Schooling is necessarily and rightly focused on learning from the past. It is one of the most important means for passing knowledge and culture down through the generations. It also plays an important role in regard to the present, having a significant part to play in the socialisation of the young, as well as indeed the future, through the citizens and workers that these young people become. However, the focus on the future in schooling has been far less powerful than it now needs to become.
Our main purpose in our new book So What Now1, recently published by John Catt, is to explore that missing dimension by developing an approach that integrates personal effectiveness, academic success, community engagement, and moral purpose, one which will equip young people to thrive and survive in the radically different challenging future they will inherit from older generations.
This aspiration immediately lays us open to the accusation that here is yet another burden being laid on the school and its curriculum, already over-loaded, crowded, and stretched. Is it not better for schools to concentrate on doing a few things well, rather than attempting to solve every problem of society? A response to this challenge drives to the heart of understanding and framing correctly both the purpose of schools and the nature of the learning that takes place in them. To succeed, it will require school leaders who have all the qualities associated with positive models of leadership, along with a firm understanding of how a culture of deep learning is established.
Culture is to organisations what oxygen is to all living things. Leadership and learning flourish in ‘oxygen rich environment’ and are seriously inhibited by the absence or poor quality of organisational oxygen. In this discussion we argue that this key ingredient lies in what we term in the book ‘deep learning for future sustainability’.
Deep learning for future sustainability is not age specific nor is it related to traditional models and definitions of intelligence. Rather it works through three key components: understanding, character and agency. Understanding in this sense is the means of creating knowledge and being able to analyse relationships, synthesise alternative perspectives and focus on the how as well as the what. Thus, learning to read requires deep learning as does learning a second language, playing the cello or making sense of the changes impacting on the community.