New Zealand - we ought to be at the cutting edge of change.
I chose the title
with great thought for a number of reasons.
Society is at the
edge of new creative age – an age of ideas that will replace the current
information age – which in turn replaced an industrial age. Ironically many
organisations still have their genesis in this industrial top down era; one
premised on predictability and measurement. In the school situation this is
seen in the current emphasis on standards and targets. School structures, age
cohorts, ability grouping, streaming, fragmented subjects, all reflect this
factory era.
So we are at the edge
of a new era of learning – the cutting edge of change but schools are being
pressurized to retreat into the past. New learning lies at the edge of chaos
not in the certainty of past thinking.
I also chose the title because I have always felt at the edge of
teaching and now, at the edge of my career. Some would say well past my sell by
date!
But any success I
have had over the years has been being an outsider. At first I was an
itinerant science adviser (later an art adviser) and this meant I escaped the conformity of expectations that classroom
teachers have to live with.
I have come to really
value the importance of ‘outsider’ thinking.
All schools ought to have a copy of Elwyn's recently reprinted book ( from NZCER)
Today schools arefull of formulaic ‘best practice’ clone like conformist teaching.
Intentional teaching, success criteria, WALTS, exemplars are all part of this ‘official’
approach. What has been forgotten is that education should celebrate
individuality not conformity; should develop students’ gifts and talents not
measuring standardized achievement based on imposed standards. League tables
will make it worse.
We are seeing the
‘McDonaldisation ‘of education.
If schools are to be
seen as hothouses of creativity and innovation then they need to tap into ideas
from outsiders.
Lehrer dedicates one
chapter to the importance of outsider thinking in successful businesses and his
ideas are extremely important to school leaders. Successful businesses make
real use of outsider ideas to escape the
conformity of past expectations. He writes that people deep inside an
organisation suffer from an intellectual handicap. It is only when problems are
shared with outsiders that new solutions can be found.
In the past I learnt
that innovative schools made use of advisers more that conformist schools –
but advisers in earlier days were not simply transmitters of officially
approved ideas as is the case today. I
also learnt that great ideas come from people on the edge – art advisers,
early education teachers, Maori educators, special needs teachers, innovative
businesses; education is too important to be left to teachers.
‘The world is full of
natural outsiders,’ writes Lehrer, ‘we refer to them as young people. The virtue
of youth is that the young don’t know enough to be insiders, cynical with
expertise.’ ‘This is why’, he writes, ‘many fields from physics to punk rock
have been defined by their most immature members. The young know less that why
they invent more.’
He continues, ‘Why
are young….more creative? One possibility is that time steals ingenuity that
the imagination starts to wither but this is not the case – we are not
biologically destined to get less creative.’ The young have the advantage that they are haven’t become encultured or
weighted down with too much convention wisdom, they’re more likely to rebel
against the status quo.’
The trouble is that
with time people start to repeat themselves and they become insiders. This
is what seems to happen to many principals but this doesn’t have to happen. ‘We can continue to innovate for our entire
careers, ‘Lehrer writes, ‘as long as we work to maintain the perspective of the
outsider.’
Being an outsider is
a state of mind but it is not easy to maintain or cultivate in our present
compliance regulatory educational environment but it can be done – if we
work with others. Also the internal structures and expectations of schools, the
obsessive teamwork, and desire for consistency destroy any possibility of
tapping ‘outsider’ thinking.
To really be
innovative we have to leave behind much of what we have believed to be true.
Our thoughts are shackled by the familiar. Creativity is all too often
traded for efficiency and consistency.
School leaders need
to encourage experimentation (and learn from failure) and value open-mindedness
– be more willing to realize there are different ways of interpreting
situations. Creativity, it seems, is a side effect of experiencing and
valuing differences. Rather than neat
solutions leaders need to value surprise and even confusion – this is the area
where creativity is to be found. When we come to believe we don’t know all the
answers then we are open to new ideas. You suddenly notice ideas you previously
ignored.
The trouble with all
this is that we live in world that worships ‘insiders’ says Lehrer. The
answer is to ignore what you already know. ‘Knowledge can be a subtle curse’,
he writes. ‘Through what we know we
learn all the reasons why the world cannot be changed. We get used to our
failures and imperfections. We become
numb to the possibilities of something new. In fact, the only way to remain
creative over time – to not be undone by our experience- is to experiment with
ignorance, to stare at things we don’t understand’.
Schools need to make
use of ‘outsider’ thinking. They need the expertise of people from different
backgrounds – to share ideas with others who have different perspectives.
Schools need to all
work together and to tap into the ideas of creative outsiders or to fail alone.
The most innovative businesses are a mix of the familiar and the unexpected.
Such environments are neither fully predictable nor fully anarchic.
The best learning is at the edge of chaos.
The best ideas come
from the edge of chaos rather than erecting walls and establishing hierarchies
that keep people in their place stifling conversation, dissent and sharing of
ideas and, in the process, making it harder expand the collective imagination
of all involved.
And as an aside there
is research that indicates that many teachers find it hard to accommodate
creative students in their classes. ’The point is’, Lehrer writes, ‘the
typical school isn’t designed for self-expression’… ‘Everyone agrees that creativity is a key skill for the twenty first
century but we are not teaching our kids this skill.’
An obsession with
standards and league tables is exactly the wrong way to go. Imagination is too
important to be ignored. There is no
test for the future we can teach to. Creativity is a skill that never goes out
of style. No text book for ingenuity, no lesson plans for divergent thinking.
Rather they must be discovered; a child
has to learn by doing.
It is time for schools
to focus on developing the gifts and talents of all students; it is time for
schools to contribute to creating the kind of culture that won’t hold us back.
This blog is my small
attempt to share an ‘outsiders’ view for those schools open considering as yet
unrealised alternatives.
Be great to get feedback!
