I had the privilege of presenting a provocation, alongside Mette Boelle (MIT) and Angela Pollock (University of Melbourne new metrics team), for Friends school in Hobart last week as part of their strategic planning process, led by the wonderful new Principal Esther Hill.
The purpose of the provocation was to inspire teachers and staff to lift the gaze towards education for regenerative futures and provoke imagination about possibilities for young people learning today in Tasmania.
I did so with humility, and gratitude for teachers and school leaders who are giving their all; pouring heart and life-work into our young people. Often succeeding because of passion and perseverance, despite systems working at cross roads.
The context
Young people today are learning and facing a new era — a shifting paradigm of work and futures. Typical headline trends are accelerating. Global climate breakdown; biodiversity loss; mental health epidemics, are real.
Yet humanity has gone through catastrophe before; and often forging new and strong institutions through the process (the United Nations was born after WWII), the pandemic spurred unprecedented collaboration on vaccines, and the history of wars in Europe led Europeans to create the European Union — the most effective international legal order in the world, built on principles of human rights, justice and economic integration.
We can choose to respond with compassion and action, or be pursued into fatalism and culture wars. We can choose to take practical action, or retreat into protective bunkers.
Small action taken collectively can move a nation. Fractal agency is a systemic feature of our social fabric, for better or worse.
Provocations
Provocations I shared to Friends (amended here for a general audience of teachers and leaders in Tasmania supporting the goals of education):
- What if? We put future generations and young people at the heart of strategic planning in schools, to align current decisions with future aspirations of young people and sustainable futures?
- What if? Each school had a culture of practice of reflection and inner development, to foster curiosity and social imagination about sustainable futures, and to foster agency towards those futures?
- What if? Teachers had as much time to reflect, plan and design transformative learning, as they did to teach, so that the heart and creativity of teaching was central to the vocation?
- What if? Schools were living labs for Tasmania as part of a climate positive story, so that we aligned learning with a climate positive economy that is a beacon of sustainable prosperity in the world?
- What if? All students were assessed not only in knowledge and skills but their ability to become producers of their own learning journeys, towards sustainable, beautiful and inclusive futures?
To all those who care for, teach, enable and empower young people; and to all young people; let’s get creative.
