Education What is it good for

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i was once introduced to a maasai ranger

at the entrance to nairobi national park

why

because i was also a ranger but i was

based in scotland

he looked at me and he shook his head

how could i possibly be a ranger

but i was but i didn’t have his rifle

for poachers

but i did once have to stop four men on

a sunday morning killing crows in my

park

being a ranger made me change my life

i changed my thinking about education

and learning and that changed my life

i had been good at education after all

i’d been in it 18 years

i’d been to school obviously

phd but it was while i was training to

be a ranger that i began to reassess

what i thought learning was

one of the things that we had to do in

our range of training was do a module

on how to work with small children

primary aged children in the outdoors

so my friend elsa and i designed an

activity

and then we meant to meet our young boys

it turned out to be

uh we called them the gang of six in

their primary school the day before

and we had a lovely talk with them they

were very sweet and then the last

question was

miss will we be abseiling tomorrow

well our heart sank there was no

rock face there was not even a boulder

and also we didn’t know how to abseil

so elsewhat and i went back and

redesigned the program because we knew

we needed to do something

much more adventurous and challenging

for these boys

their next day came and they they turned

up and

we had done a rope blindfold trail for

them

and the rope was strung between trees

and

they started this rope walk was really

quite challenging

they had to crawl underneath fallen tree

stumps

through stinging nettle patches through

mud

through brush until they got to the end

of the rope

we then took the rope away took their

blindfolds off

and said right boys you now have to go

and find that

route back that trail using your other

senses

and they did with a bit of help so we

said to them okay

this means that now you are initiated

into

being wildlife and woodland ranges

and that means you get to wear this

elastic band around your head

and here’s a pigeon feather as well

there are lots of pigeons in the woods

they were thrilled on the walk back to

the center

they were singing songs that they

thought were appropriate to what we had

just been doing

as we got to the center one of them said

miss could we get some

paper and pencils and i said but the

program’s over

and they said no we just want to write

it down so for 45 minutes they wrote

they drew

one boy wrote a poem the next day

the headmaster turned up to give us

feedback on what had happened

and he looked at ellsworth and i and he

said are you

two trained teachers and we said no

and he said well i’ll give you a job

tomorrow and we looked at him

and he said you don’t know who those

boys were do you

your gang of six and we said no

he said well they are the worst boys in

my school there are

always in my office um they truant they

misbehave in class

everything you can think of that they do

and the teachers don’t know how to

control them

well this had not been el smith and i

that our experience

and then there’s ewan ewen who was small

for his age he was 10

came with his entire class to the park

and within minutes ewan was leading the

program

because it turned out that ewan

knew that park inside out it was his

playground

he knew where the deer slept he knew

where the badgers went for their evening

drinks

he knew all the tracks and trails and

signs of wildlife

and everything that happened in

different seasons so

29 of his classmates his teacher and i

followed him

his teacher turned to me and said he’s

not like this in school

and i said well why not and she said

well he doesn’t participate i can’t get

a peep out of him

and i’m really worried about his

academic ability

it was years later that i came across

the theory of multiple intelligences by

howard gardner and it turns out that

euan probably

had the multiple intelligence of

naturalist the same as charles darwin

but for me he had two other skills

he had shown great leadership we

followed him

and he was a great communicator we were

spellbound by his stories

and then there was shona shona was six

delightful

and it was a summer afternoon summer

camp and we’d spent a lovely hour

crawling through the meadow finding

all sorts of animal trails and and

different plants

and at the end of that we went back to

the center and she decided that what she

wanted to do

was draw a map of a meadow

as though she was a bird flying over the

meadow

she could do most things but didn’t know

what a tree looked like so i helped her

my mum was visiting and my mom was a

head teacher of a first school

and she turned to me and said um she’s

not supposed to be able to do that anne

and i said why not she said well she’s

six at six they are not supposed to have

yet the concept of being able to see the

world from a bird’s eye view

and understanding what that looks like

on a map

well this got me thinking we’d had

these experiences and maybe the models

and the assumptions that we were making

about

children and young people and how they

learn

maybe they weren’t always correct in

certain situations

and what began for me was a lifelong

journey and exploration of learning

the brain and how to do the best

learning

i began traveling the world and and when

you travel the world the best thing you

can get as a job is a teacher especially

a maths teacher

um but i was also teaching geography

and one of the things that i’d obviously

been doing as a ranger had been learning

in the environment and we had also been

doing learning

about the environment but i had been

doing that in a way

that meant games and fun and all sorts

of great activities but in

classrooms i was going to have to do

learning through

and that meant creating the atmosphere

that helped the best learning to happen

but i began to also then to do this i

had to explore some of those models and

assumptions that people made

and my favorite one which seems to be

all too prevalent

maybe even today is the empty brain

model

and it goes like this four five six year

old

goes to school for the first time

teacher unzips their skull

opens it up and for the rest of their

school career

information and all sorts of stuff gets

poured in

and at the end of their career it gets

closed up and apparently

they’re off ready for the world

i didn’t quite believe this

and it turns out that neuroscientists

don’t really believe this either

so recently neural scientists have begun

to realize that actually we have been

assuming

that our brains have evolved to think

and it turns out that’s not true our

brains have evolved

to predict and tell our bodies

what to do it’s a survival thing

so if you get some information in

your brain predicts what to do tells

your body how to do that

if another bit of information comes in

and

it’s really not right with your

prediction your brain has two choices

one is it can just carry on with the

action rightly or wrongly

or it can take that information in and

reassess

and decide what to do with that new

information and maybe make a new

prediction and new actions

and that’s called learning but in order

to do that

you have to have something in your brain

that helps you

do the prediction you need experiences

you need knowledge you need data that is

going to tell you

what to do so you cannot be

empty-brained even if you make the wrong

choices

i began to take this learning that i’d

been doing

about learning and what i began to do

was actually teach teachers

and actually sometimes rangers and i was

mostly teaching

environmental education and this was in

canada

but i began to ask myself a question is

this it

is this all we have to do is good

teaching practice all there is

and then i came across education for

sustainability

or as i like to call it learning for

sustainability which means

learning for a sustainable and just

future

and it means how do we build resilience

in our young people

how do we help them understand all the

changes that are going to come

and how do we help them with what’s an

uncertain future

and we do this by doing a whole range of

things and

in particular we can do things like

critical thinking

you know asking the sorts of questions

like

is it always been that way who decides

how that happens

have they given you all the information

what have they left out

or what’s called systems thinking but it

helps people put together the whole

picture

of something so you might have some

information but how does that

fit with the natural and the human

systems

that we’re all part of or how do you

build

a sense of agency that young people feel

that they can do

something well we were doing it through

action learning

and it proved most effective by we i

meant wwf uk

because by that point i was working for

them

and wwf uk at that time were actually

held up as

some of the experts in learning for

sustainability

and it’s because of this that the

department of education invited me in to

tell them

all about education for sustainability

they were about to do their own

sustainable development action plan and

they wanted to know

how it fitted with teaching and learning

so i explained they got it

and then they asked so this thing anne

socially critical thinking

does that mean a student could question

the governance the government’s economic

model

i was shocked i said well yes i mean we

all can it’s democracy

and they said no no no we can’t do it

deliberately

and to this day they don’t do education

for sustainability

but i was on my own journey i was

working out how to do

learning for a just and sustainable

future and i began a charity 13 years

ago called seed

and we developed a lot of programs but

just recently we started to ask

ourselves again

some of these assumptions that we might

have been making

how are young children and young people

learning

what do they already know what do they

want to know

and what do they worry about so we began

the youth

listening project and over two years

we had 2 000 young people answer our

survey actually then the adults wanted

to do it as well

so we had 600 adults teachers educators

and the results were astounding when we

asked the young people where do you

learn about sustainability or the big

global issues

it turned out that they learn as much in

school as they learn

outside of school and they learn it

through

the internet they learn it through

social media tv

um david ashmore gets mentioned a lot

they learn all over

friends family they do their own

research

and then we ask them what do you want to

learn in school

and the majority of them said we want to

learn how to live sustainably

when we asked the same question of the

adults they said

oh the children need to learn about

climate change

just recently i’ve been in conversation

with caroline hickman

and she’s a psychotherapist and a

researcher at bath spa

university and like many of us she’s

starting to have conversations with

young people

and she’s been interviewing climate

change

activists young people who are activists

in climate change

and they’ve said to her yes we want to

learn a bit about climate change but

actually we want to learn how to build a

boat

because if sea level rises we might need

that

we want to learn how to grow food we

want to learn

how to help other people make change we

want to learn

how to speak to a politician

and we want to learn how to teach and

talk to our parents because we don’t

think they get it

so what can we do it doesn’t matter if

you’re a parent a grandparent an aunt or

an uncle or a teacher

you can have those important

conversations with young people

so breakfast mum

dad why do i have to go to school

now maybe you’ve been answering it’s the

law the government says so

i need to go to work but maybe you could

have a conversation about

the purpose of education what do people

think it is are there different ideas

about what it is

maybe you could say what education did

for you

and what it didn’t do for you

dinner mom dad why do i have to learn

this stuff

again you could say it’s in the national

curriculum or you could say

it’s in your test on friday or you could

have a conversation

about how that stuff fits with a bigger

picture

because as an adult you know that bigger

picture

and you might be able to help them with

that you might be able to draw

a mind map for example and a

conversation you are less likely to have

with them because we know

young people are worried about the

future of the planet and their own

future

but it could be a conversation you could

start

so instead of thinking about a negative

future can you think

together about an alternative preferable

future

what would be in it how would things

work how would they be connected

maybe you can draw that and then ask

yourselves what are the steps

that we need to take us to that point

to that preferable future what can you

do

what can i do what can we all do what

can the government do

to take those steps

and you are probably already taking

actions you’re probably recycling you

might be turning off lights

saving water but how about doing

something a little bit more challenging

as a family uh try it see if it works

have another go if it doesn’t work learn

from it

keep going because after all they say

that it takes a village to raise a child

and we need to be part of that village

so the purpose of education has to be

surely

that it’s about learning to care for

oneself

care for others near and far and to care

for the environment

that sustains us and is part of

us the world is changing

we need young people to be ready for

their future

and to shape it

after all that’s what education is good

for

thank you

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you