The Soil of Education

I don't know about you but I could spend all day listening to great speakers, something I do quite often - one of my favourite being Sir Ken Robinson. He has such an affinity towards the reformation of education - something very close to my heart. Having just watched one of Ken's latest videos, I share with you the gist of his message. He paints such a clear picture of the plight of modern education using the analogy of Industrial Agriculture.

Before the emergence of IA, natural ecosystems proliferated, unencumbered on the earth - diverse, synergistic and dynamic. The land was the scene of massive natural diversity, a 'collaboration' between the elements; earth, the sun and an assortment of plant and animal species that ensured continuity, well-being and protection, as mother nature intended.

Over the past 50 years or so, mankind has created this monolith, IA, out of the need to feed 7.3 billion people.

Above is a representation of what IA has done and continues to do to our earth - millions of square kilometers are stripped of their natural fauna and flora and go under the plough each season preparing the ground for our self-created dependence on a handful of plant species which have become the staple diet of 21st century man: Maize - the most produced grain in the world. Wheat covers more of the earth than any other crop. Rice, potatoes, cassava, soybeans, sweet potatoes and sorghum make up the list.

All these non-native plants now grow outside the natural protection and synergy of an eco-system and thus depend on unnatural measures to ensure their growth and continuity: chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

IA, too, has narrowed our dependence on animal products to about 5 species - beef, fish, pork, chicken and lamb.

Let us, for a moment, consider Industrial Agriculture as a parallel to our modern system of education - both systems are predicated on the following 3 fundamentals: 1. Competition as opposed to Collaboration, 2. Standardization instead of Diversity, and 3. Conformity instead of Freedom of Choice.

If we returned the land to its pristine state and allow natural mechanisms to re-establish, protect and ultimately flourish, then diversity, choice, difference, variety, range, mixture, depth and assortment would become the norm - factors also acutely lacking in our current model of education.

Let me take you back to your childhood, your 2nd year of life, to be precise. Did your parents sit you down and teach you to form words, string them together into intelligible sentences to form language - No! You learned to speak by yourself - but as a result of the rich variety and depth of the "soil" in which you found yourself immersed, and the uninhibited ebb and flow of words in which you "played" and formed language, in your own unique way, in your own time.

So many educational reformers, thinkers and strategists grapple with and lose sleep over the direction education needs to follow in order to prepare our children for the future, but in reality we have no idea what that future looks like. If we are to learn any lesson from the mistakes we have made in Industrial Agriculture, it lies in creating a rich, deep "soil", filled with the diversity that generates the conditions under which learners flourish; learning is a conversation, a social process of collaboration, a collective journey. Let us steer away from standardization, competitiveness and conformity and allow people's natural curiosity and creativity be their guide, supported by and array of facilitators - teachers, parents, the community, and a system that sustains diversity and co operation over a one-size-fits-all paradigm.

Prepare the soil!