Everyone accepts that there is a generation of school children whose lives have been affected by the pandemic. Whether it is a lack of socialisation, negative impact on their learning progression, mental health issues arising from the uncertainty and insecurity driven by the pandemic, there are a lot of challenges to overcome.  In wider society, we see increasing inequality, political and philosophical polarisation and a refusal to engage across the divide. Given these it is becoming increasingly important that we teach them to engage with empathy.
 
Radical empathy encourages people to actively consider another person’s point of view, even in the fact of strong disagreement, in order to connect with them on a deeper level.  That connection is a fundamental element of building a strong social fabric. The recent controversy in Batley regarding the use of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed shows how badly things can escalate when there isn’t proper engagement and understanding between parties about meaning, intent and process.
 
While the school has apologised for the use of offensive cartoons in a religious studies lesson, a deeper understanding of the context – both the offence taken by the community and the intentions of the teacher, need to be considered.  While the Department of Education issued a statement condemning the protests, doing so without addressing the concerns of the community only serves to build greater rifts between groups.  People should be allowed to protest, but other people should also be allowed free speech.  That is a hard line to walk in a country that is becoming increasingly divided. The scars of Windrush, Islamophobia, Brexit and the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric are damaging within schools but also within the fabric of our society.
 
The recent publication of the UK’s recent report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has only complicated matters, with a report that suggested that Britain is not structurally and institutionally racist, despite much empirical evidence to the contrary. The report caused an uproar but the findings were not that Britons could not be racist, but that the structural problems society faces are not necessarily racist. What the report does say however is that there are impediments and disparities but that ‘ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism’.
 
For some this is proof of a post-racist Britain, for others proof that the status quo always wins out. What’s interesting though is the idea that it might be issues of education, health, language, religion, culture, that are both helping and hindering in how they play out. These may be interwoven with race in a number of ways but taking a new approach may provide new opportunities to change outcomes.  The report says, “The evidence shows that geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion have more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism.”  That means that we need to find new ways of talking to each other across a number of different divides.
 
In order to effectively drive systemic cultural change we need to find new ways of opening debate about debate about the challenges faced within the system. That means engagement with opinions across the spectrum and the use of radical empathy to inform that engagement. One of the ways in which we can encourage this is the use of tools that provide an opening for discussion and the beginning of a more significant debate about how we embed fairness, empathy and understanding within our society.
 
As part of that process, Learn2Think is donating free copies of a book which helps to promote understanding across religious differences, by getting the conversation going within the curriculum.   ‘Journey to the Beginning of the World’ is aimed at children aged 6-10 and explains a range of beliefs that people have about how the world was made, and that that is ok.   For younger children there is another book available called ‘the IKADOOS and the Making of Planet IK’ which provides the same message in a highly colourful and fun way.  If you’re interested in receiving free copies you can email us at info@learn2think.org.uk" info@learn2think.org.uk.

This article first appeared in the April 2021 edition of Education Today www.education-today.co.uk

There has been increasing debate about cancel culture, the idea that right-wing individuals are being unfairly sanctioned for expressing opinions. This has meant pushback against the word ‘tolerance’ as if it infers that we should put up with negative ideas and approaches. At the Learn2Think Foundation we think the opposite – that tolerance is about providing the same rights to others that you demand for yourself, about standing up to injustice.
 
There is a massive difference between ignorance and the promotion of hate speech, whether it’s racism, sexism, transphobia or something else. Over the last few years there has been an increasing focus on nationalism, as politicians have stoked fears of the ‘other’ in order to maintain power. Whilst increasingly wealthy societies have historically seen an expansion of liberal ideas about social tolerance and inclusiveness, this has often fallen away in times of adversity.
 
We’ve seen this clearly in the advent of protectionism around vaccines for COVID-19. Wealthy nations are paying to get primary access to vaccines, hoarding millions of vials while poorer countries still wait. But this is not a situation where borders can be protected. Unless everyone is vaccinated, those pools of infection are likely to provide a home for virus mutation and reinfection. The science suggests that current vaccines provide protection for a limited amount of time – that means we need it regularly, and we need to minimise mutations to ensure global protection. By approaching the problem as a global one, and sharing the resources we have, we find a better overall solution.
 
It is this notion of looking at everyone’s rights as the same and seeing how things work as a global system that lies at the heart of tackling climate change.  We’re not talking a debate about climate science, which has at last gained mainstream acceptance. The challenge we face is how we go about mitigating and adapting to climate change in a world with finite resources, a growing global population and a growing wave of nationalism around the world.
 
Whether it’s managing water and pollution, energy and consumption, biodiversity and waste, every action has an impact. Those impacts become cumulative and they don’t stop at borders. Every change to the water cycle eventually affects everywhere in the world. That’s why this year the Learn2Think Foundation is making ‘Be Climate Clever’  the theme for Tolerance Day 2021.
 
If we are going to effectively meet the climate challenge, we need to find a new way to address the problem: we have to balance the responsibility of generations of action exploiting fossil fuels against countries that still need to bring people out of poverty; we have to find new ways of ensuring that individuals and communities aren’t damaged by corporate activities; we need to think about how to balance fairness and justice with action and cost, when some small island states are already sinking.  We need to explore the rights of indigenous people, the rights given to the poor and the extent to which they are even enabled to engage in decision making in democracies around the world?
 
At Learn2Think we believe that teaching children to be critical, creative and compassionate thinkers is necessary to equip them to navigate a world that is constantly changing. We need to educate our children to see the bigger picture, and to understand the dangers of ‘otherisation’ or putting yourself in a superior position to others by accident of birth, nationality, gender or race. The inference of nationalism is of a separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’, with the ‘us’ being better, deserving more. That thinking is what keeps our system so unequal, that supports discrimination and doesn’t provide opportunities for everyone to reach their fullest potential.
 
Thinking about people as ‘them’ and ‘us’ lies at the heart of sustainability and work to address climate change. Free markets are about efficient allocation of resources but free markets don’t really exist because they don’t include the cost of actions that damage the environment or society and people. We need to find new ways to share what we have, to use markets to drive innovations for solutions to the problems we face, but in such a way that our societies become regenerative rather than destructive, based on rampant consumption.
 
Something indefinable happens when we work together towards a common goal. The first step is ensuring that every child is aware of how the changing climate is changing every part of the world around us. In January we talked about the Earth Day Network’s campaign for climate literacy and we’re supporting the Network this year in promoting Earth Day on 22nd April. Climate change can be explored through topics from maths, geography, history, art, science, English and more. We’ll be putting together some specific lesson plans that we hope that you’ll find useful for that, and later this year we’ll be providing free support in teaching children how to think about the climate in different ways, how to find their voices and help make the world a better, fairer place.
 
As ever, we hope you find them useful. You’ll be able to download them for free at www.toleranceday.org

This article first appeared in the March 2021 issue of Education Today www.education-today.co.uk

In 2019 more than 262 million children and youth were out of school. Six out of ten were not acquiring basic literacy and numeracy after several years in school.  
COVID has obviously made things a lot worse. Recently UNESCO puts those numbers at over 1.5 billion students and youth across the planet who are or have been affected by school and university closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
A quality education means different things in different places. At any time there are up to 4 million children out of school because they’re fleeing conflict, famine, climate change. For the poorest, access to education is a critical step in improving quality of life and access to all the other opportunities that are available. What Covid has taught us however is that while the world might have laudable goals in broadening access to education globally, we still have significant challenges at home.
 
With almost no warning, the right to education has become dependent on connectivity. Over three-quarters of national distance learning solutions available during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic relied exclusively on online platforms. Yet as many as 465 million children and youth, or almost 47 % of all primary and secondary do not have access to these platforms because they do not have internet connections at home.
 
Many families are realising the challenges involved in education as they are teaching their children from home:  some children are without computers to access schoolwork, or sufficient mobile data to log on, or are sharing workspace with siblings and parents.  One of the indicators used to gauge the effectiveness of an education system is how many children are in school – how do we do that now? It seems as if the only option is to focus on grades and completed work and yet many educators accept that this isn’t a fair way to gauge children’s progress under lockdown.
 
In the UK the debate about lockdown is centred about the damage that it does children to be out of school – not ignoring the impact is has on their parents if they suddenly have to home school.  So basically, what we’re saying is the education is at once the most important tool for changing the world, and yet at the moment our children are missing out on the experience of school and the ways in which they learn to build the social skills, empathy and resilience necessary to overcome a crisis of this nature.
 
A recent World Economic Forum report states that the workforce of 2022 will need higher order ‘human’ skills - creativity, originality, initiative, critical thinking, persuasion, negotiation, resilience, flexibility and complex problem-solving. There are huge opportunities here, to allow different pupils to learn in different ways.

Connection means more than connectivity however, so we need to find new collaborative tools that fully engage pupils, stretch their imaginations, their management of complexity and their empathy.  If we’re going to be able to provide this, we’re going to have to find new works of working with technology to deliver these skills. And that means embracing the change and encouraging educators to lead this evolution, not letting the technology dictate the process.

This article first appeared in the February 2021 edition of Education Today www.education-today.co.uk

The last year has been the most challenging in recent history. But for children whose education has suffered from school closures, it’s been an experience that could have long lasting consequences. Given the complications, it’s also fair to say that no one wants to add a changing curriculum on top of it all. There is however an increasingly strong argument that we need to add another perspective to teaching – and that’s climate education.
 
With the UK hosting the 26th Conference of the Parties to the international climate negotiations in 2021, its increasingly important that our children understand the changes they face. This year should see governments increasing their ambition for action, with new targets due under the international climate change agreement. The original plan under the Paris Agreement was that five years after signature, governments would have to rachet up their national climate plans and ambition to get on track. These plans need to cover all the areas and Articles of the Paris Agreement and that includes climate education under Article 12 of the Agreement.
 
Nick Nuttall, deputy spokesperson Earthday.org, says “Since 1992, when governments agreed the first climate treaty (UNFCCC) and included climate education as being important, the response has been patchy and climate education and environmental literacy generally have been the Cinderella topics in the UN climate negotiations. It is time to right this wrong and take climate change education seriously as essential for every child’s future.”
 
Climate change puts children’s most basic rights at risk, seriously affecting their access to health, food, water, clean air, education and protection. We know that children take climate change seriously – just look at Greta Thunberg and Fridays for the Future, ZeroHour, The Child Movement amongst many children’s groups.  Their concern about climate change impacts, both direct and indirect, is also something which causes anxiety, fear and depression.
 
Haldis Holst, Deputy General Secretary of Educational International, agrees that teachers are reporting that many young pupils are showing signs of fear and of anxiety about their futures. He says, “A commitment to put climate education into the core of curricula is thus not just about equipping youth with the skills and the knowledge they will need as adults. It is also about healing, hope and engagement in the solutions that can, if the world steps up ambition, solve this crisis in time.”
 
No child at school today will be able to face the challenges of adult life without an understanding of the science behind changes in the natural world, technology, energy, business, data and more. The world our children will graduate to face is one that is likely to markedly different from the one we know well.  We need to start to think about systems, about how interconnected every part of nature, economies and societies are. Climate education can also help foster a new generation of citizens with the interest and the skills needed for jobs in a growing green economy, to make better, sustainable consumer choices and to hold governments — both national and local — accountable for their decisions.
 
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) said, “We need to better educate our children and youth on the science and the risks, but also the excitement of building a better world; generating more good jobs in sustainable businesses and the benefits of being greener consumers and more active citizens. I welcome this global initiative and look forward to it stimulating excitement and enthusiasm among all governments and all sectors of society.”
 
In 2019 Italy and Mexico called on all countries to commit to climate and environmental education to ensure that the next generation have the knowledge, awareness and skills to address climate change. In Italy that new curriculum was launched in September 2021. Called civic education, it has three branches consisting of the Italian constitution, sustainable development and climate literacy, and digital literacy. As Professor Massimiliano Falcone, climate ambassador - EDN advisor, says, “Climate change and sustainable development are fundamental topics for the citizen of the future.”
 
Whether we’re talking about climate change, or a green new deal, there has never been a more critical time for children to become engaged in learning about what climate and carbon mean to them. “We need to equip future generations with the knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm to survive and indeed thrive in the decades to come. And that begins in school,” said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation. 
 
The importance of education in addressing climate change is increasingly being recognised. A recent analysis from PNAS suggests that business as usual and technological change are not going to be sufficient to address climate change, but that certain tipping points can trigger large scale system changes in society and the economy. Out of six, two were educational – climate literacy in schools and universities, and general awareness of the carbon impacts of our choices.
 
A survey by World Wide Views, conducted in close to 80 countries before the 2015 Summit that adopted the landmark Paris Climate Change Agreement, found that close to 80 percent of those questioned thought climate education was the strongest policy for reducing emissions followed by action to protect tropical forests. In September 2020, the UK citizens climate assembly announced the results of its debate on how the country could achieve net zero emissions by 2050. While proposing direct measures from taxing frequent flyers to reducing red meat consumption, the overarching recommendation was information and education.
 
In September 2021 EarthDay.org launched a coalition of organisations urging governments to step up and require compulsory, assessed climate education with a strong link to civic engagement.  To date over 350 organizations, ranging from trades unions, teachers and green groups, to women’s groups like Australia’s 1 Million Women and Parents for Future Global have signed up to call on all governments by COP26 to make climate education ‘compulsory, assessed and linked to civic engagement ‘.   Support is coming from so many disparate groups because, as Kathleen Rogers, President, EARTHDAY.ORG says, “Climate education will prepare youth across a range of positive fronts– from stimulating a rapidly growing global green economy to holding their officials accountable. Indeed, I am convinced that competitiveness in the 21st century will increasingly be linked to the quality of environmental literacy among a nation’s citizens.”
 
In a crowded curriculum, it will be probably important not to create a standalone subject but to integrate and embed climate education across the curriculum—not just science but also geography; literature, arts, history and even sport. As Nuttall says, “The essential point is that climate change will define the future of this and successive generations—it can no longer be a ‘ nice to have’: if education is about preparing young people for their future, then it can no longer ignore climate change or pop it into a silo.”
 
Education should be about connecting knowledge and understanding how connections are made between different types and aspects of knowledge – and that means that we need to teach children to learn to think. Not simply about climate but about the implications of learning to what we know, how we live and how we want to grow.
 
Children need to learn the skills that will enable them to face unprecedented challenges, such as critical thinking, empathy and creative problem solving.  Never forget that environmental issues are intricately connected to social justice and equity and understanding and addressing this will play a critical role in economic development and growth in coming decades.
 
This year Earth Day will occur on 22nd April and it provides an opportunity to explore how you can integrate climate issues into your teaching, with resources from EarthDay.org. As for the Learn2Think Foundation, our theme for 2021 is climate and the skills and tools our children need to face an increasingly volatile and confusing world. We are currently developing resources to help teachers bring climate into the classroom and support you in focusing on climate literacy in 2021.

This article first appeared in the January 2021 edition of Education Today www.education-today.co.uk
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Why does an outstanding school ticking all the right boxes - with exceptionally well-trained staff, using all the technological bells and whistles- still fail to engage pupils with their own learning?
 
This was the question we were asked by a school we worked with recently, whose SLT had shadowed individual pupils for a week, hoping for a new perspective on their classroom culture. The teachers noticed one skill absent from their superficially capable cohort: they were not asking questions.
 
Why does it matter?  What is so important about students asking questions?
 
Looking at the latest cognitive science, it appears that the act of asking a question not only plays a valuable role in the brain’s learning process, but is also a measure of engagement and depth of thinking.
 
The wonderful thing about a question is that it is generated from personal curiosity:  to find out more about something new and interesting, to fill in a gap in understanding, or to challenge something that conflicts with an existing view. Ashwin Ram, computer and cognitive scientist, calls a question a ‘knowledge goal’, a personal driver and engager of a pupil’s short-term memory.  Curiosity has been shown to have its own neural signature and occurs in the ‘zone of proximal learning’ or when we think we almost know something.
 
Competing for attention in the pupil’s potentially overloaded sensory register is the first hurdle many teachers face. Can your topic stimulus win the day against the day-dreaming, the pencil fiddling and the stomach rumbling?  The more dissonance we create, the more surprising, the more heart-racing the stimulus, the more likely the brain is to begin processing it in short -term memory.
 
The next step for learning is the active processing of information, as the short-term memory can only hold something for 30 seconds before it is lost and your fabulous stimulus has gone to waste!
 
Information needs to be filed in long-term memory, otherwise it will not be available for later recall and use.  This filing happens when the brain is actively engaged in thinking. This is hard and requires effort. It is only through the interplay between a students’ short-term and long -term memory (prior knowledge), that learning occurs. And it seems that generating their own questions is a powerful way of facilitating this interplay.
 
On the non-cognitive side, questions also have considerable psychological value. When examining student motivation, Columbia University Teacher’s College identified intrinsic factors, coming from within the student themselves, as far more powerful than external factors such as praise, grades or rewards. Amongst the main motivators they found were autonomy and purpose. 
 
A question is a marvellous thing.  It guarantees our attention, rewards us and then helps us make connections and lay down and reinforce neural pathways.  In cognitive science terms it ticks all the boxes for effective learning.  In psychological terms it is highly motivational, being personal to the asker, and showing purpose in the asking.
 
So why aren’t we cultivating and teaching questioning as a skill in its own right?


This article first appeared in the November 2020 issue of Education Today www.education-today.co.uk