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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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)

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?

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)

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.)

Missing Links

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Question: What is the key missing ingredient in our education system?

Answer: Faith. The faith to remove the constraining safety harness of systematisation sometimes; the faith to be bouyed by the warm currents of naturally occuring meaning and connections between siloed disciplines. Free-fall is easy when you have a safety-net, and we do.

Indra’s Net: Hindu tradition refers to the magical jewelled net of the mythical god Indra. The net represents the threads of life and existence, for everything in the universe is said to be connected and part of a whole. We call that whole ‘God’. At every joint in the net is a precious jewel that reflects all the other jewels in the net including their reflections of that jewel itself.

We see that connectedness in maths with the Mandelbrot set, in long range weather forecasting with the butterfly effect (where a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon effects weather systems in Europe), in religions which constantly remind us that God is One and that everything is made by God and is part of God. We see it in the Jewish saying that whoever saves a single person saves all of humanity. We see it in the Chinese proverb ‘if you cut a blade of grass you shake the entire universe’. We see it in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory where all of human history is present in every human being.

In fact, the ‘holistic’ net-like nature of our ‘all-connected’ ‘joined-up’ universe reveals itself to us every day in a million different ways. Who has not experienced strange coincidence in their life and been struck by the sense of grace that accompanies it? The practice of pattern recognition and event-linkages is a useful learning skill that also enhances emotional sensibility. They can be applied in geography, history, maths, you name it.

Imagine a geography lesson about Wales using this example of North Wales shipwrecks:

- In December 5th 1664 a ship sank in the Menai Straight off the coast of North Wales. 180 passengers drowned. There was just one survivor, named Hugh Williams.
- On December 5th 1785 another ship sank there, 59 passengers drowned, again there was just one survivor, named Hugh Williams.
- On Augsut 5th 1820 yet another ship sank there, drowning 19 people; just one man survived, his name … Hugh Williams.
(cf Cliffe, Charles Frederick. The Book of North Wales, p. 155. London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1851 and Coghlan, Francis. Guide to North Wales, p. 69. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1860.)

Imagine a history lesson on US Presidents using this example of Lincoln and Kennedy:

- Both concerned with civil rights
- Lincoln elected 1860, Kennedy elected 1960
- Both killed beside their wives on a Friday, both shot in the head from behind
- Both Presidents had children who died at the Whitehouse
- John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran to a warehouse
- Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theatre
- Lincoln’s secretary, Kennedy, advised Lincoln not to the theatre
- Kennedy’s secretary, Lincoln, advised Kennedy not to go to Dallas
- Both succeeded by southern democrat senators named Johnson
- Andrew Johnson born 1808, Lyndon Johnson born 1908
- John Wilkes Booth born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald born 1939
- The names Lincoln and Kennedy both contain seven letters
- Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson both contain 13 letters
- John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both contain 15 letters
- Both assassins were killed before going to trial

Or imagine a maths lesson containing these examples of number pattern:

1x8+1=9
12x8+2=98
123x8+3=987
1234x8+4=9876
12345x8+5=98765
123456x8+6=987654
1234567x8+7=9876543
12345678x8+8=98765432
123456789x8+9=987654321

Or
1x9+2=11
12x9+3=111
123x9+4=1111
1234x9+5=11111
12345x9+6=111111
123456x9+7=1111111
1234567x9+8=11111111
12345678x9+9=111111111
123456789x9+10=1111111111

(I could offer many more examples here, some truly astounding, but I’ll save the best for later.)

I am not suggesting that we make anything like superstition part of our curriculum or pedagogy. But I am suggesting that we engage learner’s minds with issues of pattern, linkage and meaning in order to inspire a sense of wonder, a hunger for knowledge, a sense of the connectedness of all things which is the essence of spirituality, a sense of faith in the purposive and meaningful nature of the universe, and a love of learning. How better to address the growth of nihilism among our young? What better way to teach our young people to ‘think with feelings in their muscles’ as Einstein put it. How better to show the depth of humility and humanity that we need to foster in our young, the depth to admit of meaning beyond our ability to explain or systematize. And how better to show the wisdom of our faith in its goodness? Or would we rather continue to demonstrate our inhumanity, our conceit and our foolishness?

If we have faith, as Christians, Jews, Moslems, Sikhs, Rasta, Humanists, Hindu, Bahai, Buddhists, socialists, capitalists, anarchists or whatever, perhaps we should remember the story of Indra’s net and try to release the stranglehold of systematization that is choking our young people and killing our future. Our over-reliance on the safety harness of systematisation is like frightened rabbits caught in the headlights of looming chaos. Sartre’s dictum that there is nothing to fear but fear itself was never truer.

I have recently been asked by a high school to serve as a resident ‘wizard’ to inculcate this sort of approach across the whole curriculum, showing the students how to make meaningful links across boundaries and silos. My hope for the New Year is that more schools will catch on and show that they are truly worthy of the faith they demand from their communities, not just to get more exam passes but to provide a fully rounded education fit for human beings.

The Heart of 21st Century Schooling

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Notions of heart seldom rate more than a nominal nod in the agendas of most UK high schools. At best such sentimental notions are reserved for nursery/kindergarten and primary/junior schools where the focus is more evenly balanced between pastoral and academic development.

There are issues here about our perception of maturity and of what it means to be a person in society. In nursery school (kindergarten) we expect the importance of children’s feelings to weigh more than the importance of their academic achievement, say 70/30. At primary/junior school the balance is expected to be roughly 50/50. By high school there seems to be an expectation that academic achievement is much more important than pastoral wellbeing, and the balance shifts to roughly 80/20 in that direction. The kid gloves are off it’s down to the hard business of learning and passing exams – welcome to the ‘real’ world.

Obviously, emotional balance is an important basis for academic achievement, as reflected in current initiatives designed to enhance emotional literacy and wellbeing in UK high schools. Most high schools satisfy themselves with policy documents that show, on paper, that these priorities are being met. This is usually regardless of the integrity of actual practice in that regard. Everyone knows that, and this inconsistency eats away at the integrity of the schools’ mission, spelling an element of bad faith which our teenagers often intuit and respond to emotionally, even unconsciously, and frequently negatively (e.g. alienation, poor behaviour, lack of motivation, lack of respect, etc.)

Incidentally, wearing my storyteller hat, it is noticeable that the importance of story for teenagers is not generally perceived to be as high as for the younger years. Story can be dismissed as pointless fairy tales and seen as a childish indulgence by the hard nosed. Its use in terms of exploring narratives of learning and social and personal development to enhance critical awareness, thinking skills, independent learning and curricular integration cannot be denied. But it can be overlooked by those whose creativity has been too long constrained by systemic priorities or by those who prefer coasting comfortably along inside their reality tunnels without the challenge of opening up to other realities.

What all this suggests is that although society as a whole recognises the importance of emotional wellbeing for everyone, and of story too for that matter, in practice we do not actually prioritise it as much as we say we need to. And this is a contributing factor in many social problems.

Yes, it costs money to deliver a quality pastoral program, delivered by quality staff and supported by quality training and resources, but any such spend is a saving in the long run; kids who don’t grow as straight as they otherwise might often end up costing society a lot more – a stitch in time as they say.

A useful indicator is the fact that pastoral training for high school teachers receives a miniscule budget by comparison with academic and behaviour management training.

Of course some schools are lucky and have very gifted pastoral teams, while others do not (it’s not just luck, but good judgement in appointing the right people), while some schools’ pastoral teams are more of a mixed bag. Ultimately, the pastoral ethos of a school is defined and led by the head teacher or principal. There is a tendency for heads to be seen as business managers, finance fixers. This late 20th century view is actually putting the cart before the horse. Business and finance is meant to be a means to an end, the desired goal being a happy healthy school where pupils can achieve their potential because they have a clear orientation and all is right with them emotionally.

Two examples from the many schools I know:

One is a primary/junior school (which shall remain nameless) where I recently asked a cross section of staff about the school ethos. Not a single staff member knew what I was talking about. The school has no ethos, their ship no rudder. Little wonder, perhaps, that the pupils there are underachieving. The school has slipped into the relegation zone, close to failing, and spends a lot of money on consultants to keep it afloat. A heart patient with a prosthetic pump to keep it alive.

The other is Pimlico Academy, a high school where the pastoral ethos is very strong. Under its new head it has moved up from failing to good/excellent in the space of a single year. They do not have a team of consultants keeping them afloat in reactive response to any shortfalls in achievement. I have worked as a consultant there for the past three months, a proactive 'stitch in time’ to reinforce the pastoral system and academic specialism. My brief is too complex and varied to detail here, but it includes working with individuals at risk of diversion by gang culture. One boy, who displays dangerous behaviour, was excluded from school and sent to a special unit for a week. The school actually paid me to go that unit and spend time working with him. I was no little astounded and quite some impressed. I have never heard of such commitment; this school really cares about its pupils, it doesn’t just hide behind fooey policy documents. There is a lot that is special about this school. I was a trainee teacher there in the early 90’s and it has always had a uniquely mixed intake, from the children of cabinet ministers to members of street gangs. (The school is quite close to parliament in the heart of London.)

Not only is Pimlico in the heart of London, it is, in some ways, at the heart of London too. If they can get it right here London will be a better place, and the signs are hopeful.

Notions of heart are not on any political agendas and academics shy away from anything below the head and what it can weigh, measure and classify. Academics and politicians are not generally known for excellence in matters of heart any more than are high schools. This is part of the problem with today’s academic culture and the materialist values that govern its funding. Let us not forget that truly great minds are also of admirable heart. People like Einstein, Bohr, Churchill, Gandhi, MLK, Mandela and Malcolm X have shown this in the past, and people like Obama keep alight the spark of that notion. Not for nothing was the final work of Paulo Freire, the 20th Century’s greatest educationist, entitled ‘Pedagogy of the Heart’.

If 21st Century education means anything it must mean aspiration to honour the value of heart in learning and teaching for all. That is true aspiration to excellence and ultimately to social wellbeing. If we are serious about progress we should accept nothing less. Parents will be hard pushed to find a school that takes this view more seriously than Pimlico Academy. I work at scores of schools, but this is one of only two that I would class as truly outstanding.