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Theme for this Newsletter: Quotes to Inspire an Educational Transformation
This newsletter has been written by Bruce.
Feedback appreciated bhammonds@leading-learning.co.nz

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The most popular pages by far on our website are the 'Educational Quotes'. This e-zine is to let you all know that we have posted up even more quotes for your use. Also, still available is our earlier list of quotes

Many members have found the quotes on our site ideal for adding to school documents, staff notice boards and to discuss at staff meetings. This newsletter shares some of the 'new' quotes we have posted. Some are short and humorous others longer and more thoughtful, but they all provide insight and wisdom about education.

Selected 'new' quotes in this newsletter create an 'essay' of powerful thoughts to inspire the need to reinvent schools for a new century. Creative leadership at all level will be required if we wish to ensure all students see school as a positive experience.

As one quote says, 'Schools have been under led and over managed'.

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1. General Philosophy. 'What's it all about Alfie?' From UK film 'Alfie'
2. The School as a Learning Community
3. Vision, Values and School Culture 'Ones Vision is not a roadmap but a compass'
4. The Change Process 'Things do not change we change' Thoreau
5. Leadership and Teamwork 'All bottlenecks occur at the top' Anon
6. Curriculum 'Teaching is impossible if you add together all that is expected...'
7. Creativity 'Creative minds are rarely tidy.' Abbey Plaque
8. Powerful Learners 'If there is a way to do it better... find it!' Thomas Edison

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1. General Philosophy. 'What's it all about Alfie?' From UK film 'Alfie'

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For too long we have been limited by school structures and fragmented subjects which have divorced students from their own personal learning experiences. Economic rather than educational imperatives have called the tune for too long. The time is now right, as schools are struggling to educate all their students, for others voices to be added to the debate. Schools need to be returned to their communities. We need to 're-imagine' schools as learning centres focused on developing whatever talents their students have for the common good of all. To achieve this 'new education' we need to take Albert Einstein's advice: 'No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it? We need to see the world anew.' Or as Eleanor Roosevelt says: 'Today we must create the world of the future.'

Mass education was part of the dream of the early 20th century. The 'Industrial Age' has 'efficiently' transformed the way people work and seen in its full realization in the car factories of Henry Ford. But there was a price to pay for all this efficiency. 'You can have any car you like as long as it is black'! Henry Ford once said, 'Why do I always get a whole person when what I really want is just a pair of hands.' Many curriculum developers must feel the same way about creative teachers today!

Modern (really 'post modern') business thinking has seen factories transformed into 'Learning Organizations' based on vision, values and shared beliefs. This has required 'new' leadership models and an awareness of such things as organizational culture. 'Command and control' has been replaced by encouraging the enterprise and initiative of all workers. What is the schools role in shaping future society? Peter Senge, known for his development of the 'Learning Organization' asks the question:

'How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?' … the answer is. 'It's hard to imagine any way in which it hasn't changed...they're' immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar'.

John Dewey was well aware of this need for transformation decades ago: 'The conduct of schools, based upon a new order of conception, is so much more difficult than is the management of schools which walk the beaten path.' The reforms of the last decades of the 20thC many now believe are, 'akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'.

Peter Senge writes, 'Secondary education is a more purely industrial age institution than any business.' Hedley Beare, Professor of Education Melbourne says: 'If we remain wedded to the way education is currently provided we cannot imagine other ways. We need some imagination, some fantasy, some new ways of thinking - some magic in fact'.

Peter Block, the author of the 'The Answer to No is Yes', provides us with a challenge, 'We must act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, our leadership we seek is ours to become.' 'Never doubt', said Margaret Mead, 'that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.'

Tom Peters in his inspirational book 'Re - Imagine' envisions, 'a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers…creativity above fact regurgitation…individuality above conformity... and excellence above standardized performance….. And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

More quotes on general philosophy

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2. The School as a Learning Community

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For the past decade or so we have seen schools being forced to comply with a business managerial ideology that has all but crushed the common sense and creativity of innovative teachers and schools. Now, as schools continue to fail up a third of their students, is the time to reclaim schools as democratic learning communities. Schools based on shared values and teaching beliefs that realize the gifts and talents of all students is the new dream. Peter Senge, in his book 'The Learning School', writes 'As the world becomes more inter-connected organizations that will truly excel in the future will be (those)… that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn.'

Quotes on the school as a community

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3. Vision, Values and School Culture 'Ones Vision is not a roadmap but a compass'

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We need to use our imagination to create a more hopeful inclusive vision for a future one that moves away from a 'Market Forces' ideology based on an exaggerated importance of self centred individualism. We need to return to values and behaviors that are respectful of each other, other cultures and our environment. School need to have a key role in this transformation if we are to return to valuing the democratic virtues that contribute to the common good of all people and cultures.

John Ralston Saul, in his book 'Voltaire's Bastards', is critical of the Western obsession with rationality, efficiency, measurement and calls for people to participate. 'The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values…we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.'

Creating a strong learning culture in your school is a beginning. 'Culture is the underground stream of norms, values, beliefs, traditions, and rituals that build up over time as people work together, solve problems, and confront challenges. This set of informal expectations and values shapes how people think, feel, and act in school.' Deal and Patterson.

Creativity and innovative will flower if there is trust in your school says Fukuyama, 'If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms...such a society will be better able to innovate…since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge…'

From Peter Senge. 'A shared vision is not an idea…it is rather, a force in people's hearts…at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question 'What do we want to create?'

Ideas on the vision process visit
Further quotes on vision, values and culture

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4. The Change Process 'Things do not change we change' Thoreau

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In reality 'learning' and 'change' are synonymous. Whenever we learn anything new we are involved in change. Most change involves confusion, difficulty and fear of looking foolish, as we have to admit to not knowing. Many people would rather not to face up to the current reality schools that are failing (some ay up to a third of all students) and prefer to defend the past. Change is never an issue if it 'makes sense' to, and is 'owned' by, those involved, rather than being arbitrarily imposed by distant experts.

'Too many decisions', says Peter Block are, 'about changes are made by people untouched by the change process.' As Fullan says, 'In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected…piecemeal, superficially adorned projects… We are over our heads'.

It is a myth to believe change is easy. 'In order to transform schools successfully, educators need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old patterns and grabbing on to new ones' (Deal 1990.) 'To see the future you have to travel on the rough edge of experience' (Harriet Rubin Fast Company writer.) And, says Gifford Pinchot the Environmentalist, 'Innovation never happens as planned'. 'Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds', (Einstein.)

You might have to be a little mad as Thomas Sankarra of the African Congress tells us: 'You cannot carry out fundamental changes without a certain amount of madness. In any case it comes from non - conformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.'

Life is about change. Samuel Butler wrote, 'Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes along.' There are too many in our school who have sold their souls to the devil, who have compromised their beliefs for peace of mind, or who have become the 'cryogenics' of the staffroom - the 'living dead'.

For more quotes on change

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5. Leadership and Teamwork 'All bottlenecks occur at the top' Anon

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The imposed bureaucratic 'top down' changes have resulted in school being 'over managed and under led.' Now is the time for courageous leaders, at all level, to emerge and add their 'voices' to the debate. There are no experts with 'the answer' - we will have to invent the future ourselves together as we go along.

For too long we have been led by faceless bureaucrats. As Marion Brady an independent US Educator says, 'This is a dreary era. Those who know about education have no power; those who have the power know little or nothing about education'.

Fullan writes, 'It is one of life's great ironies: schools are in the business of teaching and learning, yet they are terrible at learning from one another. If they ever discover how to do this, their future is assured.' If they do discover this hidden power someone, somewhere, will have to take a leadership role. Rowan Gibson, in his book 'Re -Thinking the Future', says leaders will, 'will be explorers, adventurers, trailblazers….leaders of leaders…They will gather around them people who have the future in their bones.'

Schlechy talks about shared leadership, leadership at all levels, 'Shared leadership…is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around …depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music.'

Leadership is vital if we are, as Carl Glickman says to, 'release ourselves from simplistic and ineffective prescriptions; the time to dream is upon us.' Or as the wise old comedian WC Fields said, 'There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.'

Steve Farber a leadership expert writes 'I think it is important for leaders to answer the question, 'What's exciting about the work I /we really do here?' ...to expand it out to the higher meaning and purpose…To really articulate what we really do here, and why this place is cool.'' He continues, 'Leadership is a scary thing. That's why few people want to stand up to the plate.'… 'There are many people who want to be matadors, only to find themselves in the ring with 2,000 pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar'.

Dr Seus provides some perceptive advice:

'Be who you are
and say what you feel
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.'

The time is right. The fragmented and complicated curriculums of the past decades have lost their energy. Confusion ad ambiguity is in the air. This is the time for creative leadership to emerge. Thomas Sergiovanni defines the challenge, and the answer:

'Leaders are 'canny outlaws', system benders, creative and responsible rule benders. They have to succeed because…the deck is stacked against creative, imaginative and entrepreneurial teachers.'

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6. Teaching and Learning 'It is about teaching and it is about time.' CD SPINZ2

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For too long schools have had to comply with endless top down confusing curriculums and associated accountability demands which have taken the focus away from learning and teaching. As these imposed technocratic systems falter it is now time for creative teachers to also add their 'voice' to the debate.

David Perkins book Smart Schools is a must read. He writes, and we agree, that, 'we know at lot more now than the 'last time around'- the 1960s and 1970s - about how to work for smart schools…' 'The smart school finds it's foundation in a rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning.' He continues, 'education ultimately depends on what happens in classrooms…between teachers and learners. That is fundamental.'…. 'I hope that teachers will discover the optimism and direction to combat the energy - draining pressures and frustrations of most educational settings.'

A writer with great influence in the 60/70s John Holt wrote, 'We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing things that make them stupid.' Edward Hall, the Anthropologist, reminds us that the, 'drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer'. That so many students leave school with little to show for the time there is a comment on out current system - that many leave alienated is a crime. They have learnt not to learn!

We know the answers. Peter Senge writes, 'Many children struggle in schools…because the way they are being taught is the way is incompatible with the way they learn.' This is made worse by the impossible demand being made on schools. David Perkins ('Smart Schools') writes, 'teachers and administrators sleepwalk through their responsibilities, dulled and discouraged by the endless pressures and problems.'

Leaders at all levels must learn to see that their role is not to direct and control but to create the conditions to release the creativity of others. A way needs to be found to share the ideas of teachers both within and between schools. Creative teachers (not curriculum developers and test makers) are our greatest assets. As John Dewey wrote long ago, 'One of the saddest things about… education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire.' It is not even shared before they do! Howard Gardner asks that, 'Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.'

A wonderfully perceptive book, written in the 80s, 'The Aquarian Conspiracy' says, 'Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher…and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning'.

Robert Reich, the former US labor Secretary comments wryly, 'We are creating a one size fits all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. Paradoxically we're embracing standardized tests just when the economy is eliminating standardized jobs.'

Peyton Williams, President of the prestigious ASCD ( www.ascd.org ), recently defined the challenge, 'We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching - pedagogy - and the art of teaching...A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.'

We believe it is important to distill from the artistry of gifted teachers gifts of pedagogy so that it can be shared with other teachers. This is more than politicians talking blandly about having high expectations. An ideal metaphor for a teacher/leader is one of a creative coach. As David Perkins writes, 'The metaphor with sports is meant quite seriously…the coach stands back, observes the performance, and provides guidance. The coach applauds strengths, identifies weaknesses, points up principles, offers guiding and often inspiring imagery, and decides what kind of practice to emphasize.' We prefer the idea of an 'artistic coach' - one who at all times values the individuality of each learner. Carol Ann Tomlinson (author of several ascd books) says that a gifted teacher 'has an unfailing heart and eye for magical classrooms and who loses sleep over any sliver of work at less than the highest quality'. Doing fewer things well is vital to compensate for rushing through, as one cynic said, 'curriculums that are a mile long and an inch deep.'

If we are entering an 'Age of Ideas and Creativity' then as Peter Senge reminds us, 'All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift'. There is no one more important in any community than the gifted teachers -except lots of gifted teachers working together for a common cause!

Further quotes on teaching and learning
Practical ideas on quality learning and teaching

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7. Curriculum 'Teaching is impossible if you add together all that is expected...'

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Schools have been trying to implement impossible curriculums based on last century fragmented thinking. The future will demand students who retain a love of learning - students with their talents, dreams and passions acknowledged and developed. To achieve this, a new appreciation of what a curriculum could be needs to be imagined.

'The problem is fundamental…It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it'( Tracey Kidder.) 'There is something about the Procrustean bed about schools; some children are left disabled by being hacked about to fit the curriculum; some are stretched to take up the available space, others less malleable are labeled as having special educational needs', say Chris Bowring-Carr and John Burnham West, UK Educators. Gloria Steinem, (US feminist), comment equally applies, 'If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?'

We have always known the answers to inspire learning. Build on student's interests. Challenge them. Assist them do work that develops their self esteem. As Gardner says, 'You have to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something they can think about in lots of different ways'. And, many years ago, John Dewey wrote, 'The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.' The UK 1936 Hadow Report defined the curriculum to, 'be thought of in terms activity and experience rather than knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored.' George Bernard Shaw summed it up, 'What we want to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.'

Today, as we enter the 2stC, politicians are still obsessed with 'basic skills.' Literacy and numeracy are obviously important - we prefer to see them as 'Foundation Skills'. 'Learnacy' is far more important than either! One UK commentator recently cynically commented that 'the evil twins of literary and numeracy have gobbled up the entire curriculum.' As Kurt Vonnegut Jnr (an American writer) says, 'Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that does not mean we deserve to conquer the universe.'

Of course we believe schools should be accountable but accountable for what? Judy Yero ( visit her great site www.teachersmind.com) writes, ' I would like to see schools accountable for developing students who have a love of learning - who are continually growing in wisdom and in their ability to function effectively( and happily) in the world.'

For too long the academic and the intellect have dominated school. We agree with Charles Handy who writes that we , ' should see schools as safe arenas for experimenting with life, for discovering our talents…for taking responsibity for tasks and others people, for learning how to learn… and for exploring our beliefs about life and society.'

Our curriculum should not only teach students how to learn but also expose them to the elements that make up an educated citizen and at the same time allow whatever talents they may have to be encouraged and celebrated. The NZ historian Michael King writing gives advice to New Zealand teachers - but his basic premise applies to all countries.

'If we wish to present ourselves to the wider world as New Zealanders then we must be able to listen to our own voices, and trace our own footsteps; we must have our own heroes and heroines inspire us; we must persist with building our won culture with the ingredients close to hand and not import theses ingredients ready made from abroad'.

Imagine a school dedicated to uncovering the 'voice' of all learners and not just having to accept the thin learning they are often exposed to. From Peter Block a business writer, 'If we don't encourage others to find their own meaning, their own voice, we will never be able to sustain our own. Freedom comes from following you own voice not following another's'.

More quotes on curriculum
For Curriculum Delivery for the New Millennium

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8. Creativity 'Creative minds are rarely tidy.' Abbey Plaque

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We are entering an Age of Ideas and Creativity, an age where individual and shared talent will be the most important assets. Schools, as Tom Peters says in his wonderful book 'Re-Imagine', 'Are a thinly disguised conspiracy to quash creativity'. 'Talent', he says, 'is everything. And the production of talent is significantly dependent on schools'. Or it ought to be.

A creative teacher has what Valerie Stewart calls the 'David Factor', 'When Michelangelo looked at the block of marble he was to carve he looked beyond the outside and saw the shape of the statue he was about to create. He could see the real beauty hidden within...'

Creative individuals are the bane of the administrator's life! They are, as Farson and Keyes in their book, 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins,' seldom easy to be around. The most creative members of an organization can be irascible, annoying, touchy, intolerant, prickly, self aggrandizing. Their lack of tact offends coworkers. It also makes them willing to speak up when other hold their tongues. What comes out of their mouths is often quite valuable, if not always easy to hear.'

If we can transform school we can, as John Gowan Educator says, ' learn to domesticate creativity - that is enhance it rather than deny it in our culture- we can increases the number of creative persons….as it was in the Renaissance, Elizabethan England, when civilization made great leaps forward.' Now, isn't that worth fighting for!

More quotes on creativity

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9. Powerful Learners 'If there is a way to do it better... find it!' Thomas Edison

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Students are born with a powerful desire to learn. Everything we do must ensure that this powerful desire is kept alive. If there were to be one thing to be continually assessed it would be this desire…too many students leave with little to show for their time at school. Too many leave alienated and powerless.

American Educator Phenix in wrote in 1986, 'We are born trying to gain power over our environment. We live and die trying to figure out who we are; what life means; how to understand joy, pain, victory, and death; how we relate to each other; and why we are here. The disciplines we study- art music, literature, mathematics, science or philosophy- give us lenses….the skills…the power to use the understandings in meaningful ways.'.

Nothing we should do as educators should blunt this need to make sense. John Holt in the 60s told us, 'We should turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.' In more recent times Art Costa reminds us that, 'Intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.'

It seems so simple, 'You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.' says Howard Gardner. 'You learn to like what you get good at', Jerome Bruner once said. This places literacy and numeracy in perspective. Guy Claxton in his book 'Wise Up' says, Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them. Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.'

Learning courage, resiliency, resourcefulness and reciprocity (the 'four Rs') are what Claxton calls future skills of a powerful learner. And implicit in all this is, that if the task is worth it, learners will put in the effort. Returning to Michelangelo, 'The germ of an idea doesn't make a sculpture that stands up…so the next stage is hard work.

Our future depends on talented, caring and powerful learners .The final word is left to Charles Darwin, a man whose ideas transformed the world, 'It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.'

Further quotes on powerful learners
Ideas for powerful learning

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We hope you have found this 'essay' of quotes worthwhile. Bruce would be happy to receive any feedback on the newsletter.

Kia ora - good health
Kia kaha - have courage
Ka kite ano - until next time

Bruce Hammonds and Wayne Morris (Editors)