Alan Thompson - Thoughts on Education

As a naturalised 'Eastern-Caper', one of my favourite drives is the route from Graaf-Reinet to Bedford. It is there that I feel that I am in the absolute heart of the Eastern Cape. I am struck by its vastness, its beautiful vistas of quintessential terrain. Aloe-dotted rolling hills of incredible biodiversity provide a multitude of changing vistas as one transitions from the dusty Karoo towards Bedford, and then on to the pristine coastline. Most striking of all for me are the big skies and wide open spaces.   How odd that when we think of landscapes we tend to imagine them as places of nothingness, as if the richness of nature and the beauty of  creation has no meaning without clustered humanity being the centre of attention.    Timothy Ingold, professor of Social Anthropology at  the University of Aberdeen   once expressed it thus:  “the landscape tells - or rather is - a story. It enfolds the lives and times of predecessors who, over the genera...

    Education - and the road to leadership in education - is notable for how little attention is paid to developing educators as they advance through the leadership 'ranks'. This is a leadership pathway that is defined more by academic subject expertise (study an academic degree, be a superb teacher, become a head of department, join the management team) than it is by any intentional leadership development. An even shakier leadership progression in schools is the route to leadership via the sporting or pastoral pathway. Here, progression is driven by a passion area (say, sport) which progresses to sport administration and then management and leadership.   Both of these pathways, although common, are deeply flawed. They assume that passion and expertise readily translate into vison, communication, and decision-making skills (which are just some of the demands on leaders) and to a large extent reward simply 'being there' at the time of need. neither really require of us w...

Of all of the oddities that school leaders will encounter in their tenure, the concept of tradition in schools is one of the most unhelpful and divisive. It creates a completely false dichotomy (you are either a 'traditionalist' or 'a modern thinker') that hardens opinions and stifles discussion. Tradition is used to justify all manner of things that cannot stand on their own justificatory feet (beyond the 'it is tradition' argument), and can cast its cloak of mystery over practices and rituals that, in the cold light of day, are unjustifiably daft, or worse - damaging.     One of the strangest aspects of tradition is that it is so resistant to examination. It exists in the lore of schools as that untouchable truth which defies scrutiny - we dance around in almost biblical reverence, terrified of falling foul of the great gods of tradition - alumni and parents.   That is not to say that there is no place for beautiful ceremony, quaint practices, and meaningful r...

It is easy to criticise, isn't it? And how often are leaders subjected to criticism and comments that pick up on the negative without offering any wisdom or solutions? Like the food critic offering scathing critique of the balance of the  jus  in relation to the  sous-vide ruby trout  - it is much easier criticise than it is to actually  do . I don't have all of the answers, but as I have been thinking about prefect systems and their fitness for purpose (or lack thereof), I have given much thought as to what I would do if I had the luxury to re-design the system.    Firstly, we need to address the fundamental question as to whether we want enforcers, portfolio secretaries, or actual leaders. I think that we want the latter, and so we then need to ask the question as to what investment in time and effort is needed - so that by the time we are seeking leaders we have provided the skills and training to set them up for success. Look outside of school for ...

I often wonder what historians will write when they reflect on global events of the past twenty years, sometime in the future. For I have a sense that we are living in a time of extraordinary social, political, and environmental change. It will be known as the era where global politics lost innocence (or at least stopped pretending), hitherto unassailable empires crumbled (and new ones formed), and corruption, voter manipulation, self-interest, and extremism intersected on a massive scale. And if we are indeed living through a crisis in global politics,  there can be no doubt that this is symptomatic of  a deeper malaise - corporate and civic governance, law and order - the basic tennets of society - face a crisis of leadership - visionary, principled, ethical servant leadership.   As school leaders we have a duty to our learners to prepare them for this complex world that provides few ethical markers of its own. Sometimes our efforts manifest in overt leadershi...

As an educator and leader of schools, I have spent a lot of time thinking about 'success'. The more one thinks about success the harder it becomes to define, and we often confuse accomplishments and accolades with success. Writing about success is difficult. It is a bit like writing about love - love is such a strange concept - you can put it into words but they can't really capture that strange feeling, that odd sensation so powerful that it can drive people to madness but defies our ability to describe it.   I turned to the Concise Oxford dictionary for definitional help. Turns out that their definition of success is not as helpful as one would hope in the context of explaining a term relevant to growing youngsters to be their best selves. The dictionary describes success as "the accomplishment of an aim" which no doubt is technically correct, but fails to take into account that our context the accomplishment of a non-aspirational aim leads to mediocrity. There ...

Although the basic forms and structures of modern schooling have a seemingly timeless quality to them (even in the most modern and progressive schools there remain echoes of Tom Brown's schooldays), this generation of school leaders has presided over (or lived through) some really significant changes in educational practice and societal thinking.  And because society changes us as it changes itself (us being it, so to speak), sometimes we don't even notice it.    A significant (although largely un-noticed) change has been the notion of  substantive justification -  and more specifically, how we go about accepting truth. I know that in my own days as a scholar it was simple - we accepted things as truth simply because they  were  - if the teacher said it was so, if a deity could be invoked, or parents or the government said so, it just was. We accepted as truth something on the basis of it being anchored to an already held belief, and our acceptanc...

We are at that critical moment when final Matric results for 2023 are about to be released. This can be considered a life changing moment for the young people exiting the formal schooling system, as it can be defining of their future life opportunities, so it is an important moment for them - twelve years of schooling culminate in a single set of results which can act as a very powerful gatekeeper.    It is an important moment for schools too, as heads analyse and compare the individuals within the school, and also the performance of the school compared to peer schools. Many will consider how they will communicate the trends to stakeholders, and marketing departments consider their expression of the achievement of the school as a whole. It often, incorrectly, ends up being reduced to pass rates and distinction counts, and can end up reducing young people into units of intra and inter-school one-upmanship - and worse than that, incredible achievements, growth, and grade-shifts ...

As educators of a certain age, we probably grew up in an age where the societal status-quo remained largely unchallenged (except perhaps at the margins) and the hegemonic culture of our society was much more firmly intact than it is now. That was not necessarily a good thing, and it did nothing to prepare us for the reality of operating schools in an environment where beliefs are far more contestable, and where schools have a duty to provide a safe discourse for the promotion of social justice in an environment of identity intersectionality.   A good school does far more than simply produce grades on a report card. They are places that are formative of attitudes and principles that will guide the next generation of leaders. On top of that responsibility, they should be places of safety, where children can confidently discover who they are, and flourish. Schools, then, have a responsibility to recognise that 'diversity' is more than a board committee to satisfy governance requir...

 I don't often think back on my own school days (the reason will become apparent), but when I do my memories tend to centre around two aspects - the outstanding teachers and coaches who made such positive impact in my life and, in much greater proportion, my memories are of cruel and damaging 'discipline' practices which, while unthinkable today, seemed pretty common back then. From our deputy head (lower case) who would don his academic gown (which clinked with what were reputed to be alcohol bottles) before he would beat us (in his office if 'sent', or lined up in the quad at break having failed 'hair inspection'), to the teachers who fashioned planks into 'fun' named bats (more beatings, not cricket), to the elderly maths teacher who would hit our hands with her metal ruler ('this hurts me more than it hurts you' she would mock), to less violent but even more damaging heavy sarcasm of our teacher as she seated us in mark-order, mocking tho...

‘So Positive Psychology takes seriously the bright hope that if you find yourself stuck in the parking lot of life, with few and only ephemeral pleasures, with minimal gratifications, and without meaning, there is a road out. This road takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose.’          Professor Martin Seligman     There is a beautiful, confident green to summer in Philadelphia that mirrors (or is perhaps formative of) the confidence of its people. As I walked along the Schuylkill river the verdant foliage was almost explosive in its summer growth. The beautiful boathouses along the river and the gentle clunk of oarsmen practicing on the water makes for a most beautiful morning scene. I was out walking along the river path in the morning sun to shake off the jet-lag from the long trip from Po...

  My mind was blown when I first realised that my existence in this world could have had its first moments in wildly different ways. By chance, I took my first breath in a neat, middle-class maternity hospital - but by equal chance I could have given my first earthly cry as a prince in Monaco, or in a refugee camp in Gaza - into squalor, or into multi-generational inherited wealth. Into my bubble of relative privilege barged the uncomfortable truth that - no - whatever the  declaration of independence  might say, all are most certainly  not  born equal.    In South Africa, where the wealth gap is eye-wateringly profound, we have an educational system that, instead of addressing inequality, tends to reinforce it - condemning generation after generation to replicate its inequity. As a general rule, for those that can afford it, there stands a system that produces a globally comparable excellent education. But for the vast majority the educational standar...

  I cannot think of an enterprise more people-focussed than education. Its very premise - that of nurturing and preparing children to become flourishing adults - places humanity at its very centre. More than that, though - behind every child in a school stands a family of people (each with their own unique characteristics and challenges) and, in front, stands a teacher filled with their own dreams, ambitions, and family circumstances.    And, as much as the academic discourse of the average day deals with subject matter, grades, and activities - it is that crucial interface of humanity between teacher and student that creates real learning. Of course, the very notion of  learning  is problematic as well - although it is a product of schooling learning is not at all a 'product' in the commercial sense of the word, for it cannot be bought - it is created by the learner and the price paid (or not paid) bears little relation to the quality of the actual learning tha...