Educating for the Twenty-First Century: Seven Global Challenges [1 ed.] 9789004381032, 9789004381025

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Educating for the Twenty-First Century: Seven Global Changes

IBE on Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment Series Editor Mmantsetsa Marope (IBE UNESCO, Switzerland) Managing Editor Simona Popa (IBE UNESCO, Switzerland) Editorial Board Manzoor Ahmed (BRAC University, Bangladesh) Ivor Goodson (University of Brighton, UK) Silvina Gvirtz (Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina) Hugh McLean (Open Society Foundations, UK) Natasha Ridge (Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, UAE) -RHO6DPR൵Stanford University, USA) Yusuf Sayed (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa) Nelly Stromquist (University of Maryland, USA) Felisa Tibbitts (Teachers College, Columbia University, USA) N. V. Varghese (National University of Educational Planning and Administration, India) ඏඈඅඎආൾ 3

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ibe

Educating for the Twenty-First Century Seven Global Challenges By

Conrad Hughes

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All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do QRWQHFHVVDULO\UHÀHFWWKHYLHZVRI,%(81(6&2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hughes, Conrad, author. 7LWOH(GXFDWLQJIRUWKHWZHQW\¿UVWFHQWXU\VHYHQJOREDOFKDOOHQJHV%\ Conrad Hughes. 'HVFULSWLRQ/HLGHQ7KH1HWKHUODQGV%RVWRQ%ULOO6HQVH>@_6HULHV ,%(RQFXUULFXOXPOHDUQLQJDQGDVVHVVPHQWYROXPH ,GHQWL¿HUV/&&1SULQW _/&&1HERRN _,6%1 (ERRN _,6%1KDUGEDFNDONSDSHU _,6%1 SENDONSDSHU 6XEMHFWV/&6+(GXFDWLRQ$LPVDQGREMHFWLYHV_(GXFDWLRQDQG JOREDOL]DWLRQ_(GXFDWLRQ3KLORVRSK\_3RVWPRGHUQLVPDQGHGXFDWLRQ &ODVVL¿FDWLRQ/&&/%HERRN _/&&/%+SULQW _''& GF /&UHFRUGDYDLODEOHDWKWWSVOFFQORFJRY ,6%1SDSHUEDFN ,6%1KDUGEDFN ,6%1HERRN &RS\ULJKWMRLQWO\E\,%(81(6&2DQG.RQLQNOLMNH%ULOO19/HLGHQ The Netherlands. .RQLQNOLMNH%ULOO19LQFRUSRUDWHVWKHLPSULQWV%ULOO%ULOO+HV 'H*UDDI %ULOO1LMKR൵%ULOO5RGRSL%ULOO6HQVHDQG+RWHL3XEOLVKLQJ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by .RQLQNOLMNH%ULOO19SURYLGHGWKDWWKHDSSURSULDWHIHHVDUHSDLGGLUHFWO\WR7KH &RS\ULJKW&OHDUDQFH&HQWHU5RVHZRRG'ULYH6XLWH'DQYHUV0$ 86$Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To my father, Professor Geoffrey Ian Hughes, and my mother, the late Dr. Jean Marquard

CONTENTS

Foreword Mmantsetsa Marope

ix

Introduction

xi

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0HDQLQJRI³6LQJXODULW\´ &DQ+XPDQ,QWHOOLJHQFHE\6LPXODWHG" &DQ&RPSXWHUV7DNHRQD/LIHRI7KHLU2ZQ" Points Made Thus Far Educational Responses (WKLFDO&RQVHTXHQWLDO67(0 ,QWHJUDWHG7HFKQRORJ\ 3RVW6LQJXODULW\+LJKHU2UGHU7KLQNLQJ &RQFOXVLRQ &KDSWHU7HUURULVP

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2QZDUGV :KDW,V,W7KDW'ULYHV3HRSOHWR%HFRPH7HUURULVWVDQG+RZ&DQ (GXFDWLRQ3UHYHQWRU5HGXFH,W" How Should the Education We Design for Young People Present the 3KHQRPHQRQRI7HUURULVP+LVWRULFDOO\3ROLWLFDOO\DQG3KLORVRSKLFDOO\" How Do Schools Prepare Young People Psychologically and Spiritually IRUD:RUOGLQ:KLFK7HUURULVP([LVWV" &RQFOXVLRQ vii

    

CONTENTS

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viii

                                 

FOREWORD

A considerable number of factors place unprecedented pressure on education and learning systems to change swiftly and profoundly. These include rapid advances in communications and information technology; growing urbanization; concerns for environmental sustainability; shifts in geopolitics, demographic patterns and labour markets; increasing unemployment, especially of young people; new waves of violent extremism; and the growing divide between rich and poor. The emergence of the fourth industrial revolution is fully acknowledged as a formidable accelerant of change and complexity in the twenty-first century, and as KDYLQJVLJQLILFDQWLPSOLFDWLRQVIRUHGXFDWLRQ,QGXVWU\LVSUHVVXULQJOHDUQHUVWR develop a wider range of multifaceted, multidisciplinary, complex, and integrated competences, for which many education and learning systems are unprepared. The rapid pace of change in the twenty-first century amplifies the pertinence of education and learning systems as foundations and key sources of lifelong learning and human resilience, and, by unleashing the potential of the human mind, as foundations and key sources of development. While policies that address the role of education in development are commonplace, specific and concrete instruments for enacting these policies remain both scarce and LQHIIHFWLYH,QWRGD\¶VZRUOGWKHSHUFHSWLRQRIHGXFDWLRQ¶VKHLJKWHQHGUROHLQKXPDQ and societal development coexists with heightened frustration about the irrelevance of educational practices to modern challenges and opportunities. Evidence for this IUXVWUDWLRQLQFOXGHV\RXQJJUDGXDWHV¶IXQFWLRQDOLOOLWHUDF\WKHLUODFNRIGLJLWDOVNLOOV required by their labour markets, their alienation from their cultures, and so on. 7KH,QWHUQDWLRQDO%XUHDXRI(GXFDWLRQ,%( LVGHHSO\LQYROYHGZLWKWKHVHLVVXHV 7KH,%(¶VZRUNKLJKOLJKWVWKHFUXFLDOUROHRIFXUULFXOXPLQHQDEOLQJOHDUQHUV\RXQJ and old) to acquire competences for effective uptake of opportunities and for the effective addressing of challenges across fast-changing, and sometimes disruptive, WZHQW\ILUVW FHQWXU\ GHYHORSPHQW FRQWH[WV ,Q WKLV VHWWLQJ WKH ,%( DOVR DLPV WR improve access to the evidence-based knowledge needed to guide curriculum design and development as well as to guide teaching, learning, and assessment. 7KLV LV WKHUHIRUH D SDUWLFXODUO\ RSSRUWXQH WLPH IRU WKH ,%( WR SXEOLVK WKLV important book, which stresses the need to re-evaluate education and learning and to prepare learners for an unknown future. Conrad Hughes comes to the subject as an educator and school administrator, a standpoint entirely different from the academic perspective usually featured in SXEOLFDWLRQVRIWKH,%((GXFDWHGLQ6RXWK$IULFDDQG(QJODQG&RQUDGKDVZRUNHG in schools in Switzerland, France, India, and the Netherlands. He is now Campus and 6HFRQGDU\3ULQFLSDODWWKH,QWHUQDWLRQDO6FKRRORI*HQHYD/D*UDQGH%RLVVLqUHWKH ROGHVWLQWHUQDWLRQDOVFKRROLQWKHZRUOGZKLFKKDVOHDUQHUVIURPRYHUGLIIHUHQW

ix

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cultures, and strives to make the world a better, more peaceful, open-minded place through education. Drawing on his extensive personal and professional experience, and on his substantial contributions to thinking and writing about future competences, curriculum, and learning, this book bridges theoretical scholarship and applied work relating to education policy and practice. Conrad Hughes is at home in this century – in his own words, an “exciting, chaotic, fast-moving era” – which is about to fundamentally change education, teaching, and learning. His power stems, I believe, from a coherent, historically-and-personally-informed world view. Conrad knows more than a little about most things under the sun, and he expresses an entire world view through his writing – an intellectual landscape that encompasses art, current events, economics, fiction, history, music, philosophy, politics, and science. His previous works (including Guiding Principles for Learning in the Twenty-First Century and Understanding Prejudice and Education) can be reread in this light as a single, continuous, coherent theoretical undertaking, a commitment to the idea of sustainability, public good, and community, laced with his feeling the burden of responsibility for the future of our planet. In the world according to Conrad Hughes, there is always a moral edge and there is always something to be done. &RQUDG+XJKHV¶ERRNLVHPEOHPDWLFRIWKHDPD]LQJSRWHQWLDODQGWKHH[FUXFLDWLQJ OLPLWDWLRQVIDFHGE\HGXFDWLRQLQWKHWZHQW\ILUVWFHQWXU\+RZHYHUIRUDOORI&RQUDG¶V stern seriousness about the state of the world, his writing also evidences a merriness; it is morally serious but never drearily earnest, as he returns again and again to life and work events, with humour and wisdom, often veiled with introspection and internal conflict, to support his arguments. His ability to fuse history, futuristic thinking, and personal experience is exceptional. His personal history becomes the history of our times, and his book, a walking chronicle of the twenty-first century in the making. Mmantsetsa Marope Director, UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE) Geneva, Switzerland

x

INTRODUCTION

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When I was a boy growing up in Apartheid South Africa, I went to an all-boys private Catholic school. I hated school with a passion. Every morning when my parents would drive me to assembly under the open African sky, I would start to become nervous because I had not completed my homework or was not ready for a test. The teachers would hit us. It was called getting caned or jacked. This was in the ODWHVDQGHDUO\V,QPRVWFRXQWULHVFRUSRUDOSXQLVKPHQWLQVFKRROVZDV illegal, yet in South Africa we would get the cane. 2QHRIP\WHDFKHUVZDVDVPDOOGDUNKDLUHGPDQ+HKDGEULJKWEOXHH\HVWKDW would bore into your soul when he spoke to you. He smelled of cigarette smoke mixed with musk and would work his way up and down the aisles of his Afrikaans OHVVRQVZLWKDQDXUDRISRZHU+LVFDQHZDVFDOOHG³%OLNVLP´ZKLFKLQ$IULNDDQV means lightening. When he caned us, he would spend time aiming the stick FRUUHFWO\ DQG LQFLVLYHO\ DFURVV WKH EXWWRFNV DQG WKHQ EULQJ %OLNVLP GRZQ ZLWK D clean whipping sound that cut through the crisp morning air of Johannesburg with DVLQJXODUSXUSRVH³6KHXXZ´«³:KDFN´7KHER\VZRXOGWHQVHXSIHDUGDUWLQJ all over their freckled faces, and then they would go back to their seats with tears invariably welling in their eyes. I was in deep fear of that teacher, and I remember more about him than anything we learned in school. Whenever I was caned – and it happened a lot – the physical pain was not what stayed with me; it was the humiliation and the feeling that some terrible injustice was being done and that no one cared or would stop it. The billowing cumulonimbus clouds strewn across the Highveld horizon looked down at our corporal punishment in commiserative silence. The only ointment to address the pain and dry the tears was the dry heat of the copper rays of the sun. My driving forces were, on the one side, my ongoing hatred of school, its teachers DQG WKH FDQH %OLNVLP DQG RQ WKH RWKHU WKH UK\WKP RI OLIH WKDW FDPH RXW RI WKH pounding vinyl albums of Zulu rock. I would listen all weekend instead of doing my homework. ,¶OOFRPHEDFNWR%OLNVLPODWHU ,¶PWKHKHDGPDVWHURIDVFKRRO(YHU\GD\ZKHQ,ORRNDWDZD\ZDUGVWXGHQW a disciplinary case, when I need to reign in one of our students, I remember how I would get the cane at my own school, and I make sure that everything I do with our students keeps their confidence intact, protects their dignity, honours their souls and the development of their values. 7HDFKHUVFDQGRGDPDJHWR\RXQJFKLOGUHQDWVFKRRODQG\RXGRQ¶WQHHGDFDQH to do it. All it takes is to look at a young person with an expression that signifies

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judgement and disbelief. All it takes is to strip them of their confidence, tell them they will not succeed, that they are bad. Much damage can be done. It can happen unconsciously, the throwaway phrase or action, the unthoughtful gesture. We need to be careful of young children and adolescents the way we would bathe an infant or hold a newborn to our chest. A good teacher empathises with her students, a bad one treats them as registration numbers. You have to love your children as parents, and you have to want the best for your students as teachers, because the meaning that they give to their lives and the way they will construct themselves comes directly from the picture you draw of them, the picture you draw on the sketchpad of their minds. It does not take a lot to damage a FKLOG¶VVHOIHVWHHP$VLQJOHVWDWHPHQWRUVFRUQIXOORRNFDQVHDUWKHKLSSRFDPSXV± the part of the brain where we store the deepest memories – and remain there like a scar for life. %XWWKHWULFN\SDUWLVWKDWDVZHDOONQRZFKDUDFWHULVIRUPHGE\DGYHUVLW\:H have to care for our children and care for our students, but we must not spoil them. To spoil a young person today will not prepare him or her for a world that is more complicated than it has ever been in human history. In fact, to spoil young people will prepare them for a life of depression and low performance. Since they will be competing with children who have gone through hell and high water to gain their place in the sun, our children need to be challenged. How do we round that square? What is the balance between an education that strengthens young people and equips them to take on the world and an education that crushes their confidence? My job is one of the most complicated but also one of the most rewarding imaginable. Education is the most exciting professional area of the twenty-first century, not just because it is diverse, but also because you are dealing with the engine of the future: youth. This is a book about education. However, it is not a book that can only be read and understood by specialists in education. This is for two reasons. The first is that the research and references, the studies and the theory that VXEVWDQWLDWH ZKDW , VD\ , SDFNHG LQWR HQGQRWHV , GLG WKLV VR WKDW \RX GRQ¶W KDYH to read through long in-text citations and academic references to get the point. I go straight to the point. For the academically inclined, however, the endnotes are thorough. They back up what I say with evidence. The second reason, more important than the first, is that everybody is, and should be, interested in education, not just teachers, heads of institutions and researchers in education. Your life is a long education, and the people you are in any way responsible for will seek some sort of education from you no matter who you are or what your job is. If they do not, or if you do not feel that you are an educator as a parent, supervisor, aunt or uncle, big sister or brother, then think again. It takes a village to raise a child. Education goes beyond school and university, and everybody should feel connected to education. %HIRUHZHGLYHLQWRWKHKHDUWRIWKHPDWWHUOHW¶VVWDQGEDFNDQGDVNRXUVHOYHV some big questions about the purpose of education. xii

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Where do we come from and where are we going? What is it we should do to our children and to ourselves to ensure that the lives they, and we, lead are productive, happy, beautiful and purposeful? What of the world we are living in? How are we to carry the cultural and intellectual legacy of ten thousand years of history on our fragile shoulders? As the world gets older and the means of communication expand, there is more to know and more to transmit. How do we ensure that young people carry the past into the present? At the same time, how do we prepare young people for the opportunities, openings, extraordinary diversity, threats and challenges of our times? These questions linger, and many scramble for answers, some turning to the past, others to the future; some design experiments (never an easy thing to do with the complexities of living, in-situ human beings as they learn); others page through theory; while others, still, rely on the media, on hunches, intuition and hearsay. These big questions raise various wormhole-like additional questions, most ending soon after they have started. These include myths, neurotrash (findings in neuroscience that are half-baked or are not telling us anything specific about education), sales pitches, cheap speculation, dramatic conference keynotes by academic pop stars and attention-seeking politicians, sound bites gone viral, unfounded research claims and bestsellers putting a spin on old ideas, often platitudes and tautologies. At the end of their taking or considering these various pathways, each person has formed an opinion on education and an idea of what we should be doing to prepare young people for the future. None is entirely complete; none is without contradiction or error. In the twenty-first century, there is enough information out there to confirm MXVWDERXWDQ\RQH¶VELDVDQGPRVWSHRSOHKDYHDIL[HGLGHDRIZKDWDQHGXFDWLRQLV and will not venture all that far from it no matter what they encounter. Discourses An increasingly common assertion – one that has in fact now become banal – is that education needs to change to meet the complex needs of the twenty-first century. Whereas science and technology, medicine and travel, multinational corporations and economic development have all followed revolutionary trajectories in the last decades, in most instances the world of education, most especially in schools, seems to have stayed the same. Different sources point to different global megatrends, involving urbanisation, the creation of wealth, resource scarcity, planetary problems. The world has changed incommensurately in the last century: the world population has quadrupled since World War II (from two billion to nearly eight billion); artificial intelligence now effectively has the computing power of a human brain; we are exhausting over RIWKHSODQHW¶VELRFDSDFLW\ZKLOHJOREDOLVDWLRQDQGVRFLDOPHGLDKDYHPDGH xiii

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the world far more accessible than ever before. At the same time, increased and increasing income disparity and new forms of terrorism have created further division DQGSRODULVDWLRQZLWKLQWKHSODQHW¶VSRSXODWLRQ 7KH ZRUOG RI WRGD\ LV RQH RI 98&$ YRODWLOLW\ XQFHUWDLQW\ FRPSOH[LW\ DQG DPELJXLW\ 2XUJUHDWJUDQGSDUHQWVZRXOGILQGVRFLHW\XQUHFRJQLVDEOHDWOHDVWLQLWV technical aspects). And the intuitive response is that the education we are providing for young people should therefore change radically. We are now in the fourth industrial UHYROXWLRQ FRPPRQO\ NQRZQ DV ,QGXVWU\  ,W LV FKDUDFWHULVHG E\ H[SRQHQWLDO change, the Internet of things and highly developed artificial intelligence. Human beings no longer merely use technological tools; they interact with, and in, intelligent systems. 2YHUWKHODVWIHZGHFDGHVWKHUHKDYHEHHQPDMRUFKDQJHVLQWKHSODQHW¶VSROLWLFDO social and environmental landscape, and experts suggest that change will be even more pronounced over the decades to come. There is a need to re-evaluate education. It would be absurd to put our heads in the sand. This does not necessarily mean that everything should be changed; it might be that older strains of education need to come back into focus, that other strains need to remain as they are or experience further emphasis. Change for the sake of change LVWKHHUURUWKDWFRPHVIURPDODFNRIVHULRXVDQDO\VLV2IWHQV\VWHPVDUHLQSODFH and have been for a long time, for good reason. Indeed, one curse of educational reform is the pendulum effect created by constantly rewritten legislation that reflects political agendas and belief systems that vary from one government to the next. Education becomes the ever-morphing target of leadership hyperactivity. It is true that in schools children tend to still be grouped by age and are still subject to a knowledge-based learning experience with little in the way of transdisciplinary, project-based, relevant learning that prepares them directly and explicitly for the challenges of our time. A tired, overused statement is that the classrooms of today resemble the classrooms of yesterday, that between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century, schools are still essentially identical in layout and in terms of what young people learn. This assertion is almost always meant as a criticism. It expresses the idea that education should be moving with the times, not frozen in the past. However, anyone who knows anything about the history of education knows that for the majority of KXPDQ EHLQJV¶ FROOHFWLYH H[SHULHQFH RYHU WKH ODVW IHZ WKRXVDQG \HDUV WKH ZKROH idea of education has been strongly traditional and conservative. The idea has been that the primary purpose of an education is to transmit history and culture to young people, to make them knowledgeable about the past and to ensure that a transmission of skills, knowledge and wisdom is at the centre. And any parent knows that a good upbringing goes back to old-fashioned principles: children need to be taught to respect their parents, to be polite and kind to those around them; they should not be spoilt or simply left to do as they please. At the same time, parents across the globe are struggling to cope with social media, xiv

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new technologies and what exactly they should be doing to prepare their children for a complex, challenging world and unknown future. Are we getting it right? Will our children find, once it is too late, that we did not equip them with the right values and approaches to life to be successful? If we focus on schools, however, the traditionalist view seems far from the normative discourse in education today: the convergence of lines of thought all promoting the pressing need to reform schooling has become something of a cliché. 2IFRXUVHPDQ\VFKRROVDQGH[DPLQDWLRQERDUGVXQLYHUVLWLHVDQGFROOHJHVZLOO claim that they are not locked into the past and that there are tangible examples of educational philosophies and institutions that have changed the shape of instruction and learning quite emphatically. What this “winds of change” frenzy has led to is a collection of overused words, phrases and ideas in education. Here are some better-known examples: ‡ The jobs of the future do not exist yet, and therefore the educational experience must somehow prepare young people to be able to enter a number of different professional fields rather than one narrow area. ‡ Schools of the past focussed on content, whereas the schools of the future will focus more on skills. ‡ Social media and the rise of technology have revolutionised knowledge acquisition to the point where learning facts is fairly pointless, as students can access facts directly through the Internet, essentially without teachers. ‡ *RRGWHDFKLQJLVQRWDERXWWHDFKLQJLW¶VDERXWOHDUQLQJZKDWLVLPSRUWDQWLVQRW what is being taught but what is being learnt. ‡ Neuroscience allows us to understand the biology of learning in such a way that practice can, and should, reflect contemporary scientific developments rather than non-scientific ideology. ‡ Children learn when they are emotionally engaged and see the relevance of what they are learning. Whilst some terms that have currency include: ‡ flipping the classroom (meaning that you frontload knowledge at home and go over what you have learnt in the classroom); ‡ group work; ‡ project-based learning; ‡ critical thinking; ‡ creativity; ‡ character; ‡ collaboration; ‡ entrepreneurship; ‡ student advocacy; ‡ social and emotional intelligence; ‡ digital literacy; ‡ STEM; xv

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‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡

grit; relevance; mindfulness; kindness; self-agency or decision-making.

2QWKHRWKHUKDQGZRUGVSKUDVHVDQGLGHRORJLHVWKDWDUHOHVVDSSHDOLQJDQGZLOO perhaps be held up as examples of nineteenth century bad practice tend to include the following: ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡

lecturing; facts; rote-learning; punishment; humiliation; manners; dictation; multiple-choice tests; pure theory (without relevance); lack of emotional intelligence on the part of the teacher.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose E. D. Hirsch, a bold and perspicacious force in education, has pointed out that much of this ideological shift is nothing new: it started towards the last quarter of the twentieth century and was influenced by a change in thinking about education at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, for the better part of the twentieth century, we lived with reforms and intended reforms that were rooted in an essentially similar romantic, naturalist perspective on learning – inspired first by the eighteenth century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and embraced by his successors (Dewey, Montessori, Piaget and Vygotsky). These thinkers collectively promulgated the idea that what matters in education is how you work around the psychology of the learner. What appears new and contemporary is in fact rather tired. The recent additions to this romantic, naturalist, constructivist approach are scientific and technological shifts, which have accelerated the discourse but not actually changed it fundamentally. The discourse of the early twenty-first century is thus not actually markedly different from that of the twentieth century. We are still in a dualist controversy, which opposes an academic, insensitive and content-heavy approach, that cliché of a Dickensian nineteenth century, to a learner-centred, constructivist, skills-based approach that aims to motivate students and make them feel comfortable to be more creative in their thinking. What has changed is a sense of urgency to change the classroom and the now widespread belief that education can change the world.3 xvi

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Parents also realise that what is important is not just what their children know and how well they understand what they know, but also the development of character, lifelong learning, confidence, a strong work ethic and interpersonal skills (knowing how to negotiate with other people, listen to them, work together). Part of what I do in this book is examine some of these modernist discourses (modernist, not postmodernist, because they are not particularly new). I point out that the less-politically-correct, comfortable assertions about education relating to discipline, hard work and well-established traditions (content learning and the importance of classical subjects such as history and philosophy, for example), are not to be thrown out simply because they are old. I will, on the contrary, argue that in many ways they are needed more now than ever. Central to the discussion is the unavoidable and timeless truth that a good education comes from the person learning more than from the subject being taught or even from the style of the person teaching it. Perhaps we have fallen too deeply into the trap of obsessing over what should be taught and how it should be taught when, in truth, what is important is the passion, intelligence and dedication of the student, no matter what is taught. Even the simplest of messages can be used to extract great meaning if the student is motivated to learn deeply, hence a plethora of writings on motivation, “mindset”, character and what have you. Furthermore, education is not a monolithic entity or a static field. It is in constant evolution and development, responding to changing times and contexts. It is ongoing, never stops. For these reasons, among many others, education remains the most stimulating and fascinating, but also the most frustrating and inaccurate practice of human beings. We search, we probe, we hope and we dream. Sometimes we react angrily DQGDVVHUW%XWZHQHYHUUHDFKWKHERWWRPRIWKHUDEELWKROHLWMXVWJHWVGHHSHU While most education experts and researchers agree that grading systems are not effective, schools continue to grade students, creating aggressive gradecentred competition, a lack of interest in comments on performance (the grades wash out the effect of the comments) and a “grade junkie” ethos. We know now that homework in the primary school years does not add any real gains to learning, but most schools continue to drown their students in homework. While many are pointing out that the purpose of education should be to be intrinsically rewarding, rather than a mere means to an end, many parents pressure their children to simply use school to get the best scores, get into the best universities and secure high-status jobs. It is as if we want the best of two very different worlds: excellent academic performance, the type one usually associates with high levels of stress and rote learning, and at the same time a compassionate, creative and student-friendly way of facilitating learning.

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