Be Fearless
Over the last 5-10 years
there has been an enormous amount of hype in the business and education world
around the pace of change and what this means for our young people.
Questions such as: How do we prepare our young people for a world
beyond our imagination? How do we craft a student’s learning journey towards a
job that has not yet been created? And how do we measure up against educators
around the globe?
These and other
questions have been very much part of our staff professional dialogue ensuring
we are on top of the debate and are engaging with any new thinking.
Here at
Wellesley we are passionate about our holistic philosophy—body, mind and spirit. We squeeze so much into each day for the
boys. We regularly debate the ‘pulls’ on the timetable always trying to get the
right balance. Our professional development is on-going and relentless. The
content of the curriculum delivery is the easy part, it is the how the
curriculum is delivered is the key part. Our aim is to infuse the ‘learning how
to learn’ principles into the boys so they have the skills and dispositions of
life-long learners.
So
what are these skills or dispositions and what is the journey we need to take
children on to give them real learning power?
They
are a collection of attitudes and behaviours. Skills such as perseverance and
graft, flexibility, questioning, curiosity, creativity, abstract thinking,
reflection, making connections, resourcefulness, resilience and optimism This
is not about getting rid of content but going deeper and providing a broader
utility. I like Guy Claxton’s metaphor of a school as mind gym v an assembly line. The concept of imagining the mind as a
muscle you can build, is appealing.
Teachers
are not the font of all knowledge and it is healthy for the children to see
them model cheerful ignorance and a desire to learn. We want to prepare our
children to become brave new explorers in this exciting fast paced world.
Earlier this year, old boy Michael Dobson spoke to some of our Year 7s at a
House breakfast. He is 25 years old and after studying at Otago and then the
University of California at Berkeley he took on work as a lawyer in Wellington.
He recently won a scholarship to study in the USA for his masters in political
theory. He told the boys about the many things he loved at Wellesley but the
one thing he valued most was being taught to always ask questions, to be curious. He talked about his love of
sport but most of all his love of art where he was encouraged to explore and
create and to be fearless. He said what he learned in art class was to ignore
that little voice we all have in our head, that voice that restricts us to
voice our ideas and take the risk of saying it aloud. I want to quote you a
small part of what Michael said to the boys.
“I’m
extremely excited to live in one of the world’s greatest cities. (New York) And
I’m confident I can foot it there. And a lot of that is because of what I
learned at Wellesley long ago up some steep steps, in a classroom floating
above the school. I learned that there is no such thing as a bad idea, and what
I think matters. I believe what you guys think, matters too. So I say be fearless! Whatever you do,
do it fearlessly. But—a final word of caution. As important as it is to be
fearless, it also matters to be kind.......Don’t ever be mean. It is easy to be
mean. Anyone can do it. To be fearlessly kind—that takes real strength.”
To
see the Wellesley impact on young men such as Michael is very humbling and motivating
for us all. The citizenship and learning
to learn skill set described so far are not new features of the Wellesley
philosophy but we are forever honing and reflecting on the best way to
facilitate them to our boys.
So
we may be on the second half of the chessboard in terms of the exploding rate
of change in our world, but we are not concerned because we are determined to
provide these young boys with the skill set to not only navigate along with it
but be the explorers, explorers with
integrity that will create futures for not only the betterment of themselves
but for society.
No comments:
Post a Comment