I recently heard a Nobel Prize-winning scientist explain that he found his inspiration these days not in the learned articles of his colleagues but on the pages of science fiction novels. Given the high quality output from my colleagues in the education world, I would not dare to say the same.
Nevertheless the occasional recourse to science fiction has its merits, even in an article such as this one, which is about school improvement.
There was, apparently, a planet of a fleeting millennium or two ago inhabited by a life form not dissimilar to our own. The Rabs were an intelligent, rational, sociable lot who discovered, through a series of experiments, that without a dramatic change in their lifestyle, their planet would be unable to support any form of life within a generation or two. They resisted the temptation to suppress the terrifying data. Calm and rational even in a crisis, they did not believe that they could change the ingrained habits of a comfortable generation simply by publishing the gory details: they knew a strategy was required.
They began by rethinking education. The younger generation would be raised with the attitudes, knowledge, creativity and imagination to save their elders from themselves.
Two moments define the 20th century on Earth. On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was bombed and humanity’s potential to destroy life on Earth was brutally revealed. Almost a quarter of a century later, American astronauts brought back pictures of the Earth from space. Our planet appeared on our television screens: small, fascinating, beautiful . . . and vulnerable. We had known since Galileo that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, but it took those pictures to make our theoretical knowledge a part of our everyday consciousness.
Meanwhile, the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources, which began with the Enlightenment, accelerated barely unchecked well into the 1980s. It is barely a decade since one of Ronald Reagan’s senior advisers, James Watt, argued that the Earth’s precious resources should be used up as rapidly as possible before the imminent second coming of the Messiah.
Since then, fortunately, there has been a shift in attitudes. As companies vie with each other to demonstrate their eco-awareness, we need no reminding that we are all environmentalists now. But green consumerism barely scratches the surface. The old juggernaut still thunders on. If identifying the need for a new agenda has been this generation’s achievement, then putting it into practice and solving the complex problems that will result from doing so are the tasks of the next.
As Professor David Orr argued in his prophetic Schumacher lecture in 1992: “There are reasons to rethink education that have to do with issues of human survival, which will dominate the 21st century. The generation now being educated will have to do what we, the present generation, have been unable to do: stabilise and then reduce the omission of greenhouse gases, which threaten to change the climate perhaps disastrously; protect biological diversity, now declining at an estimated rate of 100 to 200 species per day; reverse the destruction of the rainforests . . . The future generations must learn to use energy and materials with great efficiency . . . they must rebuild the economy in order to eliminate waste and pollution.”
Orr’s argument is hard to fault, though one might prefer to bury one’s head in the sand. While many of those with power and influence have chosen the ostrich option, some schools have demonstrated enough courage and foresight to begin work on Orr’s agenda.
I recently attended an awards evening in one Staffordshire school where there were prizes not just for sport, music and academic progress but also for gardening. An Islington primary school that I know well uses the nearby Regent’s Canal to teach children about ecology and erosion, rubbish and regeneration. Its pupils are stepping beyond “consuming green” to “thinking green”. These are small steps of great significance: the beginnings of a global consciousness, which by the beginning of the next century, will need to pervade the curriculum.
When, five years on from Dearing, the national curriculum is reviewed again, the knowledge and experience of these pioneers will need to take centre stage. The decision of the Department for Education and the Department of the Environment to hold a joint conference on “education about the environment” next month is an excellent start.
This is absolutely not an argument for Luddism or for an end to progress. The new communications technology has awe-inspiring potential. It can help to provide solutions. The danger is that a fascination with technology drives us, as Orr points out, to think only of technological possibilities. The true potential of the miraculous technology will only be unleashed when the same creativity and imagination which have led to its development are applied to some timeless human needs: such as stable families; rich, diverse, safe communities; and peaceful means of reconciling disagreements. This is an educational task in the broadest sense of the term. This is where school improvement comes in.
School improvement is about exam results and performance tables. It is also about TQM, HRM, IIP and countless other acronyms. It is certainly about providing all pupils with high levels of knowledge, skills and understanding and with the self-esteem and power of thought to make use of their learning. But, most importantly, it is about building school communities which contribute to solving the immense problems facing the next generation.
That means thinking beyond the technology and even beyond the notion of schools as learning communities. Schools need to be moral communities, too, in which pupils develop the set of attitudes, including a recognition of our global interdependence, which are necessary for the survival and continued development of life on Earth.
It seems the Rabs were right, since I hear they are still thriving. As David Orr observes, “For the most part we are still educating the young as if there were no planetary emergency.” Bob Dylan put it more crisply still: “The hour is getting late.”
