Principally Yours

For most of you here today, a life without sport is inconceivable.  Most of you could no more imagine a school without sports than a school without reading.  And yet, around the world there are children who do not enjoy the privilege of engaging in organized sports.  There are parts of the world, including areas that our students have travelled to, where one of the most important gifts we can bring is a simple ball.  Organizations such as Right to Play have recognized the importance of sport and play in enriching some of the resource-poor areas of the world.  Sport is a privilege for which we must be thankful.

But I also want to suggest to you that sports, although they may appear to be physical contests or mere games, are an essential component in our society and in our school.

Some might suggest that sports forms an education of the body, but for anyone who has been part of an extra-curricular sport, they know it is much more than an education of the body.  Sports give our students the opportunity to train their bodies, their minds, and their spirits.  Ultimately, sports are part of our overall mission to nurture engaged citizens of the world.

Sports engage the mind, body and soul in acitivities, when well coached, lead to those values that we associate with good citizens.  Individual sports, such as cross-country running, help our athletes to build not only bodily endurance, but resilience, determination, courage and self-discipline.  Team sports, such as basketball, may help develop sport-specific skills like dribbling and shooting, but they also encourage key citizenship values such as loyalty, cooperation, courtesy, leadership and respect.  Can you imagine a successful school or world where there is no courage, where there is no cooperation or respect?  How much better would our world be if our citizens had the determination of a champion athlete?

The students and staff who you have seen up here were not merely engaged in physical contests.  They were involved in preparing themselves for a life in which all of these values will be important to them.  They spent early mornings and late days facing obstacles and overcoming them.  In so doing, they have become better people, better citizens. And I think they had a lot of fun doing it.

So, as we share in the successes of our student athletes on the field and court, let us remember that we are privileged to be so engaged, and we are privileged to be led by such a fine body of committed coaches.  Please join me in thanking all the coaches who helped our students to become even better citizens of the world.  We should also extend a vote of thanks to all score keepers and referees.  I would also like to express my thanks for the support of Mr. Jones, our Head, and the entire Board of Directors.  Let me thank as well the work of Mr. Feeney, who unfailingly keeps our coaches and players focused on the real values of sport.

To our student athletes, congratulations in performing so well on the court and field.   I love to come out and watch you play – you have entertained us, inspired us, and demonstrated to us what it means to be engaged citizens of the world.

Today was a gift sent to us from on high – from God? the weather reporter? the school board? – and before the day is completely done, I want to offer up thanks.  Snow days are not an everyday occurrence in Toronto, whether it is because Buffalo habitually swallows up the majority of the moisture that lifts off Lake Erie, or because we in Toronto remember better our ancient past when our forebears wouldn’t think twice about trudging through the snow to school (uphill).  It is supposedly the first time since Mayor Mel called in the army in 1999 that we have enjoyed a snow day.  And enjoy, I have.  And more than that, my experience taught me something about education – the education of the body.

After getting the announcement out to our school community that we were closing up shop for the day, and dispatching a reasonable morning’s worth of emails, I headed out through the drifts to the shed at the back of the property – 10 meter’s distance, no less – to dig out my cross-country skis.  While neighbours stood sentinel in Ken Dryden stance, shovels clasped firmly under their chins, I silently glided past, evoking the occasional smile and friendly comment.  Parenthetically, it is worthy of note that humans respond much better than do dogs to the cross country skier – last week’s foray into the ravines leading down to the Brickworks resembled a WWII prisoner-of-war escape movie, except set in the steppes of Russia, complete with snarling dogs of all sizes and descriptions that were bound and determined to bring me to justice.

Today the dogs must have been snuggling safely inside – wondering, no doubt, what would possess humans to want to push and throw the snow this way and that – as I was able to proceed unchased through the near-virgin snow of the side streets, choosing this tire track or another as a convenient guide for my skis.  I learned that shushing down Pottery Road hill on the sidewalk is made dangerous, not so much by the traffic, but by the occasional salt patch, one of which pitched me first forward, then backwards, finally propelling me into a (thankfully) deep and forgiving snow bank.  I was no worse for wear – although I’m sure my backside carried evidence of my fall from gracious form – and I carried on my way.

My destination was the trail along the Don River, which meanders through the heart of Toronto, blissfully unaware of the six lane highway that accompanies it on its way to the shores of Lake Ontario.  Sandwiched between the river and the constant shhhh sound of the cars that bear the working, but not teaching, citizens to their cubicles in the sky, I kept my head down and focused on the thin track that had been set by a fellow skier.

I have both skied and run this trail before, but never before had I allowed music to share the journey with me.  Today was different, as I had recently been shown, techno-dinosaur that I am, that yes, that wire can be plugged into that Blackberry, and that I, too, can look like every other city dweller, with long black earrings hanging from my ears and disappearing into my upper garments, miraculously drawing sounds from my pocket.  I have resisted this modern penchant for constant music for quite some time.  I virtuously asserted to myself (no one else would listen) that I wanted to be in the moment, connected to my environment, whether it be the deep woods, or the interior of a subway car.  I think I have finally decided that the interior of a subway car is highly over rated.  Hence the advent of the new, plugged-in me.

So, although for those who might have spied me from the Danforth subway cars I appeared a solitary skier, I was not entirely alone.  Franz Schubert was right there with me.  And thanks to Schubert, I became acutely aware of the rhythm of the body in motion.  The lilting rhythms of Schubert’s melodies gave me the impression that I was not just skiing, but was dancing across the snow.  I was reminded once again that part of what I love about sports is the sheer beauty of the body in rhythm.  I have often likened the basketball player or the diving football receiver to the ballet dancer, and for me, on this day, I was able to experience that beauty firsthand.

All of which suggests to me that we have a great duty in our schools to educate our children so that they can live a life in which they find opportunities to reconnect with beauty through their bodies.  I hear of so many adults who see their children’s sports in terms of competition and being in the best leagues, when the vast majority of mature adults never experience sports (except virtually, from the couch), or their bodies, in these ways.  It is with good reason that we call that course that occurs in the gym Physical Education, and not Sports.

And there is every reason to expose our students to a wide variety of physical expressions.  At The York School, we have always balanced the learning of competitive sports with the learning of other recreations, such as dance and yoga.  I now appreciate that these early experiences of a wide variety of movements, rhythms and balance reside with us throughout our lives, to be reawakened, either by our own bodies’ movement, or in response to the movements of others.  How much more do we enjoy watching a sport or recreation that we have played, as our bodies’ have developed empathy for the rhythms inherent in the activity?

So it was, that a snow day became a school day in which my body’s experience taught me a thing or two about how to prepare our children’ bodies for a life of rhythm and beauty.

What in the world do you do after two days of Speak Out Day and TEDxIBYork?  Better yet, what in the world do you do after 10 months of preparing for the most inspiring educational event that you have ever helped plan in your entire life?

Indeed, what in the world?

Taking a step in Ray Zahab’s direction (Ray told us about his run across the Sahara), I tied up my runners, ignored my aches, pains and grumbling stomach, and ran the slightly-less-than-Sahara-desert distance into the school this morning, which was the best decision I’ve made since I agreed to help organize TEDxIBYork.  Two days of full-scale engagement with people – their passions and their ideas – requires a marathon of reflection.   I’ve only started with five-kilometers worth, but I know that I could handle about 40 days in the wilderness to piece together the myriad thoughts and emotions I have experienced over the past 48 hours.

For those of you who weren’t there, I feel a deep sense of regret that I didn’t do more to get you there.  I suddenly know what it feels like to have evangelical fervor.  Everyone should have the opportunity to be so inspired.  During the two days we heard over 40 passionate speakers share their visions, dreams, innovations, ideas, lessons learned, expertise, talents, and achievements.

We were given a tour of humanity and the world we inhabit.  We travelled from the Arctic to Antarctica, from Kenya to Red Lake, from the Amazon jungle to the Sahara Desert, and from board rooms to cyberspace.

We heard from 14 incredible IB Diploma students during the Speak Out Day, the winner of which, Faisal Chaudhry of the International Academy (outside Detroit, Michigan), spoke to almost 500 assembled adults and students at the main TEDxIBYork event.  At TEDxIBYork, we were enthralled by designers, doctors and dreamers, teachers, techno-wizards, and thinkers, sages, scientists, and social engineers, a painter, two poets and a ‘pirate’.

What in the world did we learn?

Beyond the simple facts – that the true size of Africa could encompass most of the territories of Europe, the United States, India, Japan and China, that the female species of a peculiar spider is one hundred times the size of its male mate, that over 50% of students at one school modified their science data on science labs, that Canada has the second worst voter turnout of the 17 major developed democratic nations in the world, or that a herniated disc can be treated by an ozone syringe that fits in your hand – we learned that caring, creativity, collaboration, determination, discipline, dreaming, focus, and risk-taking have enormous currency in our modern world.  And we were left with nothing but hope and the conviction that whatever the obstacles the world may bring, we are equipped to meet those challenges and forge a better life for all.

But for me, it was the risk-taking that resonated most deeply.  Just one of the ten attributes of the IB Learner Profile, risk-taking has always stood as a difficult quality for a school, or parent, to nurture; risk-taking is very much a two-edged sword.  Generally, our society abhors risks.  In business, risk is defined as the “probability or threat of damage, injury, liability, loss, or other negative occurrence”.   For Faisal, our student winner, “risk” translates to “cheating” in the world of a high-school science student.  But at the same time, some of the life stories we heard challenged us to consider how we should take risks in our own lives.

The most interesting story came from Ben Gulak, teenage inventor of the Uno motorcycle and Shredder, a motorized skateboard on tracks.  At the age of 14, Ben entered a robotic Sumo wrestling competition, where he had to programme a two-wheeled robot to drive its competitor out of the ring.  The only thing they were given was the opening code, which sent each of the two robots to opposite edges of the ring.  Ben cleverly (?), wrongfully (?), boldly(?) removed the code and re-entered a code that enabled his robot to follow the other robot to the edge of the ring and proceed to push the robot out of the ring before it had an opportunity to turn around.  Thus began Ben’s successful career.  He then went on to describe how high school had to be pushed to the side to allow more time for working on his prototype for the Uno.  Lots of risks taken.  Interestingly, Ben quotes Steve Jobs on his website: “Good artists copy, great artists steal”.

And then there was Rob McEwen, who, having taken a controlling interest in Goldcorp, proceeded to make all of their mining data available on the web so that other mining experts in the world could come up with a solution to allow them to economically take advantage of the wealth below the surface of their Red Lake property.  A fascinating open source risk that literally hit gold.

Which speech is going to have a more lasting impression – Faisal’s plea that we don’t cheat on science labs or the life experiences of Ben and Rob?

Of course, not all business risks turn out so well.  Canadians know another life story.  It is the story of Conrad Black, who was expelled from UCC for selling stolen exams, became one of Canada’s most successful businessmen, only to be convicted in 2007 of fraud in the United States, where he was sentenced to serve six and a half years in jail.  Mr. Black, too, is a risk taker.

Trying to find the line that divides cheating from creative risk-taking in our daily lives is no easy task.  As Faisal set out in his speech, it is important that we create serious consequences for those who cheat or take risks that society deems unacceptable; one would have thought that Mr. Black had met with enough of those.  But as we know, the ‘rules’ are many-layered and even though you may obey the official rules, you may decide to contravene social conventions, promises, guidelines, or understandings, or take advantage of vagueness, and loop holes.  Or like one little girl filmed in a TEDtalk we saw, when faced with the choice of eating one marshmallow right away or waiting and receiving a second marshmallow, we might just decide to suck out the centre of the marshmallow and leave the appearance of having played according to the rules!

One way of distinguishing good risks from bad risks is the measure of global good to come from the risk.  Just as Alexandria Chun, a student speaker from Halifax Grammar School, prompted us to carefully evaluate the comparative benefit from putting our resources into solving one world problem over another, so too must we do a cost-benefit analysis of all risks we undertake.  And in that analysis, we must attribute a large multiplier to tasks taken on purely for the benefit of others.  As Kyle Nimmrichter, from Robert Bateman High School, suggested to us, we must embrace selflessness and “participate in something that is greater than ourselves.”

Decisions to embrace selfless risks frequently carry with them great costs for the person taking the risk.  In the TEDtalk of Raghava KK, an Indian artist who re-created himself five times, it was evident that in taking the risk of following artistic truth, you may cause yourself financial ruin and public shame, but in the end, you will have the great satisfaction of having grown into a being a greater artist.

For those of us who made the decision to launch and then plan TEDxIBYork  and Speak Out Day, it is now only too apparent that we had decided upon something that was “greater than ourselves”.  I have had people since tell me that the TEDxIBYork event was one of the top 10 days of their life, and that the two days formed the best professional development of their life.  But for me, the power of the experience and the risks undertaken lasted 10 months, not merely two days.  I discovered that risks undertaken for something greater than yourself tend to push you beyond your limits, testing your preconceptions about who you are and what you can accomplish.  I also discovered the truth at the heart of Margaret Mead’s oft-quoted words: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”   The costs were great, although mostly in time and sleepless nights. But in the course of taking on a dream such as this, as Ray Zahab would have said, you turn the impossible into the possible.  And who can argue with that?!

So what in the world do you do after taking on a risk that is “greater than ourselves”?

Simple – take on another.

I guess I better tie up those running shoes again!

Lucky for me, I work in a community where people are forever sending me things that I should read or watch. Someone I can always count on for something worth considering is Justin Medved, our resident virtual world guru. He recently handed me a documentary called “Resolved”, which is a fascinating exploration of the world of high school debating in the US. Having coached debating at our school for a good number of years before the younger generation of teachers took over, I thought I knew all about the debating world – the impromptu debate, the prepared debate, parliamentary and cross-examination style debates, points of order, and yes, even squirreling a resolution. But within 10 seconds of beginning to view the documentary, I realized that US high school debating was something entirely different than I had ever experienced on this side of the border. The “talk” of these debates had taken on an entirely new meaning. Which has raised to my mind the question of what “talk” is all about, and how might schools best shape it.

Imagine, if you will, a contest in which the winner is the one who can state as many arguments in a set amount of time as is possible, keeping in mind that the arguments must relate to the resolution, and must successfully meet the arguments raised by the opponent. In case your imagination hasn’t quite grasped this, think of the Flight of the Bumblebee played in under a minute, and imagine that instead of bow strokes on a violin, you are listening to arguments recited in a falsetto voice. That is what US high school debating sounds like.

Canadian debating is, I believe, a different kettle of fish. Students must not only muster arguments and meet the opposition so as to create what is known as “clash”, they must do so in a manner that persuades the ordinary listener to agree. A Canadian debater must employ humour, voicing, dramatic pauses and an appeal to the values of the audience. A judge in a Canadian debate must evaluate each speaker according to a number of different criteria, including persuasiveness. This contrasts with an American judge’s task, which is to count up points, and follow the flow of the arguments.

The documentary, “Resolved”, focuses upon the fact that debating has been made exclusive by virtue of the rules and criteria that guide their debates. Debating in the US, it argues, favours the select few who have the resources to compile the research and are able to follow the flow of high speed arguments. Although the thesis was compelling, I was equally fascinated by the secondary question of what makes for meaningful speech.

The documentary follows two teams, one from a well-to-do high school in Texas, and the other, a pair of black students from a more mixed high school in Long Beach, California. Both teams are extremely talented. In the end, the black students end up taking the revolutionary approach of identifying their own personal stake in the resolution, openly questioning the rules and values of the debate, and authentically indicating their own purpose and plans for addressing the resolution in their own lives. Whereas the other students are seen to read off prepared scripts, each meticulously filed in readiness to meet the appropriate argument, the black students face the judges and speak from their convictions.

In digesting what I had seen, I came to realize that speech takes on so many forms, and is bound by so many situation-specific rules. High school debating is merely an overly contrived forum for talk, where the rules and criteria for success are largely prescribed and overt. We all face talk situations where we must sort out the rules and then use them to our advantage. At home, children and parents live out unwritten agreements as to the use of vocabulary, emotion, evidence, body language, and voicing, and these inherent rules or expectations are quickly supplanted by other sets of rules when we walk into our place of business, encounter a policeman, talk to our child’s teacher, or meet friends at a local restaurant. Thus, it might be imagined that one of the purposes of a good education is to prepare students to analyze rules, detect expectations, read audiences, and shape their words, gestures, tone, and content to meet every conceivable talk situation. That would be a good education – but would it be enough?

There seem to me to be two answers to this question. In the first place, and as part of the agenda of the black students in the documentary, it is not enough to be trained to meet the situation. For black youth in America, it may be insufficient to learn the rules and live by the rules, particularly when the rules have been developed by a white majority, or worse still, a privileged white minority. As suggested by the documentary, a revolutionary education would empower students to change the rules, and not merely abide by them. The second answer is that to truly educate students, we must not merely teach them to talk, we must help them to develop a voice.

This first answer would seem, at first, to have no place in a private school education. It might be suggested by some that private schools are chosen by parents in order that their children may best understand the rules of the game, and play that game to their advantage. Arguably, this is a mistaken view of private schools, and more importantly, it may be an outmoded view of society and the ways in which people succeed.

Private schools are generally focused upon delivering “21^st century skills” to our students, and perhaps number one among these skills is critical thinking. Critical thinking, when properly taught, has the potential to be a dangerous thing. That is to say, a youth introduced to critically think will have both the ability to analyze and the ability to critique. Students will see the parts, and they will see what lies behind the parts. They will see the form, and they will see the intentions that shape the form. Critical thinking makes acceptance of society and its rules a choice and not a duty.

I think it is also safe to say that our society is not so arranged that success comes from merely following the rules. With the pace of technological change and the increasing “flattening” of the world, it is the people who break the rules and give birth to new paradigms who have the greatest success, and not the people who merely follow along. Sure, educated people will want to know how to follow the rules, but they will also want to be able to assess where the rules are taking us all, and be prepared to question those rules. When it comes to the rules of how we communicate with one another, the landscape is changing daily, and those who can think critically and are prepared to take risks in charting new approaches will be able to guide our society to more meaningful engagement and social harmony.

But the second answer is even more compelling. Let us not merely see it as our task to educate students to be able to talk well, let us strive to give every child a voice.

The difference between talk and voice is apparent to every student. Students hear countless speeches from countless individuals at assemblies, class presentations, and on screen. They can detect the difference between those who move their mouths but do not speak to them and those who transport their audience beyond the value of the mere words. Although there are tricks, rhetorical devices, and dramatic techniques that enhance oral communication, there is nothing quite like conviction to catapult a voice across the divide of teenage disinterest, such that the voice lands, not in the ear, but in the heart. How, then, do we teach students to speak with conviction?

Conviction is a surprisingly rare commodity in the public eye, I would suggest. It is out of favour at social gatherings – although it has been suggested to me that this is largely a Canadian phenomenon. We skeptically assume that politicians don’t have it, even when they are applying every rhetorical tactic in their arsenal to convince us that they do. We are bedeviled by a world of advertising in which we come to believe that everything is a sales job.

So how do we get students to see the value of conviction and to live and speak on the basis of their convictions?

In order to speak by your convictions you must be in touch with your convictions. You must “know” in the sense that you must know in your heart. Thus, we must be in the business of helping young people to find their heart. They need to be given the opportunity to discover their true feelings about the world, and they must receive the message that it is okay to express those feelings. An excellent education invokes and provokes an emotional response, but it also protects the individual such that they can take the risks to make public their emotions.

Invoking emotions is a tricky business. It requires an understanding of audience and a dedication to making the curriculum relevant. You have to know your students if you have any hope of reaching them. You have to find the hot spots in your curriculum and give students the opportunity to respond to them. Protecting souls is even trickier. A great teacher makes it his or her business to develop a class dynamic in which trust and respect are paramount.

An essential part of our school’s mission which I think has the greatest potential to help develop voice is our commitment to experiential education. One of the keystones of experiential education is the establishment of authentic experiences – experiences in which what is at stake has deep and multi-layered significance for the student. This is where reflections become so crucial, and where talk is full of conviction. This is where voice can emerge. Listen to students who have come back from working in an orphanage in India. The developed world is not a concept for these students – it is a complex reality that is clothed in personal meaning. And from deep personal meaning come convictions, the foundation of voice.

Thus, a great education does not merely equip our students to talk the talk, but gives them the power to raise their voices and shape the whole future of discourse.

Just as there is a myth that creativity is possessed by a small minority of individuals, so too is it becoming an accepted truth that schools are the number one enemy to creativity.  So says Ken Robinson in a TEDtalk entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” So says Beatrix Potter, who supposedly wrote, “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”  God help us if they are right.

The story goes like this: children are creative – adults are not.  Children play at games that they have made up; adults sit in boardrooms and nod their heads.  According to one website, whereas children see sixty alternatives in any one situation, adults see anywhere from three to six.  What is responsible for this differential?  Schools, of course.  There are even poster boys/girls for the “I am creative because I didn’t go to school” club – Mozart, Shakespeare (left school at age 13, it is suggested), and, yes, Beatrix Potter.  According to Ken Robinson, schools want right answers.  Wrong answers are frowned upon (except in art, where all answers are right).  No one gets marks for taking risks, so it is best just to play along, narrow the field of alternatives as much as possible, avoid embarrassment , and move on to university.

Perhaps in an earlier age, a principal in my position would have conceded that schools are not in the business of producing creative souls.  When I grew up, suggesting to my parents that I wanted to devote my life to creativity would have been received like news that I had joined a commune.  Creativity had its place – in classes dedicated to visual arts and drama (not so much music – that was all about practicing).

But all of that is changing.  Daniel Pink, in his enormously influential book, A Whole New Mind, enshrines creativity among the “six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend”, according to the website that hawks his book.  Creativity will become the differentiator in the new economy.  In a flat world of rapid and widespread movement of information, and the outsourcing of jobs to developing countries like India, creativity will be the key ingredient necessary to give North Americans the edge.  Get creative, or get replaced.

More than that, there is a general feeling that creativity is the one thing that can save the world.  The more that humans learn about the complexities of the problems that we face – whether they be global warming, large-scale armed conflicts, or terrorism – the more we feel the need to find someone who can break the pattern, crack the code, and capture the imagination of those who will have to participate in the solutions.

So, are schools sapping our youth of their creativity?  I think not.  There is little evidence that adults were so incredibly creative before the advent of schools.  And what of all of the people who did manage to survive schools and went on to compose symphonies, paint pictures, and design buildings?

Arguably, creativity would have difficulty finding a foothold in a society that lacked schools.  Creativity is not merely about coming up with the new and different.    Every time I try to sing something around the house, it ends up being quite novel, but none of my kids think I’m very creative.  If creativity were merely about being the source of that which is unique, we’d all score high.  Creativity has an added value dimension.  A creative person produces things – ideas, patterns, physical entities – that are new and have value.  And that is where schools come in.

Schools are about value.  The reason adults come up with three to six alternatives to the child’s 60 alternatives is because the adult has, through years of schooling,  learned that the 54 to 57 other alternatives have no value.  Who is more likely to have a better hold on value –a person who has had her horizons broadened, has been able to study history and discovered how human actions lead to results, sometimes momentous, sometimes horrendous, has grasped the underpinnings and patterns that explain the universe, or someone who has been led pell-mell by his own desires and devices, the biases of her upbringing, and the limitations of his imagination?  Creativity is not the child of ignorance, but the offspring of a liberal education.  It doesn’t matter how uniquely your mind works, it won’t have any impact on engineering if you haven’t first understood science.

But is there a recipe for mixing the new with that which is already valued?  Can a school guarantee that its students will be thinking outside the box when they leave the box (to enter another box, mind you)?  I believe that there are a few principles that we can follow to ensure that students both know what is known and aren’t chained down by that knowledge.

In the first place, schools need to begin with a reflective and reform-minded approach to its own curriculum and teaching practices.  We have to strive to be relevant; the box cannot be so outdated that students won’t engage in the task of working out who they are in relation to what is.

Secondly, an acceptance of the new, the quirky, and the unorthodox must permeate the institution from the top down.  (Anyone who has seen me dress up for Halloween can attest to my quirkiness!)  Risk-taking must become a habit; it must be modeled to the staff and the students.  Teachers need to be encouraged to change things up, to remain fresh and relevant.

Thirdly, schools need to foster an interdisciplinary approach – in thinking and in programming.  The creative solutions to the complex problems being faced in the world will come from those who can see the problems from a combination of disciplinary viewpoints.  We need to mix up our staff in meetings, design our curriculum to promote interdisciplinary thinking, and encourage our students to maintain an interest in all disciplines.

Fourthly, and related to the need to create an interdisciplinary approach, we need to continue to foster learning that is collaborative.  The survival of the world cannot rely upon solitary individuals to think up solutions.  As Margaret Mead is frequently quoted to say, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  We tend to think of creativity as springing from the individual, perhaps because when we think of creativity we narrowly focus upon the arts – Picasso, Beethoven, and Shakespeare stand for us as models of creativity.  But consider how creativity works in real life – the creative forces of marriage, business partnerships, friendships, think tanks, and working groups.  Wherever there is discourse, there is the potential to forge plans and ideas that transcend the limited horizons of the individual.

Fifthly, we owe it to our children to introduce them to the very best of the creative forces that have walked the earth.  Just as the discourse between two or more individuals can spawn new ideas, so too can the individual’s engagement with the works of the greats inspire creativity.  As I said to my son, a young aspiring author, you will not become a great writer if all you read is “Captain Underpants”.  Our children deserve to be touched deeply, to encounter something of the eternal, and to feel the magic that comes when greatness is encountered.

And finally, we have to give our students the opportunity to be creative in every discipline.  As a recent article suggested to me, science is for arguing.  Math is for wondering.  Physical education is for the exploration of the body and space.  Modern languages should allow us to create with the whole world.  Every test and every class must have open-ended questions.

Fortunately, I see sure signs of such an education in our school.  Teachers are working collaboratively to develop a curriculum that is relevant and significant.  Risks are being taken by teachers to ensure that all students experience learning.  The school has embraced an interdisciplinary approach, especially in the Middle and Primary Years programmes.  Students are guided through collaborative learning from the youngest grades to the Grade 12 “Group IV project”, in which the four sciences come together to study the environment.  Students read Shakespeare, listen to Stravinsky, and research their artistic heritage in developing their own voice and vision to share with the world.

And I end with the experience that impelled me to write this piece – watching music videos produced in one of our grade 12 math classrooms.  That’s right.  Our IB Diploma math teacher, Fatima Remtulla, has students create music videos to illustrate specific math rules.  Go figure.

So the next time you marvel at a wonderful canvas, beautiful score of music, clever advertising campaign, or amazing technological gizmo, think not only of the creative genius that developed it, but think of the incredible school that made it all possible, a school that didn’t lose sight of the possibility of the ‘new’ in the midst of all the ‘right’ answers.

The elementary school I attended as a boy was an interesting contrast to the school I inhabit now.  Named after the nation’s recent World War I experience, “Victory” Public School had a large yard that surrounded it, separated from the dangers of the street by a Frost link fence.  The large doors facing vaguely in the direction of the south (no street in Guelph manages to head in a simple cardinal direction) were labeled “Girls” and the large doors that faced in the opposite direction were labeled “Boys”.  The large doors that faced the west (west north west?) were separated from the children playing “British Bulldog” below by an enormous set of stairs, which to my child’s eye had to rival my adult’s view of the stairs to Lincoln’s monument; needless to say, we never, ever, entered those doors.  Perhaps parents mounted those stairs, although I was inclined to believe they were intended for the Queen’s next visit.  Every morning we stood and rehearsed the Lord’s Prayer (except one day when I decided that a constitutional challenge was in order, which was swiftly followed by a visit to the Principal’s office), and sang the national anthem, and every Remembrance Day we sang the Anglican hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”.

Perhaps students who attend Victory Public School today experience it just as I did – as a reflection of a society that had not yet forsaken its roots.  I highly doubt it.    For even in the late sixties, when I had to line up before the “Boys” entrance, the attempt was doomed to fail. Nationalism was dying faster than the soldiers who were thrust into the battle against communism in Vietnam, Christianity was giving way to the glories of love, peace and human rights, and a society divided up by class, rank, age, and sex was being overwhelmed by the freedoms announced some 200 years earlier. And although I have no desire to have our children return to the world of my youth, I am struck by the attempt of our forbears to create a school that was something more than an institution in which we were to learn the 3 “R”s.  Victory School was designed to represent to me the full dimensions of the society in which I hoped to become a full-fledged member.

Of course, they had it wrong.  They had banked on a future that wasn’t to be.  The building’s design was a historic relic.  The words of the songs were already being lost in our parents’ memory.  But they also had it wrong in so far as they were content to rely upon symbols to reproduce the full dimensions of the life we were to lead.  Except once – while I sat in the principal’s office regretting having refused to stand through that morning’s recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.  I will never forget how Principal Comfort (a fitting name, as it turns out) managed to address my agnostic tendencies and provided me with a full explanation of why people – himself included- believed in God.  He crossed the divide that separated me from his distant position of authority to share his true feelings about the great unknown.  In religious terms, I remained unconverted, but what a pivotal moment it was for me, for looking back I realize that he introduced to me the potential depth of the educational experience – what I shall call the “third dimension”.

By the third dimension, I mean the depth of human character that is experienced in authentic moments of shared living.  Slowly but surely, I am coming to the realization that a good private school offers this above all else.

When I ask teachers why they want to get involved in extra-curricular (now often called co-curricular) events, they say it is because they enjoy seeing the children they teach in a different dimension.  What they often fail to note is that the experience is reciprocal.  As much as the teacher discovers a third dimension in the children, who might otherwise appear as occupants of desks in their classroom, so too do the children begin to discover the fullness of the teacher.  At our school, teachers are painters, and bicyclists, and social activists, and canoeists, and singers, and marathon runners, and chefs, and our teachers have dreams, and passions, and concerns, and, … lo and behold, they are in fact fully human.  Which isn’t to say that teachers should walk into a classroom and pour out their worries or seek to shape our students’ political views.  Rather, it is by exposing our students to a rich diversity of authentic learning activities, community service ventures, outdoor experiences and competitive events, that the humanity of our teachers comes out in full view.

And what of that, you might ask? What comes of a child’s exposure to the third dimension?  A great deal, I would suggest.  If there is one thing that I have learned as a parent, it is that for every lesson I have tried to teach my children, there have been 10 lessons learned that I had not set out to teach.  I think that it is bound up in our motto, “Experientia Docet”, or “Experience teaches”.  We hire teachers to teach lessons, but we also hire them to be good models – to have minds that probe and wonder, to have hearts that care, to have worthy goals to reach, and to be engaged with the world in which they live.  If we, in turn, can allow our teachers to share their minds, hearts, goals and good examples with our students, how much richer our students will be for it.  Their vision of a better world is not merely to be nurtured by the literature they read in English classes, the historic figures they encounter in history classes, or the marvels they discover in science labs.  People are living to make a better world all around them – the lessons are there for the taking.

And there is more.  Schools ideally want children to carry their lessons forward into their adulthood.  Schools need to have a very distant goal in mind – not merely our students’ entrance into university, but their future lives as parents, community leaders and contributors to a society that will be as different from our current society as the society that gave birth to Victory Public School.  Our classes will provide them with the tools to dissect that future society and to help them reveal the choices that lie beneath the surface of status cars and desirable addresses.  The third dimension will help them to make the right choices.

Which brings me to the incident that stirred me to write this blog entry.

I was recently invited to attend a fundraising dinner on behalf of Global Pathways, a school begun recently in the province of Tamil Nadhu, India, by our former Head of School, Barbara Goodwin-Zeibots, our former Head of the Lower School, Barbara Galbraith and generously supported by member of our Board of Directors, Theresa Mersky.  The school provides education to local Indian children who would not otherwise have received a formal education.  The idea to begin a school in southern India has its roots in a programme that our school has run since Barbara’s time as school head.  We send anywhere from 9 to 14 students with two or more teachers to an orphanage near Coimbatore, Families for Children, for three weeks in March each year.  It is the sort of programme that changes our students’ lives, forcing them to see the world through eyes much different than their own.

When I first arrived at the dinner I was happy, although not surprised, to find among the 300 guests fellow staff members and parents of students, past and present.  They, like me, had been inspired by the selfless actions of these three and wanted, in some way, to emulate their example. What thrilled me the most, though, was to be approached by  members of our alumni who, recently graduated from university and trying to make their way in a world short on starting positions, found it within themselves to make a donation and be present at a worthy event.  Here was proof that the third dimension had made an impact on our students, and that our students were going to play a part in shaping a better world beyond.  It suddenly brought home to me what a different school experience these students had had compared to the one I experienced at Victory Public School.  I realized that our lives were entwined in a way that never would have been imaginable for me growing up in a public school.  They had experienced the third dimension, and I was given the opportunity to share in their lives once again, on the edge of a wider world stage, where the possibilities for creating a better world seemed so much greater than when we faced one another in a classroom, some six to eight years earlier.  It won’t be long before they will be the leaders, and I, in turn, will be inspired to emulate their example, and follow them in building a future that we all want to share.

Barbara, yours truly, and alumni Ira and Ford

For those of you who are devotees of Woodstock, you will recognize the title “Ten Years After” as the name of a blues band of that era, an era that is famed for many things, but certainly not computer technology.  Electric guitars they had aplenty, but not one participant at that festival of music could have imagined that, forty years later, students would be sitting in classes with laptop computers propped in front of them.  For teachers and students at our school, “ten years after” represents a reflection point in time, for it was ten years ago that we introduced laptops into our classrooms.

Of course, as is frequently pointed out, the laptop is but a tool.  When I think of tools, I think of the hammers and crow bars I used this summer to pull up the three layers of our living room floor.  Simple tools, simple tasks, simple – predictable, that is – results (including a sore back).   The laptop computer is anything but a simple tool.  Hence, it isn’t surprising to find, ten years after, that we are still figuring out how it fits into the anything-but-simple task of teaching students.  And so, I decided it was time I spoke with our Technology Learning and Teaching Specialist, Justin Medved – yes, the same fellow who a year ago suggested I begin this blog.  Justin and I have been having conversations ever since, and our conversations led recently to a workshop we ran with our teachers – Learning in the 21^st Century Classroom.  A few themes came out of that workshop that I want to share, not that they will surprise anyone, but I believe that they must form a starting point for anyone who wishes to reflect further about laptops and learning.

The first theme is even older than Woodstock – “the medium is the message”.  So wrote Marshall McLuhan, a great Canadian, in 1964.  In terms of education, the medium is multi-layered, and includes all the subtle ways in which our children receive the message, from the position the teacher takes in the classroom to whether or not there is a wireless connection.  For years, teachers have enjoyed the fact that they have a great deal of control over the medium.  They generally choose the textbook, choose the arrangement of desks, choose to lecture or discuss, to read or have the children read, the homework, the projects, the essay titles and even the colour of the chalk or markers – all are shaped by the teacher’s choices.  King or queen of his or her own domain, the teacher appears on the surface to control the medium.  But as post-modern thinkers have suggested to us, you can only hope to control the medium and the message that flows from it if you understand the myriad  ways that messages can be received and the multiple messages that may result.

Teachers are already beginning to understand something of this.  Over the time I have been involved in education most teachers have become aware of implicit messages that we are in danger of conveying, including the following:

a)      you can’t learn without a teacher,

b)      the teacher and all teacher resources are authoritative,

c)       a learning community is a dictatorship,

d)      the teacher is the only arbiter in the class of what is important to learn, and

e)      learning is a passive activity in which the students are filled with knowledge by the teacher.

All of these dangerous and implicit messages existed in potential before the laptop.  Fortunately, the introduction of the laptop has tended to minimize these messages.  With the laptop, the student is empowered to lead and carry out their learning independently.  Unfortunately, the laptop has introduced some its own implicit messages.  Consider the following:

a)      I can learn adequately in a classroom while I send my friend an email or two, take a moment to check the scores of last night’s game when things get boring, finish the homework that is due for my next class, and organize my folders, or

b)      More time should be spent on creating visual effects with my work, and less time spent actually thinking, or

c)       The first website must have the right answer, because many people have visited the site before, or

d)      Anything beyond one computer screen full of text is too much, and not worth reading, or

e)      To teach is to read a PowerPoint presentation, and to learn is to type down what is on the PowerPoint slides, or

f)       For every question or project assigned, there must be some website that can provide me with the complete answer; my finding it would take less time than my doing the thinking and creative work to produce it and it would more likely be right .

I have faced many students who appear to have learned these lessons.  And I am not alone.  Recent articles written by University professors and teachers also suggest the growth of these learning attitudes.  Jeffrey R. Young has recently written about how a college dean has demanded that professors not bring laptop computers into the classroom.  He cites a study in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal that, on the basis of 211 students, found that 59% found lectures boring and that the use of PowerPoint was one of the dullest experienced.  He quotes: “The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions” – all computer-free.  A Ryerson University professor, a self-proclaimed member of the techno-gadget generation, writes in the Toronto Life about how he banned the use of laptops by students in the classroom.   Which raises the question, “In what direction are we headed with education and technology, and must we throw out the baby with the bathwater?”

But before we answer that question, we first have to consider the other baby elephant in the room – the student.  Is this student the same student we encountered pre-computer, the “BC” era?  Again, many educators are making their voices heard on this score.  A recent article suggested that students are unable to do math anymore because their brains are not trained to think in a focused manner.  The computer, that allows the undisciplined mind to shift back and forth between work and play, accomplishment and arousal, and intellectual engagement and entertainment, has created false expectations for the budding learner.  The message suggested by the medium is that learning need not get in the way of a steady diet of serotonin.  But more insidious than that, one neurologist, Gary Small, the author of IBrain, has suggested that our present generation of learners have developed brains that actually work differently as a result of their internet usage.  By continually searching and looking for instant sources of information, “digital natives”, as he calls them, develop neural pathways that may not exist in a non-native population.  To put it simply, and obviously, those who use the internet get good at using the internet.  The internet becomes a full-brain workout, as MRI scans will attest.  But do these neural pathways and the increased use of the brain during internet use really translate into more profound learning?  Not necessarily.  One of the downsides of internet use, as Small sees it, is the increase of ADD diagnoses.  And another implication, suggested by a critic, is that students put less emphasis on holding information in their long-term memory, because they focus on their ability to seek out new information and retrieve that information from the memory that exists in cyberspace.

So, even if we feel uneasy about how to incorporate computers in the classroom, we can’t ignore the fact that our students’ world is a world of computer use.  Moreover, the world that they will inhabit after we are finished with them is likely to be even more so a world of computers.   To react against this new world would appear to be short-sighted – tantamount to demanding that those who have been raised in a three-dimensional world be required to enter a two-dimensional learning environment to prepare them to go back out into that three-dimensional world.  So how does a school use a 21^st century classroom to prepare 21^st century students for a 21^st century world?

Very carefully!  As we know, learning is complex.  Learners are diverse.  So are the subjects; learning French is not learning history.  And so are the school’s learning objectives – we want children to learn to share and treat people with respect at the same time that we want them to solve problems, make persuasive arguments and utilize their times table.  Thus, we must first ignore any simple answers.  No, throwing computers out the window is not a nuanced response – nor is believing that on-line courses will replace the traditional school.   We have to get smart about how we use computers and how we have our students use computers.  Computers cannot simply be considered a convenience or a way of saving paper.  As I stated at the outset, the computer is a tool.  Educators must fully consider the implications of choosing the tool.  As every carpenter knows, there is always a right tool for the right job.

But more than that, in this moment of reflection, teachers can also reconsider what learning can look like, and what we can do to stimulate learning that is multi-layered, memorable and of lasting value.  The worst mistakes we made with the laptop are to use them to reproduce the poor teaching practices of the past.  Is there a substantive difference between a student copying out a teacher’s board notes on computer rather than copying them out on paper?  No, and moreover, both are questionable means of engaging students in learning.  Better would be to send the notes to the students and have them do something with them – read another source and compare what the teacher has written with the other source, perhaps.

We have to take advantage of the real pluses that a room full of computers can produce.  Computers are particularly good at connecting people with people far away from themselves – people with very different perspectives and life experiences.  That kind of connection is worth making.  Computers can connect people to many sources quickly.  Give a group of students the task of finding on the internet three different opinions on the global warming crisis and then have them put away their laptops and discuss what evidence the authors elicit and why they might hold the opinion they do.  Do you have quiet kids in your class who don’t have the confidence to jump into the heated debates you have?  Set the class up on “discussion board”, an interactive chat that relies upon writing and responding to the written viewpoints of their classmates.  Educators have to be on the cutting edge, technologically, and they always have to be asking the question: how can this newest technological advance actually advantage my students?

We also have to think hard about the geography of our classrooms.  Recently, we began a pilot project with one of our classrooms where we created a counter around the perimeter of the classroom where students can plug in and work individually on their laptop, with a teacher able to see every screen.  In the middle are tables where students can work together face to face, or engage with the teacher.  Just as every tool has a purpose, so should every space.

Finally, every moment in a laptop classroom must become a teaching moment about how to use the laptop to the student’s best advantage.  We must help our students reflect on their own use of these powerful machines.  If we fail to point out the choices that they have to make with them, the choices will be made for them.  The benefits of instilling an acute consciousness of the tool’s potential will accrue to both the present and the distant future.  If we help students to develop a discipline about their use of this tool now, they will avoid its pitfalls and pave the way toward a future of wise computer use.  For even with a tool as modern as the laptop computer, wisdom is a realizable goal.

Levey, Gregory. “Lament for the IGeneration” Toronto Life (2009) October p. 33-37.

Small, G., & Vorgan, G. (2008). iBrain. New York: Collins Living.

Also see: Marilee Sprenger.  “Focusing the Digital Brain” Educational Leadership. September 2009  Volume 67 Number 1 Pages 34-39.

I recently stumbled upon a videotaped presentation (a TEDtalk ) by Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, on the subject of classical music.  I admit, I found it on Youtube, that treasure trove of many things trivial and a few profound.  This video fits into the latter category.  I was particularly taken by Zander’s opening story of the two early twentieth-century shoe salesmen who ventured forth to the continent of Africa in hopes of expanding shoe sales.  After the first day the salesman each wrote a telegram back to the head office in England.  The first wrote, “Situation hopeless.  Stop.  They don’t wear shoes.”  The second wrote, “Glorious opportunity.  They don’t have any shoes yet.”  Zander goes on to observe that classical music is enjoyed by a very small minority of people on the planet.  And then, like an evangelist, he goes on to convince everyone in the audience that classical music is the most wonderful thing in the world.  One theatre audience down, billions of people to go – what an opportunity!

All of this brought to my mind a traditional theory of education that I learned at the Faculty of Education, so many years ago; namely, that students are but barbarians at the gates of civilization, and that it is our job as zealous educators to bring each one of them safely across the threshold (see, for example, “Education as Initiation” by R.S. Peters, at  page 55)  Although this theory is decidedly out of fashion, I think that it is worth our reconsideration, for there is an essential quality in good education that is captured by Zander’s attitude to classical music – a deep conviction that what we have to impart to the students is so incredibly valuable that it would be nothing short of tragic to have our students remain outside the gates.

Surprisingly little in educational discussions is devoted to the importance of what we teach our students.   If fact, we don’t even talk so much about teaching anymore; it’s all about learning.  Differentiated learning focuses on the learner.  The teacher responds to the interests, preparedness and learning style of the learner.  We talk about the teacher as a facilitator of learning.  With the advent of the internet, a laptop in front of practically every private school student, and the rise of electronic distance learning courses, one might begin to wonder what role the teacher has to play.  But if the teacher is fading into the background of educational issues, how much more so is the value of what is learned.

At the high school level the question of what is essential knowledge and skills has become increasingly difficult to discern.  A student graduating from an Ontario high school need only study a single course in each of physical education, French, the Arts, history and geography, and two courses in Science, most of which will be completed by the end of grade 9.  And our inability to identify essential knowledge and skills is only compounded when one moves to post-secondary learning.   At University, the number of faculties has grown exponentially, with both the increasing specialization within the arts and sciences and the development of interdisciplinary studies.  Within applied sciences and technological studies the sheer number and rate of change of areas of study is beyond the capacity of most guidance counselors to keep pace.  Long gone are the days when learned people all knew and valued the same things.

Long gone, too, are days when learned people could have some hope of keeping up with the world’s store of knowledge. As one famous Youtube production proclaims ” It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the eighteenth century.”   When faced with such a daunting prospect, we are immediately overwhelmed.  How will we keep pace?  How will we remember it all?  How will we access the information when we need it?  And the number one problem – which facts really matter?

It is the question of value that plagues the developed world in the 21^st century.   Over the past two centuries, advancing democracy and the freedoms that go with it have opened wide the floodgates of values and their expression.  Whereas at one time a single religion and culture gave clear direction as to what was worth knowing, human migrations on a world-wide scale have diversified the range of legitimate religious and cultural expression witnessed in our daily lives.  Capitalism has guided and misguided our tastes and values, such that we find it difficult to determine what it is that we really need or want.  Overshadowing all is the blanket of relativism, a way of thinking that colours every judgement, forever raising the question, can I claim anything more than a subjective preference for this over that?  And of course, fueling it all has been the rise of the computer and the internet, putting all of these views, facts, sounds, and images within our daily reach, diluting all sense of authoritative value.

Is it any wonder, then, that education would not easily be conceived today as the process of introducing barbarian children to a neatly laid out city on the hill, a celestial kingdom of ruling concepts, a holy grail of eternal knowledge.  How could educators claim to have the truth?  And yet, I wonder if we will ever solve one of the essential problems of education so long as we are ambivalent about the value of what it is we teach.  How will students be motivated to learn if we don’t believe that what we have to teach is of supreme value?  Whatever problems we might have in deciding what needs to be taught, a teenager has no difficulty deciding between finishing a game in which he has the prospect of taking over a virtual world and finishing the math homework that his teacher assigned from the Ministry-approved textbook.

Despite all of the forces that might lead us to give over learning to the students, and release us from the responsibility of determining what is truly valuable to learn, I believe that educators must continually address the question of value, and that the question must be approached with openness and not defensiveness.  It is not good enough to say, “I am teaching you this because the government curriculum requires that I teach it to you, or because it is on the final IB exam.”  Nor is it good enough to rely upon our own ancient history of learning – “I learned this in school, and so should you.”  Rather, as educators, we must see our task as finding and articulating the best rationale for teaching this material to these students right now.

How can we equip our teachers to grapple with these important problems of value?  First, as administrators, I think that we have to make it our business to ask questions of value, and to require teachers to give reasons of substance.  If we don’t ask it first, the teacher will have to deal with the many students who will ask it, each and every day, silently and aloud.   I am convinced that a deep learning community will thrive in an environment of respectful and intentional questioning.  We have to model that.

Secondly, I think we have to help teachers find time and opportunities to engage in the activities that will prompt significant questions and help shape profoundly felt answers.  We put a great deal of emphasis in our schools on the learning experience of the student.  We should never forget that our teachers must also be exposed to rich learning experiences.  Fortunately, it is frequently the case that when teachers collaborate with one another in producing a deep learning experience for their students, they also come out with a deeper appreciation of the value of the subject matter that they are introducing to their students.  Again, it is the role of questioning that brings value and meaning to the surface in these collaborations.  More often than not, there is no consensus on meaning when teachers first come together to plan a lesson.  This is particularly true when teachers come from different cultural backgrounds, or when teachers work on interdisciplinary projects.  It is in the clash of different world views that deeper meanings can be revealed.

It is also fortunate that deep learning experiences for our students can result in deep learning experiences for their teachers.  Teachers who take risks and push students beyond the edge of the known academic box will be pulled along themselves.  Thus, we must encourage our teachers to take risks with their students’ learning, and to support those teachers who take those risks.  I was recently “pulled along” as I joined a group of twelve students and two language teachers who had decided to spend part of their March break on the French-speaking island of Martinique.  I had spoken very little French since I left my grade 13 French class, more than thirty years earlier, and so boarded the plane with some slight trepidation.  I knew that this would be a good learning experience for the students, but I really had no idea what it might mean for me.  From the moment we were greeted by our tour guide at the Martinique airport with the characteristic kiss on each cheek, I knew that my North American view of what is valuable would have to undergo some degree of revision.  As I stumbled through umpteen different verb conjugations, each one bringing me a bit closer to the Martinique people, I soon came to have a greater appreciation of the value of what my Modern Language teachers were doing for our students.  Suddenly I saw language teachers as bridge makers, and language as the key to the human heart.  Even for me, the gates were being opened, and a glimmer of golden treasures was being revealed.

Thus, we must give our teachers the scope not only to find the reasons that led them to love their subjects in the first place but to discover new reasons for drawing our students through the gates.  It may be a journey shared with colleagues who hold a similar interest, or those who have a similar vision of educational goals.  Or it may be a dynamic that evolves between teachers who are excited to break new ground and students who are game to follow.  In a rich environment of significant questioning and risk-taking, it is my hope that our teachers will come closer to discerning what is valuable about what they teach, and inspire them to continue to open the gates wide and treat each student as a “glorious opportunity” to be brought inside.

Over the past many weeks – I’ll not say how many – I have been making my way through Charles Dickens’ great masterpiece, David Copperfield. Though only at the halfway mark, I am continually struck by the degree to which Dickens speaks to us out of such a different age. Not merely an age in which class shaped fortunes (as Mr. Waterbrook agrees with his wife, “Other things are all well in their way, but give me Blood!”) and debtor prisons snared luckless souls, but an age in which good character could trump all. Or is it such a different age? Obama has me thinking.

Of all the forces that we consider to be instrumental in forming our attitudes, how little do we consider the role of literature. And yet, I can’t help but feel that there is nothing quite as powerful as the web of themes, emotions, opinions, world views, causes and effects, and characters that we find in the novel. It is no wonder that societies have paid close attention to the literature of the day, censoring those examples that threaten to upset the social fabric or reigning political apparatus. If literature does shape societal mores and attitudes, what must have been the ethos formed by the writings of Dickens? Or, to put the chicken before the egg, what kind of society would have given rise to Dickens’ novels, novels full of so many unforgettable characters?

For me, characters are what make Dickens’ novels stand out. Being introduced to Pip, Joe, and Miss Havisham at the age of 13 or 14, when asked to read Great Expectations for my grade 9 English class, was in some ways more important and more memorable than all of the school chums I met in that year of school. To this day, whenever my four children’s rising voices turn our dinner table into a boiling sea, I enjoy mimicking Mr. Pocket, who regularly “put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it.” The love, humility and sheer goodness of Joe Gargery have helped form the foundation of my understanding of those three words. The emotional cost of lost love and crushed dreams forever echo in my mind in the persons of Miss Havisham and Estella.

For those who don’t like Dickens, my eldest son among them, the problem – in addition to the atrocious length of the sentences, compared with which this specimen might be considered short – is that he didn’t create characters; he created caricatures. Without question, Dickens dramatically drew each face, dressed each body and gave each character a name that collectively left no doubt as to the character within. Take Miss Murdstone, David Copperfield’s step-aunt:

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

No one in real life is so clearly evil as Uriah Heep or as good and faithful as Peggotty, they say. True enough, I say. But perhaps Dickens’ characters appear as caricatures to us, not because their characteristics are excessive, but because we no longer believe in the force of character. Perhaps our modern tendency to dismiss Dickens’ characters as caricatures is nothing more than our refusal to believe that a unified character could ever speak forth from the infinite details of one’s life.

If Dickens were to travel through time, and join the typical North American family for an evening filled with three hours of television watching and who knows how many hours of web surfing, with a few minutes of eating and talk squeezed in somewhere, I think he would find the force of character very difficult to discern. In the post-modern world that we inhabit, where The Simpsons provide us with daily reminders of the ruling ethos of moral relativism and irony, Dickens would likely lose his bearings. Values such as honesty, humility, and faithfulness are playthings for modern characters to toss about, turning them on their head, forsaking them and eventually having reluctantly to embrace them, often for a mixture of pragmatic and nostalgic reasons. In our present-day multi-faith society, people who steadfastly hold to a set of values are ridiculed as being orthodox, old-fashioned, or simply “Christian” or “Muslim”. All ground is quicksand, and no one dare stand too long in one place. As Yeats observed, in part, in The Second Coming,

Things fall apart; the centre does not hold;
….
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It is no wonder that in such a world we would cease to believe in character. How could man or woman be expected to adhere to a set of values and thereby risk all that our consumer-driven, power-hungry society thirsts after.

But into this same world walked Barack Obama – not, perhaps, as the Second Coming, but surely as a sharp turn away from irony and the partisan forces that have come to choke the social and political scene. As Joan Didion writes in a compilation article in the December 18th edition of The New York Review of Books, entitled “Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone”,

Irony was now out. Naiveté, translated into “hope,” was now in. Innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.

Although my knowledge of American politics is even slighter than my hold on Victorian literature, I would suggest that what Obama brings to the political stage is character. Interestingly, all efforts to destroy Obama’s campaign centred on labels– Muslim, radical, or socialist – and not on the man himself. What impresses people about Obama is the consistency of his character. His positions on various issues may not be set in stone, but his demeanour, his firmness, and his thoughtfulness are.

Whence came such a man? Interestingly enough, his upbringing would have made excellent fodder for a Dickens novel. Abner Mikva, a former congressman, was quoted by Elizabeth Drew in an article in the same edition of The New York Review of Books, (“The Truth About the Election”):

He’s very comfortable with who he is; he knows where he wants to go and how to get there. He had the kind of bringing up that turns someone into a mess or a very solid, thoughtful person.

How often do we hear talk of the grandmother who brought up Obama. A Harvard education is all very well, but more essential to character are the people who influence us.

Dickens knew this. He didn’t merely create memorable characters; his characters made a difference in building the character of his protagonists. The twists and turns in the lives of Pip, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield are all marked by the influence of the characters they meet. The lesson told time and time again, is that characters shape us for good or for ill. Characters lead us astray, and characters save us. God and the devil are incarnate, and by embracing the former and avoiding the latter, we may, despite our lowly beginnings and the societal limitations that threaten to hem us in, become persons of good character and good promise.

If Obama has ushered in a return to the importance of character, how can we, as educators, ensure that our children make the most of this hopeful prospect?

To take Dickens, once again, as our guide, I would suggest that we invest in good character. When Dickens describes the two schools that Copperfield attends as a young boy, it is not the lessons that stand out, but the values and characters that make the institution. Hear what he has to say about Doctor Strong’s school:

Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle’s as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it . . .

And hear also what he has to say about the character of Doctor Strong himself:

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have been a badly-composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.

In short, we must strive to believe in the capacity of our children to demonstrate good character, to give them every opportunity to develop it, and to be of good character, ourselves. We need to create a community in which our students learn not only what our teachers know, but also what they value – something that emerges so well in the context of a rich array of teacher-led, co-curricular activities. We must lead our students beyond our school walls to interact with the world, carrying forth their values and the values of their school. But above all, we can never forget the importance of our own character. As a father of four, I am repeatedly reminded that the lives we live as adults appear more vividly to the young than the largest and highest definition television screen yet to be invented. We owe a sacred duty to the children of our school to live consistently by the values that we would wish upon those children – honesty, truth, and love being chief among them. When we have done as much, then we might deserve to be seen as “the idol of the whole school”.

And it wouldn’t hurt to have them read Dickens!

For Christmas this year, I received the usual assortment of books, classical CDs, and movies.  Generally, I find that by the time my birthday rolls around a month later I have listened to the CDS, I have watched the movies, and the books . . ., well, the books are still sitting forlornly on my bookshelf.  But this year was different.  For the first time I finished a book before listening to the CDs or watching the movies.  This year’s book was Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent journalistic exploration of a big idea, “Outliers: The Story of Success”.  As with “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”, Gladwell demonstrates that if you have an eye for big patterns, an ear for a good story, and the time to dredge up a few studies, you can write and sell intriguing books, and might even be chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people (as Gladwell was in 2005).  Moreover, not only might you be called influential, but you might actually influence people – or at least, some people.  Not so, the reviewer for the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/books/18kaku.html), who damned it in one sentence as “glib, poorly reasoned and thoroughly unconvincing.”  My head, which had been nodding along as I read Gladwell’s book, was suddenly locked in mid-nod.

Why, I wondered, am I so easily taken in by Gladwell’s assertions that success is caused by so many factors that have nothing to do with the innate brilliance or talent of the individual who achieves success?  Is it because I am Canadian (as is Gladwell, as it turns out) and, as a neighbour to an economic and military superstar, am more easily persuaded that there is nothing inherently better about those who experience success?  Perhaps.  Or maybe it’s just because I am a principal.

As a principal, I have to believe in the external factors that affect success, because I represent an institution that is one of those factors.  Schools are not in the business of identifying those who will be successful.  Schools should be in the business of building success for all, no matter the genetic makeup.  But more than that, schools are in the business of helping young people define success for themselves.

And that is where I part company with Gladwell.  One of the aspects of Gladwell’s book that struck me was how success is defined.  The “successful” personalities that stand out in his book include the very rich, the best at sports, and the best musicians.  Primarily, success is defined by those who have single-mindedly pursued a particular vocation with a great deal of focus and expenditure of time.  A lot of time.  One of the studies that Gladwell uses in support of his thesis demonstrated that mastery of anything takes 10,000 hours of dedicated time.  Why do we define success in the narrow sense of success in one occupation or area of expertise?

In the first place, success at one thing is so much more noticeable than a life that successfully balances the many aspects of life.  Narrowly defined successes are so easily captured in a two hour movie, a one hour documentary, or a sound bite.  Not so, a life of balance.  Only those who narrowly focus upon a single vocation can hope to generate impressive statistics – number of goals scored, billions made, or Oscars awarded – and statistics are the indisputable evidence that a data-driven society demands.

Which leads to the second reason that success is defined so narrowly.  We measure success in such a way because we believe that our lives as humans are to be measured not by who we are, but by what we achieve.  Our children are taught at the youngest of ages that their products are what distinguish them and are the measure of their worth.  We give marks for essays and paintings, not for goodness or the right attitude.  Money, the modern measure of all, buys only products and services that can attract a buck.  There is no visible compensation for so many virtues – patience, forbearance, forgiveness, modesty, and humility among them – and many go unspoken.

And finally, success in a single sphere is made to appear of greater benefit to our society than a life well lived.  When historians write of the changes that led to our current technologically advanced, democratic Western society, they focus upon the individuals who sacrificed so much to make a mark on the world – Einstein, Picasso, Marx, and Beethoven, to name but a few.  As a society, we hold up those who have had an impact in the area of their expertise, recognizing our debt to them. 

But, is a successful life truly defined by one’s success in a narrow field?  How does a life spent mastering a skill or producing great wealth compare to a life that is balanced, marked by caring, and guided by compassion?  And what schooling will allow children to raise such questions, and prompt children to measure themselves by who they are, and not merely by the marks and awards they receive, the money they earn, and the impact they have? 

The International Baccalaureate programmes, especially the Diploma programme,  are frequently thought of as programmes that present academic challenges leading to a university education, but what is not often noticed is the degree to which they foster values not measured by the score out of 45 that one receives at the very end.  One of the more broad-minded developments of the IBO has been the introduction of the Learner Profile, an ambitious description of values that an IB learner is to strive to make his or her own.  In addition to the more obvious attributes, such as being knowledgeable, a thinker, a communicator, and an inquirer, the IB calls upon students to be risk-takers, caring, principled, well-balanced, open-minded and reflective.  These do not make up the typical recipe for success.

Thus, in my school, where we offer all three programmes, I am emboldened by the thought that the curriculum our school brings to life is committed to something more than academic success, narrowly conceived.  I am also encouraged by the fact that the programme run for the youngest members of our school, the Primary Years Programme, is an inquiry-based programme, that values the real questions that children have about the world, and places them at the forefront of the learning process.  And moreover, I find in all levels of the IB, a commitment to critical thinking, the skill most needed to assist our students in their effort to define success for their own lives.

But we must stretch beyond our well-intentioned programmes, and act in the name of their values.  As Gandhi said, “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world”.  We must not give in to those who would measure our school purely by scores and scholarships.  We must not reserve our accolades for those who have succeeded at athletics and academics.  In assemblies and in classes we must speak of values not often championed in the media.  In programming and cultural visits, we must be prepared to give our children real opportunities to engage with a world with which they are not accustomed, granting them the scope to develop open-mindedness and caring relationships.  We must encourage our students to raise difficult questions, to choose the roads less travelled, and to follow their hearts.

Thus, it is my hope, that when I next address a class of graduates, or group of new parents  I don’t merely pronounce the expected : that I commit to ensuring that every child in my school is a success in their chosen field.  I hope to remember that as important as it is to create impact players in the world, it is equally important that children be given the tools and experiences to allow them to discern what makes for a truly successful life, and that they develop a passion for such a life.