temptation to gain glory and wealth at the expense of wider society instantly calls into question the integrity of its core mission. For all schools have at the heart of their purpose to promote equal opportunities, social cohesion and a future citizenry of caring and understanding adults. Any ‘outstanding’ privileged school which accepts the government’s ‘fast-track’ offer and turns its back on the wider community of schools can only multiply the social woes of division, corruption, greed, cynicism and despair. In higher business circles that would be what they call the dodo leadership model.

Criticism is easy and floats no boats. Making practicably positive suggestions is more difficult and more useful. So, how should the outstanding schools respond the government's offer?

The body needs many parts in order to function well: arms, legs, organs. I work with Local Authority schools, independent academies, private schools, supplementary schools for minority communities, religious schools, international schools, further education colleges, higher education sector, referral units for challenging pupils – you name it. I am in a very privileged position therefore, front row centre, and have an accordingly wide perspective.

The holistic paradigm of 21st century science and society demands that all parts of the body of education to work for the good of the whole (for each part is equal to the whole). That needs to happen here. The proposed new breed of fast track academies need to do more than the government expects or demands. They need to consider an operational framework that enables them to take advantage of the government’s offer and to spread the benefit of it to other less fortunate schools in their area. Ideas could include taking on special community responsibilities, ringfencing a significant pot to fund outreach support, forging special links with pupil referral units, helping to provide opportunities for gifted and talented pupils in other local schools. I have been working on a sackload of ideas for the past year – with all the schools, local authorities, private consultants and creative artists I work with.

As usual, those interested in dialogues around the points raised in this posting can reach me discretely by email or publicly here on the blog. But much more importantly, those genuinely interested in the healthy functioning of the body educational and in enhancing social cohesion through schools need to talk to each other!!! You cannot teach community cohesion if you cannot practice it with integrity!!! The same goes for humanities, citizenship, PSHE, ethics, even good sportsmanship! We are a team in education, from strikers to right backs to goalies. In the long run winning takes a lot more than just strikers scoring goals, it takes teamwork! We do not want our strikers to score any own-goals!

The government’s offer of fast-track academy status inadvertently presents all ‘outstanding’ schools with a momentous choice between revealing the depth of their shining quality or of their shady ignominy. It is a choice they should welcome and know just what to do with!

Now our schools can teach the politicians what citizenship really means as so many of them on all sides seem to have forgotten. Our schools can form a coalition that will strike first alarm then awe and finally admiration in the heart of divisive ideologues of all hues.

This will require collaborations between governing bodies and head teachers, staff and teachers, community and pupil voice, from all sectors and in every region. Perhaps we should start by asking fast-track academies to host, fund and lead on this, together with – you guessed it – Local Authorities. I would advise strongly against involving central government, they’ve provided the framework, it is for us to use it.



If you are going through hell, keep going. KBO (Keep Buggering On). (Winston Curchill)
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Wednesday 9 June 2010

TO BE OR TO BE NOT

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As a storyteller I am comfortable with the idea of recycling stories. To tell a story well you have to really make it your own.

There was a time when poets did the same, before the advent of printing gave poems a definitive wording. Take for e.g. Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. We all know the poem says “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, and anyone who cites “Cloudy and alone I go” is just plain wrong. But back in say Homer’s time the poems were owned by the tellers not the printers, and the words could, and doubtless did, vary.

As a spoken word artist I suggest we rethink the idea of recycling poems. Maybe it’s time to do what storytellers and musicians have been doing all along, borrowing, lending and sharing in the animation of the artform!

(Interestingly, it is worth noting that written scores, say Mozart or Beethoven, have not been considered suitable for recycling in quite the same way as jazz standards have. For jazz has more of the improvisational about it. But my guess is Mozart or Beethoven would have been happy to see people improvising around their written compositions, and changing the notes, because they were renowned improvisers themselves.)

Putting my money where my mouth is, here’s a recycling of Shakespeare’s most famous bit: Hamlet’s big speech. I’ve shortened it, but hopefully the depth and gravitas of his tone and metre is retained, along with the condensed meaning. I like to think that Willy would have liked it, especially some of the extra references that he failed to allude to in his original. (e.g. to the original, pre-Shakespearian, Hamlet’s all important mill.)

Anyway, read and see what you reckon. I have done similar with Blake’s ‘Tyger’ (relating it to the experience of African American slavery), and if you like this one I may post that one too. Some kids are scared of poems, especially old-wordy ones. Letting pupils pull them apart and put them back together like this might be one way to beat that fear and loathing, and to give today’s young people a hook into ownership of some of the greatest ideas ever spoken in English.


To be or not to be – or to pretend:
what questions suffer noble minds defend
to sling outrageous arrows to the sea
in arms against opposing troubles’
mill and fortune’s end
to rend a thousand shocks of flesh and sleep
to keep enduring – singing - sighing
sweeten dreams that mortal coil but soft demure
in dying whip and scorn defying time
to rhyme the name of action with great moment
by sins’ devout horizon
fair Ophelia
… remember.



And a quick reminder of Shakespeare’s version:

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
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Tuesday 1 June 2010

The Faster You Go ...

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"Wake up in the morning slaving for bread, sir,
So that every mouth can be fed ... "






"It is no coincidence that the most explosive period of growth for the human species has occurred during our period of greatest scientific progress.


… Nanotechnology replicators could have population doubling times comparable with bacteria (which double, on average, every 20 minutes). Such replicators … could also be the cause of growth rates higher than ever before achieved [or imagined] by humanity." (David A. Coutts)
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/bnbg6billion/6billionZPG.htm)



"The faster you go, the shorter you are." (Albert Einstein)



"Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true." (Niels Bohr)









Some thoughts on diverting the express train of reality – before it smashes head on into deep rooted concrete …

Scientists say the universe is expanding at an infinitely increasing rate, faster and faster to infinity. Coincidently, so is the world stock of information. French computer scientist Jacques Vallee has mapped the rate of information doubling from Stone Age till now.

If 1-I is the total information required about the world to create a stone axe (including complex geological knowledge and skills, understanding of animal and vegetable processes, etc.) it took 4,000,000 years for information to double and arrive at 2-I. This first doubling occurred around the year dot, at the height of the Roman Empire. Little things like literacy, empire and transport systems really sped things up. Now we could chop trees and build empires. Cool. Of course, a lot of people got whacked by the Romans, but that’s omelettes and eggs.

The next doubling, to 4-I, took just 1,500 years, to the Renaissance, with the birth of Protestantism, the age of the printing press and Leonardo. This was accompanied by some of the bloodiest wars and purges in European history, including the start of African slavery and the murder of up to 1/3 of Europe’s females and gay men by the Catholic church. More omelettes? Now we could chop, build and replicate God (not least through the development of ‘perspective’ which gives us a God’s eye view, sub-species aeternitatis, raised above our object: the world).

The next doubling, to 8-I, took a mere 250 years, to 1750, the age of reason and the rights of man, the nadir of African slavery, the American and French revolutions, the next world-wide blood-bath. Now we could chop, build, replicate God and experiment with utopias.

The next doubling, to I-16 took 150 years, to 1900, with the industrial revolution. Now we could chop, build, replicate God, experiment with utopias and harness the machine. This period saw the birth of nihilism and the death of meaning, as finally made clear to all by the event of World War One. Welcome to our world: cars, Max Plank's first paper on quantum physics, Freud's 'Interpretation Of Dreams', America's first submarine, the first Kodak camera: modernity. Jazz was invented by a barber named Buddy Bolden down in New Orleans.

Just 50 more years to I-32. By 1950 we'd had the second world-war and the holocaust and used nukes for real, we’d had dictators, photocopiers, Gandhi, and the discovery of LSD; we'd split the atom, and Charlie Parker had expressed the mathematical bases for today’s complexity theory. The last person to know all of mathematics died in 1950.

To I-64, ten years. In 1960 there were an estimated 200,000 new mathematical theorems published annually, we had civil rights marches and tranquilizers, the first earth-orbiting space satellite was launched, using computers, and the world teetered on the brink of global annihilation with the Cuban missile crisis. A taste of things to come. And soul music and rock and roll were already the greatest force for progressive cultural change.

To I-128, seven years. By '67 all the world had heard of jazz, blues, soul and rock'n'roll. DNA was discovered by geneticists to be the building block of all life, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedys and transatlantic direct dialing had all happened. Bell's theorem of super-luminal non-local effects was published, demonstrating how an event here can have an instant and immediate effect billions of light-years away, billions of times faster than the speed of light. ‘Zoom’ wasn’t fast enough? We had to have ‘phwit’?

According to Bell Laboratories magazine there were already more computers on the planet than humans back in 1982. And according to Moore’s law, they double in capacity every 18 months. (Presumably Moore’s law needs rewriting if computer development follows similar exponential growth pattern to information.)

Information is doubling faster and faster, every year now, and every time it doubles there is huge upheaval and mayhem, wars and calamity, as value systems are challenged and norms uprooted. Changes of the type that once took 4,000,000 years to adjust to we now face every year. More wars on the planet than at any other time in history? Mushrooming eco-disaster? What’s the big deal? That’s normal for us now. You’d better hang on tight, you ain’t seen nothing yet, we’re just getting to the top of the rollercoaster – wait for the acceleration on the downaways!

By 2012 information will be doubling every second, and shortly thereafter every nano-second (one-millionth of a second). And for each doubling more wars, complexity and turbulence.

Mayan predictions aside, is there any hope of avoiding total entropy and disappearance up our own information derrieres? Surprisingly, yes. The quantum physicist Schrodinger gives us hope that an anti-entropic vector might cut in at the crucial moment and save us all from final meltdown. And logic dictates that every flick of the lengthening tail of crisis has the potential to set us on a different trajectory, more sustainable, ethical and creative.

Two world wars and a world economy founded on conflict and destruction have put paid to a lot of the talent that might have helped us out of the hole. Most of our great leaders have been wiped out and we are left to flounder under the velvet gloved iron fist of the tyranny of mediocrity. But as long as we’re here there’s wriggle room for sanity to prevail, and because even a single point of light can fill an empty pool of darkness there is a real possibility of kickstarting a dynamic that can divert the runaway train.

Sure, the odds don’t look worth a punt. But all religion and mythology from the ancients to Hollywood suggest that we are hardwired for hope. Hope inspires vision and vision begets new narratives, new realities. That is what ‘history’ is made of. While most so-called hard-nosed gamblers (bankers, investors, corporate c-suite execs, etc.) wouldn’t bet on us making it they would bet on political and economic systems run by myopic pygmies with egos more fragile than porcelain butterfly wings. And that’s the smart money? ‘Playing smart and not being clever’!

So, how can we divert the express train? Clues abound.

There is no direct economic or scientific fix, so the answer must lie somewhere in cultural action. For culture informs all of society including science and economy. Culture is the code by which we express our humanity. Only cultural action can enable us to adapt to life set to super spin. We need to develop a cultural framework that allows us to manage the future positively, decisively, wisely. Ducking the challenges with celebrity media nonsense is like driving across London with your eyes closed.

And when we talk cultural action we talk education, for schools are the locus of enculturation. Media like TV and ICT may colour and describe the narrative of culture but school frames it and establishes the value of its currency, i.e. its social economic meaning.

And when we talk school we immediately talk youth too, for youth culture is a key element in the cultural dynamic of schools.

Ever since the tomb raiders entered the Valley of Kings we have seen how the influence of jazz, soul and rock and roll has curled out of New Orleans, like smoke from a reefer or a mummy’s curse, stretching across the globe. Since 1900 the blended folk music of African and European traditions has led the dance of the world’s heartbeat, giving us youth culture itself.

Clue: The problem contains the seeds of its own remedies. Cultural pluralism is the very essence of youth culture. And it is an important part of the historical process of information and population doubling. It should therefore be used for its potential remedial qualities.

In particular we need to use the cultural excellences of the Black peoples of the Americas, for they have the best track record of transforming ultimate adversity into blossoming partnership, co-creating pluralism with European folk-culture to form the twin pillars of all youth culture.

And we need to recognise and acknowledge that Jamaican culture has a special significance here, for all US and UK urban youth culture is disproportionately Jamaican influenced. Jamaica’s tiny population and economy makes the disproportion of its cultural footprint equal only to the disproportion of ancient Israelite culture in terms of it’s world influence: rarely has so much been owed to so few by so many. 'Why' is complex, but has to do with the highly concentrated enforced pluralism of island slavery and the heterogeneous predisposition of the predominantly Ashanti culture of those kidnapped from Africa to work that island.

Some may argue that certain negative aspects of ‘Black-influenced pluralist urban youth culture’ present big challenges to positive learning cultures in our schools today, with growing attitude and behaviour issues, underachievement (especially for males), lack of motivation and decreasing faith in society. This may even help to explain why boys of Jamaican descent are four to six times more likely to be permanently excluded from English schools than Whites. (I was one of those statistics myself, expelled from school for demanding anti-racist curriculum reform.)

But if such an argument holds true at all the opposite must also be true by the same token: i.e. the positive aspects of ‘Black-influenced pluralist urban youth culture’ must present some of the biggest opportunities for the development of positive learning cultures in our schools today (especially for males?).

If we are looking for education to break the chain of bondage to global destruction we should think about how we can work with that ‘pluralist urban youth culture’.

And yes … I do have some idea of how to embark on such a course and of the possible roadmap, opportunities and risks involved.

The only certainty is that the walls are about to go wavy and the ground shaky in the wobbly era now dawning. And when the going gets tough …

Where are those who can pull true sense and meaning from the infinitely complex super-spin that so disorientates our societies? Who has the nerve and the ability to divert the express train of reality before it crashes headlong into that rooted concrete, spilling eggs all over with no chance of an omelette in sight?

There are plenty of us out there, in schools, government, business and communities. We must work together to trace the huge cultural footprint of our youth culture, influenced as it is by urban, cyber, White, Black, Asian and, oddly enough, especially Jamaican. There is scant time for delay and the responsibility is all ours.

Education is the trigger, culture the ammunition.

We’ve got one shot.

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"Don't want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde
Poor me - the Israelite" (Desmond Decker)

Wednesday 19 May 2010

What's Going On

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Today I was in a school where I saw about 50 12 year old pupils baying at a teacher like a pack of hungry hunting dogs smelling blood. A scary sight. Apparently the teacher had dared to insist on pupils behaving in class, he had been very polite and reasonable about it but had given detentions to pupils who refused to comply. And this was enough to bring about a near mass riot.

What’s going on in our schools?

This evening’s Newsnight, England’s most intelligent daily news t.v. programme, had an article about the Euro currency’s desperate scramble to survive what could be a shattering total collapse of its value and its feasibility as a currency. The reporter spoke about ‘underlying imbalances’ which continue to undermine all efforts to salvage the Euro and which ultimately threaten the cohesion of all European societies.

What’s going on in our economies?

What are these ‘underlying imbalances’? (Anyone seen ‘Koyanisqatsi’? This Hopi Indian term for ‘a world out of balance’ is also the title of a great movie – a Native American spirit vision of the modern world.) The reporter did not specify. I will.

Three examples of the underlying imbalances which threaten to destroy social cohesion include:

· Global and national social economic polarity
· Reliance on unsustainable energy resources
· The tyranny of mediocrity in government, media and education

Such underlying imbalances are the source of all our insolubly wicked problems, e.g.:

· Terrorism
· Global warming
· Government and corporate corruption
· Anti-social youth cultures inside and outside of school
· Organised drugs and vice rackets

The list goes on … and on … and on … and …

What’s going on in our societies?

The problems cannot be solved at surface level any more than a tree can be uprooted by pulling its fruit. You have to dig deeper, down to the ‘underlying imbalances’, and put your energy into changing conditions there, at base level. And you have to look long and hard at the knotty roots exposed, and you have to really think, not just out of the box, but out of the whole woods that the boxes are made of.

The task of finding the problems and fixing them with workable changes starts with us asking the right question. Next we must discover the elements of the problem and what we could do about it. Then, out of that, we must develop what we should do, before deciding what we will do, and, ultimately, deploying what we have agreed to do. (Thanks to John Caswell for this formula.) And the success of this whole process rests on asking the right question to begin with. Frame the question wrongly and all your efforts to solve a problem are an expensive and demoralising waste of time.

The question needs to be about means and meaning. It’s not what you do but the way that you do it (the means by which …) that determines results. And the way we do things gives our actions meaning. Means beget meaning.

So, asking ‘how do we do things and what does that mean in terms of affecting outcomes?’ is always going to be a big part of our identifying and fixing deep rooted complex problems.

And this means looking at our theories of knowledge and our scientific and technological paradigms – what are the trends of change here? In a nutshell: we are seeing a move away from separated fields and silos towards linkages and holism.

So for the Euro to survive, and with it our European societies, and our schools, we will have to follow that trend of change. We will have to practice joined up thinking, bomb the silos, break the chains of separation, make new links to a shared future.

Luckily, some of us are ahead of the curve and have been working on strategic and operational architectures for some time now (such matters are too important to be left solely in the hands of governments compromised by political agendas). Our voices should be heard before our economies finally collapse, before schools become completely unmanageable and before our unbalanced societies reach tipping point.

Our voices can talk new meaning into being - and new being into meaning-. Our voices can tell a new story. Our voices are growing stronger, more connected and more harmonious. Lovely. The increasing momentum towards dystopia is matched by an increasing momentum towards utopia; it is a race between competing forces. But this race is not for the swift, but for those who can endure.

Which seems more durable to you: The dull grey mediocrities clinging to power by their fingernails, determined to resist change till the last, or the creative dynamic stepping razors devoted to sustainable change, devoted to survival?

Are you with me?

Thursday 13 May 2010




Utopia And Beyond?


Who does not know the trees gets lost in the woods. Who does not know the stories gets lost in life” (Siberian elder)

True story: An Amazon tribal leader taken to the edge of the shrinking forest saw the horizon for the first time in his life. Terrified out of his wits, he ran back to the safety of the forest as fast as he could. Native Amazonian mythology contains no frame of reference that allows them to make sense of such open expanse. And Native Amazonian mythology contains no utopia. Perhaps they know they’re living it.

Three years ago I became a freelance storyteller and education consultant. My aim: to help secure a sustainable future for my kids and for future generations by doing what I believe in, what I love and what I’m best at: Innovating creatively in education to enable young people and education professionals to co-construct positive narratives of learning and to think Utopian again.

Thinking Utopian is hardly de rigueur in a disillusioned age hard hit by insoluble ‘wicked’ problems. Optimism: a failure to acknowledge the inevitability of impending catastrophe; altruism: a sop to bad faith, a perfume of shady conscience. But such cynicism only serves to mark out the intellectual fragility of those who submit under the tsunami of shocks to which modern flesh is heir. It takes a true black belt to hold onto the big picture perspective, to hold fast to the courageous ideals that have sustained humanity throughout its long history of teetering on the brink of doom.

Black emancipation, Women’s suffrage, state Communism, youth hippiedom, we’ve explored utopian ideas for a while now, thanks to the likes of Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, John Lennon, Bucky Fuller, Che Guevara and the rest. And utopian ideas have brought important real-world benefits from free health care and education to internet technology and eco-tech. All such developments point to a growing appreciation of the meaning and importance of holistic aspects of human knowledge and experience from the sciences to the arts.

At root that’s what utopianism is supposed to do: inspire us to kick ideas around that might spark up new models of sustainable meaning.

But as long as the popular zeitgeist is dominated by a vacuous celebrity culture which is not even superficial what hope that some new inspired vision will become a valued common currency in education and society? Substance, meaning, faith and integrity are beggars at the door of the inane tyranny of mediocrity, administered with all due health and safety by the velvet gloved iron fist of media-fed government initiatives and qangos. That is no way to go on.

Such confounding of reason is profoundly disorienting and therefore corrupting to the human soul, hence the rise in anti-social behaviour, disruption, underachievement, disillusionment, gang-culture, etc in schools and society. There is no law against mass media cultivating a climate inimical to true utopian aspiration across society, from business and government leaders to school kids.

This climate creates a vacuum into which rush fantasy belief systems like teen vampire genres (nine out of ten books borrowed from a school library I worked in last week were vampire novels). And also into that vacuum rush ersatz moral codes like the new church of ‘Ahh Bless’ with it’s a.m. TV high priests and priestesses. (Clasp hands in lap, tilt head and simper, doe eyed and blinking – ‘Ahh Bless’.)

Numb. The idea of all this bad-faith, anti-utopian fakism is to keep people numb, no reaction when tapped. You numb reflex reactions by disorientating people over time. And you disorientate people by removing the solid bases and reference points of meaning. That’s crude meta-programming technique. And, clearly, job done. But in so doing the myopic giants have stumbled into their own traps.

Evidently they have not paid attention to the wealth of traditional stories illustrating this common mistake, from Jack and the Beanstalk to the Minotaur.

Dumb. And the idea is to keep people dumb. We have a system in which schools deliver achievement data without actually educating people. In the spirit of behaviourism, shallow as celebrity culture itself, governments tell schools to train people to pass tests. But education is not about weighing and testing, it is about enriching and edifying. Education means pupils and teachers working together in a spirit of mutual respect to enhance critical consciousness of our shared historical function to transform ourselves and society towards higher and more enlightened ‘utopian’ goals. Education must enhance the freedom to make sense and meaning, freedom for people of all ages, ethnicities and social backgrounds to define our aims together. Nothing less is worthy of the name ‘education’.

As my old mentor (Paulo Freire) once said: “utopian hope is engagement full of risk”. The risk aversion of our schools shows just how anti-utopian they are! Children are not allowed to climb trees or play conkers any more. They are safeguarded to the back teeth by a system that acts like every person who wants to work with children is a child molester. Don’t we know that almost all child abuse takes place outside of schools?!

We’re spending billions making schools antiseptic-supersafe while letting our children’s minds be totally polluted by the media’s obscene replacement of utopianism with celebrities, Ahh Bless, vampire novels and the rest. And in so doing we fail to address the underlying psychological dis-ease of the adults who really do abuse children in our society, we just make it worse.

I’m in a strange space right now, and freewheeling. Schools and local governments are jamming my inbox with requests to help. Why? Because in their hubris the media and bureaucratic powers that be have forgotten something important: a lot of education professionals still care about young people and want them to have utopian aspirations so that a sustainable future might one day emerge. And the word seems to have gotten around that in some small way, by combining common sense and goodwill with real respect and understanding of the equal needs of professionals and pupils, my kind of intervention actually helps schools and young people to forge a way together through the crazy forest of cynical meaninglessness, and out into the plains of freedom where the horizons stretch to utopia and beyond.

Our leaders are not Amazonian, but they fear the open spaces of freedom and opportunity even more than those forest dwellers. They would cut down the whole rainforest if they could, yet would fear the open expanse that results. Perhaps one day, as the final thicket is felled, their leaders and ours will stand together and tremble. But they could only stand together a short while. For the Amazonian leaders know their stories and ours do not, and while they may fear open space at first they will find the way to make new stories and will learn to find utopia again inside their hearts. And our leaders will tremble long and alone, long long and alone, as awareness slowly dawns over the lost horizon: a fiery baptism of the sun - beyond utopia.

Jack has lost his cow and has the magic beans already. The Minotaur rages with con-dem-nation and Ariadne’s thread leads us onwards, upwards to the light.

“Who does not know the trees gets lost in the woods. Who does not know the stories gets lost in life” (Siberian elder)

Monday 4 January 2010

business and education - bridging the gap

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It’s 2010! Great, let’s get on with it. There’s plenty to do.

Will this be the year that education catches up with the curve? Education in England is renowned for lagging way behind business in terms of operational models. And is it any wonder, for schools hardly get a chance to get their bearings before they are set yet another merry dance by the demon-fiddlers of the political world. (They shoot horses, don’t they?)

This week my friend John sent me a little booklet he’s been working on. He runs a top end business consultancy. His client list reads like a who’s who of the top multi nationals and fortune 500 companies (the 500 biggest US companies). He specialises in helping the C-suite executives of these companies visualise their operations and strategic planning. (The term C-suite refers to chief executives, e.g. CEOs etc.) He also advises government departments here and in the US. Basically, he helps the leaders of our world to visualise and clarify their thinking. Twenty years of this work has given John a good view of how the big wheels turn, and where they tend to catch and wobble.

John’s booklet condenses 20 years of observations about the most common mistakes within large organisations and charts the way ahead for the next decade. Much of what he says can be applied to the field of education and I’m looking at doing just that.

What I’m wondering is does the education world want to use the best thinking of the business world, or are we content to muddle along in third gear behind the leading pack? Do we want operational models at the forefront of 21st Century thinking? Is what is good enough for the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies too good for our schools and our young people too?

The drift of John’s recommendations are completely in line with what I do as an education consultant and storyteller. (Our shared perspective on the need for paradigm shift is the basis of our association, naturally enough.) But, and here's the rub, they are not quite in line with government priorities or with the usual educational consultancy models which tend to follow them to the letter. Governments are more concerned with maintaining control of education than with enabling it to self-define and flourish independently. Thankfully not all schools feel constrained to dance solely to the tunes of political whims, so I get plenty of work.

When I speak to schools their first concern is often where to source funding for the sort of creative learning projects I run. Luckily I am often able to point schools in the direction of funding streams. Sometimes another concern is that doing ‘extra’ things might detract from their main priorities: exam grades etc. But the value of the enrichment I offer shows itself every time, given half the chance.

My aim this year has to be to make more schools aware of latest thinking in the business world, to show them how that relates to education, and to allay fears that funding might be a problem or that dancing more to their own tune might compromise their ability to please their political paymasters.

It’s 2010! Great, let’s get on with it. There’s plenty to do.

(By the way folks, if you want a look at John’s website click here for the link, and yes, you will find me there on his expert network.)

(Also, you might want to check back here in the next week or so. I’m thinking of serialising some of the main points in John’s latest booklet and outlining some of the connections to education. Watch this space.)