State school dreams #2

Status Quo Vadis

Weeks, months, probably years of frustration had taken its toll and they knew that things needed to change.

So they arranged a meeting to just get it all out; to clear the pipes; to make some room.

The first meeting delivered a list that flipped all their frustrations into positive statements for a new education imaginary but having slept on it they agreed it was too long (and in danger of getting longer) and the statements themselves needed organising hierarchically.

The second meeting saw the team make the bold decision to distil the list into three apex themes, capturing broad headings pending refinement. Everyone felt that it was important that the statements from the original list could be filed under one of the three, and that they were spacious enough to enable educators to step in and inhabit them.

A week further on and last night’s meeting delivered a big breakthrough where the following was agreed:

A Carolean education imaginary

• Purpose-driven learning

• Mutualism

• Communal knowledge

The team resisted the urge to start populating the headings with the statements from the original list. Instead they copied out the big three onto large sheets of paper and taped them up around the building. It was time to see if they could survive in the wild.