the twenty first century learning initiative “can the learning species fit into schools?” john...
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“Can the Learning Speciesfit into Schools?”
John Abbott, President, The 21st Century Learning Initiative
The Campaign for Learning Kensington Town Hall 10th June 2005
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we become able to
do something we were never able to do before. Through learning we extend our capacity to
create, to be part of the generative process of life.”
“There is in each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning.”
Peter Senge
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“I learnt most not from those who taught me, but from those who talked with me.”
Saint Augustine
“Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, let me do and I understand.”
Confucius
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
The brain is our ultimate survival mechanism.
To understand the brain is to understand what humans are all about.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
"The knowledge of the world is only to be gained in the world, not in the closet. Books alone will never
teach it to you; but they will help suggest many things to your observation which might otherwise
escape you.”
Lord ChesterfieldFrom a letter to his son
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Learning is increasingly coming to be seen as a logical, sequential, planned activity. But it isn't, is it? Learning often takes us unawares - an insight triggered by some chance happenstance enables
us to make sense of what earlier had seemed incomprehensible.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“You can take man out of the Stone Age, but you can’t take the Stone Age
out of man.”
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
"I've been convinced for some time that the dysfunctionality of the secondary school and the inappropriateness of many of its goals are major causes of youth alienation and all of the social problems which that brings. Modern western society seems to be uniquely incapable of turning the energy and enthusiasm of adolescents to constructive purpose.”
Keir BloomerChief Executive, Clackmannanshire County Council
Scottish Qualifications Agency
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“High schools are obsolete … by that I mean that, even when they are working exactly as designed (they) cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.”
Bill GatesConference of State Governors
February 2005
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
What do we know about our species that might help us to
understand human learning better?
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“What’s going on inside there?”
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Evolution is nothing if not imaginative and, in case of our brains, compensatory. Pushed out into the
world long before their time human babies have to learn from the environment much more than do other animals, whose behaviour is marvelously
conditioned by instincts within the mother's womb.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
To us humans nurture is as significant as nature.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Adolescents, it was theorised, needed more of what had apparently been good for younger children. They needed to be taught more. The more they kicked against us - as very many of us did years ago, and even more still do today - society either
blamed the adolescents for being unreasonable, or the teachers for not being "good enough."
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
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Starting at about the age of twelve there is a sudden proliferation of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, followed by extensive synaptic pruning going on for as much as the next ten years.
The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
“The teenage brain, far from being read-made, undergoes a period of surprisingly complex crucial
development; it is “crazy by design”.
Barbara StrauchThe Primal Teen, 2003
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Adolescence appears to be a deep-seated biological adaptation that makes it essential for the young to go off, either to war, to hunt, to explore,
to colonise, or to make love - in other words to prove themselves, so as to start a life of their own.
As such it is adolescence that drives human development. It is adolescence which forces
individuals in every generation to think beyond their self-imposed limitations, and to exceed their
parent’s aspirations.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Today we are in many ways the same Paleolithic species that left Africa only two thousand
generations ago (for there were no modern humans living outside Africa before that time).
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Generation after generation the young had to move away from the security of the parents’
encampment and campfire, have the nerve to go beyond the next mountain, or cross the next river. This was no task for the faint hearted. Only those who could do this lived to pass on their genes to
the next generation.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
To learn to be a risk taker when young, it appears, gives you a greater sense of personal control when you are older.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
The neurological changes in the young brain as it transforms itself means that adolescents have
evolved to be apprentice-like learners, not pupils sitting at desks and awaiting instruction.
Youngsters who are empowered as adolescents to take charge of their own futures will make better citizens for the future than did so many of their
parents and their grandparents who have suffered from being overschooled but undereducated in
their own generations.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Consider again that hundred-year old disaster in English educational thought, namely that the
education of secondary pupils is more important than those in their primary years.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
It’s time to stop thinking of primary and secondary education as being separate entities, and to start
being skeptical of accepting Key Stages as anything other than administrative constructs. Lump all their
monies together and, if you’ve started to understand the message of this paper, work on the rough and ready formulae that in future class size
should never be more than twice chronological age; classes of ten at the age of five, twelve at the age of
six, twenty at the age of 10.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Treat adolescents as young apprentices. That is the process which is deeply seated within the
human psyche. That’s why the learning species find it so insufferably demeaning as it gets older to be sitting in classrooms for too much of the time.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
Here is the revolution that we need, a revolution that has been waiting to happen for nearly 50
years.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
The need for intelligent, thoughtful, informed and caring mentors able to inspire and enthuse young people within the greater community is
every bit as great as is the need for teachers of the highest quality in the schools. It’s not one or
the other - it’s both. Most of us, including politicians, just don’t understand that.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
The Learning Species will never fit comfortably in schools as we know them. We should not leave
schools to function in their present way any longer. The youngest members of the Learning
Species deserve better from us for, knowing what we now know, we no longer have the moral
authority to carry on doing things the way we did. All of us have to change.
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The Twenty First Century Learning Initiative
The 21st Century Learning Initiative
CONTACT INFORMATION
telephone: + 44 (0) 1225 333 376
fax: + 44 (0) 1225 339 133email: [email protected]: www.21learn.orgmail: Bridge House
15 Argyle StreetBath BA2 4BQEngland, UK