Voice from the Past

A couple of weeks ago, our Head of School Katrina Samson, my wife Alison and I attended the annual meeting of Heads and Board Chairs from the Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS – the association of independent schools, which also has responsibility for accreditation.)

With the explosion of private schools in Canada over the last 20 years (there are now close to 2000), there is a huge risk factor for parents deciding where to turn. I have spoken to many families from outside Canada who have made some unfortunate decisions because they didn’t know any better and were seduced by some sophisticated marketing. CAIS accreditation provides a very strong quality indicator of the school and all major independent schools are members/accredited.

Most of the sessions at the annual conference provided lots of insight into trends and issues in education today. One morning, however, the day started with R.H. Thomson playing the role of the late great author and academic Robertson Davies. Thomson was reading Davies speech to the Headmasters of the forerunner of CAIS at its annual dinner in 1971 at TCS. At that time, most of the member schools were all-boys (the all-girls schools had a separate association of Headmistresses) and a few co-ed institutions. (When he gave this speech, I was in Grade 2 at Brown Public School on Avenue Road in Toronto about to move to a CAIS school. I know – I don’t look that old!)

I found the comments fascinating, especially as my mind went quickly to the zone of assessing what has changed and what has stayed the same. Some of his ideas (and how he presents them) have fallen out of favour, but others are still very relevant 43 years later.

Here is what Davies said in 1971:

“One of your great weapons in keeping anarchy at bay in your schools is the system, devised by Dr. Arnold of Rugby and still in existence though much altered, of a chain of command. You had a form of student government before the state schools had dreamed of such a thing. Your pupils, therefore, have a chance to learn the invaluable, realistic lesson that nothing is for nothing and that power is inextricably bound up with responsibility.

 

It is astonishing how many your people reach the University without having mastered this simple lesson – that power is a weary burden as well as a satisfaction, and that the use of power has to be learned gradually….

 

Your first great strength is your strength of choice. You are not obliged to take all comers. I know you are under pressure to take all kinds of boys for all kinds of reasons, and some of your greatest successes have been with unpromising stuff. But at least you have freedom to back your own hunches and though you use the power with caution, you do have the power to get rid of boys who may be, for one reason or another, disruptive nuisances. The power this gives you to keep you own path is incalculable. If you make too many wrong guesses, you will lose your job. But then this too, is part of the system within which your schools operate; a system of realism which may sometimes be harsh in its decrees, but which never becomes flabby.

 

“Guard the keys,” said Arthur Woodhouse, “and you won’t go far wrong.” And I say it to you.

 

One of your keys is a golden one. The sanction of gold, my friends, is another of your great strengths. The parents whose boys you accept are paying handsomely for their sons’ education. They want something in return and you have to deliver the goods. This is good for you, and good for the boys.

 

Not long ago, a young man at the university where I teach, told me about meeting a girl – a very intense, young, student-politician – who asked him where he went to High School. He answered (one of the well known boys schools of the day). She became more than ordinarily intense. “But did you really enjoy that school?” she asked. She thought the question important. I am glad to say that he did not. This notion that school must provide, before everything else, enjoyment – meaning a constant nervous stimulation, continual discussion and shallow cerebration which is not thought or feeling or intuition, and a quick abandonment of whatever seems to call for laborious preparation and submission to often vexatious discipline – is widespread.

 

The real challenge of education, of course, if something very different. It is the challenge of discovering whether you can bend your proud neck to the yoke and work hard enough and long enough to get ready for very much greater challenges, which will come when school is left behind. School is often dull, because it teaches us many elementary techniques without which no achievement is possible. Real professionalism is achieved by years of necessary dull work.

 

A school, of course, should teach many sorts of professionalism. Greatest of all, it should teach a professional approach to life, and by that I mean an understanding of what can be achieved and the price achievement will cost in the hard coin of time, skill and personal devotion. Even geniuses have to know this. Indeed, a great part of being a genius consists of knowing these things without being taught them.

 

Keep your advantage. Don’t worry about your critics. Teach as professional teachers dealing with professional learners. All the real advantages in education, with which go all the big risks, are on your side.”

The First C and the Quest for the Open Mind

The last 10 days have provided a whole range of big events and sparked some fascinating issues. Those of us in the Toronto area (and frankly many other parts of the world) finally witnessed the Toronto mayoralty election and the end (at least temporarily) of the gong show that has surrounded Rob Ford. The week before last, much of Canada was seized by the murders of the W.O. Daniel Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, and what appeared for a while to be an organized attack on our Parliament Buildings. Last week, the formerly much-beloved CBC personality and musician Jian Gomeshi began a journey that will at very least remove his cute, smooth, boyish aura, and at worst will reveal some very dark, illegal and cruel behaviours – time will tell.

What is common about these three stories are: a) they spark very strong emotional responses, and b) time unveils new perspectives and truths about each one. In each case, what appears to be or what we assume to be solid fact changes dramatically as more comes to light. The reactions from observers evolves to places that had been previously unimagined. The way many of us feel about the broader issues continues to morph with this ever-changing understanding.

Three years ago, who could predicted the Fords’ journey? Even six months ago, who could have prophesized that Doug Ford would have lost that Mayoral election by a relatively small margin while Rob returned to the City Hall as a Councilor? The day after Jian Gomeshi aggressively got out in front his dismissal, a scan of the online commentary, letters to the editors, and call-in shows’ commentaries were dominated by outrage that the CBC could have taken such a step – all just weeks after the Ray Rice case blew up.

Our Head of School Katrina Samson talks about the 4 Cs of most important outcomes for education, to which I like to add a fifth: critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration and character. When I think of my own children, I am far less concerned about their subject-specific skills/performance than am I interested in their abilities in these five areas. Our contention is that these attributes will continue to take on more importance for broadly defined success in the years ahead.

Generally speaking, the first of these – critical thinking – is the one that traditional education has done fairly well at. However, watching these issues unfold and a recent piece in the NY Times have raised the question for me about how well we promote thoughtful, rationale, analytical thinking. The NY Times piece by David Brooks raises the prospect that American society is becoming increasingly polarized and defined by political doctrine … to the extent that thoughtful, open-minded, critical thinking is forced into the background. I haven’t seen any studies on the subject but fear that this may indeed be the case and, to a lesser extent, in Canada as well.

The issues of our communities, our nation, and the world require leaders who will bring thoughtful critical thinking skills, which must include the ability to understand and appreciate a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. At our Friday chapel, I was pleased to hear students from Russia and Germany reflect on their countries’ long and painful histories with each other, and students from Hong Long and Mainland China reflect on differences and similarities. Both of these are powerful messages in the times of Putin and Hong Kong democracy activism. Our future will be most successful if these kinds of conversations are regularly taking place in as many schools as possible.

These last couple of weeks provide a horn of plenty for exploring difficult issues with young people and asking them to struggle with challenging subjects with critical thinking skills. Here are some interesting questions for you to raise at the dining room table – and try to revel in the dialogue the discussion than worrying too much about the answers:

• Despite all the scandal and controversy surrounding the Ford brothers, Doug Ford lost to John Tory by only 7% of the vote. A scan of results by ward shows that Tory won 21, Ford won 20 and Chow only 3. And the map of the wards is shockingly polarized. What does the map mean? In light of all of the happenings of the last couple of years, what should we conclude from the fact that more than a third of voters supported the continuation of ‘Ford Nation’ in the Mayor’s Chair? What should Tory do to address this situation?

• Were the deaths of Daniel Vincent and Nathan Cirillo more about the danger of terrorism from fundamentalist Islam or mental illness in Canada? Should these attacks prompt Canada to readjust the balance between individual freedoms and greater security powers? Or should the identification and treatment of mental illness become a higher public policy priority? Should government have the right to hold Canadians who have committed no crime but who may very well pose a grave threat for committing one in the future?

• Should employers have the right (and responsibility) to discipline or fire people who may not have been charged with a crime but who seem to have done bad things? Should some members of society (e.g. media personalities, professional athletes, politicians, CEOs and community leaders) be held to a higher bar than the average citizen and be punished for non-illegal acts (or at least those which have not yet gone through legal process?) Does the State have any business in the bedrooms of the country?