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The Shire, Middle Earth, nr Oxford, UK

Thursday, 8:14 am

Hello Reader,

I Apologise...

My apologies if you received a similar-headed email yesterday. It was not spam; rather it was an internal conflict in my subscription mailing software: ConvertKit, now named simply 'Kit.' The team at Kit worked on this yesterday-- and thank you to them--and at least found the root cause.

So, what follows is what I really meant to send you. (Annoyingly, parts of it are time-sensitive.)

Machine Education takes a Leap Forward

About 28 years ago, at the UK’s Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, the then leader of the party, Tony Blair, announced that his top three priorities on coming to power would be “Education, Education, Education.” A few months later in 1997, he got his wish by becoming Prime Minister, in the general election.

On the face of it, this seems a laudable investment in the future of the UK through our children.

Yet history shows that despite increased funds, the UK’s performance in international tests declined.

Why? Critics argued that Blair’s policies focused too much on targets and assessments.

In my view, though, it was focused too much on the educators, on “Education” as a form of industry, as a machine that they thought was bound to produce certain outcomes. Rather it could have empowered learning through curiosity already in young minds.

Politicians are inclined to make reality fit their tools. They think in terms of budgets, outputs and of the results they think they can achieve. They seek to engineer the system to achieve these results, primarily through funding and operating requirements. Gradually, the focus shifts to the suppliers, to the educators and the technologists rebuilding a new service.

What if we took a rather more systems approach and considered the student at the centre of all this?

At the time of writing, one of our junior school-aged grandchildren, who is bright and curious, is beginning to be exhausted by the system. I’m hearing reports of her not having enough break-time and having her evenings driven by a Microsoft Teams system that micromanages her to click off bits of a deluge of curricula items. For the teachers it is a manageable routine; it lightens their administrative load. Microsoft must be happy. But what about my granddaughter?

What if there were a better way?

What if there is a better way than trying to educate her by moving her along some educational factory floor?

Temple Grandin, the autistic savant, in her book,Visual Thinking, laments the decline of apprenticeships that technical colleges do not replace. Key skills are being lost. Yet, where an apprentice is taken on by a master and learns from a role model surprising advances can be made in learning, skills and mastery. The apprentice asks; the master shows; the apprentice tries; then the apprentice ‘sees’ a different environment.

This is what I call pull learning, where the student pulls; they ask by observing and mimicking, by being curious, and leaning into a skill out of a sense of purpose, autonomy and connectedness with their teacher.

A Better Way Might Also Be an Ancient Way

In fact, it is the ancient way. Of course, this way is too individualised and appears too slow for the policy-makers and education technologists. And yet, we have discarded it at a cost to us all.

There were masters who had apprentices, disciples. Disciples would follow their rabbis, observe, ask questions, and then practise–often before they, the students, felt they were ready. But they would learn, and sometimes quite rapidly.

My friend, Mark Hendley, will be leading a day conference on this later this month, on 26th October, called In the Dust of the Rabbi. Early bird tickets are available until Saturday, 5th. I’m going, so if you come, do say, “Hi!” I know it will blow your mind–if not make you a curious student again.

Your lifelong learner,

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