Learning can no longer be seen as something that is done to children by teachers

And I could not agree more.

A different approach for teaching our children is a report published by Charles Ledbeater and covered in the Guardian

The word relationship drops in as does

that qualifications aren't the only goal of an education, and that there are different - and often better - ways of making sure that children leave school with the cognitive skills they will need as adults.

As we have a need to de-school society

Relationships cease to function as effectively in big groups, so too do schools, so large comprehensives should be broken up into a smaller number of schools - as has happened in certain parts of New York.

I sit here and ponder this - if we can only maintain 150 real relationships or connections - then why do we impose a Straight line - read - linear / industrial approach to education? See what I mean.

So we need and I would say demand the Engaged Learning Community

where education can be transformed into something truly useful for all children and society.

Which leads me onto another point of view, and one made some time ago By John Stuart Mill writing On Liberty in 1859

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

Mill also wrote

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign

which leads me onto a Howard Rheingold post Participatory Media to better enable Civic Engagement

Teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices could connect youthful interest in identity exploration and social interaction with direct experiences of civic engagement. Learning to use blogs (“web logs,” web pages that are regularly updated with links and opinion), wikis (web pages that non-programmers can edit easily), podcasts (digital radio productions distributed through the Internet), and digital video as media of self-expression, with an emphasis on “public voice,” should be considered a pillar—not just a component—of twenty-first-century civic curriculum.

Participatory media that enable young people to create as well as consume media are popular among high school and college students. Introducing the use of these media in the context of the public sphere is an appropriate intervention for educators because the rhetoric of democratic participation is not necessarily learnable by self-guided point-and-click experimentation.

and here a report by Pew on education and its potential future.

So how do children see their education system?

And why is this important? Jonathan Fanton

The real gap between tomorrow's digital haves and have-nots will be a lag in competence and confidence in the fast-paced variegated digital universe building and breeding outside schoolhouse walls.... Today's digital youth are in the process of creating a new kind of literacy; this evolving skill extends beyond the traditions of reading and writing into a community of expression and problem- solving that not only is changing their world but ours, too... In this new media age, the ability to negotiate and evaluate information online, to recognize manipulation and propaganda and to assimilate ethical values is becoming as basic to education as reading and writing.

From Wikipedia and media literacy

And back to the UK - Derek Wise Head teacher at Cramlington part of Leadbeaters report says

We want to break down the idea of the school as an institution where children have no say in their education and replace it with one of an institution where they learn the things that are important to them, at times and in ways that are relevant to them

Engagement in education?

Cramlington gets the same budget as any other school and some of what it wants to do in terms of group and personal learning is restricted by classroom design. But even here it has used its ingenuity to reconfigure an existing block to allow a whole year group to work together with a team of teachers, and its new year 7 and 8 building has been designed around the concept of inquiry-based learning.

We embrace what we create! And as Euan Semple says of of the Networked Society

there are no such things as conscripts - there are only volunteers. Young people are coming into traditional organizations having spent the entirety of their young lives: collaborating, networking and getting stuff done in very different ways. They are confronted with an alien world of: linearity, silos, hierarchies and the ego of title. The friction is palpable because the old organizational models cannot cope with or take full advantage of the new potential, unleashed is a profound transformation in the way of doing things, of getting stuff done.

So why should school be any different?

The report is good thought provoking stuff. I just hope its not just not more frothy stuff on the top of a Latte?

In 2005 we documented a project called SoundStart

SoundStart began in September 2001, when 30 young pupils from Elmwood Primary School in Croydon became the first to try this unique musical experiment. Unlike most music tuition that takes place outside the classroom, Soundstart takes a whole class from beginner to concert in one term. Jupiter brass and woodwind and their UK distributor Korg UK, working with Croydon Music Services, gave each child an instrument of their choice – a wide range from flutes to saxophones, some of which the children had never seen or heard before.

It had impressive results - so why was it not picked up by the rest of the LEA's - go figure!

And finally Sir Ken Robinson on Schools, education and creativity