Thursday 29 September 2011

TEDx London - Education Revolution: a few thoughts

Thanks to the generosity of The Camden Roundhouse and my obsessive twitter addiction I was lucky enough to score myself a place on the guestlist to the TEDx London Education Revolution conference hosted by the Roundhouse on 17th September. You can find details and (I think) vids of many of the talks through TEDx London but I wanted to talk about a few of my personal highlights and some thoughts on the issues they raised.

 Our lord who art in LA; Sir Ken Robinson opened the conference with a video talk and a nice comparison between Dramatist Peter Brook's theory of the primacy of the actor/audience relationship and the same in the teacher/learning relationship - that when this relationship is of the highest quality, there is no need to add anything unless it enhances this. A good anchor as we delved into the world of flashing, beeping new apps and technologies (my position towards which can be best defined as warmly sceptical).

 Youth campaigner Adam Roberts began the live talks with a nice point about our current need for children to be literally and figuratively 'in line' because of the current inadequacies of the education system. This chimed with one of my current hobby horses; which is the question of how many structures exist in schools because of their educational worth and how many exist for the purposes of crowd-control and money-saving?
 Carmel McConnell from the excellent Magic Breakfast underlined this issue of basic inadequacies by revealing thousands of children in the UK misbehave and struggle to learn everyday because they are hungry. For 1 in 4 children the only hot food they are EVER given is school lunch. Perhaps I am being naive, but I find this staggering. For this to be occurring, it is clear our young people are being failed in much bigger ways than by the education system and therefore to be focusing on the redeeming properties of music apps or drama workshops seems to be widdling in the wind until we can be assured the children we teach have this basic level of care.

 One of my personal high points though has to be Ken Spours burning a righteous flame on the stage, stating that a true education revolution would involve education ceasing to be a political football for career politicians; creating false polarities within teaching practice in pursuit of highlighting their clever new idea. Echoing a common sentiment for this conference, Spours ended by pointing out good ideas don't prosper because they're good, but because conditions are there for them to prosper.

 Dougald Hine's talk on creating a new university had me wriggling excitedly on the edge of my seat - the PhD lives again! Hine's central point that 'learning is not a commodity to be exchanged, it grows between people over time' and his talk of the current existence of a 'university in exile' were eloquently made and I will be following developments on The University Project with interest.

 Artistic Director of The Southbank Centre Jude Kelly gave the final talk of the day, and well deserved the standing ovation she received for it. Her commitment to breaking down the false dichotomy that 'adults appreciate, children learn' and passion that everyone should have access to the arts was smartly brought home by placing herself in the continuum of pioneering individuals who have opened previously closed cultural doors to ever-widening spheres of society. In the same way it is a staggering crime young people are not fed, it is a similar crime many people still believe elements of our arts and culture are not appropriate or accessible to all our young people and I'll be watching The Southbank Centre with interest to see how Kelly's pledge to work towards ending this inequality becomes reality. My last PhD proposal set out to explore how arts-based practice effects learning, and I find myself wondering if Kelly would have an interest in this research.

 For a natural optimist like me, nearly every conference has that moment when you give yourself up to the collective wave of euphoria and mine was during Kelly's talk when she spoke of how through childhood ballet lessons 'I have become the person that I have been ever since'. That experience of yourself, and therefore the world, suddenly making sense though a particular field or craft made perfect sense to me. It felt clear to me in that moment that there is something in the world that does this for each of us: a door we walk through to find ourselves. As educators we have been lucky enough to find the ones that work for us and surely our commitment has to be to patently, rigorously and creatively opening as many of these doors as possible to as many young people as possible. You will never know if it's the door for them, or even if they are in the right place to walk through it. But if we all - subject teachers, artists, sportspeople, techno-types, business moguls - aim just to try - to 'pass it on' as The History Boys Hector would have it; then surely that's not nothing?

 Of course, revolutions of the past have taught us it's relatively easy to give rousing speeches and feel your heart soar in the company of your peers. But as we headed out into the balmy Camden night how much of what we had heard and seen would stay with us, would continue to make sense in our everyday practice and become reality, and what would be left behind? David Price addresses this issue more fully in his excellent blog on the day, however the impression I am left with following this conference is that education is certainly going to exciting new (and exciting old) places, but does the underlying structure of our education system, and the support society as a whole affords it through the care and valuing of it's young people, provide the conditions for these good ideas to flourish?

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