Jan 19

The upsides of homeschooling

Today’s Daily Mail contains an upbeat and encouraging article about the TV presenter Nadia Sawalha and her decision to home-school her two daughters: “My two girls are home schooled and it’s brilliant, says TV’s Nadia”. In a refreshingly positive story about education – albeit with some editorial sniping at private schools – Ms Sawalha describes how she and her husband came to the decision that a standard, one-size-fits-all school was not right for their daughters’ specific needs, and so took the step into home schooling.

It is estimated that over 50,000 children are home-educated in the UK, and while the article suggests that this is down in part to the squeeze on school places as the population rises, one of the major reasons is that many parents realise that the schools to which they have access do not suit their children, and they recognise that they need to forge another educational path if their children are to be able to make the most of their potential. Home schooling does not require children to follow a specific curriculum, and nor does it have regulated hours or approaches; the downsides are the potential lack of social contact and the potential lack of contact with a variety of highly trained teachers, but the upsides are its flexibility and responsiveness to the child’s needs, and the freeing and empowering effect it can have on children’s creativity, their ability to think, and their happiness.

There is much to be said for home schooling. It is hard work for parents, and it does not suit everyone, but its real value lies in its fundamental belief that children are individuals and that they learn in different ways, and that a programme of education designed for children should accommodate to them, and not the other way around. The best schools recognise this too, and ensure that they understand and respond to the needs and uniqueness of their students; it is very easy, however, for even the best school to slip into patterns of teaching and assessing that – while effective for most – do not always work for everyone. If schools seek to be truly excellent, then from time to time they should take just a few minutes to reflect, genuinely, on what they can learn from alternative approaches to education.

The question for the day, then: how can schools incorporate the best of home schooling into their programmes? The answer: really know your children, spend time thinking about what would work for them, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Every moment we spend reflecting on what we could do better in education contributes to the growth and development of our young people. What better way to spend our energy?

 

Jan 12

Tiger or Dolphin – the politics of parenting

Prime Minister David Cameron makes the front page of The Times in the UK today with a headline that throws down the gauntlet in the battle to conquer disadvantage and inequality, beginning with social mobility – specifically, children’s potential in life, as determined by the start they get. Setting out his ‘bucket list’ of what he wants to change before he leaves office, he emphasised in a speech yesterday the importance of parenting in giving all children the very best start, and he focused in on the desirability of improving parenting, so that every child can benefit from the high expectations that will be their passport to a better future. His answer: tiger parenting; the headline reads: “All children should have ‘tiger mums’ – Cameron”, and he is quoted as saying “It is, in fact, what the tiger mothers’ battle hymn is all about: work, try hard, believe you can succeed, get up and try again”.

In many respects, he is absolutely right. Children thrive on boundaries, and they also rise to high expectations. This is not an easy ask of parents – challenging children to work hard and do their best can be very tough. If at first children don’t succeed – and they often won’t – then it can be hard to coax them to try, try, try again. It requires time, effort, a belief that this kind of tough love has an end goal that is worth more than the discomfort of the moment, and, sometimes, tears and meltdowns. It is extraordinarily painful for a parent to watch his or her child suffering (however temporarily), and it is so, so much easier (in the short term, at least) to alleviate the demands on them, to weaken the structures and boundaries, and to let them relax – apparently more comfortably – into the moment. Part of the wisdom of parenting is to know that this is not always the right thing to do, and this is where the Tiger Mother philosophy comes into its own.

Part of the art of parenting, however, is to know the limits of this philosophy. Tiger parenting has been associated with increased levels of childhood anxiety, depression and stress, as well as developing deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy, and it is easy to see why. If a child is constantly being told that he or she is not good enough, and has to do better, then instead of developing a resilience and robust desire in the child to succeed, this approach be entirely counter-productive, and the child can, quite simply, withdraw and give up. Although most children, much of the time, will benefit from tiger parenting, it is not always the answer.

This is where Shimi Kang’s Dolphin parenting comes into its own. Published in 2014, her book ‘The Dolphin Way’ (an interesting and insightful read) has struck a chord with parents and educationalists who know that there is more to parenting than constant pressure. Tigers are fierce, unrelenting and single-minded; dolphins, meanwhile, are social creatures with a collective mindset and a gentler approach to life, Tiger parenting, Shimi points out, is all about instruction which leads to mastery; dolphin parenting is all about role-modelling, play, exploration. and guidance. It is a useful antidote to the intensity of the tiger approach, but it is no less demanding – it requires parents to learn who their children are, and to understand when they need to be left alone, as well as when they need nudging.

And therein lies the rub – even gentle parenting is still tough on parents. Tiger, Dolphin or mixture of the two … no matter what style or styles parents adopt with their children, there is no let-up: parenting is for life, not just for the first few days or months of a child’s life, and in an increasingly complex world, it is an increasingly complex process. Parents are not born, they are made – through their own experiences as children, through their observation of others, and, if they are lucky, through access to the accumulated wisdom of society, which is (encouragingly) constantly developing fresh insights while rediscovering old ones). The more we can talk about parenting and support, value and empower parents, the more likely it is that parents will learn to parent in the very best interests of each unique child.

In a liberal society, it be rather disconcerting and unsettling to witness politicians entering into the private life of the family with frameworks and targets for what should go on inside the home, but it is not hard to argue for a greater good in this respect: well-parented children make for better rounded, more well-rounded, happier people, and, undoubtedly, better citizens. Perhaps there is something to be said for qualifications in parenting after all …

 

Jan 05

The times (tables), they are a-changing … or not, as the case may be

It is curious how emotive discussions can become when the subject is that of teaching multiplication tables in schools. Nicky Morgan, the UK Secretary of State for Education, recently announced that new online tests of children’s ability to recount their times tables up to and including 12 x 12, would be piloted this year for 3,000 11 year olds in England, with a view to rolling out the tests to all 11 year olds across the country in 2017. Predictably, perhaps, this has resulted in a flurry of polarised responses from commentators on education (note – commentators are not usually current or previous teachers), from the vehemently expressed ‘yes – traditional rote learning is an essential part of good education’ to the equally vehemently expressed ‘no – learning times tables is obsolete in a digitally connected world. For those of us who have been in education long enough to see the wheels turning several times, each time seeking to balance out or compensate for a perceived failing in the last cycle, there is nothing new in this, and the politicking and posturing can be somewhat tiresome. Is it time (no pun intended) to move beyond this?

Education is not a simple matter. No matter how attractive the concept might be to policy-makers, teaching children can never realistically be a case of inputting certain data and guaranteeing specific outcomes. Children and their circumstances are too complex, their relationships with teachers and their peers are too intricate, and nothing is absolutely for certain in every case – statistics, after all, about what works and what doesn’t in education are by their very nature generalised. In a society which values difference and individuality, we should not be surprised or irritated by the fact that people learn in many different ways, with different motivations and with different outcomes. Rather, we should embrace this uncertainty as a welcome sign of variety – and that the system has worked.

That said, we have accumulated significant amounts of wisdom about the building blocks that lead to a good basic understanding of the world, and, equally, we have learned enormous amounts – held, it must be said, largely in the form of teachers’ practical experience – about how individuals can be coaxed to understand, learn, develop and grow. Teachers help children to learn and this, fundamentally, is why teachers are so important in schools – they are the people who can respond to the needs of individuals, and they have an enormous influence on what children do and achieve. It follows that their views about the importance or otherwise of elements of the education programmes they follow really do matter, because these opinions, translated into action in the classroom, directly affect whether or not children learn them.

So – what do teachers think about learning times tables? Are times tables useful? Is learning these times tables useful? Is testing the learning of these times tables useful? For school leaders and teachers, in practice, the question of times tables is actually a non-story, because for the most part they have been quietly just getting on with doing them in schools for years. Yes, times tables are as useful now as in the past as a basic mathematical concept and part of how we perceive the world. Yes, learning them is useful – and teachers are always looking for ways to help children learn them more effectively and so that they are more meaningful for them. Yes, testing them is useful too, at least to a degree – it certainly proves that children can reproduce the times tables (although not necessarily that they have absorbed an understanding of their significance); and the rigour of learning does also focus children.

Moreover, there is an equality of access argument in the teaching, learning and testing of times tables – children in all schools, from all walks of life, should be able to have the same access to the same quality of teaching, ie teaching that will help them develop the same quality of learning. Does testing have potentially negative outcomes? Yes, it does – the time and resources spent on testing can detract from time and resources spent on learning, results can be (usually are) used for short-term political gain rather than genuinely enhancing the life chances of individual students, league tables promote competition between schools rather than collaboration … the list goes on.

But what is really important in this debate is that no-one is really listening to teachers in a systematic, comprehensive way. No-one is really listening to schools just explaining what they are doing – no-one is asking and listening with an open, non-judgemental, curious mind, free of the desire to criticise or give anecdotally-based opinions on what schools should be doing. The lack of a united teacher voice on curriculum matters is not surprising – teachers, as students, are individuals with varied experiences, and this is to be welcomed in a system which seeks to develop such individuality. The lack of any strong representative teacher voices is much more concerning. Where are the voices saying, for example, ‘we, ie your local school, does this, because we believe …and we know that it works because …’?

School leaders generally don’t speak out about what they do and why, either because they are wary about how their words and ideas will be communicated by the media, and how their constituencies will react to this (what will be the scandalous spin? what will people think?) or because they actually have no official remit to say anything, because most of what they do is prescribed from a centralised office, and if they choose to do follow their own path because it works well for the students in their school, they prefer to keep quiet about it.  Schools have grown silent because they have gradually become disempowered or fearful of reaction. When you are expected to be all things to all people, all of the time – a panacea for society’s ills, and yet the focus of its ire – it is easy to see why you would remain circumspect.

And yet we need schools to speak out, to re-establish themselves as the voices of education – schools working within wider education systems but responsive too to the needs of the individual children in their care. A nagging suspicion vexes those following the debate on times tables … a suspicion that schools are not really being trusted to do what is right – perhaps because we have left the age of authority behind, and perhaps because people don’t really understand that schools are always, always seeking to improve, and that this is not a sign of inadequacy but rather a very grown-up sign of strength. Schools are amazingly complex places, as the debate about times tables serves to illustrate: what fills national newspaper columns for a few days is a microscopic element in the daily life of a school.

Perhaps the time has come to give schools credit for this, and just allow them to get on with it.

Dec 22

Bailey Matthews and the power of joy

Bailey Matthews is clearly loving life at the moment. If you did not watch the UK’s BBC TV’s Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) Awards on Sunday night, or are not one of the 80 million plus people who have viewed the video online showing Bailey completing a triathlon earlier this year, then you need to look up Bailey’s history and achievements as soon as possible so that you can share in his joy.

For 8-year-old Bailey has cerebral palsy and yet, undaunted and determined to follow in the footsteps of his father, trained for and completed a children’s triathlon in North Yorkshire in July in which he had to swim 100m, ride a bike for 4km and run for 1.3 km. He had his father alongside him – and a lifeguard in the water – but he was resolutely cheerful as he made his way around the course, and so enthusiastic and resolute that, 20 metres from the finish, he abandoned his walking frame and made for the line. He stumbled and fell, but picked himself up and threw himself forward again, crossing the finish line to the cheers of the crowd. On Sunday night, he was awarded the Helen Rollason Award at the SPOTY awards, to a standing ovation.

In all his interviews before and since, Bailey has revealed himself to be irrepressibly joyful. He has enjoyed engaging in banter with interviewers galore, and he chuckled through his mock boxing bout with Tyson Fury. How many 8 year olds do you know who could stand up in an arena of adults, under the lights and cameras and noise, grab the microphone and enjoy telling the crowd that they can stop cheering now? It is easy to imagine that he is not always the most obedient of children – such ebullience is rarely easily contained – but this roguish element endears him to us more, as when we watch and listen to him, we are reminded that we can all receive pure, unadulterated pleasure from sharing another’s joy. It is said that when a baby laughs, the world stops for a moment, and that was exactly what viewers experienced on Sunday night, and since, when they have seen Bailey in action.

His parents are incredibly proud of Bailey – to bursting point! – and with reason. They too deserve our admiration and gratitude for bringing Bailey up to be so determined and so full of joy, and for letting us share in this. Shared joy is a beautiful thing – an amazing aspect of the world that we inhabit with 7 billion others. And when better than today – here and now, in this very moment – to recollect this, to revel in our good fortune, and to include others in it.

In thanking Bailey for reminding us of the power of joy, go and be joyful today – and share it.

 

Dec 04

‘The mortal in the portal’: how the online world strengthens our capacity to be truly human

I am indebted to Richard Ovenden, the University of Oxford’s Bodley’s Librarian, for the title of this blog; speaking last week at a City of London Livery Company Event in Vintners’ Hall, he used the phrase during the course of his fascinating (and passionate) insight into the work that librarians now do to educate their users about data and its meaningfulness, and his words captured my attention. ‘The mortal in the portal’: so many significances in a single phrase! So much that resonates with our experience and current understanding of how we interact with the online world! And so much embedded within it that points to the potential for our future relationship with technology …

‘Portal’ is a word loaded with potential in its own right – with its hint of technological sophistication in a future, science-fiction inspired world, it embodies the sense of a gateway to a wider world, be it access to our past, now digitised, or to geographically distant places, or to culturally and philosophically diverse thinking. As for ‘mortal’ … yes, this brings with it a time-limitation, for all mortal lives come to an end, and – with our wry sense of very human humour – we recognise that we attribute to it a sense of mistakes easily made and the potential for error (sometimes fatal), but it also communicates life, ageing, growth in wisdom and organic, creative thought, energy and movement.

Bring the two together, and we realise that each depends on the other to realise their potential. Without the mortal, the portal is inert – a series of 0s and 1s, without purpose or intent; without the mortal, the portal would not have been conceived of, nor would it operate. Without the mortal, who is there to press the ‘on’ switch?

Without the portal, though, the mortal is restricted to what he or she can find in the world immediately around, and while we know from personal experience how rich and varied this is, we know too, now we have glimpsed the possibilities that ‘the portal’ brings us, how much richer and more varied our worlds can become when we are able to access the vast fields of accumulated (and accumulating) knowledge that are ‘out there’.

Part of this week’s Times Educational Supplement is devoted to exploring the ways in which technology can enhance learning in the classroom, and in one of the articles I urge schools to think more broadly and more boldly about how to embrace this potential (and, specifically, in this case, the potential of online gaming). If we can prepare our young mortals with the skills of flexibility, adaptability, robustness and resilience, and if we can release in them their innate sense of curiosity, creativity and a desire to explore, then we can ready them for a world where they can make the best use possible of the work that previous mortals have done to create online portals to past, present and future. In turn, they will take this work forward, creating new pathways, new gateways and new levels of understandings.

And if we prepare them properly, with strong, deeply entrenched values that recognise the overwhelming importance of respect for fellow human beings and the essential togetherness of humankind, then we can ultimately ensure that their life’s work will be, as should ours be, to use the potential for connection and understanding that the online world brings to help heal division and make a truly positive difference and change in the world around us.

Nov 16

Education will save us

It is hard to write anything at all today without the dark pall of the Paris massacres hanging over the words. What happened on Friday night turned an ordinary day and week into an atrocious nightmare for hundreds upon hundreds of people, and as the ripples of the murders spread out into the wider world – families, friends, neighbours, members of the local, national and international communities – then we find ourselves all touched to some degree by what happened. On Saturday morning, flowers were already thick on the ground at French embassies and consulates around the world and the worldwide web was riven by words of consolation, of solidarity and of friendship. The sadness of Paris was in our minds and hearts.

A deeper sadness can be found too when we reflect that not only were there people who were prepared to kill other human beings who posed no threat to them, but there were other people – scores? hundreds? thousands? more? – who were prepared to plan to kill and to derive immense satisfaction from killing. The act of killing another human being – of extinguishing their life – has a finality about it; it presumes, given all that we know about the human consciousness and social connectedness, that the perpetrator does not regard his or her victims as equal to him, but rather as beings unworthy of respect and of life. Throughout history, people have thought in this way of fellow human beings who have disabilities, or who are of a different sexual orientation, or who are of a different ethnic background. We are undeniably all united in sameness, but we are all, too, uniquely different, and these differences have often been the focus of misunderstanding and hatred.

How have we been able to rise above these differences and appreciate the togetherness of humankind rather than its fractures? In truth, of course, we cannot say that we have succeeded entirely in any realm as yet, but when we look back at the advances in the past few decades especially at a national and international level in areas of gender equality, access of all children to schooling and anti-discrimination laws, to name a few, we can see the progress that we have made. This is not true in every case, nor in every country – far from it – but we can see it happening, and this should give us courage and hope. There may be a long way to go, but a retrospective view of what we can achieve enables us to renew our commitment to respecting others, to kindness, to understanding, to helping our fellow human beings.

When human beings feel justified in killing other human beings, we know that we are a long way from a vision of harmony and tolerance in our world. But we know too that we can effect change, and that we must. It is never easy – education is not a straightforward process, in which, simplistically, both carrot and stick have their place; moreover, when ideas and perceptions of the world are deeply embedded, they are hard to shift, and it can test all our imaginative powers to work out how to do this. We know that we must, though – we must teach our children not to hate others, and we must reach out across the world, to every corner, to every child. We must lead by example, by caring and loving. We teach by being and doing, and we all have a hugely important role to play in this education of the world.

And – above all – we must not give up believing this.

 

Nov 02

Why diversity is good for your brain – and every other aspect of your life

A great article appeared in a recent Guardian newspaper on the topic of diversity and why it keeps your brain active. The author, Professor Richard Crisp from the Aston Business School, in fact likens the benefits to the brain of living in a multicultural society to the benefits to our bodies of a daily run; when we encounter diversity, this keeps the brain fit, strengthens its resilience and robustness, and we are enabled to think more creatively and innovatively as a result. It is an interesting and empowering perspective, and certainly one worthy of further exploration in relation to all aspects of our social and professional lives.

Professor Crisp’s research reveals that the brain behaves – unsurprisingly – in the same way, physiologically, as the rest of the human body. In practice, this means that it does not particularly like hard work, even though hard work is good for it. When everything in the world around is homogenous – ie simple and neatly structured – then the brain does not have to exercise itself as much as it does when it encounters fluidity and diversity. These ‘messier’ concepts challenge the brain’s rather lazy tendencies to want to have everything ordered and in a defined place, and it has to work harder to incorporate them into its understanding of the world. In doing so, it strengthens its ability to open itself to greater creativity and innovative ideas – in this case, as in so many others, hard work really does pay off.

What is good for the brain is good for the person; what is good for the person is good for the team. Diversity in teams makes a real difference to productive thinking, as people have to face the challenge of dealing with different perspectives. This was identified as far back as 1999 in research at Stanford, which exposed that people in diverse teams, in dealing with one another, are made to deliberate more, clarifying issues, seeking the fundamental common ground, and finding shared and mutually acceptable solutions which are often not the solutions they expected at the outset. This, of course, is creative thinking in action.

Diversity may be hard work, but it really makes a difference when it is embraced, from the family to the boardroom. It follows, therefore, that the more we can speak up about diversity and spread the word, the more exciting, creative and productive we will all be.

 

Oct 23

The wonders of the unseen world

Visiting the world-leading Science Museum in London last week, I was lucky to be able to attend a showing of a relatively recent (2013) addition to their collection of IMAX films, ‘The Mysteries of the Unseen World’. If you haven’t seen it, do try to see it at some point; at the very least, look at the website: www.mysteriesunseenworld.com. The purpose of the film was to give the viewers an insight into the world that exists around us all the time, and yet is invisible to us. It explored the broad light spectrum, for instance, and imagined what the world would look like if we could see infrared or ultraviolet rays; we were also treated to slowed-down photography of actions that are too fast for us to see normally (raindrops hitting water, for example), and speeded-up photography of actions that are too slow for us to see – the growth of plants and the decay of food, amongst others. The film took us down into the microworld and reminded us (rather uncomfortably!) of the mites that live in the dust around us, and then it led us, deeper still, into the nanoworld – that amazing state at the atomic level about which we are still learning, and where the laws of gravity and inertia do not appear to apply.

It was a fascinating peek into the enormous omplexity of the ecosystems in which we live, and which we take for granted most of the time, unaware of them as we are. It was also a salutary reminder that we interfere with this complexity at our peril. Any actions we take as individuals will almost inevitably have unforeseen and conceivably harmful consequences on the world around us; our ignorance of the vast unseen world around us means that it is doubtful whether we can predict even a fraction of the outcomes of our choices. It follows, of course, that when this ignorance is multiplied a billion-fold (or seven billion-fold), potentially harmful consequences can become overwhelming and fatal. In essence, a nudge towards appreciating the unseen world around us reminds us to think a bit more carefully about our environment and the choices we make as a human race.

The film made me think still further, however, about what else is unseen in our world.  What else, other than the physical elements explored in the presentation, impacts on our lives in a tangible way but remains unseen? An obvious answer, of course, lies in all our thoughts and feelings, which affect how we view not only the world but our role within it, and which help direct our actions and our choices. Just imagine if we could see thoughts and feelings; the air would be thick with them, in the same way that it is thick with infrared and ultraviolet rays. Cultural expectations, prejudices, hopes, fears, preoccupations, memories, dispositions, and any and every emotion on the spectrum from joy to rage – just imagine for a moment what it would be like.

When we ruminate upon this, then we realise that to a certain extent we can already see, or at least sense, some of these thoughts and feelings. Estimates vary as to how much of normal communication between humans depends on interpreting non-verbal signals; it could conceivably be as high as 93%. When we meet people for the first time, it takes us a fraction of a second to make a judgement about them – we pick up and process tiny clues about their posture, their physiology, their stance, their expressions, and even their smell. When they speak, we hear not only words but intonation and emphasis. The more practised we become in this art, the more visible the signals appear.

Still, though, it would take a leap further forward in our perceptual powers to be able actually to expose thoughts in the way that an infra-red camera can expose infra-red waves. Ignorance of this unseen world, however, is potentially as harmful as ignorance of the unseen physical world: our actions can have untold consequences, resulting potentially in misunderstandings and lack of connection. In many cases these will be trivial; not so, however, in many others, and certainly not when it comes to relationships between nation states or even different social groups, when conflicting strong emotions can cause rising tensions.

So – a thought for the day – if we could take time to become just a little more aware of the unseen thoughts and emotions which we project, and which others feel and project too, we might find surprising benefits. Perhaps this greater awareness of being open to scrutiny, and visible, might encourage us to look more closely at our inner world and to work even harder on disciplining and taming some of the less savoury elements which most of us would prefer to remain hidden, so that we can pretend that we not possess them – intolerance, arrogance and anger, for instance.

Little steps of awareness that might just go a long way to making the sum of our human interactions so much more harmonious.

 

Oct 09

“Moving towards board diversity”, not “Giving into political correctness”

I have been mulling over this blog for a couple of weeks now, and I would be interested to hear what people think. It stems from an experience I had at a recent conference, where I attended a session about which I shall be deliberately vague: I don’t want to appear to be ‘naming and shaming’, but instead would rather have space to explore the issues which emerged, and reflect upon what happened and its wider significance.

The conference session was in the form of a panel of around 8 participants from the same company, and the first curious aspect about the contributors were that they were all men. Perhaps this might not have mattered in some contexts, but this session was about global economic perspectives, and it seemed rather odd not to have at least a female voice, as the female economic experience in many settings globally can be starkly different from the male. Digging deeper, a quick online search revealed that the Board of the company represented were almost all men, with a single female voice whose background and role description seemed to suggest that she was secretary to the Board rather than an integral part of it (I fully accept that I may be entirely wrong on this point; nonetheless, there was certainly only one actual woman on their Board).

As the moment for questions arrived, I realised that I was not the only person to feel a sense of discomfort at an emerging picture of lack of diversity. Before even the managing director had asked for questions from the floor, a host of female hands shot up, and the first to speak noted carefully and with emphasis that she was the first woman to be heard that day. This prompted a range of rebuttals from the panel – there were of course female Heads of Section, and it was just chance that they weren’t there. In fact, what a surprise it was to everyone on the panel that there weren’t any women there – they hadn’t really noticed. And they all knew women, of course, who were very good chaps really (I may be using a little artistic licence in that last statement, but it nonetheless communicates accurately the rather unfortunate, although obviously well-meaning, sentiment that was exhibited).

What really took me aback, however, was a conversation I had with the Chairman of the Board immediately after the session. I approached him to say that I was sure that he felt that diversity was really important, and that I knew a charity that could help him (Changing the Chemistry, that is, for readers who don’t know all my affiliations; I also talked about Women on Boards). His response was quite blunt: he did not believe in “giving into political correctness” and wasn’t interested in being “pushed into appointing women for the sake of it”.

Our conversation took place rather comically, now that I reflect on it. I am 1m 60 tall on a (very) good day; he was closer to 2m and was also still perched on the stage while I stood on the floor, which meant that he towered over me and has to reach down to take the cards I proffered. An onlooker could read all sorts of symbolism into the tableau, I am sure. At the time, however, I was more struck and unsettled by his antagonism, although I smiled cheerfully and departed, leaving him, I hoped, with as positive impression as possible of the words ‘diversity’ and ‘help’.

As I reflected further and discussed this conversation with other attendees, my sense of unease grew. Maybe, I thought, I had phrased my introduction badly, so as to elicit a bad-tempered response, but when I ran it over again in my head, I didn’t think I had. I certainly didn’t mean to be aggressive in any way – on the contrary. When I thought further about it, what really made me uneasy was the lack of openness to gender diversity and potentially therefore to diversity in its wider sense – ethnic, geographical etc, and, most importantly perhaps, diversity of thought. It was the sense that a growing social awareness of, and focus on, diversity in companies and on boards was an annoyance, an irritation, a distraction from the successful work of successful organisations, who have worked out how to operate in long-established and – so far – relatively successful ways. And it was the realisation that unless powerful leaders of companies open their minds to what diversity could bring to their business, nothing will change, or will change only very slowly.

We know that diversity on boards pays off – as Lord Davies put it in the introduction to his report on Women on Boards in 2011, boards perform better “when they include the best people who come from a range of perspectives and backgrounds”. Fundamentally, in fact, it is a question of how we believe we should treat other human beings in our world. If we subscribe to the core values of respect for others, of equality, of acceptance of difference, and an acknowledgement that truth may lie in how others view the world, then we have to recognise too the immense value in drawing on the voices of others as we engage in all our activities. After all, we can’t know what we don’t know – and arguably the only way to develop our knowledge (and our wisdom) is to turn to more diverse perspectives, and to learn to listen to them without prejudice.

So – what more do we need to do to in order to provoke a positive rather than a defensive reaction to an suggestion to help increase diversity? Who do we need to act as advocates for diversity? What do we need to do to sustain the amazing efforts already underway in the UK and further afield to spread an understanding of the tremendous value of diversity of thought?

And why is it important that we address and seek to answer these questions? Because one thing I learned at that conference was that we really have a lot still to do to ensure that diversity is welcomed – indeed, actively sought out – in some of our leading business spheres. And while there are people at the top who still dismiss diversity as mere “political correctness”, we can’t keep relying on blind hope that it will change.

 

Sep 20

‘Periodic tales’: what the chemical elements remind us about education

As part of this year’s uplifting Oxford University Alumni Weekend, a panel of speakers led an engaging session inspired by Hugh Aldersey-Williams’ new book, ‘Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements’. The author himself spoke, and explored how artists, sculptors and poets across the ages have used the elements, imbuing them with meaning and significance. This meaning, it became fascinatingly clear, has not been attributed arbitrarily, and the talk highlighted how intrinsically linked this meaning was with the scientific properties of the chemicals themselves: their scarcity or abundance, for instance, as well as their reactivity and their origins.

These links run strong and deep: the scientific qualities of elements enhance the cultural, and vice versa. This is why, for instance, Anthony Gormley’s sculpture, Fuse 2011, speaks to us so powerfully: cast in iron – a component of human blood – and rusted red, this image of a man lying face down is striking and visceral. His faceless, largely featureless contours are marked by the flat, angular facets of a metallic element which circulates within us and upon which we depend – in this sculpture, the hidden element is exposed, and magnified so that the form is no longer human and yet still recognisably so very human. This is science and art fused in a single, meaningful whole, which is undeniably greater than the sum of the individual parts.

In essence, the talk served to introduce a holistic perspective of the chemical elements, and the audience was encouraged to see the chemical elements through the lens of art and literature, and as an integrated part of our cultural understanding. The book sits behind an imminent curated exhibition at Compton Verney, near Stratford-upon-Avon; with pieces by Anthony Gormley, John Constable, Thomas Heatherwick and Eduardo Paolozzi, amongst many others, this intriguing exhibition sounds as though it will be well worth the effort to visit it.

What was so interesting about the talk – and the concept behind both book and exhibition – is a process of thinking which we would be wise to apply to other contexts where we seek learning and enlightenment. The session took place in a lecture theatre dominated by a large printed copy of the periodic table as we are used to seeing it, with the elements neatly separated out into rows and columns. By drawing them out and categorising them over years of work, we have understood them better; the words and pictures of the talk being conducted in the shadow of this table, however, encouraged us to think about fusing these understandings back into the complex and integrated worlds which we inhabit – physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual. It is as if we were witnessing the extraction of an element from its source, followed by its examination and finally its reintegration into a functioning, living role. As a result of this process, we were better able to understand, appreciate and fundamentally to know the element – and its scope and potential. Each element may have an identifiable individual existence of its own, but it has a greater existence as part of a larger and more complex whole. When we realise and embrace this, we gain new insights and our understanding grows and deepens – sometimes immeasurably.

Education systems are generally very good at the extraction and examination of substances, thoughts, ideas, events, processes; school and university examinations and assessments depend on this forensic dissection. Education systems are sometimes less good at the process of reintegration, of recognising that individual elements have a greater purpose as part of a larger universe. As the ‘Periodic Tales’ remind us, we miss out – and may indeed miss the point entirely – when we overlook this.