SLOW FOOD, SLOW SCHOOLS

Taken from the edible schoolyard website - written by Alice Waters

For me life is given meaning and beauty by the daily ritual of the table—a ritual that can express tradition, character, sustainability, and diversity. These are some of the values that I learned almost unconsciously at my family table as a child. But what beliefs and values do today's children learn at the table? And at whose table do they dine?

The family meal has undergone a steady devaluation from its one time role at the center of human life, when it was the daily enactment of shared necessity and ritualized cooperation. Today, as never before in history, the meals of children are likely to have been cooked by strangers, to consist of highly processed foods that are produced far away, and are likely to be taken casually, greedily, in haste, and, all too often, alone.

I believe public education must help restore the daily ritual of the table in all our childrens' lives. Public education has the required democratic reach. And it desperately needs a curriculum that offers alternatives to the fast-food messages that saturate our contemporary culture. These messages tell us that food is cheap and abundant. That abundance is permanent; that resources are infinite; that it';s okay to waste; that standardization is more important than quality; and that speed is a virtue above all others.

Fast food values are pervasive (especially in poor communities) and often where they least belong. Recently I visited a museum of natural history, for example, which celebrates the astonishing diversity of world cultures, the beauty of human workmanship, and the wonders of nature. It even houses an impressive collection of artifacts relating to food: tools and depictions of hunting, foraging, agriculture, food preparation, and the hearth.

But in the museum cafeteria, crowds of people queue up in a poorly lit, depressing space as if in a diorama of late-twentieth century life, surrounded by that unmistakable steam table smell of pre-cooked, portion-controlled food. In this marvelous museum, surrounded on all sides by splendid exhibits that celebrate the complexity of life and the diversity of human achievement, people appear to have stopped thinking when it comes to their very own everyday experience. People appear to be oblivious that the cafeteria represents the antitheses of the values celebrated in the museum.

Yet a museum cafeteria could have delighted the senses. It could have been beautiful and made you think. It could have served delicious meals in ways that teach where food comes from and how it is made. And when you returned your tray you could have learned something about composting and recycling. You could even have a little friendly human interaction, had the cafeteria been designed to encourage it. It could have inspired you to head out of the museum and see the world in a different way. Instead it was like a filling station.

Our system of public education operates in the same strange, no-context zone of hollow fast-food values. Maurice Holt, professor emeritus of the University of Colorado, has observed that public education today has little philosophical grounding and is relatively unconcerned with tradition and character. In school cafeterias, students learn how little we care about the way they nourish themselves—we’ve sold them to the lowest bidder. Soda machines line the hallways. At best we serve them government-subsidized agricultural surplus, at worst we invite fast food restaurants to open on school grounds. Children need only compare the slickness of the nearest mall to the condition of their school and the quality of its library to learn that they are more important as consumers than as students.

What we need is a systematic overhaul of education inspired by the International Slow Food movement. This eco-gastronomic movement celebrates diversity, tradition, and character and what it’s founder, Carlo Petrini, calls “quiet material pleasure.” This is exactly what Maurice Holt has proposed. “Slow Schools” would promote community by allowing room for discovery and room for paying attention. Concentration and judgment and all the other slow food values that testing cannot measure would be given a chance to flourish.

How do we begin to turn the public schools into slow schools? The Edible Schoolyard at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, in Berkeley, California, provides a hopeful model. King School is a public school with about 1,000 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. It is an astonishingly diverse group, socially, economically, and culturally—over twenty languages are spoken in the students’ homes. A decade ago, this school was surrounded by large schoolyard covered with blacktop. The school’s cafeteria had been closed because it was no longer large enough to accommodate all the students. Microwaved, packaged food was sold from a shack at the end of the parking lot.

Members of the community dismayed by the state of the school began speaking with other parents and teachers. We noticed that the blacktop schoolyard was large enough for an enormous garden and talked about initiating an edible landscape. We suggested that the students could plant and care for a garden and even learn to cook, serve, and sit down and eat together in a renovated cafeteria and lunchroom. These ideas would have been nothing more than well-intentioned fantasies had King School not had an enlightened principal. He understood that a new school garden and a renovated cafeteria and lunchroom meant more just the beautification of school grounds. He understood that these were the central elements of a revolution in both the lunch program and the entire school curriculum.

Presently the Edible Schoolyard consists of a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen-classroom. In the garden, students are involved in all aspects of planting and cultivation; and in the kitchen-classroom, they prepare, serve, and eat food, some of which they have grown themselves. These activities are woven into the curriculum and are part of the school day. A new ecologically designed cafeteria is being built and the program is preparing for the transformation of the school lunch program. When the cafeteria has been built, lunch will be an everyday, hands-on experience and an essential part of the life of the school.

Such a curriculum is not a new idea in education. Waldorf schools and Montessori schools, among others, practice similar experiential, value-oriented approaches to learning based on participation. This kind of participatory learning makes all the difference when it comes to opening minds. The Edible Schoolyard, for instance, has shown that if you offer children a new dish, there’s no better than a fifty-fifty chance they will choose it. But if they’ve been introduced to the dish ahead of time, and if they have helped prepare it, they will all want to try it.

Learning is supposed to be a pleasure, and a food-centered curriculum is a way to reach kids in a way that is truly pleasurable. At first, the kids may not quite believe that they are allowed to have so much fun outside in the garden. But before long, they all know what compost is. And all know what’s ripe and what’s not ripe, and when. This is knowledge they have learned without realizing it from experiences like picking the raspberry patch clean every morning. While they are touching, and smelling, and tasting, so much information floods in—because they are using all of their senses. What better way to learn about geography than by combining twenty seven aromatic spices to make an Indian curry?

This is the beauty of a sensory education: the way all the doors into your mind are thrown wide open at once. Esther Cook, who teaches in the kitchen at King school, says it so beautifully: “the senses are truly the great equalizer. They are the key to a beautiful life, a really fulfilling life, and they are available to anybody.”

A slow school education is an opportunity that should be universally available—the more so because kids aren’t eating at home with their families anymore. In fact, in the United States, many children never eat with their families (an observation confirmed by our experience at King School). Our most democratic institution, the public school system, now has an obligation to feed our children in a civilized way around a table. And students should be asked to participate—not just as a practical life exercise, but as a way of putting beauty and meaning into their lives.

There are countless ways to weave a food program into the curriculum at every level of education. The creation of the Slow Food University in Pollenzo, Italy, which will open next fall, clearly shows the seriousness and wide reach of an eco-gastronomic perspective. It is reconfiguring gastronomy as a subject of academic inquiry. The depth and breadth of the subject—its relevance in ecology, anthropology, history, physiology, and art—assures it could easily be integrated into academic studies of every school, from the kindergarten to the university.

Now if every school had a lunch program that served its students only local products that had been sustainably farmed, imagine what it would mean for agriculture. Today, twenty percent of the population of the United States is in school. If all these students were eating lunch together, consuming local, organic food, agriculture would change overnight to meet the demand. Our domestic food culture would change as well, as people again grew up learning how to cook affordable, wholesome, and delicious food.

To make this a reality we need more model programs at all levels; when these models are good enough, we will have the momentum to seek the mandate and the money to make them a reality throughout the country. We know from experience that it can be done.

Forty years ago, a presidential commission in America told us our children were physically unfit and that we had to launch a national physical fitness program. The country responded by building gymnasiums, buying equipment and training new physical education teachers, and by making physical education a required part of the curriculum in every school. Today we are worried anew over the health of our children. Child obesity is shocking, and at the present rate of increase, one out of every three children can be expected to develop diabetes, and for African American children, the statistic is one out of every two. We must respond by bringing real food, nutritious food, back into the schools and into the curriculum. We must create new incentives for educators to integrate real food into the lives of their students. Perhaps the best and most radical way to do this is to give credit for school lunch, just as credit is given for physical education or for math or science. This would add a new dimension of integrity to the lunchroom, placing it on a par with the classroom, and breathing new life and dignity into learning how to eat.

What we are calling for is a revolution in public education—a real Delicious Revolution. When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum, enriched with experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world.

the edible schoolyard

The mission of the Edible Schoolyard is to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape which is wholly integrated into the school's curriculum and lunch program. It involves the student in all aspects of farming the garden - along with preparing, serving and eating the food - as a means of awakening their senses and encouraging awareness and appreciation of the transformative values of nourishment, community, and stewardship of the land.

Principles

The following principles guide the design and conception of the Edible Schoolyard:

Participatory: The Executive Committee, Steering Committee, staff, teachers and students who help plan, develop, and manage the garden reflect the multicultural and demographic diversity of the school and community.

Ecological: The Garden is designed and maintained using sound ecological proctices that are reflected in all aspects of the project, from the way the food is grown, harvested and prepared, to the recycling of waste back into the earth.

Aesthetic: The goal is to create a beautiful environment that will inspire personal and social responsibility, one that will also function as a model for other schools.

a single carrot

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
Paul Cezanne

floating wind turbines

chair made from carrier bags

removable sink

LED charges by day glows by night and above...streetLED

futures through design - some examples

Here are a few pictures of designs and ideas that are showing us ways that the ecoculture is going. Welcome to the future!

creating - sustainable - communities

Let's begin with the title.
Creating sustainable communities says a good deal about the intention behind this book.
This is a book that anticipates that to achieve something that is sustainable there is a need to attend to both the relationships between the custodians, and a need to engage and nourish the imagination.
Community plays an important part therefore in establishing a tone for participation through the quality of relationships, the extent to which people feel that they have a voice and are capable of action as engaged citizens. This serves to define both the emancipatory possibility of community as a social movement, and ensures that there are fundamental principles of equity, social justice and most significantly ecological consciousness at the heart of the community venture.
Creativity is the dynamic that engages individuals and groups. It is a way of being that stimulates, inspires, designs, imagines and models our world.
Sustainable retreat, is the progression from a managed to a living systems understanding of reality. It is the fundamental framework within which we live our lives in collaboration with all other living beings on the planet.

chapter two outline

This chapter will get into thinking about and having an influence on the future
Sustainability is intricately linked with the future as well as the present way we do things. Choices we make today influence how we live and how we might live. Rather than get tied up in knots with development plans and goals and objectives, I think that the key thing we need to learn is how to live with emergence. Once we understand how to think using a living systems model we can nurture appropriate forms of change.

This chapter will provide the simple outline of a proccess of understanding through a living systems model drawn from the thinking of permaculture.

A series of headings provide a shape through which living systems thinking can be made more accessible, these are:

Observation, Boundaries, Resources, Evaluation, Design, Implementation and Maintenance.

Each of these will be described and developed, they make sense as a whole, so interconnection is a fundamental from the outset.

wholeness

One of the greatest lessons we can learn from ecosystems is that in order to understand an ecosystem one has to look at it as a whole. It is not possible to look at an ecosystem and make predictions about its activity by simply adding together the constituent parts. The system is integrated. All of the parts are interactive and interdependent and by being like this they form a complex whole.

the atmosphere - connectivity

The earth's atmosphere could never persist without the presence of life. The atmosphere is maintained in a stable state as a result of the organisms that live on the planet. The interaction between the organisms, and the mix of gases generate the conditions for life to exist, and for the atmosphere to function. Lovelock found in his research at NASA that this applies not only to the atmosphere, but also to the temperature and all other conditions that living things require. In effect, the earth is very similar to a living organism itself, with many different life forms interacting in a similar way to organs inside the body. Lovelock gave this the name Gaia - the name of the Greek mother goddess.

methodology...

Permaculture followers will recognise the O'BREDIM mnemonic that forms the basic operational method of thiis approach to growing plants.
I want to explore its use in human systems thinking, particularly as the possible ways of creating a working methodology that enables people to nurture sustainable community.
The sequence is as follows:
Observation, Boundaries, Resources, Evaluation, Design, Implementation and Maintenance.
In order then, first in relation to permaculture, and then extending into community.
Observation allows you first to see how the site functions within itself, to gain an understanding of its initial relationships. Some people recommend a year-long observation of a site before anything is planted. During this period all factors, such as lay of the land, natural flora and so forth, can be brought into the design. A year allows the site to be observed through all seasons, although it must be realised that, particularly in temperate climates, there can be substantial variations between years. In the community context this approach is stressing the importance of time to get to know and feel the ways that a community responds to situations. It is about taking stock, reflecting and connecting.
Boundaries refer to physical ones as well as to those your neighbours might place on you, for example. Within communities boundaries can be environmental - what physical space have we got to do things, emotional - in terms of the impediments and possibilities the emotional state of readiness exists in the community, and conceptual - based on preconceived ideas
Resources would include the people involved, funding, as well as what you can grow or produce in the future. Similarly in the community - who, how and what would people be doing, or be able to offer to do?
Evaluation of the first three will then allow you to prepare for the next three. This is a careful phase of taking stock of what you have at hand to work with. This is interesting as it emphasises the importance of taking stock along the way, in the form of continuous examination and reflection as part of a learning process.
Design is always a creative and intensive process, and you must stretch your ability to see possible future synergetic relationships.
Implementation is literally the ground-breaking part of the process when you carefully dig and shape the site. In a similar way we engage and develop strategic activity, build things, establish working patterns and foster new initiatives with colleagues.
Maintenance is then required to keep your site at a healthy optimum, making minor adjustments as necessary. Good design will preclude the need for any major adjustment. To maintain the sustainable community we nurture the relationships, we seek patterns that reinforce and encourage relationship and interdependence and we encourage connectivity.

Introduction to the book

Alex Steffen describes a tension between the unthinkable and the unimaginable in his presentation of past, existing and future worlds. Unthinkable because the challenges facing humanity are on such a scale, and in many cases of our own making, that it is easier to pursue business as usual and hope it will go away, unimaginable because the fabric of a new way of living on the planet is as yet too ill defined to capture people’s imagination.

To understand the possibilities of how this will play out in the education sector we need a new frame of reference, a new paradigm. The current paradigm is failing to provide a sufficiently coherent overview any more, driven as it it is by an assumption that organisations such as schools are rationally functioning places that seek and require equilibrium in order to define and practice successfully. This is a double ‘whammy’ - it is both a false interpretation of school and learning, and it is incredibly misleading of reality. Much of the problem that we encounter with schools in most developed westernised systems are the result of the failings of this paradigm, it is time to attempt a new world view.

The paradigm is not strictly limited to education. It is in fact a dramatic shift in general terms about the ways in which human beings make connections between thinking and their everyday reality. Recent events such as the financial market collapse and the increasing awareness of rapid depletion of critically required resources such as oil are serving to underline the need to attend to the practicalities of change. The ‘thought world’ (Douglas 1986 Douglas, M. 1986 How institutions think. Syracuse.NY Syracuse University Press) that we create is known to subsequently define the worlds in which we live - a dominant operational narrative, or, as Wittgenstein commented ‘words create worlds.’ We need to find new words in order to transform our thought world and embed it into our daily lives.

A decade ago I made a first attempt at creating a conceptual framework to help me in my work where I was focusing attention on the ways in which schools might attempt to enhance their overall operational performance in response to this challenge. The central feature of the framework was a shift from the mechanical interpretation of the operation of the school and process of education, to a living systems interpretation of school and education that was rooted in deep ecology. This framework subsequently made me draw into question the appropriacy of managerialism as a device that would enhance educational improvement, founded as it is within a contrasting world view from that of living systems, where order, predictability and accountability form the basis of operational practice across both the management and development of the educational journey.

Over the last decade I have come to realise that the organisational thinking frame - the thought world plays a huge part in the likelihood of profound change taking hold. People do not, and indeed cannot, base their practical day-to-day decision making on knowledge alone. Having a well conceived theoretical framework in itself might help us to interpret the reality of the school in a new way, but it hardly serves as a way of scoping human activity to lead towards operationalising a new paradigm. I have seen schools grapple with the desire to create a learning community and at the same time be locked into the hierarchy and routine of a managed model, accountable to a wider system that holds to a different set of guiding rules and principles. The duality of perspectives, one that looks towards understanding the contextual challenges they immediately face and the other which seeks to change the way of doing things in response to these newly defined challenges emerging as society and environment changes places teachers and headteachers, students and parents in a constantly colliding series of situations, these can interfere with each other but fundamentally they are working from different paradigmatic frames. As a result, the dominant thought world prevails, and school communities find that they are not making the change to a learning community because the managerial thought world impedes the transition.

So a decade has run by and during that time I have worked closely with networks of schools to explore ways in which they can help themselves to move towards a style of working, shaped by a thought world of function as learning communities. I discovered that my ideas generated better understanding and provided the context for initially reinforcing but ultimately self-defeating processes of change. Indeed I now think that I deluded myself into thinking that the ideas espoused in Learning Schools, Learning Systems were in any way a radical break from the pack. I was attempting to shape and redefine a discourse of change from within an established, dominant world view. Little surprise then, that frustration has triumphed over euphoria.

Despite the failings and frustrations, I have remained closely aligned to the central tenet of the theoretical framework. That is, that we need to make a profound shift in our ‘thought world’ and take it from the mechanical to the quantum. In so doing we embed deep into the functionality of any newly posited design, the fundamental truth that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature, we are living beings pursuing our lives within a living system.

Recently, and continually during the last two years, I have begun to find ways in which this simple issue, can be realised and I have watched and participated in a movement that is fast gaining recognistion and influence in my local community. Whilst I am now far more realistic of my own role within this, I feel it is time to say something more. At its simplest, I think we can safely say that the existing paradigm is best defined as a deficit model of education, where schools, students and professionals all adhere to a thought world where success is defined by knowing, and that the ‘knowing’ is something that is more often than not defined by someone else, somewhere else. The resulting ‘catch up’ of those charged with providing the educational service within this knowledge framework is perpetual, it will never resolve the problem because the ownership of the knowledge is beyond the self or the resources of the organisation of the school. This I think serves to compound small successes, and doubly disempowers those who are struggling to deal with existing demands. Second, the entire system that serves to manage and improve education is premised on the first assertion. So we have inspections, national curricula, state mandates, off-the-shelf solutions which schools become ever more obliged to use in order to at least show some semblance of effort to keep in line with the direction of the flow. It is initially reinforcing, people see success, they are reported as improving, they receive adulation, they then buy into the idea that it is the only game in town, and once they do this the likelihood of introducing any alternative design is impeded significantly. What we see in educational reform is a repeating pattern, as Seymour Sarason (1990) reported ‘a predictable failure’ lies deep in the managed system, a prevailing misconception about change. For more than a decade this situation has limped onwards, with educational systems across the western world squeezing ever less and demanding ever more from the managed model. I maintain that this is no longer sustainable, there are too many externally pressing challenges for business as usual to prevail. It presents us with some significant challenges, one being the very question of whether we really need schools in their current form any more if their capacity to make the leap to a new paradigm is a practical impossibility.

This book tries to expand upon these basic ideas. It is conceived as both theoretical and practical because both theory and practice are part of a system and closely connected, it is work in progress because, as I have begun to learn, that is all we ever have in the emerging, living system.

small steps

WHEN THIRTEEN-YEAR-old Andrew Davey read a blog by a leading expert in green computing, explaining how changing from a white background computer screen to a black one could save energy, he decided to put the theory to the test. He is now the proud owner of an environmentally-friendly search engine called Ecosmartsearch.com - a search engine with the motto “We are saving energy, now it's your turn”.

Andrew’s search engine uses a black background which saves energy because the computer monitor uses 59 watts to produce the image on the screen, whereas a white or light screen uses 74 watts to display the image. This means that every time ecosmartsearch.com is used, it saves 15 watts. As it is Google-powered the search results are exactly the same but use less energy.

The blog which inspired Andrew to invent his search-engine explains the maths: "Google gets about 200 million queries a day. Assuming each query is displayed for about 10 seconds, that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day. If users run Google in the usual full-screen mode, the shift to a black background would save a total of 8.3 megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 megawatt-hours per year." Andrew realised that was a whole lot of carbon-dioxide that could be saved from entering the atmosphere.

see the full film on the FOE website

Winberry Hill - (text from the FoE website) Interview with film winners from Todmorden!!!!

Where are you from and what do you do as a living?

We live together in Todmorden, in West Yorkshire. I grew up in Accrington in Lancashire and David grew up in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.

I work as a library assistant. David is a fishmonger, but we both think of ourselves as filmmakers really – it’s what we love.

He trained in animation at university, and I studied media.

Have you made films before?

David’s been making his own films since saving up and buying his own video camera two and a half years ago.

In 2007 he won the Ravenscroft award at the Meniscus Film festival for a film called Fuzzy Logic. The film’s a mix of animation and live action about a day in the life of a computer game character.

He also won a an award for a short documentary about re-homed battery chickens called Being the Change.

We sometimes film weddings and parties, which earns us a bit of cash and gives David a chance to improve his camera work and editing skills.

We’ve been a couple for almost eight years, and making films together for two. Our different skills and opinions on each project complement each other. Working as a team stops either of us from getting too self-indulgent.

What motivated you to make your film about Winberry Hill?

I grew up in Accrington. I picked berries with my mum as a child on a little hill just off the bypass.

We were supposed to be picking berries to make jam. Often though, I’d just munch on them and come home with purple fingers and not many berries.

The question ‘Which bit of the Earth are you a friend of?’ instantly made me think of Accrington. I wanted to break its image of a typical mill town.

As I say in the film, for most people this hill off the bypass isn’t a final destination – it’s just a blur at the side of the road as they drive on by.

If you take the time to come and look, you see a bit of Accrington that most people never get the chance to see. It’s not all terraced houses and mills – it’s different - full of wild flowers and butterflies, bumble bees and berries.

How was it making your film?

On the day we filmed it wasn’t as sunny as we’d hoped. But we went anyway, armed with our tripod and a flask of coffee.

David got some great shots of the contrast between the motorway and the greenery. After trying for ages, we got shots of a bumble bee, and a butterfly opening its wings.

We ended up with about 30 minutes of footage, which David edited down to one minute.

How do you feel about having won this award?

We are very pleased to have been awarded this prize by such respected judges and can’t wait to get started working with Friends of the Earth to make a film that will have a positive impact on the environment.

creating connection - building resilience

Cuban night was really great fun and very interesting. We showed the film, and people watched and clapped at the end. Then we pulled tables togeher and food was served. As the eating carried on people shared their observations and insights from the film. What slowly happened was a shift from the issues directly identified in the film, to people's local concerns and interests in and around the town. Phone numbers were exchanged, people made connections with others who were doing similar work, or had mutual aquantainces, we couldn't see a web of connection, but we could feel it.

It serves as a good example of resilience in action - nothing overly complicated - just a situation created where people could focus on something together, have a chance to listen and connect in their own way to ideas and possibilities and then reconstruct their observations in the company of others without any particular agenda or forced plan. The circle of diversity, feedback and modularity seems to hold together quite well - diversity - people who attended came from a really broad spectrum of the local community, and came for different reasons, some for the fun of an evening out with a film, some came to dance (!), some came because they knew us, some came because they were interested in the Incredible Edible 'thing' but didn't know much about it - this range gave the place a buzz and provided a base of difference from which to start. In modular terms, it self-organised - people drew tables together and just began to talk together, lots of different ideas being tabled, lots of ways of constructing and connecting to them with people responding and refining other peoples suggestions, and the ideas weren't simply coming form one source or influence, I think that this leads to peole feeling they have an ownership and a control - it becomes our shared and our individual stories. Feedback was of all three the most interesting - there was none, quite deliberately we chose to leave the discussion open with the simple pointer that we will pick it up again in the new year. These things take time to synergise, they take time for people to consider and reflect and sift through before committing to action. A few weeks and we will be back in there, - nurturing emergent thinking - don't you just love it!

Hidden Connections - Know thyself

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena
Vaclav Havel

We live in interesting times. For more than two decades educational practitioners working in schools have been at the forefront of a national experiment in defining and assuring quality across the school system. The definition of quality has been externally created, modelled and then presented to schools in the form of standardised curricula, through nationally defined measures of leadership and headship (NCSL) and through the strict definition of performance standards which have been monitored through state managed inspectors - Ofsted.

The combination of these powerful measures has been widely commented upon elsewhere, but one prevailing impression is that education is now redefined, as Pring observes.

So mesmerised have we become with the importance of ‘cost efficiency’, ‘value for money’, productivity’, and ‘effectiveness’ that we have failed to see that the very nature of the enterprise of ‘an educational practice’ has been redefined. (Pring, R. (2000) Philosophy of Education Research. London: Continuum.)

Quality is an external matter, schools ‘deliver’ on quality boundaries defined beyond the school gates, they may tinker with it at the edges, but the message is clear, stray too far away from the state version of quality and you will be made to pay.

So it comes as little surprise that school self-evaluation is now well and truly back on the agenda. After all, why bother running a huge and expensive monitoring process when the vast majority of the schools are ‘on message’? Indeed, it is politically expedient to create the illusion that quality is now a matter of local taste, as this creates an illusion of freedom which for most of the profession’s collective memory is more of an historical oddity than a real feature of their educational practice and operational process.

But school self-evaluation represents a serious challenge. It offers a possibility, probably by accident more than design, for educators to take the empowering step of asking what they mean by quality in their own establishments and not succumbing to the brain numbing mediocrity of running a mini-Ofsted operation inside their own establishment. The choice is clear, do they use self-evaluation to really listen and attend to educational need, or will they simply replicate the model that asserts quality is something that someone else defines?

I would like to think that we might pitch for the former. In so doing it seems sensible to offer some pointers which might help a school to begin to take themselves seriously.

There are three simple tools that will be described here, each play a part in bringing the ‘self’ into self-evaluation.

Ensure full participation
Just because our last twenty years have created a repressed profession, the next twenty need not be defined through more of the same. This is a huge opportunity to revise - to re-vision the way school communicates to itself. So, as a matter of principle, if self-evaluation is to work for the benefit of the community of learners then it is imperative that the community of learners, and this means all learners, are represented in the conversation. You might start with a senior management agenda for self-evaluation, but pretty quickly you will want to know what students think, what the parents think, and what the rest of the staff think. Having a voice in the process of self-evaluation is not just the bricks and mortar of filling in a form and then being told that you were consulted. If self-evaluation is to become a valued, integral part of the way the community hears itself, then there needs to be buy in.

Use questions to generate enquiry and engagement
One starting point we have used regularly in the IQEA programme is to focus attention on what we mean by the quality of the learning experience. It is a good example of how a simple question can lead to profound set of actions leading to change. The lead question can be supported with a few pointers - what defines quality in our (key stage - department - classroom - entrance hall - parental outreach...) but our experience suggests that it is best to leave the specific focal areas to the people involved in the conversation.


Support people in hearing each other
Pay attention to group size when exploring questions, as people need to be able to hear each other. This is about meaning, not just words. They may need help with this, look at some of the work of the great writers such as Frijof Capra and David Bohm talking about Dialogue. It is through the word, that meanings are generated. People need time to explore ideas, to co-construct them and to then explore their possibility in the day to day life of the school.

Model enquiry as a shared process across all aspects of the self-evaluation
Self-evaluation can create huge logistical problems, after all, it may involve a lot of people exploring a shared issue on quality improvement over a period of time. We have found that having a simple, coherent method enables the self-evaluation process to function and provide required data to inform development at a later stage.

In the case of the IQEA programme this is formed through an action enquiry process taken through six stages of development:
introduction - explaining to all participants the way the self-evaluation is going to operate
preparing - Asking how we are going to start to do this work
gathering - how we might find out about areas of quality improvement
synthesising - how we interpret what we have found out
confronting -asking does this make good sense?
reconstructing - asking what does this mean to us and what will we no proceed to do as a result of our findings?

At the centre of these mini enquiries is the knowledge that they are part of a larger process, and driving this process is the search for the hidden connections that deepen our understanding and awareness of our roles and functions in serving learners in the school.


Time
School self-evaluation is not a quick fix. It is a way of thinking out loud together. This takes time to discover and takes time to nurture and maintain. However, it does bring rewards. The possibility that we are entering into a new phase of empowered, articulate advocates of locally defined and purposeful community embedded change is exciting, challenging and light years away from the given quality of the machine age. It is time we took this time seriously and use it to good effect for the sake of all learners in our communities.

Bohm, D. On Dialogue. London. Routledge
Capra, F. (2003) The hidden Connection. London. Flamingo
Pring, R. (2000) Philosophy of Education Research. London: Continuum.

International Energy Agency report on oil resources

‘Hydrocarbon resources around the world are abundant and will easily fuel the world through its transition to a sustainable energy future.’ Claude Mandil (2005) Executive director of the International Energy Agency - IEA.

Somewhere between 2007 and 2008, the International Energy Agency changed its mind. Previous assessments of oil supplies were dismissed as unreliable and the Agency undertook the first ever detailed analysis of what the global oil resource looked like. Until very recently ‘it was mainly an assumption - a global assumption about the world’s oil fields.’ (Fatih Birol - IEA, author of the Energy Outlook IEA 2008). It was a country by country, field by field study, both onshore and offshore and in addition it looked at decline rates across the major 800 oil fields in the world. So we begin to move from fiction to fact, and with the first set of publicly available data what are we looking at?

First, the IEA expects conventional oil extraction in the major fields to come to a plateau in three or four years time and then it will begin to decline. In global terms there is an assumption that this can continue - working in the known fields until around 2020 when it will plateau as well.

Second, a new, revised figure has been identified for the decline rate, that is the rate at which oil is declining in the fields globally. Last year (2007) this rate was stated at 3.7%, it has been revised to 6.7%.

This has some startling implications. It is taken as given that oil is running out - the IEA are clear that this is the case. What is not clear is how fast we are running out. But when we add into the equation the IEA revised estimate we could be looking globally at 2020 being the likely point at which we face a crash.

So where are the plans? Where are the contingency strategies? If we are really looking at something that is just over a decade away then we need to begin to weave a post oil mentality into the fabric of society - we don’t seem to be seeing the clock.

Climate action project - Obama Plans

From the Transition to Green plans url: http://www.climateactionproject.com/docs/transition/document_gw_01.pdf

This report highlights priority environmental recommendations for the Obama administration transition
team endorsed by a coalition of national environmental and conservation organizations listed below1.
Many organizations assisted in the creation of this report and we recognize their contributions. The report
describes how the administration can resume Federal leadership on critical energy and environmental
challenges affecting our economy, health and well-being in order to put our nation on a sustainable path
now and for future generations.
Over the past several months, a coalition of national environmental and conservation organizations has
completed an internal process to develop a set of suggestions for the new administration. Sub-committees
including representatives from throughout the environmental community have considered the full breadth
of environmental issues we expect will be considered by the administration and developed the detailed
recommendations included in this report. It contains key consensus recommendations and is meant to
compliment, and not replace, other environmental transition reports developed by individual organizations
with recommendations of their own.
Each set of agency recommendations highlights three major issues for the agency, followed by key
administrative, legislative and budgetary policy actions and critical actions to take in the first 100 days.
We urge the agency transition teams to use this document in the first crucial days of the Obama
administration and look forward to working with the administration to develop policies that will both
revitalize our economy and protect the planet.

Participating as leaders - ch5 notes

Our earlier discussion raised the importance of a reciprocal, communicative approach to the challenge of leadership for sustainable retreat ( I want to revisit the word retreat later - it has negative connotations and I recognise the need to define this carefully).

To achieve this there is a need for a coherent model of leadership support that will enable participants to connect at a point that suits their personal requirements.

In the outline below, we draw upon six principles described by Lambert (2005) that enable integrated, dynamic and interconnected working. Often the principles overlap and contain each other, they reinforce each other and present a vision of development for educational leaders that is both powerful and practical in leading towards individual and community learning and transformation.

Our earlier discussion highlighted the significance of people centered change, as a sustainable, practical and principled route to reform. We suggested that:

People charged with taking a lead with the change need to have opportunities to investigation what is wanted – they need to generate their own ‘solution’ to the problem
People have to find out what’s already working
People require time and support to build the solution
People support each other in order to identify and amplify useful strengths
People address the solution by taking small steps to build on what’s working
People focus on interactions between individuals

These aspirations place demands on how people work together. To respond to them we suggest that there are some important principles that can be considered and actions can be built around them. Each of these are outlined below and serve as the overarching frame for the work we envisage.

1. Trust: Who am I and am I safe here?
Becoming a confident, capable and caring leader is a lifelong process that involves taking responsibility for one’s own learning within a context of a community of learners.

Key points:
Meeting people in similar stages of professional life
Challenging and supporting self-disclosure, risk taking, and reflection
Sustaining trusting relationships

Programmes of support:
Year long cohort based groups 10 – 20 participants and 2/3 partner facilitators, one day and residential retreats
Activities to maximize potential learning, understanding of differences and common themes between participants

2. Purpose: Where are we going?
How do we generate, balance, and interrelate concern for organizational goals with those of the individual whilst ensuring personal and organizational well-being?

Key points:
Learning by leading and co-designing goals

Programmes of support:
Seminars: expert led seminars working with small groups and providing focused and specialized advice and support on topics of interest
Leadership ‘Accounts of Practice’ working as a cohort team and visiting each others sites and providing critical feedback
A consultant led, structured visit, which would involve some preparatory activity (reading, responding to questionnaires, providing initial data) an on-site dimension (observation, learning walk-throughs, data capture) and a plenary event involving dissemination of findings and further questions, and new lines of enquiry.
Use of provided self-assessment instruments, journals, narratives, case studies, weblog and e-support
Inquiry into site improvement needs, and site leadership capacity

3. Action: How will we get there?
A practice field for action and reflection – doing is all about how to pursue the goals and design activities that elicit and sustain authentic interest, investment and engagement in learning.

Key points:
Learning by leading by experiencing and participating in the learning community
Individual activity
Community activity

Programmes of support:

Action learning teams: undertaking shred fieldwork and enquiry into specific questions that are a) site related b) common across the group
Group based presentations and feedback sessions – facilitator participating and working within the group
Coaching and peer mentoring activity – using experienced coaches and mentors to deepen leadership understanding of role and function
Shadowing
This form of leadership support would be a bespoke activity brokered between colleagues from different institutions over agreed periods of time ranging from single days to multiple visits. The focus is mutually agreed and the process can be operated through an agreed protocol, or through the support of an experienced consultant it can be extended into other forms of inter-organisational support.


4. Construct: What are we working on and learning about?
This involves making sense of everyday activity and focusing on how we do our work.

Key points:
Attention to details, discrete topics, skills, challenges, new possibilities
Attention to real world, integrated holistic problem and practice based topics, skills, challenges and possibilities

Programmes of support:
Learning walkthroughs – teams focused on questions generated within the institution – provide critical feedback after a series of structured enquiries
Opportunities to model, teach, and build learning activity around dialogue, conversation and reflection processes, can be facilitated – guided developments
World Café activities – opportunities for groups of varying sizes to gather together, possibly from a wider regional base and share expertise, reflect together on common challenges related to policies and local issues, extremely powerful in visioning and generating creative solutions for persistent problems
Inter-school/establishment networking – building on know how of the NLC programme

5. Reframe: How else might we view this?
By this point the programme beins to address the question What is the powerful pedagogy for thoughtfulness? It involves learning by thinking and doing.

Key points:
Self assessment and personal accountability for leadership behaviour and practice
Partnership in mutual encounters aimed at growth change and improvement

Programmes of support:
Placements in other establishments (one day – one month)
Facilitated group narrative activities such as journal readings, reflection times, emphasizing enquiry and systems thinking
Established protocol activities – such as Accounts of Practice, Walkthroughs, Group reading, Portfolios
Structured visits to other institutions – conversations with other practitioners
Conferences and specialist workshop/seminars where work in progress can be profiled and examined
Regional leadership and networking – using the regional leadership and networking centres

6. Transform: How far have we come and what are we seeing that is different?
This principle is realized as a result of working with the other five. It concerns values and commitments that are nurtured in the learning community.

Facilitated evaluation and appraisal programme which draws upon evidence presented in earlier activities and combines the perspectives to generate a portfolio of work in progress which is critically evaluated by peers
Retreats / residential reflective seminars aimed to frame new goals and recognize needs and areas of improvement
Regional leadership and networking - building upon existing organizational services at the regional level it is feasible to foresee new roles and functions emerging from leadership centres.

Participants in this programme need to see their school accurately and honestly. They need to have experiences that will expand their sense of the possible, of self and organization. The range of ways in which this can best be achieved have been outlined in the document. We have emphasized the importance of dialogue and communication as a driver for sustainable practice. We have also moved away from some of the traditional knowledge transfer programmes towards a process led model which engages participants in their own knowledge creation activity. This approach, we suggest, is more suited to the learning culture that is being encouraged to flourish and will nurture a new generation of enquiring, learning professionals.

sustainable retreat principles

These are formative ideas for establishing policies and practices which initiate the practice of sustainable retreat.

see the scale of things
beware of living too heavily in a world of fictional experience and entertainment
see beyond technology and technological solutions
account for materials and energy in all human activity
consider the meaning of ‘growth’

Strong support for egg campaign

EGG campaign has got off to a flying start with a meeting of enthusiastic hen keepers.
Part of Incredible Edible Todmorden's vision is that Todmorden will become self sufficient in terms of its egg supply in the near future and to further this aim a meeting was held at the Bear Cafe last week for anyone interested in keeping hens.

IADVERTISEMENT

ncredible Edible has estimated that Todmorden needs about 3,000 eggs a week to be produced locally to ensure that every egg is a Todmorden egg.

Pauline Mullarkey, of Incredible Edible, said that during the meeting, attended by over 20 people with a wide range of experiences in hen rearing, the excitement for the vision was tangible with a growing belief that this was an achievable aim.

Of the people at the meeting, Pauline said: "Some people keep a few hens and use the eggs for their own consumption, some people had a larger number of hens and were selling their eggs on a farm gate basis. Other people there didn't keep hens but were interested in the idea and were left in no doubt that it would be a great idea. One woman was able to inform the group of a battery hen rescue charity she is involved in and someone else was able to address the group with vast knowledge about keeping a large number of hens.

"Those people who already have knowledge and experience of keeping hens were more than willing to offer their support and advice to people who may never have kept hens before and would therefore help give people in the town the confidence they might need to have a go and become part of this wonderful plan."

The next step will be looking at the possibility of setting up a Local Egg Co-Operative which could source local eggs from around the town and get them distributed to the local shops, market and supermarkets.

Pauline said this is one of the many strands in terms of local food production and Incredible Edible Todmorden is now keen to see action on the ground in the town. Anyone interested can email on nick_pauline@tiscali.co.uk or ask to speak to Pam Warhurst at The Bear Cafe, Rochdale Road, Todmorden.

Building the 21st-Century Economy - Cuban night at the Bear!

Tonight is our Cuban evening for the Incredible edible project. I will introduce the film with the following: (or variations on the theme!)


“ There is nothing so difficult in human affairs than to change the established order of things
because those who will be hurt by the change are quite certain of their loss while those who
will benefit are uncertain of their gain.” – Machiavelli

In our personal lives and in the lives of our nations, change usually involves three forces: push, pull and inertia.

That’s the case now as we confront the end of the industrial era and we begin to establish a relationship between our economy and ecology.

There are two huge challenges that we face.

The first is the challenge of changes in the Earth’s climate, and the second is to overcome the political tensions associated with ownership and distribution of oil.

Both these challenges are forcing nations, communities and individuals toward a change of lifestyle.

The force that pulls us forward is the vision of a way of living in our communities with economies that bring security, opportunity and stewardship of the planet. It is our next frontier and it calls for us to exercise an imaginative, sustainable response.

The forces holding us back are many. They may be technical, structural, political and economic. But by far the biggest barrier of all is the barrier of attitude. Do we do nothing, do we resist or deny, or do we begin to think together about the future and how we might want to live in it?

We know that the stocks of oil around the planet are dwindling, we find less crude oil year on year and at the same time we use more and more of it. Imagine an olympic size swimming pool, and then imagine it full to the brim with oil, every fifteen seconds, we are draining that pool - it is running out, and the general consensus of scientists and oil industrialists is that this will happen in the next twenty to forty years. If there is anyone in the room luck enough to be under the age of thirty the chances are that you will spend most of your life in a post-oil economy. We know what is happening with climate change and we are getting better at the projection of its impact on people, habitat and environment. The signs are too many and too persistent to ignore. The question is not if we should change. It’s whether we have the will to make the change necessary.

When Barrack Obama makes his inaugral speech next month in Washington, he will focus attention on preparing the american nation for an agenda of change, in one of his advisory reports it says...

Climate change is not a problem we can put off and deal with sometime in the future. It is happening now. Our job is to keep it from getting worse. We have the tools we need. What we lack so far is a sufficient sense of urgency to use them.


The challenges brought about by climate change and the move to a post oil world will not be solved by new technologies alone. To put it bluntly, smart technologies can accommodate stupid behavior, but only to a point. The solution will involve not just be found in developing new hardware, it will be achieved through the choices we make as consumers and as citizens.

That’s good news. It means that each of us can make a difference.

Tonights film shows one way in which a community faced with a need to change has reinvented itself, it offers a glimpse of a different future where the production of food enables people to reconnect, redesign and rebuild strong and resilient communities.

creative innovation - responding to the tyranny of certainty

The world is either the effect of cause or chance. If it is the latter, it is a world for all that, that is to say it is a regular and beautiful structure.
Marcus Aurelius: Emperor of Rome

Derren Brown, the famous illusionist recently ran a programme on television where he offered a fool-proof service to horse racing punters. The basis of the programme was that he traded on his amazing ability of prediction. He invited people to come forward and place a fixed bet on the winner of a specific horse race. One thousand people responded by putting money on a horse, but here was the rub, Brown spread bet, he covered every horse in the race and thus guaranteed that some of his clientele were going to win. Taking only his winners, who were still committed to the notion that he was able to pick out winnners, he repeated the process again and again, slowly thinning down the number of people each time whose horse won the race and always inviting the winning punters to continue to put increasingly large amounts of money on the horses. So punters who stuck with Brown’s winning bets began to win large aounts of money, and being on the inside track so to speak, meant that they were very likely to win again as the suggested bets were from a trusted source, and there was no cause to believe he would fail. Of course, eventually there was only one punter left, who was persuaded to put all her life savings on a horse of Browns choosing. It lost. However, television being what it was, Brown had it covered and she didn’t really lose because he had put the money on a different horse. Thus maintaining the magic, but not after revealing the scam to the trusting woman, and to the audience.

I tell this story because it seems to me to reveal something of the madness that we have in educational reform. Despite more than two decades of endless change, we still seem no closer to making any real sense out of public sector developments. Public spending on education has gone up and down, according to the colour of the political flag that was in office, but in the main, the plethora of initiatives that successive governments have committed to as drivers of improvement in services have singularly failed to make the grade. We are now in a situation where we need to try a new direction as money is once again short, and there is a growing recognition that we need to redesign service in a way that high standards are established without resorting to spending more than economically we can afford to spend. For some this new agenda is being termed as ‘paradigm change’ 1. For most of us, I think in reality it will be a variation on the existing theme. Our reform, is simply that, reengineering the existing form, not transforming. Whatever happens, it is very likely that educational service reform will continue to undertake an equivalent of Browns spread betting, sifting only the successful initiatives as evidence of how to improve the system, and leaving on the sideline a growing number of ‘also ran’ schools.

We can see this in the logic underpinning much of the school to school networking taking place. The emphasis on knowledge transfer, replicating across the system any examples in the system of great success, making sure that the champions of these successes are highly visible and ready to make clear for all that will listen what exactly constituted their success. The findings will then form the basis of the next development in areas that lack the cutting edge knowledge. We are already seeing this in the work of the schools challenge initiative (DCSF 2008). Knowing ‘what works’, is persuasive, it comes with the full backing of government seeking solutions in areas of greatest need, and as an approach it is endorsed by most of the professional development community who need to be seen to have a body of knowledge and be seen to know how to use it properly. In this world, certainty plays a very significant part in ensuring that we have an equitable, open opportunity for all. Indeed, this has formed the basis of many recent school improvement initiatives, and certainly underpins much of the concept of what is known as ‘evidence led practice.’ The usual systems of carrot and stick apply, performance will be defined and measured against the implementation and management of the new developments in their new settings. We can presume, as knowledge transfer mechanisms begin to embed, that a few organisations improve, many will drift, some will fail.

It seems clear to me that in our next phase, we need to examine the idea of transformation and challenge the tyranny of certainty approach vehemently. What we do know about knowledge is that ‘whenever knowledge connects with knowledge, new connections take place. Ideas spawn ideas, which synthesis with each other until more knowledge results. It is completely natural,.’ (Verna Allee 1993). We simply don’t know a great deal about how to transform a system in the form of a service that has been around for over a century because until now all we have ever done is reform it. Embracing the reality of ‘not knowing’ is much harder for us to take on board and embed into our organisational psyche. In the previous two phases of public sector reform, under both conservative and labour administrations, professional knowledge was managed in unprecedented ways by reinforcing the assumption that someone out there knew best, and in that certainty, we simply had to find out what it was, where it was, how it worked and how to repeat it somewhere else.

Embracing lack of knowledge places a profession of educators in a very interesting position. It means we have to learn. We have to learn to see the problems differently. It means we have to learn to live with chaotic, diverse and emergent public service rather than assuming a fixed, orthodox approach that will suit all-comers. We need to learn how to create the conditions that are conducive for innovative, creative ideas that can be explored, deepened and connected over time not through procedure and content, but through a philosophy of emergence - a willingness, collectively to listen, study, trial, reflect, reconstruct and communicate with integrity and in a culture of trust. We need to learn to create a learning community, designed around relationships that are focused on emergence.

Putting our trust in someone else’s confidence trick is simply not a sensible way forward.

beginning the conversation - school

Until now I have explored some of the broad issues which I think inform a way of thinking about the whole idea of sustainable retreat. I have emphasised that the concept presents some important challenges to consider when we attempt to introduce practices into established organisational structures such as schools because their modus operandi is guided by other ways of seeing the given world.

However, there are constructive starting points from which we can begin to make plans and develop responses that are positive and principled. In order to take the ideas forward I think that there are some basic assumptions which serve as foundations upon which all the practical application of knowledge into sustainable communities and schools can flourish.

We are looking at this problem as something that is interconnected, it is a systems challenge.
We are looking finding a balance between design and emergent leadership.
We are looking at how to enquire into the possibility of change.

Some starting questions:
• What do we mean by sustainable school improvement?
• What are the main questions we need to address in order to nurture more sustainable learning communities?
• What systems and processes of professional support can best assist us in our activities designed to address these questions?
• How can schools support one another in order to strengthen the impact of these activities?

I will address these questions further in the next few posts and illustrate them with examples of work in progress.

moving school - Arpora village, Goa, India

The moving school is an initiative funded by the Danish Government in Southern India in support of children of migrant workers. The schools are simple in design, built upon truck bases, with bamboo walls and a chalk board the school employs a teacher who speaks the children's home language. They offer a foundation stage education for children who would otherwise find themselves living on the streets during the daytime while their parents are at work. Often finding themselves in unfamiliar villages and towns and invariably in states far from their home, the children find it very difficult to settle into local schools. The moving schools can do just that, they are able to follow the children and their families when they move on from one workbase to the next.

moving school - Arpora village, Goa, India

on the road

travelling too much this month...need to write but finding that time is against me...

making time, making space in the schedule of life to pay attention and to reflect is not easy

its easy to be dragged along

easy to uncouple the thinking and just float along bumping into whatever comes next

its important to stop...its important to

university for all the people

It is very interesting that there are so few universities located in rural areas...why is that beyond the obvious that more people are centered around cities?
I want to suggest we need to develop a new form of university for all people. One that offers anyone, of any age from toddler to pensioner to have lifelong access to resources to inform, challenge and develop their skills, knowledge understanding and their resilience. At the moment, universities are elite places, they remain the places of the few, and not of the many, they remain the places where people spend a little time and then move on, they remain in the main, peripheral to most people's lives. Yet they could be a way of thinking about future living, they could be places where people can meet and think together, they could be places that inform and provide the possibility for people to pass on skills and practice new things. The local university could be a way of re-thinking how we re-connect school to community. Instead of school, we could all be part of the local university, it could be truly universal.
Instead of being preoccupied with the university as a building, let's think of the university as a way of combining ideas - people - and problems and re-defining the university as a place of learning again that serves people for their lifetime of learning, it could easily play a central part in forming the renaissance of sustainable communities.

A reaction to no action

IF YOU SPEND ALL YOUR TIME TRYING, THEN ALL YOU'RE DOING IS TRYING. SO DON'T TRY. JUST DO.

Saw this on the side of a wall as I was travelling on the train the other day, it took the outward and return journey to see all the message, thanks to whoever posted it!

work in progress

idealism and community

'this is just idealism, get real Paul...'

Ok, it knocks you when you realise that perhaps what you are writing is not the wonderfully clear and practical guidance you think it is...! A note in response though to a good friend and valued critical reader.

It was Durkheim who said that idealism only ever arises through the communal becasue it was 'at the school of collective life that the individual has learned to idealise. It is in assimilating the ideal elaborated by society that he has become capable of conceiving the ideal' (Durkheim, E. (1976)
Whilst many people don't agree with this sentiment, it presents a very interesting relationship between idealism and community. If its 'just idealism' and I need to 'get real' then is individualism the assasin of the idealist, and if our preoccupation with individualism over community is so strong, then does this not inhibit considerably our chances of exercising real freedom? There are alternatives, this is one of them that I am exploring, it is not idealistic, it is reality in a changed form.

chapter material - starting off

So we had a great meeting, the discussion flowed and together a timeline of activity, milestones and the emotion of change was created, more on its detail later.

For the moment a short piece on barriers and starting points - when faced with ground shifting issues it is easy to procrastinate - a few objections we identified to begin with...

We aren't allowed to...
Fear is a mind number. All too often the first point of resistance to any initiative is that we are not permitted to do it. As if waiting for permission ever changed anything! Who constructs the barriers in the first place?...people! If its socially constructed it can be socially reconstructed.

We haven't got the money...
Three critical elements of any initiative are not linked to money - authenticity, vivacity and playful (Oliver James 2007). James's work exploring the psychology of happiness tells some simple and compelling stories of what makes human beings thrive and live fulfilling lives. The message is clear, despite considerably more financial security than we had in the 1950's (even during a credit crunch) more people than ever are reporting emotional distress - a mental illness like depression, anxiety or psychosis (pxiii). In starting the journey towards creating sustainable communities part of our immunity kit needs to be emotional fitness and well-being. Authenticity - means to be real rather than false. Vivacity - means to feel enervated, fascinated and excited by life. Playfulness - is is taking what is going on around and 'use your imagination to transform it into something amusing and beyond what it seems (p252)- best illustrated in children's play.

We don't know enough about how to do this...
So who does? I draw inspiration from David Boud here and his commitment to dialogue as a way of transforming situations and lives. Talk to each other, share the possibilities of what you want to achieve. Do something and then reflect on what it was like and what you might do differently next time. The way forward will become clearer the more you do it. This is about 'leading from the future as it emerges' (Scharmer 2007) - as Peter Senge reminds us, 'the greatest of all human inventions is the creative process' (in Scharmer 2007 - Foreward). In Scharmers work he talks about people learning together about the future by 'drifting together' with the right intentions. The whole process of capacity building, creating resilience, is paying attention to the drift and making best use of the connections we create along the way, but remaining focused on the larger goal of serving the greater need - the deep ecology. Not knowing what to do encourages us to be resilient, resourceful and reflective - the feeling of what we are moing towards can become a real, powerful force for change.

Things to do...starting off...

My suggestion is that there are only three points of departure that you need to create a sustainable community.
Food, energy and know-how.

Food - to nourish and connect us back into the ecology of the earth.
Energy, to provide for our warmth and to enable us to use other resources effectively.
Know-how, to nurture our abilities to share, explain, develop and apply what we know to new situations with care and attention.

The conversation that develops over time will attend to all the other dimensions that will make the activity fulfilling and sustainable. It is a self-organising system, it will evolve to suit the local circumstances.

A sustainable community focused on food, energy and know-how will provide enough flow into awareness raising, nurturing appropriate organisational needs, generating communication networks using face to face and telecoms, celebrating the journey, groups for spin off activities to strengthen the web, generating demand for new skills and know how, creativity and enjoyment for life and of life.

Food...Use food as a point of reference, sources of food, types of food, places where you can grown food, who grows food, how do they grow food, where do they grow food, where else can we grow food, what sort of food can we grow, when can we plant it, who will be involved, what will we need, who else will we invite?

principles of organisation - networks / relationships

In Capra's recent work he says ' Over billions of years of evolution, the Earth's ecosystems have evolved certain principles of organization to sustain the web of life. Knowledge of these principles of organization, or principles of ecology, is what we mean by "ecological literacy."

The idea of life taking over the planet not by combat but by networking particularly resonates at a time when we are looking for ways to build resilience.

I was asked by a headteacher at a recent meeting what I meant by relationships. Somewhat taken aback I really had to stop and think about my answer to a question that genuinely was looking for ways of connecting and making deeper sense of how perhaps to encourage this web of life.

So here is a little example...

Today I am going to meet with friends from the Incredible Edible project, I am excited about us getting together. We have put aside some time to talk through what we have done so far, to capture some of the main ideas and the learning that has happened along the journey so far. The idea is to create a timeline and begin to use it as a way of telling the story.

It is the coming together and the telling that is important. In preparation of this we have made some food, got a few bottles of wine, some tea and coffee and made a curry. We have lots of paper and pens and space to record and note down our ideas. We all know what this meeting is setting out to achieve, and we hopefully come prepared in our minds and are interested in what others have to say and recall.

During the time together we will listen to each other's story. We will as a result of hearing other's versions of the journey be able to embellish and deepen our own appreciation of what is happening. At the same time as we do this I think we deepen the connection between each other, gaining insight into the highs and lows of the work, recognising our anxieties and limitations, concerns and our celebrations of success. The conversation will be a living example of how relationships begin, are nurtured, encouraged and can flourish and - I am certain of this, can surprise through the new insights that shared conversation can generate.

The story so far will be recorded and presented later... for today that's all folks...

thanks to contributors

The comments that people are kindly sending are very informative and instructive. If you want to post a comment please do so, critical, contentious or whatever I won't hack them unless they are vulgar, offensive or libelous!

My colleague sent the following response to an earlier post.

' We are indeed seemingly locked into use of an ‘official’ form of language which as Richard Pring (2000) argues has changed the education beast itself, including the identities professionals have established for themselves in taming it and keeping it happy and fed. These professionals, many of whom are ‘activists’ in Sachs’ (2003) teams are terribly good at this, deriving much status from unwittingly exercising a restricted form of professionalism. They serve up laudably hot meals from a baseline of work intensification, but from a menu that is anything but a la carte and which is written in a lingua that is out of step with customer needs in a post modern age. It is right that both the diet and menu needs to change in order to properly address current world complexity and the ‘bigger picture’ in social and ecological terms. It is also right, as you point out, that networked learning communities can only flourish if the given menu is held up for increased critical scrutiny. Education needs to be re-chartered as a public good, with learning re-cast in moral, cultural and human terms. The character of healthy learning communities and sustainable eco-systems will be determined as much by moral imperatives, imagination and social responsibility as by science and servings of insular school meals past their sell-by date. Professionals, jealous to protect the status of these traditional meals will however need to think anew and work alongside different disciplines and agencies, forging new alliances that will offer a more imaginative menu.'

quote of the day

So mesmorised have we become with the importance
of ‘cost efficiency’, ‘value for money’, productivity’,
and ‘effectiveness’ that we have failed to see that the
very nature of the enterprise of ‘an educational practice’
has been redefined.


Pring, R. (2000) Philosophy of Education Research. London: Continuum.

(thanks to Peter Logan)

networks

http://www.globalschoolnet.org/gsnpr/

George Lucas of Star Wars fame, has a website that does some very interesting networking of projects around the world sharing ideas, expertise and resources.

Have a look.

more on sustainability

Sustainability is a collective and not a singular term. It is the result of a complex web of connections and relationships, lose any one and the web becomes weaker. Assume singularity and the web no longer exists. We are, in our very essence, part of a community, not isolated as a species but integrated into nature and as such we depend on that nature for our survival just as much as it depends upon us to play our role in connection to it.

ecological literacy

From recent writing by Frijov Capra...

To understand how nature sustains life, we need to move from biology to ecology, because sustained life is a property of an ecosystem rather than a single organism or species. Over billions of years of evolution, the Earth's ecosystems have evolved certain principles of organization to sustain the web of life. Knowledge of these principles of organization, or principles of ecology, is what we mean by "ecological literacy."

In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy – our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly. This means that ecoliteracy must become a critical skill for politicians, business leaders, and professionals in all spheres, and should be the most important part of education at all levels – from primary and secondary schools to colleges, universities, and the continuing education and training of professionals.

We need to teach our children, our students, and our corporate and political leaders, the fundamental facts of life – that one species' waste is another species' food; that matter cycles continually through the web of life; that the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun; that diversity assures resilience; that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.

quote of the day

How can one argue that the American economy is efficient if it uses forty percent of the world's primary resources to support six percent of the world's population, without any observable improvement in the level of human happiness, well-being, peace, or culture?
EF Schumacher cited in In Capra, F. Uncommon Wisdom

a language of connection - a way of being

Wittgenstein ' Words create worlds'

A good friend sent me a very interesting suggestion related to the previous post. She says'the language of ecological system developments is about balance, dynamics, reciprocity, mutuality, symbiosis. But the question of power and authority and responsibility need to be incorporated in to this ecological view some how.'
I have for a while talked about the 'discourse of change' - it seems obvious that the words we use to describe the things we are trying to achieve or create can in themselves reveal a great deal about our mental model of the problem.

For example, if we talk about levering change, optimising performance and enhancing efficiency we are alluding to practices which have strongly industrial connotations. Putting a different lexicon in place begins the process of transforming our thinking, along the lines of Wittgensteins observation. Participatory, nurturing, connecting language can and does shape behaviour. If we attend to how we construct our ideas we self-consciously consider the dynamic of our relationship with the other.

If we look at the current system and think that there is just a temporary economic downturn that has to be fixed, then our operating assumptions remain locked to existing models.

However, if we think that the old system is not viable, then our effort is not focused on fixing the old system but on nurturing a way of being that is better in keeping with the needs of the planet and our place in the ecosystem - this anticipates methods and processes that are drawing their inspiration from different assumptions about how we act.

In the case of my work, I think at the centre of this I will place the importance of nurturing resilience, from which different actions can ebb and flow. Illuminating this - by attending to 'revelatory' language of knowledge as a way of deepening that understanding and exploring the balance, dynamics, reciprocity, mutuality and symbiosis is an important part of the challenge.

Sustainability and Improvement: A problem ‘of’ Education and ‘for’ Education

In this short discussion paper I will develop some earlier writing on the theme of education, improvement and sustainability (see refs). It builds upon my primary criticism of the school improvement movement that it is accustomed to thinking of education as good in and of itself. As David Orr suggests candidly in his essay in the early 1990’s, ‘It is not education that will save us, but education of a certain kind (Orr 1991)’ my assertion is that the type of education that is being advanced through the school improvement movement is simply not the kind that we need to tackle some of the most pressing challenges we now face in the form of environmental change and the looking presence of a post-oil economy (Stern 2006).

A problem ‘of’ educational improvement
It is fair to say that amongst most people, education is generally thought of as a good thing. Indeed, it is thought of as such a good thing by many people that they willingly send their young children to participate in it for the majority of their childhood. In turn, governments commit vast amounts of money each year to support and develop the education system offering a diverse curriculum to ensure that we have ‘a talented and vibrant workforce’ (Ed Balls – Secretary of State for Education). This commitment to education as a good thing in itself is not a recent feature of industrialized nations, as Ivan Illich (1974) reminds us:

‘John Amos Comenius, a Moravian bishop of the seventeenth century, a self-styled pansophist and pedagogue, is rightly considered one of the founders of the modern school. He was among the first to propose seven or twelve grades of compulsory learning. In his Magna Didactica he described schools as devices to “teach everybody everything” and outlined a blueprint for the assembly-line production of knowledge, which according to his method would make education cheaper and better and make growth into full humanity possible for all.’

Comenius was also an alchemist who adapted the language of his craft to the pursuit of rearing children. Through a succession of twelve refinements the alchemist sought enlightenment in the pursuit of creating gold. Needless to say the process failed, but each time it failed the alchemists presented new reasons for the failure and they tried again.

Education has become a form of modern alchemy. It promises to bring forth citizens who will be fit for the receiving environment created by the magic of modern educational science. With successive years of compulsory schooling, students are expected to progress to a point where they will be deemed successfully educated and ready to participate in the wider world. Yet despite successive waves of initiatives and improvement efforts, the industrial mode of education continues to fail many of these people. Instead of asking the question of the science, we continue to propose new ways to work the alchemy, our latest is in the form of the National Challenge (DCFS 2008 ), (previously the London Challenge, The Manchester Challenge and the Black Country Challenge). As a result, education, and more particularly educational improvement has become institutionalized. And as it is a necessity for students to have qualifications in order to participate in our society; we consider schooling as an ‘entitlement.’ Such a view compounds the poverty of those who are unschooled, at home and abroad, and maintains a gulf between developed and developing nations, cultures and communities – a defining feature to distinguish between those who practice education in a manner that we recognize, against those who do not (Reimer 1971). If we accept the authority of an institution to define how educated we are, we accept someone else’s measure of ourselves. When we collude with the institution in this way, we define ourselves through its definition of success, and we commit to adhere to its way of operating thus ensuring that it remains necessary and that the institution continues to flourish.

My suggestion is simple. Alternatives to the current alchemy of education do exist, but it is very difficult to present these different ideas of what education might be, within the existing measures of the school improvement and school effectiveness movement, primarily because the movement is locked into the institutional view that school, and therefore schooled education, is the only game in town. I make these claims as someone who has been a part of this movement for a good many years, and it is in recognition of the limitations of my own arguments for learning communities, that I felt the need to begin to explore further into the possibility of a different discourse and practice of education and thus we need to proffer a different concept of improvement.

A problem ‘for’ educational improvement
In his most recent book the eminent scientist James Lovelock (2006) points out, that as nations and individuals we are currently trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback where our preoccupation of self impedes our vision of our wider effect.

‘What happens in one place very soon affects what happens in others. We are dangerously ignorant of our own ignorance, and rarely see things as a whole’ (Lovelock 2006).

Whereas my earlier ideas proposed the notion of a learning school functioning as a network in a deliberate, orchestrated strategy for improving the quality of educational provision, I now recognise that this in itself is severely limited. Over a decade of work in the field in the pursuit of creating Learning Communities has taught me that a commitment to interconnectedness, and a willingness to develop strategic understanding of the consequences of interconnectedness take us much further into the interplay between individual and group, between one living community and another and as such, it has caused me to have to rethink the place of education within a much wider sphere of human encounters and activities. To so anything less, is simply to magnify the already intolerable level of failure that exists in the system.

Whereas much of the school improvement movement’s earlier work was concerned with reform, I now think we have to focus completely upon transformation, further reform is not enough. A decade ago, I was not alone in thinking that a coherent argument in favour of sustainable development would be sufficient to galvanise a range of opinion and practice and create a vibrant and innovative way of responding to change. I now think that we have to be advocates for transformation, as sustainable development has simply created the pathway for maintenance of the status quo. Transformation means seeing the problem through a completely different set of lenses, the reformists lens no longer provides enough interconnection to enable the challenge of sustainability to be appreciated.

A decade ago I was concerned, as many were, with sustainable development - a reform of existing policy. Now I think we are in a race for survival and sustainable retreat is our preferred route, our transformational journey.

The term ‘sustainable’ is becoming more a part of the new school improvement lexicon. But it is frequently cited in connection with the maintenance of existing practice, and is locked to the notion of development (DCSF 2008). Sustainable development is fashionable as it makes reassuring noises and fits the old world order that still believes in the main that global warming is fixable, and favours business as usual with a trust in technology as the solution to the current problems we face. But as Lovelock comments, sustainable development puts us in the comfort zone of pretending we are making real change when in fact we are deluding ourselves, and colluding with existing arrangements;

‘Sustainable development is a moving target. It represents the continuous effort to balance and integrate three pillars of social well-being, economic prosperity and environmental protection for the benefit of present and future generations. Many consider this noble policy morally superior to the laissez-faire of business as usual. Unfortunately for us, these wholly different approaches, one the expression of international decency, the other of unfeeling market forces, have the same outcome: the probability of disastrous global change. The error they share is the belief that further development is possible and that the Earth will continue, more or less as now, for at least the first half of this century. Two hundred years ago, when change was slow or non-existent, we might have had time to establish sustainable development, or even have continued for a while with business as usual, but now is much too late, the damage has already been done. (Lovelock 2006, p3/4).

Lovelock’s argument is that it is much too late for sustainable development, he makes a compelling case for what he calls sustainable retreat (p8). In his critique of science as a ‘cosy, friendly club of specialists who follow their numerous different stars, he observes that they are ‘wonderfully productive but never certain and always hampered by the persistence of incomplete world views’. We might usefully draw the analogy across every sector, and particularly shine it upon current educational policy, be it focused on sustainable development or simply upon the future. It is much too late for educational ‘reform’ under its current guise as it is wedded to the view that we create citizens in the form of participants in the knowledge economy, worldly consumers, reliant upon economic development and progress. It is an institutionalized version of the old order. This, the old order, has crumbled, we prop up schools as if there is no alternative, yet we fail to see that the damage is already done, we need to transform the whole notion of education for a clear need, survival.

If we think of education for survival - for sustainable retreat we can explore it on personal and societal terms. How we relate to our planet, and how we begin to construct a new transformative discourse and practice of change. In what Joanna Macy calls ‘The Great Turning,’ she describes the essential adventure for our time - a shift from the ‘Industrial Growth Society’ to a ‘Life-sustaining civilization.’ It is a re-evaluation of how we live together on a grand scale, and as such it is a fine place from which to begin to consider the problem for the new role of education. She continues, ‘People are recognising that our needs cannot be met without destroying our world, We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.'

She continues...'Whether or not it is recognized by corporate-controlled media, the Great Turning is a reality. Although we cannot know yet if it will take hold in time for humans and other complex life forms to survive, we can know that it is under way. And it is gaining momentum, through the actions of countless individuals and groups around the world. To see this as the larger context of our lives clears our vision and summons our courage.’

My primary observation is that I got learning communities badly wrong. I thought a decade ago, that the general development of the learning community concept, and its integration in the education system as a progressive vehicle would enhance the likelihood of other, closely connected concepts and issues and facilitate a radical redesign at a systemic level.

Despite many valiant efforts (for example the NCSL Networked Communities Programme, and our own IQEA networks), it is clear that the enterprise of learning community development on its own is fundamentally flawed, not least, in the notion that a community simply focused on learning is in any way equipped to develop appropriate responses to a changing environment. There are many reasons, but one central failure of the learning community development has been the nature of institutionalized learning - what is learnt is too often taken as given rather than being held up to careful critical scrutiny.

I propose that the problem for school improvement, is to position itself for something radically different, a concept I have begun to call a sustainable living community – not a school, not primarily focused on the intention or need of the school, but something deeper and wider that serves its community with an ethic of all education is environmental education from the outset. It is more deeply embedded in responding to cultural, social, ecological, economic and spiritual need: it is concerned with connection to local food, local work, local innovation and re-engagement with earth, interconnected networks of similar communities, communities looking at new forms of building for sustainable living and of course, exploring how we educate all members of the community to begin to participate in what Peter Senge (2006) calls ‘metanoia’ - a shift of mind and practice in response to a changed environment.

I think that the challenge is to reclaim education from centralised, predetermined packages of learning - to take education from those who see it as a servant of industry and therefore model it around industrially established measures and parameters and to embed it in ecology. Humans need to learn that they are related to all other life, and that our future depends upon the well-being of the planet. Stephen Sterling (2001) calls this alternative 'authentic education', a form of education rooted in tradition, in meaningful contexts and in the pursuit of community. It is open, participatory, engaging, passionate, it challenges convention, it is spontaneous and reflective. This challenge is what Thomas Berry calls 'the great work' which involves us in remaking the human presence on earth and how we 'provision ourselves with food, energy, materials, water, livelihood, health and shelter' (Angyal 2003). The pursuit of sustainability comes through both ecological renewal and spiritual reconnection with self, others and environment. It is time for this change, it is time for this challenge to be taken up by educators, and for education. This is what improvement when used in relation to educational practice, should now mean.

References
Angyal, A. (2003) Thomas Berry’s Earth Spirituality and the Great Work. Ecozoic Reader, 3,3,35-44
Clarke, P. (2000) Learning Schools, Learning Systems. London. Continuum
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. Professional Development Today.
Illich, I. (1975) Tools for Conviviality. London. Fontana
Lovelock, J. (2006) London. Penguin
Macy, J., and Young Brown, M. (1998) Coming Back to Life. New York. New Society Publishers.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Senge, P. (2006) Learing for Sustainability. Boston MIT. SOL
HM Treasury (2006) Stern review: The economics of climate change. available at: www.hm-treasury. gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_
economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm
Orr, D. (2004) Earth in Mind. Washington. Island Press

Sterling, S. (2006) Education for Sustainability. London. Earthscan
Sustainable Development Commission. (2007) Every Child’s Future Matters. HMSO
The local government white paper (2006) Strong and prosperous communities – the Department of Communities and Local Government

Wrigley. T (2005) Another school is possible: Learning from Europe. FORUM, Volume 47, Number 2 & 3, 2005