Notes From the Road: Schools Around the World.

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We mere mortal “practitioners” – as we are referred to by educational theorists in their various incarnations – are often collectively scratching our heads as we almost invariably are left dumbfounded by the blatant disconnect between what educational gurus, speakers, and policymakers proclaim at conferences and what is really going on at schools.?

In the last few years, I have been very lucky to be able to visit schools in various parts of the world, from Finland to Kenya, from Singapore to almost every country in Latin America and, in the process, exchanged with and learned from hundreds of educators who, with both feet on the ground, are dealing with the challenging and yet hopeful present of real schools with real students. Here are a few notes from those travels, with gratitude and a sense of perspective.?

Good teachers make the difference. Perhaps the most important thing educational leaders can do is get out of the way of teachers and provide them with resources and adequate working conditions. No theory or innovation is better than a good teacher, who intuitively subsumes, in ways that are truly ineffable, any educational fashion of the day, trends or fancy keywords that are rendered moot in the face of great teachers who can connect with and inspire their students.

Teaching as an aspirational profession. The most successful countries in the world, like Finland or Singapore, have managed to make the teaching profession desirable and attractive for young people. Not just in terms of salary and benefits, which are, of course, essential for that goal, but also in how they have managed to elevate the social status of teachers, who are appreciated and recognized. The opposite is also, sadly, true: countries whose education systems are broken are the ones where teachers are poorly paid, lack resources, and are vastly underappreciated socially.?

The deficit model is morally unacceptable. In every country that I have visited, I have heard educators, either in loud proclamations or in whispered conversations, decisively reject the deficit model whereby schools use various assessment instruments to punish, through either grades or other built-in measures, student failure. Standardized and even international systems of examinations need to be completely overhauled in favor of what we all accept but fail to implement: formative assessment that enriches learning. Sir Ken Robinson sadly passed away before he could view how his quest for preserving students' self-esteem from irreparable damage by schools could actually make an impact, despite his incomparable eloquence.?

Students’ wellbeing is the new excellence. I have been in quite a few instances in which school leaders from some of the countries that are regarded as leading examples of good practice present a summary of their educational philosophy, and they all emphasize wellbeing as the core tenet of their schooling. Yes, it is the kind of thing that we all say, but when, in places like Denmark, Finland, or Singapore, educators start off their presentations by emphasizing that student wellbeing is the cornerstone of any learning, you know that it is not just paying lip service to a fashionable idea, like it sometimes happens in many of our countries.?

Measurements are not God. Our very human compulsion to measure and make a complex and dynamic reality fit into neat boxes has taken us to glorify and treat standardized measurements as the absolute truth. Small variations in PISA results, well within the statistical error margin of evaluations that differ for each cycle, are treated as looming catastrophes. Cultural differences are not accounted for, as, for example, when students in many countries with an individualistic culture do not make their best efforts for no-stakes testing, or when students in places like Singapore or Japan self-assess some of the measurements and hold themselves to higher standards than the rest of the world, thus lowering their scores in some of the “soft” variables. At best, even PISA is just a view from 30,000 feet, signaling real issues but not to the point where national systems can be ranked with meticulous rigor.?

Schools are victims of their success. In my opinion, the greatest barrier to change is success. Many of the rags-to-riches stories of schools who have successfully innovated have stemmed from difficult situations that forced them to innovate. Some of the best-resourced schools in the world are still preparing students for a world that does not exist anymore, and are subjecting students to inordinate amounts of pressure for the sake of obtaining a competitive advantage for workplace demands that are outdated and illusory. It is very hard to change when parents’ collective expectations are still rooted in what used to be and not even in the present.?

Trust and autonomy are the trademarks of virtuous states. Finland, Denmark, and Singapore are three countries where I was able to witness firsthand how minimal governmental intrusion and very low levels of bureaucracy bespeak an inherent trust in schools and school leaders, thus fostering innovation, as well as not burdening principals with unnecessary compliance instruments which only serve to distract them from their primary roles. Conversely, systems that are inherently mistrustful and that implement tedious webs of control are burning out teachers and principals who cannot deal with systemic incoherence and regulations that quite often are absurd. In education, context is paramount, and teachers and principals know best what works in their own schools.?

Technology – and AI – are having minimum impact. Once more, history repeats itself and schools worldwide are choosing blissful ignorance rather than tackle the challenge of preparing our students for a world that has been radically transformed by technology and most recently by the sudden irruption of AI. To make matters worse, a baffling fundamentalist push to ban cell phones from schools is exacerbating families’ fears regarding the use of technology for learning, thus further inhibiting what could be a true revolution in learning, spurred by the opportunities that technology and AI offer for greater personalization and engagement. Even in the world’s innovation hotbed, Silicon Valley, schools are largely not adopting AI for a renewed learning landscape, and the use of technology is mostly conventional.?

Resources are not decisive, but working conditions are. It may be argued that good schools can exist everywhere, but heroic efforts on the part of teachers who defy all odds to strive to provide a better future for their students in underprivileged conditions are not sustainable. Well-resourced public schools, and, especially, adequate working conditions for teachers, are the foundations for successful systems.?

Innovation is not for the faint of heart. When courageous educators take a leap of faith and create schools that make true on the basic principles of the future of learning, amidst systems that do not embrace that vision of the future, they find that, despite there being almost universal consensus as to those tenets, growth and sustainability are hard to come by. Prospective families may like what they see and even recognize these laudable efforts, but they find it hard to personally commit, blocked by a kind of post-traumatic gut feeling that still correlates high-quality education with the choreography of traditional learning.?

Schools are schools everywhere, and the joy of learning is universal. Perhaps the most important lesson from my travels is that, regardless of conditions, constraints, and difficulties, irrespective of educational systems’ shortsightedness and government bureaucracies, the magic of learning still transcends. Mere moments after crossing the threshold of a school building one can immediately perceive whether there is joyful learning at the school, and no theory or technological innovation can trump the unique joy that a group of committed and loving educators can create in a school, from the dusty classrooms in disadvantaged communities to the glittering new designs in the most affluent neighborhoods.?

This is, by no means, an attempt at generalizing any of these observations as descriptors of schools worldwide, but rather, as mentioned, field notes from my travels around the world, as homage to many wonderful educators who so generously have opened up the doors of their classrooms to share their passion. I am grateful beyond words and inspired by their love and commitment to keep on trying to change education, as in the quote attributed to various famous characters, “Not knowing that it was impossible, they went and did it.”