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
Scientific Research
Facing an Inconvenient Truth and Doing something about it
If not since the beginning of time, at least over the past half dozen millennia, older generations concerned about the future wellbeing of their societies have pondered the question (and the mystery) of how young people learn. So profound was Confucius’ observation two and a half thousand years ago; “tell me and I forget, show […]
Thesis 94 – Precious and Extraordinarily Fragile
If civilisation is to survive, we have to live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. Ecological markers suggest that in the early 1960s, humans were using about 70% of nature’s yearly output; by the end of the 1980s had reached 100%; and in 1999 we were at 125%. We are raiding ‘the larder’, […]
Thesis 90 – Don’t Fence Me In
The adolescent brain, being “crazy by design”, is a critical evolutionary adaptation that has built up over thousands of generations, and is essential to our species survival. Adolescence forces young people in every generation to think beyond their own self-imposed limitations and exceed their parents’ aspirations1. Adolescents are not just over-grown children, or immature […]
Thesis 81 – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Eat five pieces of fruit and vegetable daily. Limit your consumption of meat; eat wild grains and fish, reduce salt and sugar. Exercise regularly. Talk a lot and tell stories; don’t work too hard; get plenty of sleep, and share and share alike1. Humans have been using their brains to think, and their stomachs […]
Thesis 80 – Stand Back to See Clearly
Inquisitive Man has so extended the range and depth of human knowledge that it is impossible for a single mind to comprehend its entirety; that being so, it would seem essential that some should attempt to create a synthesis of all the parts, not with the authority of disciplinary experts, but with a skill in […]
Thesis 37 – Landscapes of Our Minds
Our bodies and minds are not of recent origin. They are the direct consequence of millions of years of surviving, and evolving, in landscapes and in climates different to present-day England. The preferences of our distant ancestors, and their ways of looking at life, still condition many of the decisions that we, and our most […]
Thesis 19 – Remember our Ancestors
“What task could be more agreeable than to tell of the benefits conferred on us by our ancestors, so that you may get to know the achievements of those from whom you have received both the basis of your beliefs, and the inspiration to conduct your life properly?” It’s all too easy to assume […]
Thesis 18 – Understanding Cultures
Why are we as individuals and societies all so different, yet at the same time so curiously similar! The colour of our skins may vary but in comparison to the overall structure of our bodies and what we are discovering about our inherited predispositions to behave in certain ways, we all conform ─ English, African, […]
Thesis 16 – Setting a New Course
Today’s society faces a crisis of perception; a whole constellation of ideas and beliefs which had defined Western society since the Reformation five hundred years ago, is now falling apart. We are rapidly rejecting a mechanistic view of the universe, the assumption that the human body behaves like a machine, that life is a competitive […]
Thesis 11 – Playing to One’s Strengths
Psychologists for long pondered the question, “Which is more important — Nature or Nurture?” It has always been an emotionally charged debate. Political demagogues in the twentieth century incited their peoples to extremes of racialism having convinced themselves that certain cultural features ‘were there in the blood’. This led to eugenics. Research now shows conclusively […]
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