'It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive but those who adapt the quickest'
Charles Darwin

The most sensible things said during the 'talk fest' was when Dr Peter Sharples said that the knowledge wave should reach down and raise the opportunities for all people not just those who already have the advantages. This was echoed by the secondary student from Gisborne who worried about the spiritual vacuum created by the selfishness of the past decade. What we really need is to create our country as a knowledge or a learning community open to all. Certainly there was no attempt to listen to voices at the recent conference other than the voices of the so-called elites. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Education, along with a raft of other Ministers, were present. It is a shame that they weren't present at the far more enlightening Ninth Thinking Conference held in January which faced up to the need to transform schools; the very organisations that could create future 'knowledge wave citizens'. The 'thinking' conference was a powerful transformational conference for those who attended but it failed to crack the hardened walls of the educational elites in their 'ivory towers', or politicians in their 'beehives' in Wellington. (Visit www.breakthroughs.co.nz)

The Prime Minster, quite rightly, is keen to sponsor the creative arts as an attempt to develop a cultural identity for our country. Unfortunately the PM hasn't as yet seen the obvious link to re-invent schools as organisations dedicated to developing the gifts and talents of all students. Our schools, particularly at the Secondary level, with their genesis in the idealisation of a factory mentality from an earlier industrials age, have changed little since the time mass education was the vision for the times. Mass education for many students has become a mass nightmare as our growing failure rate indicates.

Pilot school to develop student talents - the beginnings of a true knowledge wave!

Wouldn't it be courageous if the Government were to establish in all major centres new Learning Communities dedicated to the realisation of student's talents based on the philosophy of the multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner? These 'pilot' schools could be dedicated to uncovering and extending the natural talents of all adolescent students who chose to enrol. Traditional secondary schools could continue as a traditional conservative alternative.

One point of view that really impressed from the Knowledge Wave Conference was that of Peter Biggs from Creative New Zealand. He said education is about ideas, about the humanities, the arts, creativity and if reconceptualized could transform our country. He believes we first have to determine what we value as a nation and what talents we want to develop. Peter Biggs feels we need a new consciousness, that we need to develop new myths and develop new heroes of the imagination- heroes that combine the head, the hand, the mind, and most of all the spirit. He believes, as we do, in the need for a cultural transformation. This is a vision we all could align ourselves behind as a nation. We are heading into an 'age of ideas' not knowledge - we already are overloaded with information. What we require from our leaders is wisdom and inspiration to develop passionate talented people (not dour 'play it safe' conformists) if we are to develop as creative country. Tipene O'Regan continued this theme saying, ' we need educated people with imagination and flair in all areas, people with breath of imagination to reach for distant horizons'

Instead we have an education system based on assumptions more akin to the industrial dinosaurs. Schooling is no longer synonymous with education for students turned off from learning currently leaving with no qualifications. More of the same is no longer an intelligent response!

'Charlie Brown' asked Lucy, ' do you think it is worth worrying about the future?' Charlie replies. 'No, I am hoping that yesterday will get better'

The Knowledge Wave Conference didn't reach down to consider what real changes are required in our education system to prepare students to thrive in an age of uncertainty, unpredictability and for the innovative greater opportunity. That the current school structures were planned to produce citizens for the previous Industrial Age seemed to be totally overlooked. While modern industrial complexes are being transformed into 'learning organisations' secondary schools still reflect the failing factory 'top down control mentality'. Bells, piecework, timetables, routines, students passed along assembly lines in forty-minute periods, all reminiscence of time and management of the early factories.

'So far no country has the education system which the Knowledge Society needs'...'learning will permeate the entire society.'
Peter Drucker

New Visions, New Dreams, New Horizons - New Schools.

'Talk about things you want to do
You've got to have a dream
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true'
Oscar Hammerstein in 'South Pacific'

As the Ninth Thinking Conference illustrated we now know enough about how students learn that no one need fail but to do we have to change our own minds first. Humans are born predisposed to learn and continually adapt to their environments. Why is it then are so there so many students turned away from learning? The problems lie in the hidden assumptions that underpin our views of schooling and learning. These are the true barriers to learning. Instead of focussing on curriculums (the 'what' of learning) we need to focus on the structures of the schools themselves. As Dr Deming, the business guru of quality management, said, 'good people wrong system'.

'Landing on the moon and beating gravity is difficult enough but sometimes the paperwork can be overwhelming'
Verner Von Braun

What exactly are the 'messages' our current secondary schools are teaching students? That learning is individualised and competitive while the 21stC will require people who can work in teams and share their individual talents. That subjectivity and feelings are irrelevant when it is personal skills that they will need if they are to be able to make a full contribution to the future. That learning is divorced from the community when they need to see how their learning fits into the wider scheme of things. That learning is done in age 'ghettos' when they will need to work along side others of all ages. That learning is learned by listening to a teacher, or from reading a text, rather than in an apprenticeship relationship with those who have experiences to share. That knowledge is prescribed and dispassionate when students need to mix with adults who have a passion for their craft. That knowledge is presented as disparate isolated subjects when the learning they will have to face up in the future will contextual and be naturally integrated. Most of all that current schools present knowledge as objectives to be 'achieved' or 'ticked off' rather than something to fulfil a passion to know or a talent to develop. Is it no wonder then that so many students are apathetic towards learning? School for many students has become a game to play until life begins. Too often all they learn is to play safe! We need to invent a new game.

'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them'
Albert Einstein

We need to replace the metaphor of the school as a factory with the school as a learning community.

'The answer is not to increase the amount of education, but to educate people differently'. Ken Robertson 'Our Future Must be Different'
London Times July16 1999

An apprenticeship model of learning - an old idea revisited.

All learning is constructed in each student's mind. Learning is a dynamic relationship between the individual and the environment with the brain continually self-adjusting and reshaping itself. So that learning is not left to chance the learner requires a partnership with a teacher or master. The closest way to describe this process of learning is called an apprenticeship. 'Master' teachers 'scaffold' help as required, gradually 'fading' and 'weaning' students to take full responsibility for their own learning. This is the 'art and craft' of teaching that is too easily lost in the factory mentality of big schools. 'Master' teachers make the learning processes explicit and allow skills to build up bit by bit. Modern constructivist learning and brain research backs up this approach. The work of Lev Vygotsky comes to mind: 'What a student can learn with help today she can do for herself tomorrow' An apprenticeship approach is also aligned with learning in indigenous cultures, before 'modern mass schools' were developed.

'in all societies ...adolescents have learnt to become adults by observing, imitating and interacting with grown ups around them. The self is shaped and honed by feedback.'
Mihaly Csikszenrmihaly

We need to work smarter not just harder. We need to go beyond the 'basics' as important as they are and focus on helping students learn 'how to learn' and how to tap the intrinsic motivation latent in all students gifts and talents. School based on uncovering talent rather than imparting knowledge may be a real answer.

Beyond the 'Stocktake'- the courage to confront our future!

Our current curriculums are a product of the 'right wing ' efficiency, accountability, competition, choice and control ideology of the 1990s. Self-management gave an illusion of democracy and local control. There is a growing trend, under the new government, to foster a sense of community and local responsibility. Schools also need a greater community ownership of their schools within a revised government guiding framework. The wider community also should have a voice in the provision of education - perhaps we need a modern version of an education board to encourage greater collaboration and continuity? Currently the larger community input into school is non existent. Schools exist almost as isolated enclaves more focussed on centralised compliance demands than the needs of their own wider community. There is a need to develop a true partnership between parents, local communities and teachers if schools are to become the key to the re-invention of a sense of community in our self centred society and a place dedicated to realising the talents of all students. Our 'atomised' school system needs to develop into a more collaborative network. Currently school success relies almost entirely on having a dynamic principal and a supportive BOT. This is far to hit and miss. As well we have a closed system that feels no responsibility outside each individual school and as a result students are falling through the cracks, the responsibility of no one in particular.

An area that has not been faced up to is the lack of consistency between level of schooling and the cost to student learning when they transfer form one level to another - many students it seems really never recover from the shock! Our current confused and complicated curriculums statements fail to ensure a safe transition. One wonders if anybody really cares about this systems failure problem? In the UK 40% of students fail to make academic progress the first year of secondary education. In NZ 73% of all suspensions occur between the ages of 13 to 15. Absentee rates double or triple from year 8 to 10. Is the Ministry concerned with the reasons for these problems? Do we need as suggested new pilot schools to explore new avenues.

'The ultimate purpose of learning is to liberate the goodness and genius of all children'
Stephanie Pace Marshall

New Visions from Queensland - a new 'learning wave' is being set in motion!

'What we need is 'out of the box' thinking to unify new ideas how brains work and to encourage evolutionary dispositions.' 'The Unfinished Revolution'.
Abbott and Ryan ascd Pub 2001

The Ministry, with it's timid Curriculum Stocktake', is trying to resuscitate a increasingly sick and ailing Curriculum Framework, more akin to 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic', and in the process wasting valuable time and resources. We need to move the debate past the traditional goals of literacy and numeracy - they alone will never be enough. There is no point in trying to alter yesterday's blunders tomorrow. What we need are new insights about how to ensure all students learn and to develop the talents of all our students. Meanwhile across the Tasman the Queensland Ministry of Education is striking out in new and dramatic directions - making their own waves!

Do your own 'surfing' to catch the new 'knowledge wave!

Use the 'google' Internet search machine and access the writings of Alan Luke if you want to be up with some real exciting developments. Alan Luke is the Assistant Director of the Queensland Education Ministry and, unlike our current ex Treasury Education Secretary, an educationalist. Luke's role is to develop a 'futures model' of education rather than 'stocktaking' their own version of the 1990s technocratic Curriculum Statements. Queensland are the only state to make such a wholesale fundamental review and are focusing on the future skills students will need if they are to catch the 'knowledge wave'. Currently they are setting up 'lighthouse' trial/pilot schools and their scheme is to be fully realised by 2010. This is one 'learning wave' we could also easily catch!

Queensland has recognised that their current curriculums have created 'change fatigue' and that their teachers were losing their 'passion for teaching'- they needed to 'think out of the box'. Queenland have recognised that their current curriculums (similar to our own) have no real educational philosophy underpinning them and that a lot of their dedicated teachers appeared to be 'treading water', 'limping along' with no philosophy and no shared vision. All this will sound familiar to teachers in NZ.

Queensland wants a system that allows school to differentiate themselves - a variety of schools of excellence. They want community accountability based on community compacts. Most of all they want place the focus back onto realistic curriculum, teaching and learning and authentic assessment. To simply 'stocktake' their curriculums, as we are timidly doing in NZ is no longer an option.

'To simply 'stocktake' current curriculums '...would be a panel beaters delight; it's akin to sticking a 1980s Holden engine in a 1990s Falcon body, with a mid 1970s Nissan chassis.'
Alan Luke

Queensland are to focus on:

1. The 'New Basics' - a range of traditional and future oriented attributes, tools/skills for students be able to navigate their own futures and to become active citizens
2. The provision of 'Rich Tasks'- substantive rigorous tasks to inspire learning. These are not necessarily aligned with present Learning Areas. Each class level would introduce 6/7 such integrated experiences a year. The intention is to do fewer things well - a less is more philosophy.
3. Assessment to be based on clear performance criteria illustrating clearly what students can demonstrate they can do. Assessment is to seen as feedback to improve learning, teaching and to inform parents and the wider community of student progress and school success.
4. Powerful pedagogy. To assist teachers the focus is returned to teaching and learning by encouraging teachers to utilise repertoire of classroom teaching strategies.

The officials at the Ministry of Education know all about Alan Luke and the developments in Queensland. His ideas are being recognised in NZ but not the idea of sidelining the outdated curriculums. Unfortunately it seems we are too tied to the technocratic NZCEA and the current NZCF Curriculum Statements, artefacts of the 1990s, to be so courageous. Pilot school would be a start.

Final thoughts - forget catching the 'knowledge wave' - lets make our own waves!

Perhaps there is no point In trying to catch up with an elusive 'knowledge wave', rather what we need to do is to begin by making our own 'new waves' starting with our very youngest students. At the Catching the Knowledge Wave Conference Professor Gluckman (NZ) urged us to support innovation and invest in the talents of all New Zealanders. Dr Yuan Lee, PM of Thailand, advocated an ' education system which fosters non- conformity, creativity and a willingness to tolerate failure.' He believes that Einstein and Edison would not have done well in current Asian schools - we aren't sure they would do so well in NZ schools either, not unless there is a real transformation. As Lesley Max (NZ) pointed out, 'the building blocks for any knowledge wave are established in the first five years of life.' Mike Hoskings summed up a TV One debate on the conference saying, 'we don't seem to be educating our students the right way?' It is as simple and difficult as that!

'The principal goal of education is to create men and woman who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.'
Jean Piaget

It seems we do have some of the answers of how to create our own 'knowledge wave' but do we have the wit, imagination, leadership and courage to do so. Not so far.

Bruce Hammonds
Wayne Morris

'There are no problems only solutions'
John Lennon

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