The 21st Century Learning Initiative
Promoting a Vision, Knowledge, Experience and a Network
What price 'Intelligence'?
Response to Tony Little's book 'An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education'
This short monograph was written by Neil Richards, a Trustee of the 21st Century Learning Initiative in response to the publication of Tony Little’s book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education.
Battling for the Soul of Education
Moving beyond school reform to educational transformation:
The findings and recommendations of 3 decades of synthesis
Download from battlingforthesoulofeducation.org
Knowledge
Thesis 29 – Elizabethan Education
There is in education a law of delayed action, by which seed sown and long forgotten only grows in late years. Teachers like to see results from their efforts, and direct them accordingly, but the most precious fruits of a good teacher’s work are those that he is never likely to see.1 If the […]
Thesis 25 – Early English School
“The knowledge of past events has further virtues, especially in that it distinguishes rational creatures from brutes, for brutes whether men or beast, do not know… about their origins, their race, and the events and happenings in their native land”.1 The conquering Normans rapidly displaced the original nobility and replaced English bishops by Frenchmen. […]
Thesis 24 – Emergence of the English
The life of nations, no less than that of men, is lived largely in the imagination. History is continuously being edited to empower the story each generation wishes to believe about itself.1 The Romans were in britain for nearly four hundred years, and when they withdrew in 407 they left behind a well-farmed land […]
Thesis 22 – Judaism and Christianity
Of the three roots of western civilization ─ Greece, Rome and Palestine ─ it is the influence of the Jews which is the most extraordinary. A tribe of desert nomads seeking land of their own between the great kingdoms of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt, these were a people whose struggles against adversity had convinced them […]
Thesis 15 – Wisdom beyond Knowledge
Our lives are drenched with information. With so much that we could think about it’s inevitable that we shut most of it out of our consciousness for fear that our brains will crash through overload. So selective can be our focus that we can easily miss the blindingly obvious. Give ourselves time to think and […]
Thesis 6 – Burning with Curiosity
[Please scroll down to listen to an audio version of this thesis] It is inquisitiveness that best defines what we humans are all about. We ask endless questions, the answers to which often beg still further questions. From the darting, curious, eyes of a baby only a few weeks old, to the growing child’s persistent […]
HMC Conference, St Andrews
The most complete statement of the Initiative’s ideas
Stories from Alberta
My travels have taken me to unusual places, and inevitably I meet audiences of many different kinds. The people of Northern Alberta, living in an area the size of Florida, and now known as the Athabasca Oil Sands, were one of these highly distinctive groups that I spent time with in March. They are […]
The Child is Father of the Man: How humans learn and why
Published in 1999 by Network Educational Press. Available at Amazon. Review of John Abott’s The Child is the Father of the Man by Gerald Haigh of The Times Educational Supplement (4 Feb., 2000). (c) Times Supplements Limited “Politicians and industrialists listened to Abbott’s plea for less emphasis on schools and teaching and more on community and […]
Policy Paper
The Initiative’s Policy Paper from November 1998 is the most detailed description of our work and is necessary reading for anyone interested the ideas and research accumulated by the Initiative. The document is available as a PDF file.
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