Following from last week’s post, this week I want to look at the capacity to get things done, again I have touched on this subject in a previous post here.

From the age of about 18 months intrepid toddlers begin the process of learning how to get what they want and to get things done.  Aside from an intuitive capacity for manipulation through various categories to get what they want – physical (grabbing what they want), intellectual (being tricky), emotional (tantrums) and social (calling on others to intervene) – an increasing ability to act in the world follows the stages of empowerment.

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The expression of twenty-first century skills propounded by the World Economic Forum splits these skills into Foundational Literacies (that can be written in the curriculum) and then Competencies and Character Qualities that, together, I like to refer to as Life Skills.

At first glance, it looks daunting to try and develop these Life Skills in students, but it becomes easier when you realise that these skills are derived from four capacities, three of which emerge in humans before the age of about six and the fourth is a particular cognitive stance essential to adult maturity and discernment.

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I cannot emphasis enough that teacherly authority is a basic attribute of being human, to quote Zak Stein*:

“Teacherly authority is a deeply rooted aspect of what it means to be human. We have had structures, both formal and informal, of teacherly authority in play for as long as we have been human. In fact, as soon as we started putting them in play is when you could say, “Oh, okay, human.””

It is this attribute that allows us to focus the attention of the next generation onto what is important for cultural continuity, so they don’t have to create everything again from scratch but can build on what is already in place.

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About 40% of teachers see teaching is all about ‘relationships, relationships, relationships’. Of that 40% about 5% have high levels of legitimate teacherly authority such that students willingly do their best work, and these teachers have a lifelong impact on their students. In Why We Teach I called these teachers ‘Enlightened Teachers’ and described how they had got to this level of performance despite the system, not because of it.

The balance of the teachers in this 40% group I called ‘Motivated Teachers’.  The concept of teacherly authority now provides a pathway for these teachers to achieve the same level of performance as their enlightened colleagues.

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