It’s too late for my own children, but I’m going to ask something very specific of my grandchildren’s schools. In fact there’s a list of things I’ll want them to do.
1. Help them to find their element.
Help them to discover their special talents, and their unique individuality. Help them to engage with their creativity, their imaginations and their enthusiasms. Motivate them to pursue paths of learning that excite them and stimulate them. Set them on the road towards lifelong learning. Identify their strengths, as well as areas where they’re less able. Nurture their strengths, and work with them on their areas of weakness.
Do not talk to them about preparing for the world of work – we have no idea at this stage what opportunities for careers there may be. If they tell us they want to be doctors or engineers or acrobats or scientists or mathematicians or farmers or actors or winemakers – then they will let us know. Let them be co-determiners of their knowledge curriculum. Offer them many different pathways, but do not presume to know what they need to know. Show them how to take responsibility for their own learning, and how to be independent explorers and learners.
Help them to discover the almost limitless possibilities for creative living and learning in this world. Is this too much to ask? Or would you rather limit your ‘education’ to drilling them through to exam success in whatever paper qualifications happen to be around at the time they turn sixteen or eighteen? I’m sure by then there will be no GCSEs or Ebaccs or A levels, though no doubt there will be other splendidly-titled examinations dreamed up as vanity projects by future government ministers.
2. Help them to become fully evolved human beings.
This means helping them to begin a long journey in the course of which they will develop all six of their intelligences to very high levels.
Develop their love of learning. Stimulate their intellects – don’t just fill them up with imperial gallons of so-called Facts. Fill them with fascination, and let them discover all there is to know about our incredible planet. Fill them with awe and wonder, and develop in them the skills with which they will pursue their individual learning journeys. Help them to develop critical thinking so that they can see through the nonsense and lies that permeate our societies.
Let them learn alongside friends and classmates in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration, not competition. Let them become socially intelligent with high levels of empathy. Allow them to learn how to communicate in many different ways.
Give them a love of literature, and open up treasuries of poetry, story and drama that will help them to discover their individual selves. Develop their personal intelligence. Allow them to know who they really are – what they think and feel.
Let them discover their individual voices. Let them express their individuality through writing, music and many different artforms, as well as a command of spoken language.
Allow them to discover the value of silence and meditation. Let them discover the value of intuition through listening to their own inner voices. Help them to understand and appreciate human values. Teach them the value of human virtues. Enable them to practice virtue in their living and learning. Promote spiritual intelligence.
Teach them ways to look after themselves physically. Promote fitness and health. Teach them physical skills and show them how to enjoy the benefits of physical fitness. Show them what it means to be physically intelligent. Show them how to learn through maximum use of their five physical senses.
Help them to appreciate the benefits and the drawbacks of instinctual behaviour – the things they do without conscious thought. Reinforce and develop their positive instincts. Show them how to manage negative instincts. Let them consider how instinctual intelligence can be advantageous, and how instinctual behaviour can be self-harming. Promote awareness of the meaning of instinctual intelligence, and the unconscious habits that serve us well.
Is this too much to ask?
3D Eye 
Another powerfully inspiring post! I fully believe that it is not too much to ask, and while my children are grown, I will never cease from promoting teaching children compassion and doing all we can to help people grow up with healthy spiritual and social intelligences. In this way I can have genuine hope for seeing more peace in our world. Thank you so much for this post!
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Gina – many thanks for your continuing interest in and support for 3Di. Since policy makers never speak of spiritual and social intelligences, or the role of teachers in developing them, we despair of significant change ever happening, We need to rethink our aims of education. More than ever we need our children and young people to have high levels of these intelligences – but they’re of no significance, it seems, as far as politicians and others are concerned. There was scant mention of them at the education conference we attended last weekend, and when even education professionals disregard these essential intelligences, then we begin to wonder when change will ever take place.
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From my own development journey about education.
‘My definition of education though was limited and the description I gave reflected this. “An education gives us access to knowledge. A good education should inspire, enable learning and provide an opportunity to develop skills. To do this it needs to comprise of the fundamental elements that will share society’s values and meet its needs. It includes developing character as well as intellectual, creative and physical abilities.”
I have learnt, and still learning, that there is more, much more. My current working theory is that there are six aspects or functions of education. These are:
Integration: sharing traditions, rituals and beliefs
Understanding: to develop and share knowledge and understanding
Awareness: to achieve an understanding of ones self, needs and desires
Evolution: to educate the educator, to be relevant and to move forward
Objectivity: to reflect, observe and question
Responsibility: to understand options and consequences (physical, social, spiritual and moral)
The challenge I set remains the same, that of
“developing attitudes and approaches to education that promote diversity of learning and sharing of good practice.”
Perhaps the bigger challenge is to restructure education, to change the “system” so that the present functional aim, that of standardisation, becomes an outcome not a function.’
Like you say, ‘Is this too much to ask?’ If only!
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Thanks for sharing this, Kevin. Our education system needs the people working within it to demand changes that truly benefit children and young people, and also benefit teachers. Fortunately there are signs that this is beginning to happen. There are now several informal groups in England that are proposing radical changes to the way we do education in this country. In spite of the best efforts of politicians some light is breaking through. Even the CBI is calling for the abolition of exams and sixteen and returning education policy and practice to the professionals so that they can work more effectively and creatively. 3Di certainly intends to go on arguing for a multiple intelligences approach to a creative curriculum.
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