+ “Our task is to educate their [our students] whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson
Our learning ecosystem | Polaris
In her fascinating book Beautiful Failures, Lucy Clark propagates a well-researched case for change to our education system. Beautiful Failures is an examination of Australia’s education system, borne out of the experience of Clark’s daughter. It is a book that truly delivers to readers, most of which have little knowledge of the education system apart from the fact they themselves once went to school. Clark sets down the foundation of her argument and then steadily builds on it so, by the end of the book, the uninformed become well-informed and the well-informed even better informed.
Clark quotes Albert Einstein, “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. I think it’s worth remembering that our education is not just about a score at the end of thirteen years of education. It is about developing a lifelong love of learning, of how to learn and how to use what you have learnt as each young person finds their place and purpose in life.
Beautiful Failures is a sobering read. Although she is despairing at a system that is clearly broken, young people who are damaged and teachers who are drained, Clark offers hope and ideas for a viable solution.
Like Clark throughout her book, I have frequently referenced the work of the Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Andreas Schleicher. Much of Schleicher’s commentary focuses around what the Fourth Industrial Revolution could mean for education and jobs. The dilemma for education today is that the kinds of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise, automate and outsource.
The response by Schleicher (2016) when asked what success in education means to him, says, “I think success is about helping children to shape their future, to participate meaningfully in our societies, and to be equipped to make a difference.” He goes on to say, “we need to think what sort of people do we need to create tomorrow’s world, and what are the fundamental building blocks to shape that? When you do this, you arrive at ways of thinking – creativity, critical thinking, problem solving – and ways of working – collaborations, social emotional skills, character, resilience, leadership, empathy – all of those elements are fundamental.”
Overwhelming emphasis in today’s education is on literacy and numeracy and whilst these are pivotal foundation stones, these underpinnings and content alone will not serve young people well for a new world environment. The Melbourne Declaration is eleven years old and spurred the inclusion of capabilities, which are central to enterprise thinking, in the Australian Curriculum more than seven years ago. However, whilst capabilities are included in the curriculum they are not being taught or assessed in any systematic manner.
The Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) argue that young people will need to be more entrepreneurial than in the past, and that a more transferable set of ‘enterprise skills’ will be demanded in 70 per cent of future jobs (2017).
To prepare young people for the future workforce, all schools should take hold of their own educational setting and lead the necessary change needed. To equip today’s students for the workplace of 2030 and beyond, a whole new curriculum is needed: one that centres on foundational literacies (ways of knowing), capability skills (ways of thinking) and character attributes (ways of working).
OECD is strongly advocating curricula that integrates knowledge, across learning disciplines, with a strong emphasis on skills development. Schleicher (2015) says that, in the past, education was primarily about teaching people something. But now, he says, education should be “about making sure that students develop a reliable compass and the navigations skills to find their own way through an increasingly uncertain, volatile and ambiguous world”.
Schleicher goes on, in the past, teachers could expect that what they taught would equip students with the skills needed for the rest of their lives. However that is not the case today because, he argues, “schools need to prepare students for more rapid economic and social change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented and to solve social problems that we do not yet know will arise”.
With the fourth industrial revolution underway and progress accelerating at the speed of a million algorithms, children entering kindergarten today will need a very different education from the ones their parents, and us, received. The Class of 2030, a new paper from Microsoft and McKinsey, found that, as manual occupations enter their death spiral, 30 to 40 per cent of future jobs will depend on social-emotional skills.
When designing education for the future, student agency, collaboration and problem-solving, are the three essential components that must be included, said Karen Cator, president and CEO of Digital Promise, a non-profit research organisation that promotes innovation in education. “[Teachers] want to ask all of the questions and answer them, because that is what they have been taught to do. That is what they have been tested on, and it is too much of a risk to step out,” said Cator. “However, the way to create learning experiences that include agency, collaboration and problem-solving is by engaging students from the start and letting students ask the questions.”
Toward the end of her book Beautiful Failures, Clark writes “I want a school run by people who believe that every child has the ability to succeed in their own individual way…”. I genuinely believe that every educator wants to see the young people in their care flourish. But many are hardwired to a system of schooling and conditions not that dissimilar to their own education.
Understanding the needs of tomorrow’s schooling, and importantly the broader trends of education and the future workforce, shapes the thinking that underpins much of Polaris, our new learning ecosystem at Marcellin College and our vision for faith, learning and life for a new world environment.
While Polaris is no silver bullet solution to Australia’s educational challenges, it explores innovative integrated programs, personalised learning plans, stages of schooling and student-led pedagogical approaches for all learners, with the view of fostering greater independence, academic competence and skill capability and character formation. We seek to equip each young man with the context they need to comprehend the world they live in and help them build the necessary critical and creative thinking to better understand and positively contribute to society. Polaris aspires to foster a robust and inquisitive mind, allowing each young man to emerge, grow and thrive.
Each young man of Marcellin is assisted to find his True North in a highly supportive, personalised and engaging environment. The future world is full of great possibility – Commencing in 2020 I invite you to join us on this remarkable journey called Polaris.
Clark, L. (2016). Beautiful Failures. North Sydney, NSW: An Ebury Press book, published by Penguin Random House Australia.
Foundation for Young Australians. (2017). The New Basics: Big data reveals the skills young people need for the New Work Order. n.p.
Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2009). The element: How finding your passion changes everything. New York: Penguin Group USA.
