Schools Must Change at the Speed of Life

A Sandbox in Every School

The Speed of Life

‘To every season, turn.’

All life is in a constant state of change. Seasons frame the cycles of life’s growth process “because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels”¹. Within the flow of the river of life, humans like to construct rigid structures and then are surprised when they break. As has been told to me as a child (and sometimes as a husband), ‘Sit down and stop moving!’

Institutions of education should also be constantly adapting. Why? Because our collective knowledge is constantly evolving. Because the lives of students and (sometimes) teachers are constantly evolving. Because technology is constantly evolving. Because our ecosystems are constantly evolving. Because the process of learning must be responsive and adaptive to the circumstances of our lives.

The Uneaten Banquet

Schools are society’s principal institutions for learning. As such, they must be authorities on the science and practice of learning. The great crisis in educational institutions exists because schools have failed to do their homework. The system of education is largely broken but we are not powerless to improve it; it is bound by bureaucracy, resistant to change, and paralysed by choice, but surrounded by solutions.

The budding field of neuroscience has already produced a wealth of understanding about the process of learning. Neuroscience is a gift to education because it directly informs pedagogical practice and is innately practical. Its domains include: sleep, sensory perception, neuroplasticity, memory, attention and focus, hormone and neurotransmitter regulation, emotional regulation, cognition, consciousness, and more. Imagine a school where students understand how each of these systems function and have practical tools to leverage their potential.

Educational psychology, including specialisations in neurodiversity, is increasingly being incorporated into schools. Every school I have worked in has had a robust ‘Well-Being department’ with sensitive, knowledgeable, experienced practitioners. We now have excellent information regarding how to nurture the well-being of children from prenatal development through adolescence, and beyond. The inclusion of well-being as a pillar of education has changed the nature of pedagogical discourse; however, there remains far greater potential for its impact.

Nutritionists are now able to harvest data from individuals, analyse it through a range of matrices, and develop complete strategies for optimised individualised health. Imagine a school where nutrition and lifestyle factors formed a part of student guidance and assessment.

Physiotherapists and rehabilitation medicine have an abundance of knowledge regarding the care of the spine, posture, muscular and joint development, and other critical body systems. Imagine a school where students graduate with a full range of motion and the strength to support their own body weight.

Schools now have access to more knowledge regarding the development and potential of human beings than has ever existed, and AI to synthesise it for them. Our rigid educational structures are groaning under the weight of unrealised evolution, refusing to transform. This is ironic because the ‘Learn. Unlearn. Relearn.’ mantra has been an utterance on the lips of educators for over half a century (A. Toffler, Future Shock, 1970).

Too Great a Price to Pay

Schools should be more rebellious, not waiting for permission to change. I feel we have become far too polite to our institutional overlords. We should change that which is in our power to change, as a first-responder cares for their patients, and let governments and universities adapt to the mess of our disruptions. The cost of our children is too high a price to pay for a bureaucratic response to this crisis. We should ask forgiveness rather than permission; reclaiming the earned trust of our communities and authority over the institutions that care for our young by addressing the quality and effectiveness of our learning ecosystems.

We should not continue to meander down the path of educational collapse before we decide to respond. Our response must include modelling the examples of health and learning we aim to inspire in our students. We must redetermine how to become meaningful in the lives of our youth and the communities we serve.

As institutions of education, we are not modelling the qualities we teach and demand of our students. We groom our youth to soak up and apply knowledge for an uncertain future while we model the opposite. We train our students to analyse problems and find solutions while exemplifying the problems we compel them to address.

Charged with the care of our youth, and therefore our future, how shall we now attend to those entrusted to us?

Health is the Baseline for Assessment

Our educators must, most importantly, become skilled observers. The scope of student assessment must become holistic, and I believe that the foundational quality of assessment should be Health. Somehow, we are able to perceive if something is healthy or not. We look at a tree and know if it’s increasing or diminishing. We can determine the quality of a piece of fruit by holding it in our hand. A healthy life is one surrounded by fruit, flowers, and the buds of new growth.

The role of schools, if we are to be involved in assessment at all, is to nurture health. The vocation of a gardener is inferred from the beautiful concept of Fröbel’s kindergarten - a garden of children. Our gardens are overgrown and undernourished factories for cut flowers. Our gardeners lack the skills and tools to nurture health. A sickly garden is not much of a garden at all.

Consider the health of our students. Most are depressed, disillusioned, and distracted to the point of illness. Many are oxygen-deprived from histamine responses that cause constantly-blocked sinuses.

So many students are sugar-saturated and caffeine-addicted, consuming an unfiltered diet of processed foods and stimulants. As a person who has invested deeply in understanding food, I am appalled by what and how most people feed themselves.

There is a clear divide in my classroom between those who can move and those who can not. About 25% of my students can dance, fight, flow, and bend beautifully. Many of the rest have bent backs because of tight hamstrings, weak muscles, misaligned posture, and ‘glute amnesia’, in no small part owing to sitting in poorly-designed chairs all day with insufficient movement.

Students are unable to give sustained attention or focus because their senses are constantly being bombarded by stimuli, and they have not been trained to do so. Of course, focused attention and effort are the cornerstones of any learning practice. Students’ minds are chaotic, unrested, overworked, hypertense, and very much unclear about the point of it all.

Defining First Principles

The role of educational institutions must be redefined. We are no longer ‘trustees of knowledge and skills’; information and explanations are available in abundance in the public domain. We must now become enablers of learning, empowerers of self-expression, and nurturers of ‘the self’. We have a sick generation and we must also become healers. Our role has changed from the didactic to the applied. We are the primary social institution endowed with the care of our children outside the home and we have not only been underperforming, we’ve been causing harm. It’s time to step up.

Neurodivergence is the Norm

It is my perspective that the percentage of neurodivergent students is not increasing; rather, the industrial façade of standardisation is crumbling. All humans are diverse; neurologically, physiologically, energetically, and potentially. Biodiversity is nature’s strategy!

My intention is not to flatten a very complex issue, nor to gloss over factors that are obstacles to learning, but instead to turn the tables on ‘the myth of normal’ (D. Maté, G. Maté, The Myth of Normal, 2022). Isn’t it telling that a primary body responsible for monitoring the statistics of neurodiversity in the USA is the Center for Disease Control? Many approach our growing awareness of neurodiversity as a problem, I see it as an opportunity.

Our investigations into neurodiversity have yielded spectacular insights into the possibilities of what it means to be human². Our ethos must shift from the enforcement of conformity to the celebration of diversity. Standardisation is no longer an option if we value the lives of our children. As Iain McGilchrist so expresses, ‘We need individuality with togetherness’ (I. McGilchrist, On Theories of Everything, 2021), rather than conformity in isolation.

A New Breed of Educator

To transform education we need to change our paradigm for the role and abilities of educators. The qualities selected for in our educators must serve as a template for the ideals to which we aspire, and they must be applied in their lives with great integrity. The manner in which we educate must become far more sensitive, as we must increase the sensitivity of human beings. Humans have vast reservoirs of untapped potential for sensitivity, through which the quality of our experience of life is determined.

Educators must be empowered with the freedom to create their own ecosystems, curricula, and methodology, according to the virtues of their persons and their fields of inquiry. Educators must become sensitive observers, balanced in nature, and inspirational; solutions, not problems.

Schools Must Evolve at the Speed of Life

The institution of school must become exceptionally flexible. One function of education is to shine a light into the future; with this clarity, we can arm students with the virtues, skills, and knowledge required to contribute purposefully to ‘the ascent of man’ (J. Bronowski, 1973). To see the future we must look inwards and downwards, to the new growth of our emerging generations. We must also evolve at the speed of life, responding to the rhythms of both the natural world and our technosphere. Right now, life is unfolding at a break-neck pace and schools largely have an entrenched resistance to change.

As institutions of learning, we must model the qualities we wish our students to integrate. Examples of health, balance, success, communication, self-development, imagination, creativity, play, and most importantly, a life-long passion for learning. Currently, schools are modelling the paradigm, “Do as I say, not as I do.” From the earliest ages, children understand that hypocrites are not to be trusted. Schools, administrators, and educators must bear the hallmark of “Do as I do.”, where our actions outshine our words.

Our Planet’s Greatest Untapped Resource.

Students are the greatest untapped resource on this planet. This is not hyperbole. Energy is most abundant in youth. The passions of youth are pervasive. Neuroplasticity is greatest when we are young. Youth are capable of remarkable skill and ability. The efforts of students’ hearts, minds, and bodies are not being harnessed to address the critical problems of our present and their future. Instead, the products of students’ efforts are disposable, insignificant, and isolated from affecting the challenges of the world they live in. Perhaps, if we give our students agency in shaping their futures then they may not feel so powerless to affect it.

A Sandbox in Every School

One practical way for schools to begin to embrace change is by creating their own ‘educational sandboxes’ - laboratories for human potential. One cluster of classes, IN THE CORE CURRICULUM, should be granted exemption from the rules of school. In these sandboxes, educators can structure their classrooms how they want, create their own curricula without disciplinary or pathway obligations, assess students in alternative ways (including the option to not give grades), design new structures for submissions and feedback, choose their tech stacks, etc.. These applied research spaces should inform the practice of the larger school. Modelling the concept of this sandbox solution has been the primary aim of my programmes, The Dojo and LALTech Lab.

These ‘sandbox courses’ should be in the core curriculum for several reasons: 1) to provide all students with an alternative experience of school; 2) their incorporation demonstrates a clear commitment by decision-makers to change; 3) the problems created by the integration of these non-conforming courses force flexibility and solutions within existing structures; and 4) such courses require the recruitment of a new breed of educator who are capable of this sort of applied research.

An Opportunity to Become Profound

We live in a time of immense opportunity. We have the privilege of creating an entirely new way of doing school from its foundations. We have a bounty of knowledge, willing practitioners, and applied research to inform and support our development. We must now restore the gardens of our youth, our future, to health and fullness of expression.

To do so, we must allow existing structures to break. As we tell our students, ‘failure is an essential aspect of learning’. Do schools have the courage to take their own advice? In many ways, ‘school’ has already failed. If we allow the existing model of school to fall, we will have the opportunity to create something profound in its place; a faculty to empower generations towards protopia (K. Kelly, What Technology Wants,2011).

This transformation will require an army of gardeners, employing all solutions available to us.

And, we must begin now.

1. (Ezekiel 1:20, the Bible) This quote is intentionally unreferenced because I’m not a religious person and I didn’t want to present as such at an early point in this paper. Regardless, I hold a deep respect for sacred texts from many traditions, including the Bible.

2. The number one ranked podcast in the world at the moment is The Telepathy Tapes, which explores the abilities of those with non-speaking autism, providing but one example of such insights.