Life no longer looks like school :(

Having spent most of my working life teaching and leading in schools with only a six month break to spend looking after our first daughter, I have now spent the last three and a half years co-constructing the Future Schools Alliance. This morning it struck me…school no longer looks like the vast majority of people’s working life. It did once, but it doesn’t anymore.

We are all aware that what we call the traditional model of schooling was developed a little over two hundred years ago to move our workforce from an agrarian one to an industrialised one. It was designed to achieve the much-needed purpose at the time of teaching the children of independent thinking, resourceful farmers to become more conformist, predictable and obedient cogs in the machinery of new industry. What levels of independence and creativity are being called for in the new world?

Although I have read contrary academic views, conversations with my grandparents and their friends about their experiences of childhood, has left me with no doubt that even the segmentation of the school year was built around ensuring that students were free to continue to work the farms during various periods of planting, maintenance and harvest. Naturally the farm and a literal hand-to-mouth existence, meant that farm work came an unequivocal first priority, esoteric book-learning a distant second, and compulsory education beyond primary school be dammed. Once you could read and had a level of numeracy, most youths were pretty much done with school.

For me however, who grew up in the suburbs, and even for my country cousins, whose parents now had large scale farm machinery to do the manual work previously done by children, school became the priority, and a childhood, free from the need to contribute, was extended into the late teens and for those ten percent of students who went to University, into their mid twenties. From the age of five, I knew no other rhythm to life other than that dictated by school, roughly from 9 until 3.30, with regular two week holidays and a long summer break. Five years off for university and some early career false starts and then into the same pattern for the next thirty years.

In doing some work recently on planning for a totally green field school, I was forced to confront the question “How much structure and routine do students actually need?”. Many students and certainly most teachers LIKE structure, clear processes, timetables and guidelines, but is that really what is required for the world they face into?

Teachers are a strange lot and we often tend to mix socially with other educators. True isn’t it? But when I started considering the working lives of my non-teacher friends, almost none of their patterns of existence today match the nature of traditional school. The tradesman and his team building my deck, do not chop their day into 6 equal chunks of 60 minutes, although I did notice that they had morning tea and lunch at times replicated by school. His working like is complex, managing multiple projects, looking at weather forecasts to ensure his crew have a range of indoor and outdoor jobs, quoting and paperwork at night, training up an apprentice, liaising regularly with suppliers and other trades and a huge amount of problem solving. His crew, at various stages of experience, work together and sometimes in isolation, learning from each other in ‘doing the actual work’. Never was their time spent on a project, done just for the development of some skill that was not of immediate use to be applied as happens everyday in schools.

A gardening consultant friend, blends his time between solitary writing work for newspapers and magazines, preparing slides for an upcoming international presentation over Zoom, planning a number of short tours for wealthy clients and doing some domestic chores to keep the household functioning for his teacher-leader wife who in spite of being the principal has almost no flexibility in her schedule or choice as to when she can take holidays. Self-employment allows him to lean into projects when he is inspired or senses an opportunity, but for her whilst leadership is rewarding, the pace is relentless with little time for self and certainly no down time outside the much anticipated holidays. Teaching and leading in schools seems to be a never ending cycle of holidays spent in recovery then struggling through to the next break.

My eldest daughter, a fourth year doctor in hospitals, is paid to work and learn, but not as well as some might imagine given the ridiculous amount of unpaid overtime expected of young doctors. The pressure is immense, the strain on relationships brought about by rotating shift work high, and the stakes of a mistake made through fatigue significant. Oh, and this is the outcome that we hold out as the pinnacle of success, now that every University has flooded the market with law graduates which in comparison to a medical student are far less expensive and hence more profitable to train. 

As she points out, “Also, tell them about the shock of moving from so many holidays to only five weeks a year and minimal free time for hobbies :( “ I don’t have the heart to tell her that most people in Australia get only four weeks and that for half the world’s population, once they leave school, people get only two weeks paid leave and in the USA they get none, where paid leave is totally at the discretion of the employer! School is not really reflective of the working world young people will enter is it?

Daughter number two, a third year midwifery student, was assisting with the deliveries of babies within just five weeks of starting her University course. Now THAT is hands on learning. She does shift work and on the side, runs her own business Dyslexia Demystified, presenting to teachers on supporting neurodiversity and mentoring young people with dyslexia and employing four dyslexic staff. Neither of my daughters’ working lives look anything like their education did, and the level of autonomy and complex decision making required of them is nothing like the conformity and rote learning which rewarded them both with the marks to get into their chosen professions.

My contention is that almost no one’s working like looks like that of a teacher, or for that matter a student anymore. Few people with jobs that anyone would actually want work regular hours. Since COVID, even seasoned professionals based in offices Zoom with corporate jacket, pyjama bottoms and Ugg boots. The pandemic has given many people far more flexibility and resulted in fewer and fewer people working nine to five. Even in education, I have seen a few examples of school leaders who had to return overseas for family reasons continue to do their full time school leadership job via Zoom for over a year now, seemingly with no change in productivity.

The world is changing faster than any time in human history, becoming less certain, more complex, less and less people have a single job, time is divided between supporting one if not multiple families, hands-on, ongoing, point-of-need learning is becoming a larger part of most roles. We are now competing for jobs with people across the planet and as almost everyone becomes on-line proficient and it is increasingly possible to build deep personal and professional relationships on-line, this competition is set to skyrocket. With all the uncertainty in the world no wonder mental health issues are skyrocketing.

Are we doing the right thing by creating so much structure in schools and presenting life in nicely packaged, discrete bundles of knowledge for students to engage with? Perhaps we think we are trying to preserve the right of young people to a carefree youth by delaying exposure to the lack of structure young people will face in the ‘real world’. Yet I am not sure the pressure filled, ATAR obsessed, schedules filled with sport, music and tutoring is much of a life either. Certainly the one in four students who don’t complete first year University or more than one in two who don’t complete their degree suggest that the well intentioned, scaffolded structure of school isn’t even a good preparation for that outcome. Once the exoskeleton of school is withdrawn, many students emerge as a jelly like substance barely capable of supporting their own weight.

Whilst many people like certainty and routine, this is not the world we are facing into. Young people ideally need to know that they are loved and cared for, at home as well as school, and some routine and rhythm to life are great predictors of future success, but surely school needs to better replicate post-school life and young people should confront uncertainty, complexity and be involved in real world challenges whilst they are still surrounded by caring and capable adults who can support them to practice picking up the pieces, resetting and moving on.

I am interested in your thoughts. Do schools in their current form look enough like the post-school world to best meet the needs of young people?