Principally Yours

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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October is unlike any other month – at least, it is in my life as a school principal. October, that month when leaves fill our horizons with the hues of day-long sunsets, and when peaches and watermelons give way to apples and pumpkins; October is, for me, a month of dressing up. Every October, I spend an evening as the Master of Ceremonies at our annual staff and parent Cabaret. For a week in advance I slough off my serious principal’s skin. I busily prepare ridiculous lyrics – doggerel, to be sure – to accompany an old, but familiar tune with which I open the evening. One year, I donned a toga in honour of our school’s pending production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, and sang “A Cabaret Tonight”. But no sooner has the Cabaret become a faded smile, when I am asked by the student council to appear, once again, as the referee in the annual York Wrestling Federation, an event to raise money for our local United Way, in which teachers take on hilarious personalities and fight in the ring before a gym full of screaming children. On occasion, I too become an unsuspecting combatant in the feigned fights, and have to defend myself against such perilous weapons as “Silly String”. And then, as I help the students and other staff members to tear down the ring, I realize that October isn’t over until the 31^st.

And so, once again, I dress up – this year as my version of my worst-dressed students, last year as a cross-dressing pirate – and at about 2:30, join with other long-time staff members to perform the annual humourous rendering of a classic fairy tale on stage for the Lower School children. (Yes, that’s me in the pink wig!)

Some might ask what all of this has to do with running a school, to which I would respond, everything. For a school is not a factory – a school is a community. And only in a community would I dare to reveal the self that stretches far beyond my job description.

If school were a factory, I could probably get through each month with one gray suit, and one inoffensive tie. I could focus on teaching and learning, poking my head into classrooms to make sure teachers are teaching and children are learning, disciplining errant children so that they can remain in the classroom, chairing teacher meetings to keep everyone focused on getting students through the system and out the other end, dealing with parents who threaten to get in the way of production. Thus would be the sum of my job, were school but a factory.

But schools are not factories – or at least, they shouldn’t be. Children are not widgets, and graduates are not products – churned out with the same cut, styling, colour scheme, or standard features. And yet, we are often lulled into believing that schools are factories. “Schools should get our children into university”, we are told. “Schools should prepare our children to join the workforce of the 21^st century,” others will claim. All worthy goals, but in themselves, not sufficient to claim the entirety of over 17,000 hours of time we spend with each child. For were a school to aspire merely to get children into university, it would, on the one hand, be at the mercy of the university’s definition of all that is valuable, and, on the other, would deny its children their full potential. There is more to life than either university or the workplace can offer.

To nurture a child, a school must see itself first as a community, and must act on the promise that every community holds. For it is so often the case that children learn best the lessons that we have not written down on paper and linked to a government curriculum document. When you ask adults what they remember of school, it is startling how little they speak of the classroom. And when they do, it is often a teacher whose personality captured their imagination, not a lesson, or concept learned. We most frequently recollect the life outside the classroom – the school trips, winning a basketball championship, playing euchre in the cafeteria, or being sent to the principal’s office (!). If we focus upon our schools as communities, we begin to imagine the myriad ways in which we can touch and influence our children, and how we can do so for the better. For if we embrace our children as members of a community, we care about the personal goals they hold, relationships they have with us and with others, and their future lives as spouses, parents, creative agents, productive team members, citizens, and humans in search of meaning.

But to say we will build schools into communities begs the question, “what sort of community shall we build?” A community may be defined as a group of people united by a shared purpose and shared values. Some of the early “community-like schools” fit well under this definition. Take, for example, the monasteries of Europe, in which monks set about the task of dedicating themselves to learning and living out the dictates of the Christian religion. The purpose and values were, for those who entered the monastic centres, crystal clear. In contrast, the 21^st century Western non-denominational independent school must articulate a purpose and set of values that have deep meaning, without the guidance of a 1000 year-old tradition. Given the multicultural, post-modern, relativistic temperament of the times, this is a serious challenge. At the same time, we have all read stories of old, largely English, boarding schools where traditions and values have served to preserve outdated values of discipline, authority, and social outlook. Here, purpose and value become narrow, stifling, and out of touch. The other difficulty, then, is how to create a set of enduring practices, rituals and traditions to carry forward the agreed upon values without forming a closed society – a box or fortress, if you will. For in “shared purpose and shared values” there is the danger of mindless obedience replacing critical reflection, loyalty trumping openness and kindness, and the general closing of ranks.

Walking the thin line that keeps a community a centre of meaningful endeavour, without creating a rigid relic of the past, is a balancing act, but I have come to find some guiding principles in seeing the task through, and it isn’t without its benefits.

In being part of the building of one independent school community, and having observed others, I have come to value, in no particular order, the following: critical self-examination, open discussion with all stakeholders, keeping your eye on the mission, not the market, and continually working to infuse your mission with enduring and global meanings. I’m sure most people couldn’t begin to imagine the number of hours that have been spent in our school discussing the vision and direction of the school. From Strategic Plans and their many attendant committees to administrative retreats, from email debates to long, drawn-out meetings with parents and teachers, I have found that our school benefits most when hard questions are asked, every voice is listened to, and where we keep coming back to what we have agreed is deeply important, inspiring, and worth so much of our daily life. I have also recently found it helpful to read and reflect as a means of more clearly perceiving the wider implications of our conversations and decisions, and raising new and important questions.

So, what kind of community emerges from such critical, open, forward-thinking, meaningful discussions? My sense is that we are in the process of becoming a community in which the four principles that have driven our development are found in abundance. Teachers and students have come to value critical thought, are more open to different ideas and different peoples, are increasingly hopeful and constructive in considering the future, and are becoming more engaged in their learning, whether in or outside the classroom. In such a community, students will feel free to bring all they have to the table – their questions and ideas, their passions and playfulness, their hopes and dreams – and find that they are fed on a diet of more questions, greater passions, and global aspirations. In such a community, it is our hope that students will come to know themselves most fully and be prepared to take on the responsibility of acting on all the potential that they have found within.

Who knows, they might even find the courage to sport a costume once in a while!

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One would have thought that teaching was the simplest task in the world.  Everyone does it, and everyone has been at the receiving end of it.  From the moment we emerge from the womb, parents are manipulating their voices, manoeuvering  their heads, widening their eyes, and raising their eyebrows, all in the hope that their newborn creature will respond, and that these responses may, bit by bit, be shaped into  responses that the parents, in turn, can understand.  If a constant dose of parenting in the early years doesn’t clue us into what teaching is all about, surely the 18 years spent observing teachers of all persuasions and temperaments (I estimate you are exposed to as many as 70 teachers by the time you graduate with an undergraduate degree) would makes us all experts at the craft. But for all that teaching may appear to be natural, it is amazing how difficult and complex it really can be.

As a principal, I am blessed with the opportunity to teach 21 wonderful 16 year olds for 80 minutes, every four days.  The course, Theory of Knowledge, is a dream for pondering souls such as me, but can be a nightmare for a good number of teenagers.  Fully immersed in the reality of their own world – coping with their daily “360 review” of parental, teacher, and peer expectations – they might be forgiven for not sensing the urgency of such questions as “What is reality, and how do we know it?”  But this year was to be different.  For The York School had dedicated itself to differentiated instruction in all disciplines, and I, as the “principal” teacher, was confident that I would get on board, and reach all my students, kinesthetic learners and linguistic reasoners alike.  If I had only known what lay ahead.

On the first day, I came with diagnostic tools in hand.  I asked each student to rank order eight different methods of learning according to their preference and to indicate their favourite subject and favourite pastime.  Needless to say, philosophy did not figure in either of the latter two categories. But that wasn’t the biggest problem.  Of the eight learning approaches – teacher explanation, reading, discussion with peers, experience, visuals, asking questions, viewing experts on video, and relating content to their own lives – by far the most popular choice was “experience”.  How would I have my students experience the most abstract of all possible subjects?  Most alarming was the unpopularity of reading.  Only three students included it in their top four methods of learning.  A layer of sweat became noticeable between my palms and laptop computer. 

If you think that by sending your child to a top-notch independent school you are ensured of a homogenous group of learners, you are dead wrong.  If you thought by the fact that all teenagers seem to be able to listen to the same – sometimes dreary and monotonous – music, and wear the same basic outfit of tops and jeans, that they are all the same, you don’t know teenagers.  And if you want to teach teenagers, you have to know teenagers, not their conforming patterns of behaviour, but their individualities that make conforming so difficult for so many of them.  And if it is difficult for a teenager to conform to clothing and music, imagine how difficult it is to conform to Mr. Hamilton’s preferred way of teaching.   After all, they have available to them umpteen different channels on their televisions, enough Youtube videos to fill any one of the earth’s oceans, games to keep their fingers tapping into eternity, and countless internet sites to suit every fancy imaginable.

My options were fairly clear.  I could take comfort in the fact that they have to take and succeed in my course in order to obtain an IB diploma; I could stand at the gate and only let through those who hearken to my voice – OR – I could take a risk; I could try to take account of all the individuals in the classroom.  It suddenly seemed like a cocktail party.  Over in the corner are the people I know.  The rest of the room is full of the people I don’t know.  Do I make a beeline to the corner, or do I take a risk and try to communicate with everyone?  Is this party about me, or is it about them? 

It just so happens that risk taking is, like reflection, one of the ten attributes of the IB learner profile.  And so, again, I was faced with the realization that what we ask of our students, must also be asked of ourselves as teachers.  Like our students, we must do the uncomfortable thing, the thing that doesn’t come easily. We must teach in ways that we ourselves might not find helpful.  We must dare to imagine what each of our students needs in order to learn, and we must find ways of meeting those needs, whether or not it suits our style.  We must take an interest in everyone at the party.  And do teachers want to do that?  Surprisingly, yes.

On Monday last, our entire academic staff stopped what they were doing to sit down in small groups to discuss readings on the subject of differentiated instruction, in anticipation of a full-day professional development session to be held in January.  I couldn’t be in all the small groups, but in the meeting I joined, it was abundantly clear that teachers were keen to develop strategies that could help them reach everyone in their classes.  Despite the fact that differentiated instruction was going to mean more work, teachers were all for it.  At first I was (pleasantly) surprised.  And then I thought back to my experience of trying to prevent my dream course from becoming everyone’s nightmare, and why I and others got into teaching – like every parent, all we really want is that smile, a response that tells us that our passion has become their passion.  The torch has been passed.  A candle has been lit – for everyone.

I can’t claim to have created a raging firestorm in my Theory of Knowledge class, but a small incident in Friday’s class taught me one more thing about taking risks with differentiation.  I had just subjected the class to Descartes’ first two Meditations, in which Descartes famously concludes that even were there a demon responsible for all our thoughts, perceptions and imaginings, it must surely be true that if I think, I must exist, or in Latin, “cogito ergo sum”.  Picking up the notion of a demon being responsible for creating our reality, we viewed a segment of the “Matrix”, a movie in which reality is simulated for humans by computers.  I could tell that despite the clarity of Descartes’ argument and the dramatic impact of Keanu Reeves emerging unclothed from a vat, the abstract notion that reality might not actually be as reality seemed, and that the relation between the thinker and reality might not be so straightforward, was being lost on some (most?) of my students.  We needed an image to capture this notion. 

And that is when I took a risk.  Only having a rough sense as to how I might capture the idea in a drawing, I turned to the class and offered the white board marker to any willing soul.  Tentatively, a single hand went up at the back of the class.  With hesitation, Jeremy, my differentiation saviour, approached the front, took the marker from my hand, and began to draw.  What resulted, a stick figure imposed upon a simple venn diagram, not only assisted the visual learners in the class, but to my surprise, ended up helping me.  Although I knew that I liked to draw arrows and rough representations of concepts on the board, it later struck me how intertwined different ways of learning are.  For Jeremy’s diagram led to a flurry of words and arrows and suddenly the topic seemed so much clearer – words and visuals combined. 

In the end, my little taste of differentiated instruction taught me that not only is teaching not so simple, neither is learning.  On the page and in the classroom, words, gestures, sounds, movements, and pictures can all work their magic, supporting one another in metaphor and symbol, leading to a multi-layered depth of understanding.  And so, differentiation isn’t merely there to help visual learners learn on Mondays and linguistic learners learn on Wednesdays.  Differentiated instruction offers the hope of building complex and enduring understandings for everyone, full of colour, sounding like poetry, and moving like a well-trained athlete. 

And that kind of learning is well worth the risk.

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In one of the comments to my last entry, one of my former students asked for examples of ‘experiential education’. The York School has, since its beginnings, had the motto, “Experientia Docet”, or “Experience Teaches”. In our most recent Strategic Plan (2007), one of the major planks was to be a renewed push in the area of experiential education. Based on that commitment, we had our faculty begin this year with a half day focused on experiential education as an ongoing area for professional development. To set the context for the direction the school had adopted, I gave an address in which I outlined the philosophical underpinnings of experiential education, and the rationale for this strategic direction.  You can access the address at the following link. Click here

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To blog or not to blog. That was the question raised soon after our new Technology Teaching and Learning Specialist, Justin Medved, arrived on our school’s doorstep this August. A blogger – go see his blog – and general web enthusiast, Justin had just come from the International School of Bangkok, where he had successfully turned that school on fire with all things technological. Moreover, he had convinced two of the key administrators there to begin to blog. I was to be his next subject. As it would turn out, Justin found in me a receptive audience. Having just returned from a leadership conference given by Independent School Management (ISM) in Philadelphia, I had been persuaded that ‘reflection’ needed to become an essential part of my job. That being said, by the time Justin and I sat down in September, I was already slipping into a familiar pattern of endless meetings and emails, putting out fires, and biking home as fast as I could so that I could get a start on the tasks that didn’t get completed during the daylight hours. Where was the reflection?

As a school principal overseeing the delivery of two of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes (MYP and Diploma), I am constantly reminded that reflection is a key educational value. The IB has developed a list of ten key attributes that make up the ‘Learner Profile’ – number ten is “reflective”. Reflection turns up in so many of the things that our students do, from research in the humanities and the design cycle in technology to assessment criteria in math, science and the arts, from the personal project to reflections on Creativity, Action and Service (CAS), an obligatory requirement for all students. And then there is the mandatory Diploma course that I am privileged to teach, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), in which students continually have to reflect on everything they do as students. Beyond the requirements of the IB, I am daily faced with our school’s motto “Experientia Docet” or “Experience Teaches”. And as anyone knows, experience doesn’t teach much of anything without reflection.

Which brings me back to the blog. A blog appears, at first blush, to be a preposterous undertaking. Who, in their right mind, and in all humility, could believe that their thoughts are worthy fodder for the consumption of the entire world? Only an ego of colossal proportions, or someone much more famous, clever, or humourous than I, could consider such a thing. And yet, I thought, isn’t that the sort of response I receive from some of my students when I ask them to share their thoughts with their class, or write out their reflections? “Why me,” they seem to say, “my reflections aren’t good enough to share”. And then I had my first inkling as to what reflection was and why it might be important. And I began to reflect.

And I continued to reflect. And reflections turned to readings, and readings turned to further reflections, and I suddenly became aware that the blog had done its trick. I was reflecting for I had to blog. I blog; therefore I reflect. I reflect; therefore I am.

So what is reflection, why is it so hard for so many of us to do, and why do we insist upon it as an educational value?

Much has been written on the role of reflection in education. I happened upon the “encyclopedia of informal education”, a web project, in which author Mark K. Smith has conveniently summarized the major literature regarding reflection in education from John Dewey to the present. Suffice it to say, I have a great deal of reading to do before I can pretend to be anything of an authority on this subject. But in the interim, I am able to point to a number of themes that are important to a consideration of reflection’s role in education. In the first place, reflection is not a pleasant dreamy state that we would set to romantic music with a sunset as our backdrop. As Dewey writes, reflective thought is an “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends.” (Dewey 1933: 118) It is a rational, deliberate and purposeful activity that involves critical analysis and synthesis. It is hard work. More recent thinkers have tended to emphasize the role of reflection in responding to experience and make more of the emotions that lie at the core of experience. As Donald SchÖn has written, “The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour.” (SchÖn 1983: 68) In fact, it is often the emotion – whether it takes the form of doubt, puzzlement, or distress – that drives people to engage in reflection.

It is precisely the emotional basis for reflection – not to mention the hard work – that makes reflection so tricky in the field of education. Asking a room full of 14 year olds to reflect on their experience tends to summon up the same response as some of my worst puns. That is why ‘experiential learning’ is becoming so important to the education of young adolescents. Unless you engage such students in authentic tasks leading to emotional responses, you can’t expect real reflection to take place. That’s one of the reasons why at our school we introduced an integrated experiential education programme in grade 9. As a result, we have seen many of our Grade 9 students successfully reflect, for in putting pen to paper they draw together heart and mind.

As our students move into the Diploma programme at grade 11, we witness the transformation that seemed impossible at grade 9 - students want to reflect, as Dewey suggested, on their beliefs and the basis of their knowledge. Suddenly, students are excited to find answers to such questions as “why do I have these beliefs?”, and “how do I know?” Emotional responses are no longer limited to what has been experienced directly, but extends beyond their world of friends and family, TV personalities and popular music icons, to the adult concerns of media manipulation, political machinations, and environmental degradation. The world is suddenly their oyster, and their reflections become vital and profound.

But lest we forget, reflection is hard work. Whether we are sorting out our emotions and discerning personal values and attitudes, or discovering the shaky underpinnings of contemporary truths, reflection takes work, and, I would suggest, it takes practice. As I prepared to write this blog, I was amazed at how difficult it is to keep focused on a single abstract topic for stretches of time over several days. At the same time, the longer I kept at it, the clearer my thinking became. And the more organized my thoughts became, the stronger was my vision.

As a leader of a school whose mission is as lofty as one could possibly imagine – “to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who are engaged citizens of the world” – I have to summon up a vision that is capable of making that mission come to life: for me, for my teachers, for my students, and for their parents, all of whom look to me to breathe life into those precious 15 words. I can’t do that on a diet of meetings and emails. I need to reflect. For in reflection, the barely audible stirrings of the heart come to the surface and infuse the mind with a sense of purpose, of order, and, yes, a clearer vision. And that is when I finally came to have a fuller understanding of why we need to have our students reflect.

If I need purpose, order and vision to run a school, how desperately do our youth need these three? In a time when their brains are changing as dramatically as they did in the first two months of their life, when eight subjects fly by in two days, and friends are made and lost in a hallway gathering or flurry of typed messages, when the world seems doomed by global warming, the crash of Wall Street, and rogue dictators in countries that no longer seem so far away, a little bit of purpose, order and vision could go a long way. Reflection may be hard work, but giving students the opportunity to practice this vital thinking skill on an ongoing basis can only benefit them now and in the future.

For in the practice of reflection lies our hope for tomorrow. Reflection will give our children the ability to rise above fashions and fads, to resist evil masquerading as comfort, and find lasting meaning in their lives. Reflection will enable our children to have clear visions of what is good and what is right, regardless of the confusion of media sources that clutter their world.

And that, I suggest, is worth more than a moment’s reflection!

Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think, New York: D.C. Heath.

SchÖn, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How professionals think in action, London: Temple Smith.

Updated with photos of two landscapes created by our Lower School art teacher, Bart Snow.

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