Renewal time!

Let’s recognise the true nature of the change that is underway

Education is how cultures renew themselves.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-78) distinguished between three distinct types of cultures. In postfigurative cultures cultural transmission is predominantly from the elder to the younger members of a society.  Young people do what their parents (and grandparents) did.  Teachers reflect typical adult behaviour.

Cofigurative cultures arise when a postfigurative culture breaks down.  Mead claimed they are transitional and short-lived, are present-oriented, and cultural transmission is between contemporaries. She gave youth culture of the 1960s and '70s as an example.  Which was indeed short-lived (although, some would say, glorious nevertheless).

Prefigurative culture is future-oriented, and cultural transmission is predominantly from the youth to their elders. Mead wrote - ”I call this new style prefigurative because in this new culture it will be the child—and not the parent and grandparent—that represents what is to come”.

Margaret Mead First Day Cover

What is different in education during a prefigurative emergence?

Transmission from teacher to child is less important (but not unimportant) than creating the space in which young people can struggle with defining the contours of what the future might be like and what they need to become to co-create and thrive in that future.

Twenty-first century skills are required, and schools are gradually orienting themselves to cultivate them.  What is missing is a big enough space for exploration.  As a society we have allowed algorithm driven social media to strive to monopolise attention in the pursuit of profit when that attention is needed to prepare for an uncertain future.

This makes no sense and puts our future at serious risk.

A question to ponder – what can we, should we, do about this?

Starting last week and continuing for the next three weeks I will be posing a question like this to think about over the coming summer break.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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