Thoughts from an International Educator

creativity, action research, CPD, innovation, pedagogy, and the future of learning

Spoilt for Choice? Not quite….choosing a school in Dubai.

May 23, 2013 by · No Comments · Learning

Schooling and school selection is one of the most contentious and polarizing topics discussed by parents and educators in Dubai. There are approximately one hundred and forty private schools in Dubai providing education for over eighty thousand children. Schools offer a range of curricular from English (not British), American, Indian, French, Pakistani, Australian and several more. Unfortunately for the majority of parents, schools are over-subscribed and waiting lists are common occurrence.

So, if you’re choosing a school in Dubai, what sort of things should you be considering and how do you really know if the school you have signed up for is worth the money you are planning to pay?

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Well, there’s an earth of things to consider such as the geographical location, curriculum and inspection results, all outlined in the following article by my good friend, Kevin Simpson. However, there are other factors at play that most parents aren’t privy to, so let’s navigate through the topic with some important ones:

Profit vs. not-for-profit

Have you checked to see if you are sending your child to a profit or not-for profit school? This might not seem like a massive consideration but think about this: if a school is a profit making school, they will have to cut corners at some point to err….make a profit. That’s what profit-making schools do. For example, it costs anywhere between $600 and $3000 dollars to advertise teaching posts in the biggest talent pools. If you’re a business and you’re looking to make money, are you really going to spend that much on advertising for a number of teaching posts? Well, in actual fact, not many are. If you check the TES website and a random sample of school websites, you’ll see which schools are spending money on recruitment and the ones that aren’t.

Another way to cut costs is to slash the staff training budget. Are the teachers from your school staying up-to-date with 21st century teaching practices? How would you actually know that? There’s a perception out there that once you’re a trained teacher, then you’re good for the next 30 years. Think again. The best schools invest resources into their staff so that they can design the very best learning for their students. How will you know if your school has received best possible training?

Not-for-profit schools have to put the money back into the schools, so therefore, teachers’ salaries tend to be higher, money spent on students tends be bigger and staff training tends to be better. A shining example of this is Jumeirah English Speaking School (JESS). They are a not-for-profit school that is recognized for its achievements and they get the very best training from around the world. Shame about the waiting list….

Accreditation

What does it mean to be an accredited school? Across Dubai, you have schools claiming to “British” or “American” but are they really? First of all, there is no such thing as a British Curriculum. There is, however, an English National Curriculum and schools that are accredited by the Department for Education in the UK receive an official number. Once they’ve got that number they’re accredited to offer an English-style education. The very-best schools usually apply to multiple accrediting organizations to ensure the education they are offering meets a certain standard. For example, Dubai College is accredited by the Council of British International Schools, the British Overseas Inspectorate, the British Schools in the Middle East Association and the Royal School of Music. If you’re wondering if your chosen school has been accredited, check to see how many logos are on the school website and if the school has a dedicated accreditation page. If they’re not accredited, they’re just saying they are certain brand (British?, American) something but they don’t actually have any benchmarking to prove it.

If you’re not sure what this means, hold a sign above your house saying “Doctors’ Surgery” and start asking people to come in for random operations. If there were very few surgeries in your local area, people will start to come in and believe that you are a real organization. You could probably imitate the basics such as checking on someone etc but imagine what would happen if you had to actually diagnose someone with Asthma. It’s the same principle for learners, schools can imitate a lot, they can cover over the cracks, but when it comes to real learning, they’re not always up-to-standard or able to facilitate it, and that’s why I would be looking to see if a school has been accredited.

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“Outstanding” vs. “Good” vs. “Acceptable”
Every school in Dubai has been inspected. The inspections focus on eight key areas of schooling ranging from health and safety to leadership and management. Obviously the quality of teaching and learning is the priority and if you’re sending your child to a school that is just ‘acceptable’ then you should start asking questions. Check out the KHDA website for individual inspection reports.

The education landscape in Dubai is a complex one as the private sector vastly outweighs the public one. Due to this unusual disparity, high-quality education is a rarity and families are often forced to look beyond the UAE to cater to their needs. So, briefly, let’s consider some of the possible solutions to this issue:

Public system relieving private one?
Can the public sector relieve the private one? At this stage, the public school system would not be able to provide the international-type of education that parents in the UAE want.

Community Schools
Imagine if all private schools had to accommodate their local demography and places were prioritized for local children. This may be an option for the future and developers such as EMAAR and ArabTec could actually design schools within their communities for their communities. It would be difficult to enforce, however, it would enable parents to feel safe and secure in the knowledge that their children were attending a local school rather than travelling across the city.

For schools, there would be more opportunities to collaborate rather than compete. Imagine if Dubai College, Jebel Ali Primary, JESS and Repton School were a federation that allowed for movement across schools and collaborative training and learning. This type of federation is common in the UK and the benefits are outstanding for all. In the current climate, this wouldn’t happen, because schools are competing for admission places and teachers, which ultimately stifle collaboration and innovation.

More of the same?
It has been reported that Dubai needs another 100 schools to accommodate the growing population. Surely if more schools were built, in a quicker time-frame, the stress of waiting to find out wouldn’t be as bad. At this point in time, according to the construction network, the following schools are currently under construction:
• Foremarke Hall
• Kings School
• The Indian High School – Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO)
• Victory Heights Primary School – Dubai Sports City
• International School of Choueifat – Dubai Investment Park (DIP)

Finally, it’s not an easy process but it pays to be informed. More often than not, parents see facilities and glossy marketing materials before they think about the important things like quality of teaching and learning and quality of leadership. I have been to a number of schools that on the face of it look amazing but in reality, they are delivering a sub-standard form of education. The issues will continue until the wider issue of lack of schools and type of schools improves. The single most important factor that you should consider is the quality of the teaching and learning. If your child is likely to receive high-quality teaching regardless of the type of school they are more-likely to achieve their potential. This should be prioritized above all other factors in your decision-making.

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Four Things I Wish I Learned at School

March 24, 2013 by · No Comments · Uncategorized

In light of the recent national curriculum changes in the UK and with the story “Children can’t think if they can’t learn facts.” I thought I’d pitch in to the debate with my own chimes in relation to what I wish I learned at school.

1. The Financial System (National and International)

If my memory serves me correctly, I wasn’t taught anything about the UK banking system, taxes, interest rates, the Bank of England – nothing! For something so important, so significant, so crucial to our lives, I wasn’t taught a single thing about any of the above. In fact, there was no-where in the curriculum for it to be taught. Words like: Black Monday; depression; bankers’ wages; bonuses; just weren’t part of the vocabulary back then so I obviously grew up without any pre-informed knowledge about them.

Worryingly, I wasn’t ever taught about debt, mortgages, and overdrafts. The words base rate, balance transfer, Bank of England, Ombudsman, fixed rate, credit score and variable were all entirely foreign. In fact, some still are. It’s not that my parents were uneducated, but neither had been to university, so neither had experienced life as a working student. At school I was taught that university was everything. But nobody ever mentioned the amount of debt I would have to gain to get the qualifications I sought. And nobody ever mentioned how easy it was to get in to more debt when you were there. For example, the Cooperative Bank gave me a 2000 pound overdraft without me ever investing any money in the bank at all.

“So, wait there, I can have 2000 pounds for nothing?”
“Yes. Just pay us back over ten years.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘Stupid person, he didn’t know what he was doing.’ No, I didn’t and neither did the other 50,000 students. Again, I was never given the opportunity to learn this at school.

Questions to consider:
• How many schools, teachers etc are currently teaching their learners about the global recession?
• How many learners have been affected by the recession and want to know more about it?
• Where in the National Curriculum could teachers address these points?
• What would we want our learners to know about the financial crisis?

These are all significant questions that require in-depth learning. More importantly, young people will inevitably be the participants in the global economy, so they should know about the various components of the financial system, so they can challenge and improve it. And, not take that 2000 pound overdraft.

2. The Power of the Media

I can’t ever recall studying anything remotely related to the power and influence of the media. We read the occasional newspaper but we never deconstructed a series of stories across the national or international press. We were never taught that we were viewing the world through some else’s lens. I became intrigued with the media as I grew older and this prompted my own enquiry into various sections of the media but there are certain skills that I think young people should have the opportunity to develop whilst at school. Learners are part of the media and are completely saturated in it; however: are young people given the opportunity to critically analyze a story or item across the media, over a period of time?

Take the story of Shannon Mathews (the girl who was supposedly kidnapped but actually hidden by her own parents because ironically, they watched a T.V programme of a family staging the same thing). There are a number of inter-related narratives within this story:
• The BBC’s representation of white working class people
• The representation of social class within the UK
• The emotional impact of the event on Shannon Mathews
• The parents, who planned this event after watching a T.V show
The list goes on…but a story as controversial and complex as this should be given a prime time slot within the school week, shouldn’t it?

• Where in the National Curriculum can young people critically analyze the engineers and facilitators of their perception of the world?
• Are schools and teachers fully aware of their children’s identities on social networking websites?
• In what ways are young people constructing their identities online through the media?
• Where (in the curriculum) can young people develop a range of dispositions to critically construct and articulate the variables within the media that impact on daily life?
• How many teachers could confidently and competently facilitate learning around the media’s representation of 9/11?

Answers to the above on a post-card please.

3. War and Peace

Between 1990 and 1995, there were eighteen recorded wars, one genocide and countless other military ‘interventions’ around the world. However, at school I was taught very little about any of them. History touched upon wars up to WW2 and R.E mentioned war momentarily but I never explored any of the wars of that time. In that time period, the genocide in Rwanda took place but I don’t recall ever studying it at school. I later read about it in Philip Gourevitch’s outstanding book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.”
• How many young people are learning about the genocides of recent times?
• How often are young people taught about WW2, WW1, without any discussion or exploration about the conflict in Palestine?
• How are schools ensuring their children are aware of current wars taking place?
• How many young people have parents serving in these conflicts?
• How are schools making their children aware of organizations that work to stop wars from happening?

4. School isn’t everything

When I was at school, I was constantly told that ‘school is everything’. If you fail, that’s it, you’re a failure and you’ll never get a ‘good’ job, go to university etc. I remember sitting down with the Careers Advisor and she asked me what I wanted to be. I replied “A professional Basketball Player.” She replied “Sorry, that job isn’t available on the system.” She then punched my grades in and out popped a slip of paper with a list of random jobs that I could get if I went to university. I remember being extremely puzzled because back then, just like now, being a professional Basketball Player is a ‘real job’.

Paul McCartney, was never recognized for his writing or musical talents at school. John Cleese, was never recognized for his sense of humour. Matt Groening (The Simpsons), was never recognized for his artistic talents at school.

• Are these the types of facts that children should be taught at school?
• How many children pass through the current system without ever being recognized for their talents?

Now, my school may have been limited, however, they certainly weren’t doing anything different to other schools in the area. If a curriculum is extremely limited, based upon debatable facts, narrow and not in-line with children’s interests, then should we expect more talented people to emerge despite the system, not because of it?

Shaun Robison (c)

References: The Element – Ken Robinson

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Education for Sale? Of course, just don’t ask which kind.

March 18, 2013 by · No Comments · Learning, Reform

The Global Education and Skills Forum has been taking place in Dubai over the past three days and I was fortunate enough to attend the opening dinner on Friday evening. The event was organized by the Varkey Gems Foundation whose slogan is “Changing lives through Education”. Tony Blair, held a pre-conference Q & A and former US President, Bill Clinton delivered a key-note speech to open the conference. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) were the theme of the conference. If you check the website of the conference, you’ll see lots of quotes about education and poverty, that type of thing. All very noble stuff if you buy into it. The aim of the conference “is to expose the role of public and private partnerships in education and introduce policymakers to lessons from international evidence.” The forum hosted 2 Presidents, 2 former Presidents, 1 Vice President, 1 former Prime Minister, 10 Education Ministers, and other senior policy makers taking part in this inaugural Forum. Before I go any further, for some of you, this post is going to provoke quite a negative response and for others, you’re going to stop and consider it for a second. Hopefully the latter.

Now I know that Bill Clinton is one of the more popular US Presidents of the last three decades but let’s face it, he was sandwiched between two rather internationally unpopular ones. And I’m aware that his wife, Hillary, is a popular figure among some circles. However, it’s not his popularity that I’m taking aim at here.

During his key note speech, he was asked about a positive example of public-private-partnerships and he used the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Programme) Charter School movement in the US. Now the jury is still well and truly out when it comes to the KIPP movement. For some, the KIPP movement has transformed individuals in impoverished circumstances and for others, there’s simply not enough credible evidence to support the initiative as an alternative to public education. Both Gerald Cole at the Education Week and Matt Carlo at the National Education Policy Center have written extensively about this. There have also been numerous questions about the organizations that have funded the research into the success of the programme and their connections to the KIPP movement – obviously a conflict of interest. The point is, the jury is still out. This wasn’t the greatest example of a successful PPP. But with emotive terms like poverty, education, literacy, women, disaffected, gap, you could easily buy into this hype with some clever marketing. Clinton went on to talk about the importance of education, especially for women and girls internationally. But what was really missing for me, was the type of education that these people need and the distinction between education and schooling.

I would like to draw your attention to the movie A Thousand Suns. I highly recommend this movie because it grapples with the very concept that Clinton and the Varkey Gems Foundation were attempting to highlight. The film focuses on the people within the Gamo Highlands in Ethiopia. This part of Africa is one of the most densely populated with over 4 million people who maintain a 10,000 year old agricultural industry. The farmers within this region are highly knowledgeable about the land and crops through their connection to nature and ecology. According to the OneWorld website “A Thousand Suns explores the modern world’s unjustifiable sense of separation from and superiority over nature, and how this is being imposed upon the people of Gamo.”

One of the most disturbing themes emerging within the movie is the interference of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In their quest to “end hunger in Africa” under the auspices of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) they brought western scientists to transplant their knowledge to the Gamo Highlands, to move farming away from household food security and into an external market-based agriculture model. Gathuru Mburu of the Institute for Culture and Ecology, makes his own views very clear on how best to ensure food security:

“Putting the entire seed sector in the hands of companies, local or foreign, eventually means the same thing. It’s corporate. While actually it is the farmers that have the skills. The farmers have the traditional knowledge. We need to develop structures for more village-based seed banks for communities… That’s the most sustainable approach to food security.”

Through loans, farmers are ‘encouraged’ by the so-called experts to use their pesticides, genetically modified seeds and fertilizers. You can see where this is leading…

Get this man into the global economy! Taken from http://www.globalonenessproject.org

Now, from this movie you can see that the locals were very-well educated but their education didn’t necessarily fall into a category on the GCSE league tables or an SAT Test. On the Global Education and Skills Forum website they hit you with some facts about education:
• 61 million children are out of primary school
• 71 million young people, including half of all adolescents in low-income countries, receive no post-primary education
• 793 million illiterate adults

The website for the forum poses two key questions about developing nations in its agenda: How can they develop the human capital needed to strengthen their economy whilst budgets are constrained? How can they help nurture global citizens with the needed tolerance and respect to introduce and sustain peace? Interpret these questions as you will but the use of ‘they’ is rather alarming to me. The questions I would be asking in return are:

• How will you maintain local knowledge of culture, environment and community to ensure their values and beliefs are recognized within the global market?
• How will you ensure that your schooling matches the local population’s specific educational needs within their communities?

The statistics on the website and the questions are without reference or any real definition of what education truly is. My fear, with the promotion of PPPs, is that governments are over-looking the local knowledge they already have, in the race to get their populations “schooled’ so they can benefit from the global market. It’s all very well promoting “education” but let’s be honest, it’s not education they’re promoting, it’s schooling of a certain kind.

Shaun Robison ©

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The Factories are Still Smoking but there’s a Different Cloud in the Sky

March 8, 2013 by · No Comments · Uncategorized

For those of you that watched Sugata Mitra’s recent TED presentation titled “Build a School in the Cloud” it may have provoked some mixed feelings about the roles of teachers and schools in the current climate.

Sugata is the Professor for Technology at Newcastle University, England, where I am currently completing my P.h.D in Education. I managed to see one of his lectures back in 2005 on the Hole in the Wall Project and the word inspiring doesn’t even come close. Since then I’ve been writing, reading and sharing his videos and thoughts. His Hole in the Wall Project posed significant questions about the nature of learning, young people and the role that schools currently play in their education. Ken Robinson built on many of the same themes in Changing the Paradigm and in his books. The work illustrates that we all have the capacity to achieve beyond our perceived potential, if we are intrinsically motivated by the authenticity of the opportunity and provided with a healthy climate to explore.

Sugata’s recent presentation, which won him the TED prize for 2013, took aim at building a school in the cloud. The current school system was designed and conceived during the industrial revolution – hence why so many schools operate on factory lines. Since his presentation, I’ve been reading several reviews and interestingly, he has provoked a strong counter-argument from traditionalists who advocate the current system. This is no surprise. When I’ve shared Sugata’s videos with various groups of teachers, the immediate threat they perceive relates to the complete abolishment of teachers.

Unfortunately for these teachers, the clock is ticking, in my opinion. The Khan Academy and more recently, Code Academy are two wonderful examples of self-directed learning that threaten the status quo. It’s shame that Sugata’s work is viewed as a threat, rather than a valuable resource that poses more questions than answers. Crucially, technology is developing much faster rate than humans and the only choice is get on board or get left behind.

Shaun Robison (c)

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What should professional learning look like in 2013?

February 4, 2013 by · No Comments · International, Learning

Approximately a year ago, I posted “What should learning look like in 2012?” a commentary outlining potential learning approaches with school children. In that post, I emphasized authentic learning, converged with the ‘real world’, negotiated by the learners, and divorced from subject compartmentalization.

Well, hopefully, this post “What should professional learning look like in 2013?” will suggest a potential continuing professional learning framework for teachers who aspire to create healthy, authentic opportunities for their learners, whilst maintaining the ideal that they are part of the learning journey themselves.

So, what should professional learning look like for ‘trained’ teachers? Should it be through professional development (PD) sessions detached from their classrooms? If this were a potential model for teachers, it would be assumed that they could simply transfer or interpret the content for their learners, so therefore, a cognitive activity.

Alternatively, professional learning could be situated within classrooms and learning spaces but if this were a potential model for teachers, learning outside of those vacuums would be an essential supplement to the contextual learning within it. Or, it might be a mixture of both depending on the school or context. These were very rudimentary descriptions for the purposes of this blog – I could write all day about the benefits and challenges of both.

Before I outline my preferred model, it’s important to highlight the language of professional learning and some of the perceived connotations around some key terms. First, I’m not too keen on the current language used. Professional development implies that teachers are not yet developed, so they’re not quite there yet… still lots of developing to do.
Synonyms of developing:
upward, rising, on the increase, emergent, budding.

None of these terms particularly strike me as significant words that you would want to associate with a teacher who has designed an authentic climate for learning. Imagine if a teacher designed a learning episode similar to the one I described and they were labeled as ‘on the increase’.

‘Training’ has many connotations, but for me, the idea of being ‘trained’ is quite derogatory. Training also has connotations of knowledge transfer – and once you’ve been given the training, you are somehow trained until the next time.

I think American Author, Mark Twain, put it best “”If teaching was as simple as telling we would all be a lot smarter than we are.” Professional learning, on the other hand, hits the nail on the head. But, where does one start when discussing professional learning in 2013?

Schools are extremely complex intuitions charged with enabling young people to be dynamic individuals beyond their being. Teachers create micro-professional knowledge for their specific purposes that may share similarities to other teachers in other schools, but may also be in conflict with many other factors.

From my experience, it’s clear that young learners are in many ways more likely to demonstrate the skills and dispositions required to be dynamic beyond school, where as the teachers are quite often the product of it and seek to maintain their positions, as masters of that particular universe. Consciously and un-consciously.

For the purposes of this discussion, consider the following questions:
• What would happen if the word ‘teacher’ was removed from the vocabulary of each school?
• What would happen if ‘teachers’ were replaced by ‘lead learners’ whose responsibility was to model a range of skills and dispositions and co-construct the planning, facilitating, execution and implementation of the learning?
• What would the implications for professional learning be each year if the entire school adopted this model?

Due to limited curricular and pressure to spoon feed learners for exams, teachers often assume the role of knowledge-giver. A lead learner would exhibit the exact opposite for their learners. For example, a lead learner would model how to learn from mistakes, locate certain resources, and think out loud whilst reflecting on the all of those processes. When was the last time you observed a teacher deliberately making a mistake to model the process of learning from mistakes?

From my experience, it’s clear that most schools adopt a mixture of situated learning, peer-to-peer learning approaches, with visiting ‘experts’ delivering inset training on various initiatives; all with limited impact on learning but great for ticking the box in the budget for CPD.

Think of the potential impact of having a team of lead learners within a school, modeling key learning dispositions side-by-side with ‘teachers’ in the classroom, full time. A rigid curriculum or exam specification just wouldn’t be suitable for this climate but think of the types of learners it would cultivate. Some of you might be screaming the words ‘Advanced Skills Teacher’ but I’m thinking of something completely beyond that. If we are to create dynamic individuals that are beyond are institutions’ capacities, we can’t use products of a system in isolation to change it. The focus has to be on collaborative learning between adults and children, converged with the economy, environment, workplace, digital networks and much more. Rather than hierarchies based on age, not necessarily learning power.

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Day 3 – A Martian Anthropologist’s View of the Educational World – the South Pacific and elsewhere

April 16, 2012 by · No Comments · 2012, Free Schools, Learning

I’ve been extremely busy of late so haven’t had the desired time to blog but I’ve managed to find enough time to write the last in my Martian anthropologist series.

Day 3 – A Martian Anthropologist’s View of the Educational World – the South Pacific and elsewhere

Yesterday’s visit to the Middle-East was extremely interesting; lots of money invested to develop a system that is tried and tested elsewhere with questionable success. The key questions that I keep coming back to from my observations are:

• What is the purpose of education?
• What is the purpose of school?
• Do these two things match?
• Do schools develop dynamic learners that are equipped for life-long learning, change, cultural awareness, success and failure?
• Or, do they ‘school’ learners into products of an already failing system that is struggling to cope with demands of global change?
• What do Earthians want their learners to be like in the future?
• What do Earthians want their schools to be like in the future?
• What is the connection between schooling, happiness, the economy and exams?

Well, here I am in an area called the South Pacific. It’s very different from the Middle-East and the northern hemisphere – less buildings, more water, more green, less people. I’ve been told this area is one of the richest parts of the world in terms of bio-diversity and the animal world. On my way here, I met an animal behaviourist who was supposedly here to observe the behavior of the local dolphins. Interestingly, he wasn’t aware of my magic powers (obviously) and I was able to find out that he was actually transporting the dolphins to a hotel in Dubai called ‘Atlantis’, the same hotel that used to have a Killer Whale in its sea life centre which was transported by the same guy. And to think he told me he was saving lots of animals from becoming extinct!

It took me a while to find any schools or institutions that ‘educate’ (I’m struggling with the meaning of this word) children. My local tour guide told me that he didn’t want to send his children to school because they would leave the community and never come back. He said that he preferred to teach them how to build, hunt and cook so they could function in their communities. If any of his children were lucky, they would learn about the different plants and leaves that heal people and stop them from becoming sick. This would mean they would spend time with a village elder who was an expert in this area. This is first time I’ve seen such a thing during my time on this planet.

I managed to track down someone who worked in a local school and they were very keen to talk to me. They informed me that they were doing their best to educate the children in the local area with limited resources. They were ‘Christians’ and they said that since the induction of Christianity in this region, the local people have abandoned their previous culture because it was based around false beliefs. Very strange. Anyway, on one wall, there was a hand written poster that read “Education is your way out of poverty and your road to success.” I wonder what this meant. What type of education would lead you out of poverty and to success? Apparently only one generation of people here have been using currency; they previously used shell stones and other things with value but since the inception of money, everyone is now to place a value on their belongings. From what I can see, the schools here are an extremely under-resourced, under staffed and a questionable presence in the community. If their intention is to educate people out of the community to progress on to another society with the same education system, what chances have they got against people who have been schooled in a different country with the same system?

If this education system is an extremely impoverished version of the previous ones I visited in the Middle East and northern hemisphere, then wouldn’t the locals be better served in opting out of that system and adopting their own to meet the local challenges of their environment?

From my visits around the Earth, I’m perplexed by the way in which humans have chosen to organize themselves. If a country has chosen to engage in the global economy, does that mean that is resigns itself to schooling rather than educating? If the economy is the priority, not brain development through learning, why are humans so inefficient at it? I have observed lots of extremes in my three visits; for example, schools in the northern hemisphere are allowing individuals and businesses to open schools with their own rules, whereas in the Middle East, this is being reversed. In one country, decentralized education for thirty years resulted in massive disparities across the system. Some benefitted greatly from it whilst the vast majority did not. In the Middle East, there seems to be an obsession with qualifications rather than effective behaviours, resulting in a mish mash of qualified, credible, experienced practitioners demonstrating effective and forward thinking practice and ‘qualified’ in-effective individuals claiming to be experts. Is this a variable of the previous system that promoted de-centralization, ideological thinking and ‘free education’?

The idea of ‘best practice’ is hotly disputed in all regions and becomes even more problematic to define when the wrong person can manipulate success to suit their ideals. I’m concerned that as a planet, Earthians are not are focusing on the brain enough and very little time is actually spent developing awareness of the brain, learning styles and potential for future learning. My lasting thoughts before I leave this planet are:

• If education is going to be centralized in individual countries that operate in the global economy and then compared with other countries, how will you ensure there is equality among the countries for there to be any realistic comparison of attainment?

• If countries are de-centralizing their education systems and promoting a free market within their countries whilst operating in a global economy, how will they ensure there is equality among their learners so their is significant progress both socially, educationally and culturally so that global understanding is enhanced not abused by ideological individuals?

Shaun Robison ©

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Day 2 in the Life of a Martian Anthropologist – the Middle-East

March 26, 2012 by · No Comments · 2012, Free Schools, International, Learning, Purpose, The Future of Learning

Well, yesterday’s visit to the northern hemisphere was really interesting although very strange. I’m not totally convinced their schools and systems are designed for learning and all that interference from banks and businesses makes me a little bit skeptical about the whole thing.

Anyway, I’ve spent a day in the Middle East and I’ve observed some very strange educational practices that I’m going to share with you today. Firstly, the weather is absolutely amazing compared to the previous place but I can’t see anyone using solar power which is slightly worrying.

I interviewed someone here to grasp the local context and they informed me that a lot of money is being invested in education in this part of the world. However, the schools systems here are similar to the ones in the northern hemisphere but unlike their peers up north, they are actually reversing a lot of the changes that the people in the north are putting in place. For example, in one country in this region, they have ‘villa schools’ which are schools run by businessmen, farmers, taxi drivers and people with generally no qualifications in education. For the past thirty years, these schools have been operating without qualified teachers, with their own curriculum, their own standards and generally doing as they please. The results of this unbelievable strategy are damning and comprehensive; I’ve been told that the extremes of the education system are wide and varied. In some schools, all of the teachers are qualified and the curriculum is pretty robust and reflective of this bizarre planet. In other schools, there aren’t any qualified teachers and the curriculum is purely a text book or what the business man wants the students to learn. This might be the reason why there are so many un-employed young people in this region, the highest rate of youth unemployment in the world.

The other thing I find very strange is the amount of people from the northern hemisphere transplanting their previously un-successful strategies in schools in this region. I’m astounded that the people from this part of the world look upon that system that I described last week as a success and have employed people to do the same here. Has this decision been made based on educational or business reasons? I wonder. In one class I went into, the students were illiterate in Arabic and the teacher was trying to teach them English literature. How could young people from this part of the world have a contextual understanding of English literature? Why aren’t the students learning their first language successfully?

Interestingly I visited an ‘international’ school that taught many students from around the world. This particular school was known for its excellent exam results and I was told that every student should get an A*. I asked some of the students if they had ever been taught the concept of failure and if they were told how to learn from it and they said they had never been taught this concept and that it was vital for them to get this best result every time. Some students said they were scared of getting a low result and because of this they didn’t try anything they hadn’t done before. Quite strange and sad, don’t you think? I did, however, find it amazing that most of the young people in this school could speak multiple languages and they could switch languages during a conversation, something I didn’t see in my other visit.

After my school visits I went to an educational conference in one of the main cities and it was rather remarkable. Inside this large airport hangar, businesses and companies mainly from the northern hemisphere were lined up in sections ‘selling’ educational strategies, resources, technological products and other weird things. I asked several of the people selling these things if they knew about the impact of their products and if it actually supported learning. None of them could really give me a conclusive answer. One guy was obsessed about using technology but he couldn’t explain what the students would gain from using his product other than looking fancy while the other students looked on. I wonder if any of these people selling these products have any experience in cultivating learners to develop a range if dispositions that will enable them to re-learn in the future?

The other thing that I find bizarre in this part of the world is the obsession with qualifications rather than skills. It seems that everyone I speak to has a master’s degree or a PHD but after seeing some of their work, it’s quite obvious that their master’s degree is not the same as others’. I spoke to one recruitment agency and they told me that everyone they employed had to have a master’s. What is the obsession with a qualification that is an indication of commitment to one thing for a certain period of time? I’ve met people in the northern hemisphere and in the Middle East who have no pieces of paper with letters on but they are more than capable of doing the job that some of the people with the pieces of paper. I can see that commitment to one thing is great for some people but by the looks of it, the vast majority who do commit to one thing for that length of time learn lots of bad habits about learning in the process of doing it. It looks like they have sacrificed the one thing that piece of paper says they have achieved.

It’s been a really interesting visit. Significantly, a so-called expert here told me that this region is aiming to achieve ‘international’ standards in its education system. He said that the countries here want to compete with other countries around the world. I’m totally baffled by this thought. So, countries that are completely different in culture, society, history, language and laws want to compare their children’s exam results? I wonder what would happen if countries designed something to compare the happiness of each society instead? Surely this would be a better indicator of success rather than a test that is completed by different children who have a completely different experience of learning. Surely this test would be different within countries because it would be impossible to design such a test that is comparable, right? Instead of trying to judge the attainment of young people for political reasons, countries might start to think about the implications of the process of learning and the impact this is having on their societies.

Well I’ve seen two very different parts of the world and there are some striking similarities between the two but I don’t think these are working out well for the learners. There seems to be too many people transplanting strategies from elsewhere instead of researching and designing with the context in mind.

I’m off to a different part of the world next week called the South Pacific. Apparently they do things very differently with their children and I’m keen to see what this looks like.

Shaun Robison ©

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A Martian Anthropologist’s View of the Educational World

March 18, 2012 by · No Comments · 2012, International, Learning, Purpose, The Future of Learning

I’ve been looking for some inspiration for this week’s blog and I found it in the study guide from the ‘Schooling the World’ website. I recommend this study guide to all educators, visionaries, thinkers and policy makers.

This week’s blog is written from the point of view of a Martian anthropologist, visiting Earth and observing the various educational, cultural and social habits that function in our relatively small planet. The ‘big’ questions that I want to you consider throughout this blog are:
• Why does society accept these practices?
• What are the implications for the future?
• What do we want our society to look like in 10, 20, 50 years’ time?

Day 1 in the Life of a Martian Anthropologist

I decided to visit an area called the ‘northern hemisphere’ first because I was really keen to know why they were northern. From space, it’s really difficult to say but it seems that a lot of people view this area as northern and the others as southern, and this is universally accepted by people in this area. Very strange.

Anyway, I got to the northern hemisphere and managed to get a brief overview of current events. In the past couple of years, a lot of areas in this region have ‘cut’ funding in ‘education’ (I think this means learning but I’m not sure) because of a financial disaster created by organizations called ‘banks’. I wonder why there is a connection between banks, businesses and education and surely this is one area where you add more to it rather than take it away, right? I also read in a newspaper that one of the bankers rewarded himself with lots of money even though his bank caused the problem. I’ve never heard of this concept before – doing something which affected lots of people in a negative way but then rewarded for it. What kind of society does this? In a newspaper, it said that this banker was the friend of someone in an organization called ‘the government’ and they were also rewarding themselves. A man on the ground told me that several of the people in the government have lots of houses and travel around the country using money from ‘tax’ (money taken from people’s earnings to make society better) to make decisions on behalf of the people who live in an area of land called a ‘country’. It’s bizarre though, most the same banks exist in lots of different countries.

I was also told that many young people across these countries were rioting and looting; some were even burning down buildings because they were unhappy about their treatment. The young people who did this worked together, used technology to organize themselves into groups, sold certain objects for money and kept other objects for themselves. I’m not surprised actually. From my observations, a lot of young people are herded up into one building before 9am, told to stand in a straight line with people born in a timeframe similar to them, forced to wear the same clothes before they see eight different adults who tell them bits of information about different things which they have to remember for a ‘test’, before they leave the building to the sound of a ringing bell and then travel back to their houses at 4pm. I think I would be unhappy if I were forced to do this. Some of them even go home to an empty house because their care givers are working until very late. This happens five days a week from September till July for fourteen years and then they have to sit as an individual in complete silence, and write down everything they can remember on a piece of paper. And if they do not get certain ‘scores’ they are branded as failures. Some stay on to repeat this process while others leave and go somewhere else. The ones who stay in this system the longest and get the most pieces of paper with different letters on are called ‘professionals’ or ‘middle class’ while the ones who stop and do something else are viewed very differently by the bankers. It’s quite a strange concept. The schools are then judged on the success of this model and then compared to the success of another school doing the same thing and then the government judges these schools, whilst deciding to give them more or less money or to let someone from a business control them and decide what they learn. I’m still really confused about this, why are banks, businesses and schools connected? One woman said quite angrily to me that ‘all of the bankers and politicians went to one school together’.

The type of information these young people have to learn is another observation that I find really interesting. I spoke to several people who had been through this experience and they said ‘they have never used algebra since leaving school’, so why do so many people have to ‘learn’ it if it is never used after this perturbing experience? In fact, most of the people I spoke to said they have never used most of the information they were told to learn and they felt like they wasted a lot of time being told what to do, when to do it and why the needed to do it without really feeling like they knew why. The other thing I find really interesting is the way in which schools are organized in the society. Some children go to a school that is based on a belief in a higher being (is that me?), some schools charge a fee, which obviously means that the banker’s children will be able to afford to go to them and the other people’s children will not; some young people have to sit a ‘test’ at the age of eleven and if they pass the test, they can go to a school with other children who have passed the test. It’s strange though because some of these children did not do as well as some other children in a different test that all children had to take before they moved to a school for older children. Very bizarre. I wonder what will happen to this society if everyone goes through a different system.

There are schools that are owned by businesses that set their own rules, employ people who have not completed a higher stage of the education process and teach them information that they think is important. It seems like these countries are divided in lots of different ways. I wonder if these societies will be so divided that more young people will be un-happier and angry and more riots will take place. I can’t imagine the stress that these young people go through but it looks very strange to an outsider. I’ve never seen any other planets organize their young by doing the following:
• Separate them by a timeframe decided by a higher power
• Tell them they need to learn certain information by a certain time to be accepted
• Tell them what to wear and how to wear it but at the same time, tell them ‘you’re all individuals’
• Make them see lots of different people who will tell them different things in between two bells ringing
• Test them on this information at the end of fourteen years for them to rarely use it again
• Label them as successes or failures if they don’t get a certain score
• Put them in categories based on how much money their parents own and then send them to a place based on it
• Fine them if they don’t follow these rules and then tell them they are ‘free to choose’.
• Send the banker’s children to different schools so they can work in banks in later life to make big mistakes and get rewarded for it.

Apparently schools have been doing this for the past two hundred years with the same results. I’m really confused. It’s been a really interesting experience so far but I’m struggling to see the purpose of it all. I wonder if this place will look the same in the future and if the people in the government and the banks will still be deciding the future of the people who pay them some of their money each month. I’m also keen to know why banks are not labelled as failures and why they are given more money and more control. I’m visiting a different part of this planet next week called the ‘Middle East’. I don’t why it’s called this but hopefully I’ll find out why.

Shaun Robison ©

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Cultural Hegemony or Globalization? Education can work both ways.

March 10, 2012 by · No Comments · Globalisation, International, Learning, Reform, The Future of Learning, Uncategorized

Over the past few years I’ve been situated in a different culture, different political landscape with people who share a completely different worldview. The topic of ‘culture’ is a regular talking point among colleagues and some cultural experiences have stood out more than others but none more so than the one I am going to share with you today.

Around fourteen months ago, I was working in a school in the desert with young people from the age of ten to eighteen. This particular community was economically and socially deprived compared to many of their countrymen. Tribal factions still existed among the people and this was a contentious issue in the school and the neighboring school and community (the desert’s version of gangs). I’ve worked with disaffected young people in New York, New Jersey and the UK but I can honestly say this challenge was completely different due to the context of the school. The students were like young people anywhere else in the world –inquisitive, interesting and thoughtful. However, they had extremely low levels of literacy in Arabic (their first language) and a disproportionate number of them required support for a specific learning need. The school was quite literally the heart of the community and the Principal, although not from any of the local tribes, was the savior and visionary. I was one of six people employed to change the learning culture of the school in partnership with the Principal and to implement the government’s reform agenda.

To cut a long story short, we implemented a new behavior system in the school and the local teachers enjoyed the structure and the instant results it brought. After about a month into the system, the pastoral leader of the school called me into his office to discuss a student’s behavior with his father. Picture this – a very spacious office with the usual equipment, the pastoral leader who was wearing a shirt and pants, a student from Grade 9 wearing the traditional Kandora, the student’s older brother who was wearing his military uniform and his very elderly father, who was wearing his Kandora whilst holding a walking stick. Neither of the boy’s family could speak English. The pastoral leader explained that the student had skipped Science and he was on a school report, so his father had been informed and he wanted to take action. Due to my lack of Arabic, I asked the pastoral leader to interpret my words to the student and his father; I could sense that things were a little tense and I was keen to move things forward. In my most assertive and convincing voice, I re-assured the boy and his father that he wouldn’t do this again, that we were working well together and this was a ‘one off’. The boy was shaking next to me. I used a bit of reverse psychology with the boy to bring him back on the board – standard stuff. The pastoral leader then started interpreting to the father and older brother. In the back of my mind, I was aware that this could escalate if the interpretation wasn’t accurate, my body language and non-verbal cues were negative or because of my position, or lack of it in the community.

At this point, the boy was still shaking and his father was starting to wave his stick in the air whilst mumbling in Arabic. The pastoral leader was doing his best to calm him down and to re-assure him that we had the boy’s behavior in control. Before I had a chance to consider our next move, the boy’s father stood up and smashed his stick across his son’s head, sending him sprawling across the room and in the process of doing so; cut his finger on the wood. He then repeatedly hit him with the stick and then the boy’s brother started throwing punches in the boy’s face. There was blood everywhere, the office was now a fighting ground and everyone apart from me was shouting in Arabic. In what must have been a split second, I managed to conceptualize a million thoughts about the predicament that I was in: I’m a White, British educator, wearing a suit, working in a tribal community, in the desert, who doesn’t speak Arabic, doesn’t understand the local tribes and their customs whilst sat in an office witnessing a father and brother physically assault their sibling for missing a science class, who is twelve year’s old.
• What should I do?
• What would somebody else do in this situation?
• Is this an isolated incident or a regular punishment?
• Who am I to stop this parent from doing this to his son?
• Who am I to judge these people who have lived in this community for years without any ‘western support’ or governmental intervention?
• Who am I to impose my western values on the people who are raising this boy?

Now I know that most of you are probably thinking that these people are brutal, violent, abusive, and un-civilized and much more but that is the easy thing to do. Judging in this situation is the easy thing for anyone to.

Within my conceptualization, I managed to wrestle between the brother and the boy and break things up. The pastoral leader had grabbed the elderly father who was covered in blood, as was his son. I actually felt like I was back in England momentarily and my instincts kicked in. In my very limited Arabic, I kept shouting “stop” as the brother remained fairly aggressive. At this point, I was concerned for the boy’s physical health more than anything else as he sobbed loudly in the background of the action. I walked the brother to a seat with the intention of ending this entire exchange there and then. The Father then broke free, shuffled towards his son and continued hitting him with the remains of his stick. The brother broke free and also ran towards him, this time kicking him in the head. All of this happened in the space of about three minutes.

We managed to pull them both off the boy and calm the situation down. We quickly got the boy to the medical centre for treatment. At this point, I was questioning my being, my values and the entire purpose of my role in the school. Before leaving, the father and the brother sat opposite me in the same room and said in Arabic “He will never do this again, we are very sorry for his behavior, he has brought shame on our family. He will never disrespect you or the school again.” I nodded in response whilst contemplating their words. Wait, let me get this straight: they had assaulted their own sibling to show me they would not stand for such behavior or bring shame upon their family. Breathe.

As you can imagine it took me quite a while to get over the experience but I haven’t stopped trying to make sense of it. I’m not angry at what happened but I do think that we need to re-evaluate our approach to working with different cultures. I’m not an advocate of violence and I certainly wouldn’t do that to my children but within this particular local culture and community, who am I am to argue?

This incident raised some significant questions in my mind relating to culture, cultural hegemony and history:
• In a global society, is there a point that we should stop trying to understand other cultures and if so, is this cultural hegemony?
• In a globalized world, are we willing to accept people with completely different value systems just as long as they buy into the global economy?
• If a local community has opposing values that are in conflict with western values, but they are functional and successful by their own indicators, who are we to judge this community?
• What can we learn from cultures and communities that function with completely different value systems?

Within its contextual description, this incident does seem to be quite brutal but let’s not forget that our own communities have demonstrated similar acts of brutality both at home and abroad in recent years but I’m not comparing the two.

Western educators are being employed by governments around the world to ‘educate’ their people to prepare them for a global community. This could be translated to read ‘western educators are being employed to homogenize the word so big businesses can ultimately reap the rewards’. Imagine if, in a globalized community there were no imposed western values and each participant had an equal right to contribute. Imagine if Arabic (change to Chinese if you like) educators were brought to the UK or USA to work with students and teachers to implement their ideas, language and ‘culture of learning’, what would the implications of such a partnership be? Would it strengthen our own culture and community cohesion whilst developing our understanding of another? Would it diversify our understanding of humans or would it maintain our subconscious belief that we are ultimately ‘better’?

From a critical theory perspective, this would certainly alleviate some of the imposed values that non-western countries have been judged by. In my opinion, educational globalization in its current form is a dressed up version of cultural hegemony which might be impossible to escape in the current economic climate unless there is drastic change.

I’m going to leave you with an excerpt from the conclusion of the book ‘TRIBE’ by Bruce Parry. I often read this conclusion because it resonates so much with my own experience and my understanding of the current global predicament.

“Our global systems are in dire need of reassessment. Politicians, craving re-election, act only in the short term. Their sponsoring corporations transcend nation states, and pander primarily to the interests of their collectively greedy shareholders, while operating within an economic system which accentuates disparity of wealth and where natural products are only worth anything at all when they’ve been plundered and destroyed.

Many of us in the ‘developed’ world see some sort of global disaster coming. But as modern societies, presently at least, see seem to be continuing in the same vein, feathering our expensive nests, raiding our natural resources, whilst simultaneously looking romantically over our shoulders at ‘how it used to be’. Many of us cherish the idea that there are these ‘pristine’ cultures still living in harmony with the planet. It provides us with a strange form of comfort to know that such people still exist. Yet too few of us are doing anything at all to stop our collective progression towards something potentially catastrophic.

The sad irony is that even as we destroy these tribal cultures, now is the time when we need them more than ever. Rather than wrecking the planet, we could be listening and learning from their long-standing knowledge about to lead a more sustainable life and how to protect the environment. Yes, they’re still only human. Yes, they still get it wrong sometimes and they’re certainly not pristine and perfect. But they still have lots to teach us. If only we could listen.”

Shaun Robison ©

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How should the topic of ‘genocide’ be taught in schools?

March 2, 2012 by · No Comments · Learning, The Future of Learning

This was one the questions posed by one of my fellow tweeters this week and it really got me thinking. Genocide, as an act of human behavior has so many contributing factors that it might always be impossible to present it in an honest, all-encompassing way. As an educator, I always try to tackle things head-on and human atrocity is something that I think we should all be aware of. However, we are always in danger of omitting information that someone else is aware of, was affected by and in some cases, we are in danger of polarizing young people’s opinions about a particular issue.

• At what age/development should young people learn about genocide?

• Can genocide ever really be given the time and justice it deserves in the classroom?

• To what extent has the media constructed a hierarchy of genocides to influence public opinion?

• What do we want young people to learn from genocides and historical events?

• How can we instill young people with confidence if the perpetrators of such acts have not been brought to justice?

• What is the right type of information to present to young people about historical events?

I love learning about history and I’ve visited several places around the world where genocide and human atrocities have taken place. I vividly remember the Killing Fields in Cambodia and the sense of eeriness in S21 prison where thousands of people were tortured and murdered. I remember seeing thousands of skulls stacked up in the middle of the killing fields with mass graves surrounding them. I can honestly say that I will never go back to this part of Cambodia despite the wonderful people who live and enjoy life in Phomn Penn. It’s interesting though because at school, we’re told that it’s important to study history, historical events and events that changed the world so that we can develop a sense of identity, understanding and so we don’t make the same mistakes again – yet we continue making them.

I remember visiting the ‘American War Crimes Museum’ (now called the American War Museum for reasons associated with tourism) in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in 2007 and in 2010. I recommend this museum to anyone who has an interest in history, the Vietnam War and the insertion of media in our daily lives. The public’s perception about the Vietnam War was greatly influenced by the media, as this war was one of the first to be televised as the events happened without any editing. The museum exhibits graphic photographs of soldiers fighting, victims of Agent Orange and significantly, the Mai Lai massacre.

I won’t go into great detail about the Mai Lai Massacre as you can read about it yourself but in short, around five hundred civilians in the village of Mai Lai were slaughtered by American soldiers and it was captured by a photographer. According to museum, four American soldiers intervened and tried to stop it whilst other others continued. A woman had her pregnant baby cut out of her stomach, children and babies were executed and the museum currently displays photographs of it all. Twenty six US soldiers were accused of this massacre but only one was brought to justice. Interestingly, Colin Powell served in the unit that committed the atrocity but claimed he got there after the event and the photograph of still- serving Senator of Nebraska, Bob Kerry, who received a Medal of Honour for his service in war, is on full display in the museum as one of the main perpetrators.

This is where the teaching of such events gets a little complex. How would you explain to young people that the Vietnamese people view these people as murderers who committed terrible crimes whilst the American people vote them in to the Senate and view them as heroes? Everyone has heard the phrase “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” but how can we present this to young people without offending the victims or people suffering to this day?

In the past it was very easy to present this dilemma due to the lack of information and evidence from both sides of the coin. I studied structuralism at university and this concept is still very relevant for many people who choose not be informed by current events or for those who only have access to certain types of media. During WW2, Hilter was the binary opposition of America and Europe; he was the evil to the good. During the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese were the communist enemy to the democratic capitalists, and in the American media, the word ‘invasion’ was quite frequently absent.

Binary oppositions construct a meaning people for people but the intended meaning might still be lost on most. Most recently, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden labeled Wiki leaks founder, Julian Assange, a “terrorist”. What for? Exposing governments and politicians by making information transparent to the public? As an educator, how would you present this particular issue to your digital native students? Ronald Reegan famously called the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” during the Soviet/Afgan War in the eighties. Now those same people are called “terrorists” by the American government. Before students learn anything about history, it might be better to teach young people about the media and how the certain people are represented by certain organizations for certain purposes. I still find it extremely interesting to switch on the news in a foreign country just to see how certain people are represented.

I remember watching the events of Hurricane Katrina unfold and the representation of African Americans during this event. I was lucky enough to visit New Orleans last summer and an exhibition of the disaster triggered so many emotions in me and the people who were most affected by the event. There was a very infamous news story at the time of a young, African American boy stranded in shoulder-high water with a bag of groceries with the headline “Looter” and another image of two white people in the same situation with a caption explaining how they had “found” food. One was simplified to an image and a label with connotations of criminal behavior whilst another was explained with connotations of being “resourceful”. This happens every day in the news but I’ll save this for another blog.

Back in my school in the UK, I arranged through a charity for a former child soldier to visit the school and to be interviewed by some students for the school newspaper. I had heard through an acquaintance that this person had experienced some horrendous things back in Sierra Leone and he was seeking refuge in the North East. My students were extremely interested as they’d recently watched the movie ‘Blood Diamond’ starring Leonardo Di Caprio and we’d been covering the topic in English at the time. In response to one of the questions posed, the former soldier talked about how he was raped by other soldiers who were initiating him into their group whilst displaying their physical power over him. I filmed the interview and I will never forget how my students responded. In the most human way they could, the empathized with the man and showed their humility in the face of something that was extremely heart-wrenching and emotional. The next day they talked about the complexities of the subject, hypothesizing about the perception of child soldiers and the nature of doing something horrific to someone else in order to self-preserve.

And this is where genocide becomes an extremely ambiguous topic. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the actual act of committing mass murder of a particular group of people; I’m talking about the inputs prior to the act. Many of the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide were children. Should they be prosecuted as adults for their acts of violence? Many of the German soldiers during WW2 said that they were just following orders, and if they were disobedient, they would have been killed. At what point does personal responsibility to act become less important than self-preservation to stay alive? Moreover, should this be taken into consideration if the perpetrators were children at the time?

I’m going to leave you with this thought: I was lucky enough to attend a lecture from a Holocaust survivor some time ago and one of the speaker’s responses is still very colorful in my mind. My wife asked him whether he had forgiven the people who committed the acts of brutality during WW2 and after a long pause, he said ‘no’. How should this view be taught to young people and what do we want our children to learn from this?

Shaun Robison ©

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