The problem

There would be very few educators who haven’t heard of the late Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken became a worldwide phenomenon with his 2006 TED Talk (viewed more than 76 million times), “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”??

Everyone is born with a creative mindset. Think back to when your child, or one you knew, was a toddler. Their imagination was vast. They could spend hours with a cardboard box, playing endless games with an imaginary friend.

But the moment that child walked into school that beautiful mind, and all the dispositions necessary for creative, innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, started to be conditioned out of them. By necessity, that child quickly learned that they had to conform to the standardised system and produce what their teacher asked of them if they were going to see success (an “A”).

This wasn’t an issue during the industrial age when we needed workers for production lines in factories, but it causes massive problems now, with the advent of the AI era.

We have entered a time like none other. Technological advances driven by Moore’s Law mean that we are living in an “Age of Accelerations” Not only is the world changing, but it is doing so at an increasing rate.

With automation and AI, jobs we know of today are being massively transformed if they continue to exist at all.

[With the introduction of AI] all major professions are being impacted, from the music industry to policing, from education to social care. Over the next decade work and life in general will be radically transformed on a scale that is hard to imagine today. How we prepare the next generation for that radically transformed future is, I think, one of the most important questions that educators need to address today. Professor Nigel Crook, professor of AI, Oxford-Brookes University

We know AI could lead to the end of the teacher. To survive, teachers will have to move from pedagogy, in terms of lectures, to actually being mentors, helping students on their lifelong learning journey. Professor Sohail Inayatullah

The new jobs that are emerging need high levels of emotional intelligence and the ability to think creatively; the things AI cannot replicate and never will.

Education is no longer about teaching students something, but about helping them building a reliable compass in their tools to navigate this world with confidence. Success in education today is about building curiosity and opening minds. Andreas Schleicher OCED

Frustratingly, with the age of accelerations upon us, politicians and governments continue to use education as a political commodity. Lamenting a 'failing system', they persist in endless strategies (more money, back-to-basics, standardised testing, classroom discipline focuses, etc.) of trying to fix a model of delivery that is no longer fit for purpose, rather than seeing the problem as an opportunity to rethink how we do school and properly prepare young people for a different future.

Coupled with this 'big, hairy, audacious problem', you have the added issue of teacher burnout and teacher shortage. Teachers have become so overloaded with administrative compliance that they don't have the time to effectively plan for learning and grow their capacity as a teacher. The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) and tracking learner adjustments is a huge one. The overload of assessment and the pressures of standardised testing performance is another significant burden. Teachers would also love to collaboratively plan, but when is there ever the time?

The resultant effect of these big problems is a decline in academic performance and a rise in student behavioural issues.

Why?

Because people are becoming increasingly disengaged from learning and school. It is boring. They can't see the relevance. They can see better ways of learning without having to sit through another dull lesson.

Coupled with the perceived irrelevance of school, young people are becoming more and more concerned about their future aspirations and the disappearance of opportunities, like owning a home, that their parents and grandparents enjoyed.

A big problem?

So what to do about it?

Imagine if... there is another way.

Imagine if... you could inspire young people, infuse life and vibrancy into their learning, and enable them to surpass creativity.

Imagine if... you could take learning beyond.