The Slow Cognition Movement
What if…? What if schools moved more toward paced education, as a model for how we ‘do school’? The design strives for a certain harmony…a balance of tech and non-tech that is deeply intentional. Imagine “Not-Spots” as ‘destination areas’ within your school. Perhaps they’re even personal, at times, as in: can I use your not-spot? What if…we were intentional about slow cognition, in terms of creating a movement?
Powering Ahead: Alternative School Models
The Alternative School Models that will be successful will be those that rely on network thinking as a core design principle. Like Tesla, who has built charging stations in order to provide the requisite power for their all-electric cars, ASMs that create and utilise platforms (from student information systems to learning software to other softwares not yet named) that enable all their schools (and parents and students…all ‘users’) to tap into them on a daily basis will gain ground quickly, scaling in ways that incumbent schools have not anticipated.
Our Bigger Dream
In Eastern philosophy, there is a great question posed: what is the nature of this age? What is the nature of our age? I submit that it is the globalisation of superficiality. Being ‘friends,’ for example, can mean one thing in a bricks-and-mortar school, whilst meaning something entirely different in the largest country on planet earth, Facebook. Lest you think I am joking, consider that Facebook has borders (virtual, bandwidth all around you), it has a population, it has rules of conduct (terms and conditions of use), it exhibits a certain ethos. I’m not providing a value judgement; I am only looking at it, as an entity. It should shock you, at least somewhat, that I would want to categorise Facebook as a nation. Yet, what is the nature of our age?
Future-Back Strategy
Existing leadership development programmes exemplify the present-forward model of thinking, rather than future-back. We continue to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for today’s schools, with today’s thinking. We might even be so bold as to assert that these programmes prepare managers instead of leaders. That’s an issue.