Educational Philosophy For 21st Century Teachers

Educational
Philosophy for
21st Century
Teachers
z
THOMAS STEHLIK
Educational Philosophy for 21st Century Teachers
Thomas Stehlik
Educational
Philosophy for 21st
Century Teachers
Thomas Stehlik
School of Education
University of South Australia
Magill, SA, Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-75968-5 ISBN 978-3-319-75969-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2
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Acknowledgements
My thanks and acknowledgements to: Christobel for the many conversa-

tions, ideas, and suggestions that have contributed to shaping the book;
my three beautiful daughters for educating their dad; Ballinglen Arts
Foundation in Ballycastle Ireland for their warmth and generosity in pro-
viding an inspiring space where parts of this book were written; colleagues
in Australia, Finland, Ireland, Canada, and Sweden for conversations,
conviviality, support, references, and interest in the global education proj-
ect; Pasi Sahlberg for reference to his features of the Global Education
Reform Movement; and the University of South Australia for granting me
study leave and time away from teaching in order to complete this book.
v
A Note to the Reader
This book refers to many sources and references that provide a historical
perspective to the narrative, and even though the content is still relevant
to a discussion of educational philosophy, in some cases the language is
outdated. Some quotes therefore include gender exclusive language which
I would normally avoid using. However, I have chosen to present such
quotes verbatim, and in those cases I ask the reader to suspend judgement
of the medium and focus on the message.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: What Is Education for? 1

1.1 ‘I Hated School…’ 3
1.2 Why This Book? 6
1.3 Part I: The History of Philosophy and the Purpose
of Education 7
1.4 Part II: Schooling Versus Education 7
1.5 Part III: The Kingdom of Childhood 9
1.6 Part IV: ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’ 10
1.7 Part V: Case Studies of Educational Philosophies 11
1.8 Part VI: The Future of Education 12
References 13
Part I The History of Philosophy and the Purpose of

Education 15
2 The Importance of Philosophy 17

2.1 A Brief History Lesson 17
2.2 Ancient Philosophy 18
2.3 Branches of Philosophy 19
2.4 Plato and the First Academy 20
ix
x Contents
2.5 Medieval Philosophy 22

2.6 Modern Philosophy 24
2.7 Types of Knowledge 29
2.8 The Evolution of Philosophy and Knowledge 31
2.9 The Importance of Philosophy to Education 34
References 36
3 The Purpose of Education 39

3.1 Definitions, Meanings, and Models 39
3.2 Practical and Contemplative Activity 42
3.3 Reciprocity 45
3.4 Forms of Education 48
3.5 Educational Philosophy 54
References 55
Part II Schooling Versus Education 57
4 School: History, Meaning, Context, and Construct 59

4.1 Definitions, Distinctions, Developments 59
4.2 Which School or College Did You Go to? 63
4.3 Evolution and Revolution 68
4.4 Differentiation and Dual Systems 75
References 81
5 School: Rhetoric, Reality, and Revisionism 83

5.1 Schools as Places and Spaces 83
5.2 The Massification and Marketisation of Education 86
5.3 The Global Education Reform Movement 90
5.4 Responses to GERM 94
5.5 It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child 97
References 102
Contents
xi
Part III The Kingdom of Childhood 105
6 Development over the Life Span 107

6.1 The Kingdom of Childhood 107
6.2 Nature or Nurture? 116
6.3 Play Is a Child’s Work 121
References 126
7 The Twenty-First-Century Child 129

7.1 From Infancy to Adolescence and Beyond 130
7.2 The Millennial Child 133
7.3 The Quantified Self 138
7.4 Nature Versus Technology 144
7.5 The Millennial Parent 148
References 155
Part IV ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’ 159
8 Teaching the Teachers 161
8.1 ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher…’ 162
8.2 History of Teacher Education 165
8.3 Content Knowledge Versus Pedagogical Knowledge 168
8.4 The Philosophy of Teaching 173
8.5 Who Teaches the Teachers? 177
References 179
9 The Role of the Teacher 181

9.1 Teaching as Art and Science 182
9.2 You Are Not Alone 185
9.3 Who Owns the Curriculum? 189
9.4 Curriculum Responses 193
References 198
xii Contents
Part V Case Studies of Educational Philosophies 201
10 International Comparisons and Case Studies 203

10.1 Finland: Equality Begins at the Blackboard 203
10.2 The Worldwide Waldorf School Movement:
Education Towards Freedom 214
10.3 Green School Bali 224
10.4 Conclusion to This Chapter 229
References 230
11 Thinking Outside the Classroom 233

11.1 Deschooling 235
11.2 Not-school 237
11.3 Doing School Differently 241
11.4 Youthworx 242
11.5 Unschooling, Homeschooling 244
11.6 Gap Year 247
References 254
Part VI The Future of Education 257
12 Predicting Unknown Futures 259

12.1 Twenty-First-Century Skills: What Are They? 259
12.2 The Classroom of the Future 265
References 269
13 A Holistic View of Education 271

13.1 ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ 271
13.2 Mother Nature’s Child 276
13.3 The Future Is What We Make It 279
References 282
References 285
Index 301
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Joining the dots—turning information into knowledge 35

Fig. 4.1 Sorting by age and gender began even as the children entered
school in 1898. (Greenwich, London, England) 64
Fig. 4.2 Separate entrances for students and everyone else…but given
the placement of the apostrophe, did St Patrick’s have only one
student?! (Ballycastle, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland) 65
Fig. 4.3 Post-compulsory education: specialisation of schools, Amos
sports college 81
Fig. 6.1 The threefold development of life over seven-year cycles 112
Fig. 6.2 The kindergarten at Willunga Waldorf School—a safe, nur-
turing, and enriching environment 125
Fig. 7.1 Homo Zappiens vs Homo Sapiens 138
Fig. 10.1 The forest as a teaching resource: trainee teachers on excur-
sion, Eastern Finland 207
Fig. 11.1 Nine dots puzzle solution 235
xiii
1
Introduction: What Is Education for?
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Mark Twain
This book is about education in the twenty-first century, how it has devel-
oped, and what it means for teachers, parents, schoolchildren, and edu-
cational policy makers in post-modern western societies through an
educational philosophy lens. It is intended as a manual for twenty-first-
century educators, and by the term teacher, I am being inclusive of all
adults who are involved in bringing up children in our societies. In this
regard I am firmly influenced by the notion that as a parent, you are your
child’s first teacher (Baldwin 1989), and by the well-worn but resonant
saying: It takes a village to raise a child.
Like Mark Twain I also make a clear distinction between schooling and
education. It will be important as you read this book to arrive at a shared
understanding of these terms—as well as terms like training, teaching,
learning, curriculum, assessment, and so on—to unpack their meaning,
their etymology, their use, and abuse in different contexts such as every-
day parlance, academic language, policy jargon, and bureaucracy-speak.
© The Author(s) 2018 1

T. Stehlik, Educational Philosophy for 21st Century Teachers,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_1
2 T. Stehlik
The intention of the book is to stand back and take a big picture view of
education and its attendant terminology, assumptions, myths, and influ-
ences. It is offered as a long meditation on a discipline that has been an
occupation and interest for my entire life and career—as a student,
teacher, parent, teacher educator, and educational researcher. The more I
have pursued this interest, the more I realise that education is everywhere,
affecting and influencing us in many forms, from the overt experience of
formal institutions like schools, to the subtle effects of lived experience of
the world and the influences of people and things that we interact with
on a daily basis.
In a crowded and busy modern world, we often do not have the time
to stand back and contemplate big questions of meaning as we become
bogged down in the minutiae of detail and the demands of daily life. My
experience of working in university teacher education in Australia for
over 25 years has also reinforced the view that, as emerging professionals,
beginning teachers have less opportunity to discuss and consider funda-
mental questions such as What is education for? and What is my role and
purpose as a teacher? Teacher education courses have become crowded
with regulatory requirements and mandatory subjects in behaviour man-
agement, assessment policy, and curriculum content, leaving little room
for reflection and discourse.
In 1978 I completed a one-year Graduate Diploma in Education at the
University of Adelaide to qualify as a secondary English and humanities
teacher. In addition to the subject area courses, there were four core
courses in this program that covered the history, sociology, psychology,
and philosophy of education. Since then, theory has gradually given way
to practice. At the University of South Australia where I became a lecturer
in education, subjects related to the philosophy of education gradually
disappeared from the Bachelor of Education (BEd) around 2010. Despite
the BEd being a four-year program—the minimum required length for a
teaching qualification in Australia—such subjects became the casualty of
a policy shift towards pragmatism and regulation, which saw them side-
lined and eventually crowded out. It is intended therefore that this book
will be seen as a resource for those beginning teachers—as well as anyone
else with an interest in education past, present, and future—to engage
with and reflect on those philosophies (and philosophers) which have
Introduction: What Is Education for? 3
underpinned and influenced the very e ducational institutions, teaching

methodologies, curriculum frameworks, and learning environments that
we have inherited today.
1.1 ‘I Hated School…’

In a first world country like Australia, almost everyone has been to school
at least up to a certain year level, so everyone has an opinion of school
based on their own experiences. For many people these experiences have
been challenging and uninspiring at best or extremely negative and dis-
tressing at worst. Australians also have a culture of criticism concerning
the profession of teaching, compared to countries like Finland where
teaching is seen as a noble profession and teachers are highly regarded as
‘candles of the people’ lighting the way to knowledge (see Chap. 10). In
Australia even the politicians get in on the act of disparaging teachers,
with erstwhile Federal Minister of Education Christopher Pyne engaging
in teacher bashing in the media and even in parliament (Pyne 2014).
Pyne was using ‘teacher quality’ as a measure of school performance,
looking for reasons why Australian schoolchildren were not performing
so well in international academic assessment programs such as the
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). And yes, while
research has shown that the role of the teacher in a traditional classroom
is important for successful outcomes, this is often based on the relation-
ships established with students as much as on a teacher’s content knowl-
edge, and is clearly only one part of a much bigger picture in which other
significant factors come into play, such as adequate funding and resourc-
ing of public schools (Stehlik 2011). The fact that the proportion of
Australian schoolchildren now attending a non-government school is
over one-third and growing demonstrates that parents are voting with
their feet and choosing private independent schooling—if they can afford
it (see Chap. 5). Pyne himself attended a Catholic school and so his view
of education would have been influenced—and skewed—by that
experience.
As part of my academic research work, I had the experience of leading
a research project working with young people who were disengaged from
4 T. Stehlik
school and undertaking alternative learning programs outside the main-

stream curriculum (a growing trend—see Chap. 11). I was working with
a colleague who was an experienced research assistant, highly educated
with a PhD, and to all intents and purposes an intelligent and well-
adjusted woman. Yet when she accompanied me to a primary school in
the southern suburbs of Adelaide to interview the principal, I noticed she
was becoming increasingly agitated. Waiting outside the principal’s office,
she looked terrified and I asked her what the matter was. She said she had
not been in a primary school since she was a student herself, over 30 years
ago, and this was bringing back bad memories of her experiences as a
young girl. She had suffered under a male teacher who had been abusive,
violent, and manipulative and who regularly sent her to the headmaster
for punishment for minor infringements of his sadistic discipline (Note:
in those days the principal was invariably male). I reassured her that
things were different now, teachers were not like that (I hoped!), corporal
punishment was banned years ago, and the principal we were about to
interview turned out to be a charming professional woman who put us
both at ease.
But I was disturbed by this event, as it recalled bad memories of my
own schooling during the 1960s and early 1970s: suffering bullying from
cruel, sadistic, or cold teachers—as well as bullying from other kids—and
being punished by severe headmasters who seemed to relish in giving
‘cuts’ to the hands or back of the legs with a cane. Why did these people
get into teaching if they disliked children so much that they could physi-
cally and mentally abuse them? And yet I also had some warm, wonder-
ful, and inspiring teachers who were positive role models and managed to
get me interested and inspired in subjects that I loved—English, geogra-
phy, and history. On balance, and despite some of these Dickensian char-
acters, I did reasonably well at school and even came ‘top of the class’ in
the upper primary years. And this seems to have been the experience of
many of us—despite a random series of mixed experiences and unpre-
dictable situations that as children we have little or no control over, most
people have ‘survived school’ and managed to come out reasonably
unscathed, even having learned something.
However, there are also many victims of the schooling system: young
people who leave school early, are disengaged or discouraged, act out and
get into trouble, experience bullying and social exclusion, have low
literacy and numeracy and reduced career opportunities, and no interest
in further education. I often think that we do our children a dis-service
by sending them to an institution for the best years of their lives, sitting
in classrooms of rows of desks, in a large group of kids of the same age,
who are all expected to achieve in all subjects at the same pace and level.
Compare this, say, with growing up in a tribal or village society where
children of various age groups can interact and learn by looking out for,
and being looked after by, each other. As a parent I know that children
need boundaries but they also need the freedom to be a child and be able
to experience what Rudolf Steiner called the ‘Kingdom of Childhood’
(see Chaps. 6 and 7).
But I am concerned at the cumulative effect of these negative experi-
ences of school, especially as it is apparent that many parents who have a
low regard for the education system are projecting this onto their chil-
dren—whether intentionally or subliminally—and it becomes an inter-
generational issue, leading to the type of ‘teacher bashing’ mentioned
already. Like my colleague, it seems that many adults are under the mis-
taken apprehension that not much has changed since their own school
days, and the teachers and classrooms that they experienced are the same
ones they are sending their children to today. I therefore advocate for a
more positive discourse around education in our society today, and in the
hope that being more informed will lead to being more enlightened, I
offer this book.
Finally, it is not surprising that the effect of spending so many of our
formative years at school results in aspects of school life entering our
dream life. I still clearly remember a dream that I had as boy of about ten
or 11 years old, in which I was at school but only dressed in a pyjama
top… I was in the asphalt quadrangle surrounded by other boys and girls,
doing some sort of PE while desperately trying to cross my legs and cover
up my lower nakedness. I think this is probably a very common sort of
Freudian dream, being naked or not properly dressed in public, but the
fact that I can visualise the dream 50 years later suggests to me how very
exposed I felt at school—not only different with a funny European sur-
name, odd sandwiches made with rye bread instead of square white bread,
and white legs instead of a bronzed Aussie tan, but somehow removed
6 T. Stehlik
from what was actually going on. Even as a school student I think that
subconsciously I was already asking the question: What is education for?
The incursion into the dream world escalates when one becomes a
teacher, reflecting the deep emotional investment involved in the profes-
sion. I spent ten years in various high schools teaching English and other
humanities subjects, eventually escaping to the world of adult education
and university teaching, where behaviour management and classroom
control are not such pressing issues. But those years of standing in front
of out-of-control classes and rebellious or bored adolescents resulted in
recurring dreams which I can still have to this day, 25 years later. The
dream (or nightmare really) usually takes the form of me not being pre-
pared for the class, or having misplaced important paperwork, often
standing in front of the class with no trousers on, and helplessly watching
things deteriorate around me. Other colleagues have told me very similar
stories of such experiences invading their sub-conscious dream life, even
long after retiring from teaching. The feeling of not being in control is a
fundamental and deep human fear, and it is also not surprising that pub-
lic speaking has long been identified as the number one fear, even ahead
of fear of flying or fear of heights.
1.2 Why This Book?

Reflecting back on my years as a teacher and my struggles with teenagers
in classrooms, I see now that neither they nor I really wanted to be there.
For me it was a job, not a career or a calling, and while I loved literature,
drama, and poetry, I was lucky if I could inspire one student in a class of
30 adolescents to feel the same, severely distracted as they were by hor-
mones and puberty and not at all interested in dead poets or classical
literature (although Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a per-
fect piece of literature for this age and a story that they can relate to). For
the students, much of the curriculum did not have enough meaning or
relevance to their immediate lives. So our task as teachers, parents, educa-
tors, and generational role models is to somehow offer a glimpse of cul-
ture, beauty, humanity, and creativity in the midst of the dross and daily
grind required by curriculum writers, education bureaucrats, and faceless
policy wonks responsible for the ‘system’ we have. But how did we get to
this situation? Who decided all of this in the first place? On what do we
base our educational decision-making? What is the rationale for ‘school-
ing’ as opposed to education? This is what I aim to tease out in the fol-
lowing chapters of the book, set out in six sections.
1.3 P
art I: The History of Philosophy
and the Purpose of Education
Chapter 2 takes us back to classical Greece and the origins of the concept
of philosophy, a term that combines the Greek words for love and wisdom
and so literally means the love of wisdom. From the influential work of
Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, a brief history through time includes consid-
eration of some of the major movers and shakers in philosophical and edu-
cational thought from ancient through to modern times. At the same time,
the chapter introduces and unpacks key terms and concepts related to edu-
cation that we have inherited and use daily but often take for granted.
Chapter 3 enters into a discussion of the purpose of education in mod-
ern societies, given the systems of thought that we have inherited. Is the
purpose of education to develop the individual or for the benefit of soci-
ety, or both? Notions of reciprocity are examined, for example, individual
uniqueness balanced with the common good and reproduction of society
balanced with developing character. Should school-based learning be ori-
ented towards a vocation or for lifelong learning? How do we develop
and value human and cultural capital?
The key question for this section is: What have we learned from
history?
1.4 Part II: Schooling Versus Education

Part II then moves from the past to the present and the future, looking at
the schools we have today, how they have developed, how they are devel-
oping, and how they might evolve in the future in terms of structure,
function, process, and product.
8 T. Stehlik
Chapter 4 examines the history, meaning, context, and construct of

schooling. It includes a discussion of definitions, origins, and early
examples and investigates the extent to which schools function as social
sorting and socialisation agencies as well as knowledge factories. Schools
are analysed in terms of their establishment, development, and purpose
with case study examples of experimental schools attempting to break
the ‘factory model’ of universal mass education that resulted from the
Industrial Revolution. As students, parents, teachers, and citizens, what
are our expectations and hopes for schools compared with our experi-
ences and realities? What are the similarities and differences between
government and independent schools? How can we classify and make
sense of the varying philosophical and educational rationales on which
they are based? The notion of ‘school choice’ is a recent development
but is there really a choice? Why are some schools free while others
charge high fees? Is there a correlation between funding and student
outcomes?
Chapter 5 compares the rhetoric of school with the reality of what
children experience, then queries how, why, when, and where we edu-
cate our children, and how school choice should be an informed deci-
sion but has become a hotly debated issue in a commodified
educational marketplace. The massification and marketisation of edu-
cation are examined in the light of such trends as the Global Education
Reform Movement (GERM), accountability standards for teachers,
and a curriculum focused on narrowly defined vocational outcomes.
The Age of Enlightenment introduced the reductionist idea of cate-
gorising everything from clouds to humans, and we still think of edu-
cation as being categorised into separate subject areas according to a
taxonomy of knowledge developed in the mid-eighteenth century.
Responses to these trends are examined, including the alternative
view that ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’. How do we under-
stand and work within these opposing positions in the twenty-first
century?
The key question for this section is: How have we applied what we have
learned from history?
1.5 Part III: The Kingdom of Childhood

The third section considers what the Kingdom of Childhood looks like in
the twenty-first century, in the light of technological, social, economic,
and global developments. Some things have stayed much the same over
the years, others have changed drastically. This section also addresses
those who are charged with the care, support, and upbringing of our
children—parents, guardians, and families.
Chapter 6 provides an overview of development over the life span,
with reference to key educational theorists whose work has influenced
contemporary thinking and practice around human physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual development, including the early work of
Friedrich Froebel who recognised that play is a child’s work, to the work
of Jean Piaget and Rudolf Steiner in child development and human
development. The debate about the influence of nature vs nurture in
child development is examined with reference to the literature on ‘wild
children’.
Chapter 7 introduces the notion of the ‘twenty-first-century child’, in
the light of contemporary and often challenging and complex contexts in
which children are now growing up. Educators and other professionals
(psychologists, social workers, and youth workers) note an alarming
increase in diagnosed disorders among children and young people such as
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, depression,
and anxiety. Children and young people are now labelled as ‘digital
natives’, tangled up inextricably in the world wide web, with toddlers,
tweens, and teens seen as consumers of education as well as consumers of
goods and products. As a result, education has also become a commodity.
Reactions and responses to these modernist trends driven by information
technologies and the media include various ‘back to nature’ initiatives
such as the Forest School movement in the United Kingdom and Europe
and bush kindergartens in Australia. At the same time, children are
increasingly becoming exposed to real societal dangers in the form of
sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. The chapter also addresses those
who are charged with the care, support, and upbringing of our children—
parents, guardians, and families. Parenting as a vocation is introduced and
10 T. Stehlik
discussed, in the light of the various roles that parents have in educating
their children and managing their own learning about parenting. The
child-parent relationship and the child-parent-teacher relationship are
examined in relation to the roles and responsibilities of all the actors in
this model. For example, what are the assumptions and expectations from
the different perspectives of these actors around a concept like
‘homework’?
The key question for this section is: How should children and adults
learn?
1.6 Part IV: ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’

Part IV is for and about teachers and the teaching profession—an exami-
nation of the reasons why some are called to the job as if to a vocation
while others just fall into the role and how consideration of educational
philosophy is important in maintaining and developing not only an
understanding but a love of the profession.
Chapter 8 is about ‘teaching the teachers’, a critical aspect of the whole
education system, but an aspect in which I claim educational philosophy
has taken a back seat to educational pragmatics. Pre-service teacher edu-
cation is regularly under the media spotlight in terms of concerns about
teacher quality, lowering standards, and ideological biases. A brief history
over time shows that ‘teacher training’ in teachers colleges has gradually
been replaced by ‘teacher education’ in universities, where educational
theory is meant to inform educational practice and vice versa. The peren-
nial question of whether teachers are sufficiently prepared to meet the
challenges of the profession on graduation is still debated and remains
largely unanswered. At the same time, in-service teacher education and
ongoing professional development of teachers should be given just as
much attention. With a move towards continual reflective practice and
professional learning communities among beginning as well as experi-
enced teachers, a consideration of personal and professional educational
philosophies becomes paramount.
Chapter 9 introduces the role of the teacher in the bigger picture of
education as one of the helping professions similar to the professions of
psychology, social work, and primary health care. As such, teachers need
to see themselves as part of a cluster of professional roles providing an
integrated and holistic contribution to education that goes beyond the
classroom and school to the wider community. Educating and nurturing
children and future citizens is a huge responsibility and can put unreal
expectations on teachers to do it all alone, and sharing this important
task in a joined-up approach can reduce stress and burnout. In fact, as
explored in other chapters and one of the underpinning messages of this
book, teaching is not an activity exclusively limited to those who are
labelled as ‘teachers’. Comparative views of the profession from local and
global perspectives show that in countries like Finland, teaching is a
‘favourite occupation’, yet in Australia, anywhere from 30% to 50% of
teachers leave the profession within the first five years. Some examples of
enlivening teaching as an art as well as a science are given via creative and
imaginative ways of thinking about pedagogy and curriculum as well as
content.
The key question for this section is: What is my role and purpose as a
teacher?
1.7 P
art V: Case Studies of Educational
Philosophies
This section of the book compares education systems in a number of dif-
ferent countries, cultures, and settings. The intent is to provide case study
examples of the ways in which culture, climate, language, ethnicity, geog-
raphy, space, and place do make a difference.
Chapter 10 offers some international comparisons and case studies:
Equality begins at the blackboard: Finland

Education towards freedom: The Worldwide Waldorf School movement
Education for social and environmental sustainability: Green School Bali
Chapter 11 explores alternative learning programs that operate outside

of school, applying adult learning methodologies, often employing the
12 T. Stehlik
creative arts as a point of interest for young people otherwise disengaged

from the standard curriculum, and mostly delivered not by schoolteach-
ers but by community educators, parents, and many others. They are a
form of education now characterised as part of the ‘Not-school’ move-
ment, which includes all out-of-school educational experiences such as
homeschooling, which itself is part of an emerging trend of ‘unschool-
ing’. School leaving age and school retention are all issues related to how
long we expect young people to remain in institutionalised learning situ-
ations, while pathways to further education and/or careers are no longer
simply linear, and gap years are becoming the norm.
The key question for this section is: What is education for?
1.8 Part VI: The Future of Education

This final section concludes the book by attempting to make some pre-
dictions about unknown futures and the trends, opportunities, chal-
lenges, and threats that can be imagined given the discussion and
argument developed in the previous chapters. If we accept the proposi-
tion that we are now in a knowledge society (or knowledge economy) in
which certain twenty-first-century skills will be required and that think-
ing globally while acting locally is not just rhetoric but reality, what
would the schools of tomorrow look like? Would we even have schools?
Chapter 12 looks at the notion of ‘twenty-first-century skills’, otherwise
known as ‘soft skills’ such as communication, collaboration, cooperation,
and creativity, compared with ‘hard skills’ such as literacy, numeracy, and
content knowledge. What will the classroom of the future look like in
delivering these contrasting aspects of the curriculum, given the contem-
porary demands of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’? Can creativity and
imagination be taught? How do we turn information into knowledge in
a world of information overload? What is the process of the ‘getting of
wisdom?’
Chapter 13 addresses a number of questions for consideration in terms
of learning from the past, informing the present, and planning for the
future in education. What should a curriculum look like? Given the
notions of the crowded curriculum as well as the hidden curriculum,
what are our priorities in preparing children and young people for life in
the twenty-first century? What can be characterised as ‘Nice to know’ vs
‘Need to know’? For example, would adolescent secondary students gain
more from learning about developing successful relationships than how
to master calculus? Parenting is a skill that seems to be an assumed one—
but why is that skill not taught? How do we measure successful learning
outcomes? How can national curricula be delivered consistently but with
allowances for local differences? ‘Success for all’ is a catchcry among edu-
cation policy makers, but how achievable and realistic is it? Is empower-
ing learners and learning how to learn more important than acquiring
content knowledge? The chapter and the book conclude with the propo-
sition that a holistic view of education—inclusive of but going beyond
schooling—is needed in a world where knowledge is becoming increas-
ingly fragmented, digitised, and disposable. Putting our children’s happi-
ness and wellbeing at the centre of the education project I suggest would
be a good place to start.
The key question for this section is: What can we learn from experience
to shape educational futures?
References
Baldwin, R. (1989). You are your child’s first teacher. Berkeley: Celestial Arts.
Pyne, C. (2014, April 17). Australians to have their say on teacher education.
Media Release, Thursday. https://ministers.education.gov.au/pyne/austra-
lians-have-their-say-teacher-education. Accessed 23 Mar 2018.
Stehlik, T. (2011). Relationships, participation and support: Necessary com-
ponents for inclusive learning environments and (re)engaging learners.
Chapter 7, In T. Stehlik & J. Patterson (Eds.), Changing the paradigm:
Education as the key to a socially inclusive future. Brisbane: Post Pressed.
Part I
The History of Philosophy and the
Purpose of Education
2
The Importance of Philosophy
This chapter takes us back to classical Greece and the origins of the con-
cept of philosophy, a term that combines the Greek words for love and
wisdom and so literally means the love of wisdom. From the influential
work of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, a brief history through time
includes consideration of some of the major movers and shakers in philo-
sophical and educational thought from ancient through to modern times.
At the same time, the chapter introduces and unpacks key terms and
concepts related to education that we have inherited and use daily but
often take for granted.
2.1 A Brief History Lesson

Philosophy is about everything: how we know what we know, how we define
our place in the universe, what we believe and how we judge truth, beauty, and
justice. Ethics, in particular is about the good life and how we learn to be
happy. (Frohnmayer 2016)
In considering the history of philosophy, I am here taking a particu-

larly European/Western perspective as this has been the main influence

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_2
18 T. Stehlik
on the development of modern western education. For the purposes of

this book, Middle Eastern, East Asian, and Indian philosophy are not
included.
From this perspective, there have been three major periods of western
philosophical thought:
Ancient: Greco-Roman (circa seventh century BC to fifth century AD)

Medieval: Christian-European (circa fifth century to sixteenth century AD)
Modern: From around 1600 to today
2.2 Ancient Philosophy

Any consideration of the importance of philosophy in the twenty-first-
century western world has to begin with classical Greece, since the term
itself is derived from the Ancient Greek language, combining the word
for love, philos, with the word for wisdom, sophia—literally means the
love of wisdom. The term wisdom is itself one that will be unpacked and
explored in the following chapters, since it is an important concept in
understanding the stages of development of a human being. Pythagoras
(570–495 BC) has been credited with coining the term philosophy, and
whether that is true or not it reinforces the fact that, while we might
remember Pythagoras for his mathematical theorem, philosophy in
Ancient Greece encompassed ‘any body of knowledge’ including disci-
plines such as mathematics which we would now consider one of the
sciences.
The Hellenic culture that emerged in ancient Greece between 700 and
400 BC saw an unprecedented development in concepts of civilisation
and applied thought that have endured to this day, and influenced many
of our current systems of thought, governance, and education. Their
achievements in creating a rational, scientific attitude to the universe
were equally balanced with a blossoming in art, drama, and literature and
a concern for truth, beauty, and moral values. However, their own way of
looking at the world on a day-to-day basis was very different to ours.
The Hellenic view of nature was centred in their religion—nature was
living and companionable, and all living things including plants and
The Importance of Philosophy 19
a nimals contained a spirit. Humankind was not seen as the centre of the
universe but as part of a bigger cosmic progression. In contrast to our
experiences of Christianity and a contemplative approach to spirituality,
Ancient Greek religion was extroverted, not introverted. Their religious
beliefs were outward-looking, not introspective. In fact, in Ancient Greek
there is no language equivalent for words like person, personality, indi-
vidual, the self, self-consciousness, ego, or I, with daily life and society being
more communal and community-minded. The political ideal for Athens
was therefore based on a true concept of democracy—a word and an ideal
that we have also inherited from Ancient Greece.
The Greek Gods were considered on a higher plane than mortals, but
more like elder brothers and sisters than the father/creator image of the
Christian God. They were not creators of the world but also products of
the world with their own evolution, their own problems and foibles, and
thus were not perfect or above reproach. The epithet as above, so below
represents this notion.
In this world view then, it is not surprising that the Greeks had a
clearly defined philosophy of living. They found the world extraordi-
narily interesting and developed a sense of wonder about it and a desire
to know how it works. In the opening sentence of his Metaphysics,
Aristotle boldly states that ‘all men naturally desire to know’. In a book
on the importance of philosophy to the past, present, and future of
education, this is an idea—and perhaps an assumption—that we will
explore.
2.3 Branches of Philosophy

For the Greeks, Natural Philosophy was the study of the physical and
natural world. It included astronomy, medicine, and physics.
Moral Philosophy included ethics—the study of goodness, right and
wrong, justice, virtue, and beauty—from which we gain the word ethos,
which can mean both ‘custom’ and ‘character’.
Metaphysical Philosophy involved the study of existence, and included
the concept of logos, or logic. Meta-physick literally means ‘what comes
after physics’.
20 T. Stehlik
From these we have inherited what we now refer to as the natural sci-
ences (e.g. physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology) and the social sci-
ences (e.g. psychology, sociology, economics, education). It is interesting
to note also that the Greek word logos means ‘knowledge of ’…so that, for
example, the word psychology means ‘knowledge of the psyche’…and in
Ancient Greek the psyche referred more to what we would now under-
stand as the soul.
2.4 Plato and the First Academy

Plato (428–348 BC) is without doubt the most significant figure from
the Ancient Greek world in considering the development of modern edu-
cation. In fact, it has been claimed that “the European philosophical tra-
dition…consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead, cited in
Livingstone 1959: 111). Himself a student of the equally influential phi-
losopher Socrates (470–399 BC), Plato is credited with establishing the
first academy, a place for learning that was the template for what we
would consider today as formal educational institutions such as schools
and universities.
Plato embodied the ideal of philosophy encompassing ‘all bodies of
knowledge’, natural, moral, and metaphysical. For example, from him we
have inherited such diverse things as the notion of platonic love in human
relationships, as well as the mathematical formulae for platonic solids—
three dimensional geometric shapes such as cones, spheres, and cubes. The
well-known parable of ‘Plato’s Cave’ demonstrates his thinking around
the distinction between reality and perception, which in effect was an
early form of constructivism—the theory that the real world is not abso-
lute but is mediated and constructed by our individual perceptions of it,
which are in turn determined by culture, socialisation, and upbringing.
[Plato’s Cave: In Book VII of The Republic Plato outlines the ‘Allegory
of the cave’ as follows:
Ordinary people are imprisoned in a shadow-world cave, only able to
look at the wall. A fire behind them casts shadows of actors moving
between them and the fire. Unaware of the true reality hidden from them,
the prisoners believe that the shadows represent reality. When a prisoner
is released from the cave, he initially suffers from the sun’s blinding
brightness, yet as his eyes adjust he begins to see the truth. If he were to
return underground to enlighten his former fellow prisoners, they would
not believe him, for they couldn’t even imagine a world beyond the shad-
ows dominating their existence, for that is all they have ever known.]
Plato made aesthetic sensibility the basis of his ideal education system,
believing that “all grace of movement and harmony of living – the moral
disposition of the soul itself – are determined by aesthetic feeling: by the
recognition of rhythm and harmony” (REF Fuller?). This fundamental value
is significant to education and will be re-visited in subsequent chapters.
Plato wrote extensively about education for young children and was an
early adopter of the principle of freedom: “Avoid compulsion and let your
children’s lessons take the form of play. This will also help you to see what
they are naturally fitted for” (Republic VII: 536). The importance of play
for young children was ‘re-discovered’ in the nineteenth century by edu-
cators like Friedrich Froebel who is credited with establishing the first
kindergarten, with play-based learning now being a central theoretical
plank of early childhood education.
However, Plato’s Academy did not provide universal education for all
sections of Hellenic society—in fact, it was extremely exclusive, open only
to males and to those from certain families. This practice of education
being exclusive to certain sections of society, in particular males, has been
carried through the centuries and is still with us today in various forms.
Furthermore, Plato’s Academy was not based on any formal program of
study organised into separate subjects as we would know today. Plato’s
idea of learning was based around conversation and discussion on a range
of topics, based on the Socratic Method—a method that uses questioning as
the basis of discourse through reason and logic, or dialectics. The Socratic
Method—also referred to as Socratic questioning—recognises that the
process adopted in a learning situation is just as important as the content
under consideration, and is still a valid pedagogy.
[Pedagogy: from the Greek ‘to lead a child’. Modern definition: ‘the art
and science of teaching and learning’]
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was one of Plato’s students at the Academy
and carried on the Platonic tradition of seeing education as a process—
combining a study of the natural world with the development of moral
22 T. Stehlik
character, through dialogic communities incorporating the dialectic

method. His approach to scientific method was founded on empiricism,
the view that we can only arrive at truth and factual knowledge through
direct sensory experience. This is the basis of all modern science that relies
on methodical observation, experimentation, testing, and proving of
hypotheses to arrive at logical conclusions. From Aristotle we have inher-
ited the methodology of action research, defined as “systematic inquiry by
practitioners about their own practices” (Zeichner 1993: 200). Aristotelian
Action Research maintains that the process of bridging the gap between
theory and practice can occur through the action-reflection cycle—rec-
ognising that practically oriented, deliberative activity is important, but
that reflecting on and theorising about that activity will enhance the
learning process. This is particularly important today in the notion of the
reflective practitioner and the ‘Teacher as Researcher movement’, which
will be discussed further in Part IV.
Aristotle however was also a key figure in developing the branch of
Metaphysical Philosophy that influenced philosophical thinking into the
medieval period, which became dominated by the church and theology.
While the rise and spread of the Roman Empire saw classical Greek phil-
osophical thinking followed and maintained, with many extant examples
of references to figures like Plato and Aristotle in Roman art and litera-
ture, the vast empire eventually collapsed around the fifth century AD,
when much of this intellectual tradition became lost to the western world.
The period in history which followed is therefore referred to as the Dark
Ages, when formal academic learning almost disappeared from secular
life and was only to be found in monasteries, with Latin becoming the
medium for written thought, while knowledge of Ancient Greek was
almost completely lost.
2.5 Medieval Philosophy

It is very interesting to note that the rise of the Islamic world from
about the eighth century AD was responsible for maintaining and
developing some of the ancient philosophical traditions that were oth-
erwise lost to the west, in addition to introducing many of the scientific
and intellectual foundations that we take for granted today. For exam-
ple, up until that time, the numbering system was based on Roman
numerals, and the Romans did not have the concept of zero. The mod-
ern numbering system that we use today was introduced by Persian and
Arabic mathematicians, who also gave us words like algebra (al-jabr, in
Arabic literally means ‘bone setting’).
Meanwhile, the domination of the Christian church and clergy in the
so-called Dark Ages saw secular knowledge being replaced by sacred
knowledge in Europe, with monasteries becoming centres of learning,
and knowledge of Ancient Greek only being kept alive in remote places
such as Ireland.
An enduring image and concept from Christian theology that is rele-
vant to our discussion is the Tree of Knowledge. While earlier references to
this go back to Babylonian times, the version outlined in Genesis, the
first chapter of the Bible, provides the foundation not only for the notion
of ‘original sin’, but of our modern concept of knowledge. In that story,
the Tree of Knowledge bears the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve eat
despite being warned not to. Prior to that, humans did not have a con-
cept of good and evil; everything in the Garden of Eden was good. After
the ‘Fall of Man’, humanity became exposed to knowledge of everything
that was available, both good and bad, including things that were sinful,
as represented by Adam and Eve ‘losing their innocence’ and covering
their naked bodies. Gaining knowledge therefore implies a duality of bal-
ancing knowledge of the good with knowledge of the bad, requiring the
need for new social codes based on strict morality—greatly influencing
education.
The aesthetic sensibilities that were so much a part of the Platonic
tradition therefore were overridden by Christian morality into the
Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries), with only the logical intel-
lectualism of the Aristotelian tradition remaining from the world of
classical philosophical thought. The key outcome from this period was
the development of the philosophy of religion, with major figures
including Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, the former a bishop and the
latter a monk.
Augustine (354–430 AD), later to become canonised as St Augustine,
was a key figure in the latter part of the Roman Empire. His contribution
24 T. Stehlik
to education included recognising the importance of critical thinking

skills, an idea that was taken up with vigour by philosophers in the mod-
ern period.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD) was an Italian cleric who intro-
duced specific ideas about teaching, learning, and pedagogy which have
greatly influenced modern education. For example, he believed that
teaching in ‘classes’ was better than giving individual tuition, as it encour-
aged competition, emulation, group discussion, and debate.
However, probably the most significant development in education
during the medieval period was the establishment of universities during
the Carolingian Empire (800–888), so named after the emperor
Charlemagne (742–814 AD), during whose reign most of Western
Europe was again united under one dynasty 300 years after the decline of
the first Roman Empire. Charlemagne established by decree schools in
abbeys across his extensive dominions, which became known as the
Scholastic tradition, from the word scholastics, which literally meant
‘schoolmen’. From these centres of learning, modern universities gradu-
ally evolved, providing a ‘universal education’ initially for clerics, eventu-
ally becoming open to the secular world.
In the field of education and learning the Carolingian age saw the estab-
lishment of a common basis for European scholarship…If medieval Europe
possessed a common fund of ideas, it was largely due to the work of
Carolingian scholars. (Strayer 1955: 52)
2.6 Modern Philosophy

The Renaissance period (1355–1650) saw a return to classical Greco-
Roman thought and revival of aesthetic activity and Platonism, which
can be seen today represented in classical art and architecture from the
period, as well the emergence of the idea of Humanism. Although still
based on a rationalist and logical structure of learning, Humanism
departed significantly from the medieval pre-occupation with the afterlife
by being more concerned with the here-and-now and the development of
human self-realisation, reinforced by the recognition that the Greeks and
Romans had built up magnificent civilisations based on their native tal-

ents rather than superstition or faith (Fuller 1955).
The Renaissance was followed by a period from the early 1700s known
as the Enlightenment, which saw scientific methods and reductionist
approaches to knowledge gaining traction in what was actually a reaction
against the monarchy and the church, as well as building on advances in
technology and scientific discovery. Enlightenment thinking sparked
radical movements that eventually led to social upheavals such as the
French revolution in Europe and the American War of Independence,
and would ultimately result in the modern notions of economic rational-
ism, free markets, and the universal rights of the individual.
Enlightenment thinking can be credited with the promulgation and
secularisation of knowledge that was previously held and controlled by
the church and the clergy, and was seen at the time as crucial for social
and individual emancipation and education of the masses. A great exam-
ple of this is the publication of Encyclopaedia, with the first English
Cyclopedia published in 1728, followed by the more comprehensive
French encyclopaedia edited by Denis Diderot from 1751 to 1772 and
the first major reference book to feature a large number of separate con-
tributors. Diderot famously claimed that he wanted to ‘change the way
people think’ by making available ‘all the world’s knowledge’ to the pub-
lic and future generations. While earlier Greek publications such as
Geographica by Strabo from around 75 BC had mapped knowledge of the
ancient known world, by the 1700s the discovery of ‘new worlds’ had
greatly expanded the possible horizons of knowledge and consciousness.
Furthermore, the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes
Gutenberg had since made it possible to promulgate written information
more widely to those who were literate and could afford access to books,
leading to the establishment of some the world’s great libraries.
One of the foremost of the Enlightenment thinkers was the English
philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). His influence on education
included the notion that a child is born with no pre-determined ideas,
that their mind is different from an adult’s and is effectively a blank slate,
or tabula rasa. Locke’s concept of the ‘noble savage’—that the native peo-
ple of places like the recently discovered New World deserved recognition
as sentient human beings with souls—greatly influenced the democratic
26 T. Stehlik
independence movement in America. Locke also developed a theory of

mind that has evolved into modern ideas about identity and the self,
based on the value of introspection (Gibson 1917). In this, he was in turn
influenced by the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596–1650) who
is credited with the saying ‘I think, therefore I am’—an aphorism which
puts self-consciousness and self-awareness at the centre of any intellectual
or sensory process. In addition to his theories of dualism—the separation
of mind and body, in which each can be in control of the other—Descartes
invented key mathematical principles and symbols that are still funda-
mental to mathematics today: Cartesian coordinates to map a point in
space as represented on x and y axes, and superscript to represent a num-
ber multiplied by itself (squared or cubed for example), to name only
two.
However, the most influential person from this period who is credited
with being the ‘father of modern education’ was Comenius (Jan Amos
Komensky 1592–1670), a Czech educator who was an early champion of
universal education. In his book Didactica Magna (1633), Comenius
outlined an educational sequence and structure that would lay the foun-
dations for our modern education systems: kindergarten, elementary
school, secondary school, college, and university, with society being
responsible for the education of all its children until the age of 18. He was
an early advocate of providing education ‘according to the nature of the
child’ which evolved into a strong movement in late eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century European educational thought. For Comenius:
…the child was seen as a non-distorted image of God and was not to be
abused by brutality or force, but be subject to a Christian upbringing and
education. For its time [this] was a very positive view of the child as a gift
from God, yet in need of discipline and education. (Dahlin 2006: 11)
Comenius was not only a theorist but also a pragmatist, introducing a

number of innovative and practical educational resources and methods.
He believed that a child should learn to read in their mother tongue, and
so published pictorial textbooks for children, written in their own lan-
guage rather than in Latin. His Orbis Pictus published in 1658 is a type
of encyclopaedia of general knowledge and one of the first picture books
produced expressly for children, subsequently published in many differ-

ent languages (Pikkarainen 2012).
Many people will have heard of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss phi-
losopher who in 1762 published his controversial book Emile, or On
Education. In this work, Rousseau took the idea of education ‘according
to the nature of the child’ to its extreme, returning to the Platonic prin-
ciple of freedom and going further to advise that “you should give your
scholar no verbal lessons; he should be taught by experience alone”
(Rousseau 1921: 56). Emile was presented as an idealised child whose
education was mapped out by Rousseau in his treatise as a series of spe-
cific and very didactic instructions to his tutor. Even though unrealistic
for universal public education—Emile was to receive one-to-one tuition
in a pleasant country house and be allowed free play whenever he liked—
Rousseau’s theories which included a strong aversion to treating children
as passive recipients of factual information gained strong traction and
have been further championed by twentieth-century educationalists like
John Dewey and Paolo Freire (see below). In addition his view that the
child should be regarded as a child and not a small adult was revolution-
ary, but has eventually become acknowledged and is discussed in detail in
Part III, ‘The Kingdom of Childhood’. Rousseau’s influence on educa-
tional theory and practice has been considered ‘tremendous’, in that he is
also credited “with giving a new theme to children’s books: the apprecia-
tion of the wonders of nature” (Patterson 1971: 8).
Meanwhile, another Swiss philosopher, Johan Pestalozzi (1746–1827),
also believed that every aspect of a child’s life contributed to the formation
of their character, personality, and reason, which is encapsulated in his
declaration of ‘learning by head, heart and hands’. This idea of a child-
centred approach to learning and of educating ‘the whole person’ led
directly to the work of Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) who has already
been mentioned as the founder of the kindergarten movement and a pro-
moter of learning through play and games.
‘Head, heart, and hands’ and ‘educating the whole child’ are also some
of the foundational principles behind the educational philosophy of
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), who founded the worldwide Waldorf
School movement in 1919, based on his theories of child development
which were outlined in his extensive writings and lectures. Steiner
28 T. Stehlik
Education and the Waldorf School approach will be discussed in some

detail in Chap. 10, but it is sufficient to note here that Steiner was not
only building on the earlier work of German philosophers Friedrich
Schiller and Johann von Goethe but returning to the Platonic ideal of
aesthetic sensibility—‘the recognition of rhythm and harmony’.
Before moving on, it is apparent that up until now all the historical
figures mentioned have been men. You may be asking, were there no
women philosophers? The answer is ‘yes’, but as in many other fields, the
contribution of women throughout history has not received the same
attention, respect, and coverage as men. One who is definitely worthy of
mention is Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), an English writer and
philosopher who was a follower of Rousseau but also an early feminist
and champion of equality of opportunity for women, writing about the
education of girls who had largely been ignored in the story of Emile.
Unfortunately Wollstonecraft died young (in childbirth) and is mostly
remembered now as the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of
Frankenstein. However, contemporary feminists have recognised her
important contribution to literature—including children’s literature—
and her perceptive views on educational equity, as shown in this quote:
Women are not naturally inferior to men – they appear to be only because
they lack education. (Wollstonecraft 1792)
The Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952)

also contributed to the growth of freedom in education through her
pioneering work in establishing the Montessori Method and the associ-
ated worldwide movement in early and elementary schooling, based on
the view of the child being allowed to explore the natural world and learn
through a stimulating environment. Even more interesting was the fact
that, as an example of a woman who rose above nineteenth-century prej-
udices to become a celebrated physician, academic, and educator,
Montessori single-handedly created worldwide interest in the importance
of educating young children in a more holistic, humane, and loving way
through her charisma and force of personality. Her lecture tours of
Europe, India, and America throughout the early part of the twentieth
century backed by her innovative use of film and the keen interest of the
media in her “youthful feminine charm” combined with her “professional

accomplishments and intellectual ability” did much to support the estab-
lishment of many schools based on her methods (Kramer 1976: 53). This
was an early example of the way in which the ‘cult of personality’ could
influence and direct public opinion in a particular field through the
growing power of the media, which can be seen today in the way in
which many people base their information and opinions on what they
receive through the popular media, by definition mediated information.
Another important contributor to the development of our contempo-
rary understanding of early childhood education was the English activist,
social reformer, and educator Margaret McMillan (1860–1931), who was
motivated by the work of Froebel to establish nursery schools in England
for poor and deprived children suffering from the urban squalor resulting
from the industrial conditions in Victorian and Edwardian London. Her
pioneering of a play-centred approach in a natural setting for infants has
only recently become established practice in early childhood learning and
has provided the foundation for current trends such as the Forest School
movement (see Chaps. 6 and 7).
2.7 Types of Knowledge

Returning to the educational world view of the Ancient Greeks, it is
important to note their understanding that knowledge was not absolute,
but relative to varying applied situations and contexts. We can identify at
least four different types of knowledge from ancient philosophy, but this
list is not exhaustive and neither are the types completely separate or in
any particular order, as they can overlap and interact. However, it is useful
to know these terms and to be able to identify these knowledge types, and
their application in an educational sense will be immediately obvious:
Episteme—This is scientific knowledge that is based on enquiry, research,

and evidence, as exemplified in laws and principles that have been
proven and accepted as fact, for example, Newton’s first law or math-
ematical theorems. From this, we understand the word epistemology to
mean the theory of knowledge.
30 T. Stehlik
Techné—This is craft or art knowledge—practical skill-based knowledge

used in the process of creating and making products. From this we
have the word technology, which is understood to be applied science or
in fact episteme applied to practical applications.
Praxis—This is knowledge based in social practice and implies some
form of action. In fact, acting or being in the world requires praxis
knowledge and acknowledges the agency of the individual.
Phronesis—This is an interesting and subtle form of professional knowl-
edge that is more a kind of virtue-infused wisdom based on experience,
rather than abstract scientific or values-free technical knowledge.
Wisdom then is an important word to unpack and understand, and it

is not surprising that the Greek philosopher Heraclitus came up with a
definition as far back as the sixth century BC:
To see things accurately, and not rely on prejudices and preconceptions.
We associate wisdom now with the later stages of human development.

For example, we would not think that a child possessed wisdom; we
assume that wisdom comes with age and experience. However, we would
also hope that a young child, in their formative and early years, would
not have already developed ‘prejudices and preconceptions’ but would be
open to all new information and experiences with a sense of unbiased
inquiry. So why would they not possess wisdom? Perhaps they do… but
perhaps we also need to ask whether young children can ‘see things accu-
rately’, and in fact need to acknowledge that for very young children,
their world view is very limited and information is not only sensory but
is mediated and often interpreted (through their own prejudices and pre-
conceptions) by the adults who surround and are responsible for them
and to a certain extent by other children—siblings, relatives, friends,
schoolmates. A word that is often used in conjunction with the getting of
wisdom is insight—which perhaps is a more accurate term for the kind of
internalised and occult knowledge that may be gained with age and
experience.
[Occult = secret, or hidden]

Child development will be discussed more comprehensively in Part
III, but for now it is sufficient to ponder on the various forms of knowl-
edge as presented above, and to think about how they are associated with
different ages and stages of development, and whether the concept of
wisdom is something that comes to people only when they attain adult-
hood (like wisdom teeth). Suffice to say that the Socratic Method, intro-
duced above, is based on the assumption that discourse or dialectic
conversation requires putting aside one’s prejudices and preconceptions
to arrive at an accurate understanding of any topic by listening only to
the rational line of argument based on logic and evidence, rather than on
bias or emotion. In this regard, wisdom can transcend as well as encom-
pass all of the types of knowledge discussed. Phronesis is not values-free
and can result in a biased and narrow-minded view. Wisdom can be
informed by, as well as be a result of, praxis. Episteme can involve purely
contemplative theoretical activity which has no practical application. The
effects of techné without a moral compass informed by wisdom can be
disturbing in the creation of art, and deadly as a result of the products of
technology.
2.8 T
he Evolution of Philosophy
and Knowledge
Throughout the twentieth century, educational philosophy can be seen to
be an interesting but selective accumulation of most of the theory and
practice that evolved over the preceding two and a half centuries of west-
ern philosophical thought. Newton’s image of ‘standing on the shoulders
of giants’ in order to see more clearly by building on the work of those
who have gone before is apt.
For example, the American educationalist John Dewey (1859–1952)
built on the work of Rousseau by also emphasising the importance of
experience with his well-known idea of ‘learning by doing’. Dewey and
his student George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) spearheaded pragmatism
in philosophical thought, “often seen as the first original philosophical
32 T. Stehlik
‘school’ to originate from North America” (Biesta 2012: 247). Pragmatism

suggests among other things that consciousness is not separated from
action and interaction, but is an integral part of both—a nod to the idea
of praxis. Dewey also established an early form of ‘free school’ in Chicago
in the late 1890s—the Laboratory Schools (see Chap. 4). Writing in the
1920s, the American adult educator Eduard Lindeman (1885–1953)
believed that education in the future would be defined ‘by situations, not
subjects’, echoing the Platonic ideal of freedom. The Brazilian Paolo
Freire (1921–1997) was a community educator and activist who had
strong and influential views on child education, also decrying the ‘jug
and mug’ approach of filling ‘empty vessels’ with facts. His metaphor
however was the ‘banking concept’ of education, where “students are the
depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire 1996: 233).
Contemporary educationalists such as Daisy Christodoulou point out
how pervasive these educational theories have become in the modern
classroom and curriculum, giving examples from the United Kingdom
where the teaching of factual knowledge has almost disappeared in favour
of students learning through self-directed inquiry-based projects. She
suggests that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that
committing facts to long-term memory is actually critical to developing
problem-solving and critical thinking skills (Christodoulou 2014).
The English educationalist Herbert Read, writing about the problem
of education in the aftermath of World War II, set out an elegant appeal
for returning to the Platonic ideal of aesthetic sensibility being the basis
of an ideal modern education system in his fascinating text—Education
through art (1948). Subsequent chapters will expand upon this and
include more of the views of late twentieth-century and contemporary
educational commentators and philosophers on the ‘problem of educa-
tion’ in modern times.
However, larger shifts in thinking that occurred throughout the twen-
tieth century are also important to consider in bringing our historical
overview of educational philosophy up to date. These include the influ-
ential work of American Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) whose book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced the idea of paradigm shifts in
thinking and knowledge—that throughout history we have witnessed
points in time where a revolution occurred that challenged accepted
knowledge, and a new paradigm (world view, or framework of under-

standing) emerged. Examples from history include the universal view
that the world was flat until proven otherwise through scientific explora-
tion and discovery, the belief that the earth was the centre of the universe
until proven otherwise by Galileo and others, and so on. During the last
century, we have witnessed paradigm shifts in scientific thinking, with
Newtonian physics being extended by Einstein’s theory of relativity, and
even supplanted by quantum physics.
There have also been paradigm shifts in general thinking across a range
of disciplines from the rational/mechanistic/dualist view inherited from
Aristotle to more organic/biological/integral ways of seeing the world.
These include the work of James Lovelock (1989) whose Gaia theory sug-
gests that the planet as a whole is a self-regulating and holistic entity, and
the emergence of Chaos Theory (Gleick 1987), leading to the concepts of
complex adaptive systems and self-regulating organisations. At the same
time, Aristotelian binary logic has led directly to the development of
computer language (‘bits’ = binary digits) and enabled a revolution in
information technology, mass media, communication, and entertain-
ment, through personal devices linked by the world wide web.
So while we can say that a majority of individuals in the modern west-
ern world now have unprecedented access to information and knowledge,
as a collective civilisation we have advanced certain forms of knowledge
at the expense of others. Knowledge has become more and more special-
ised, as reinforced by increasingly narrow education pathways, so that
someone could be an ‘expert’ in a very obscure subject area but have very
limited general knowledge. For example, the average person is no longer
brought up with the types of basic survival knowledge and skills that
existed in agricultural and subsistence societies prior to the industrial
revolution, reliant as they are on power, water, food, and basic necessities
coming from somewhere else at the turn of a switch or tap or a visit to the
supermarket. Teaching these ‘disappearing skills’ is now being offered in
‘Repair cafés’, for example, in Edinburgh where people can learn among
other things the apparently lost art of darning (Moore 2017). Many chil-
dren growing up in cities and urban environments often do not even
know that milk comes from cows—they have only experienced it coming
out of a carton. As we will see in subsequent chapters, ‘back to nature’
34 T. Stehlik
movements in education have also been part of a shift in thinking, as a

reaction against this industrial/intellectual/rational model of schooling
that we seem to have inherited.
2.9 T
he Importance of Philosophy
to Education
Education as we know it today in all its various forms could be consid-
ered to have evolved and developed over the course of history from the
thinking, writing, actions, and influence of the philosophers introduced
and discussed in this chapter. Educational institutions structure their
programs around subject categories in the natural and social sciences that
originated in Ancient Greece. Teachers use forms of pedagogy such as
Socratic questioning in the classroom on a daily basis and engage in
Aristotelian practitioner action research—whether they are aware of it or
not. The word pedagogy itself is derived from the Greek and literally
means to lead a child. It is now used widely to refer to the wide range of
theories and practices applied in teaching and learning situations, and has
been defined as “the art or science of teaching” (dictionary.com).
Many educational programs are still based on the Renaissance idea of
providing a general liberal education that crosses disciplines and inte-
grates the sciences with the arts, combining practical knowledge with
aesthetic sensibility. Religious schools are still closely linked to theologi-
cal traditions as well as offering a modern curriculum. Individuals use
Encyclopaedia and/or their modern equivalent—the Internet—to access
information and knowledge.
Yet it is important to distinguish between information and knowledge.
As the illustration quite simply suggests, information can be a random
series of unconnected facts, figures, or opinions; knowledge requires
understanding, effort, and agency in ‘joining the dots’ and looking for
patterns, sequences, and structures that make sense and give meaning
(Fig. 2.1).
However, as we have seen, knowledge is not absolute or free from val-
ues, morals, or contexts and raises the question of whether all knowledge
Fig. 2.1 Joining the dots—turning information into knowledge
should be freely available to all citizens in a democratic ideal, whether

there are some things that we need to know while other things are just nice
to know, and in fact given the almost infinite possibilities available in the
information age, how do we make decisions about what forms of knowl-
edge are important for society to reproduce and pass on to subsequent
generations? This becomes the dilemma in determining what we teach,
how we teach it, when we teach it, and ultimately, why?
A further set of questions arises in discussing the historical develop-
ment of philosophy, education, and knowledge over the period of west-
ern civilisation that has been the focus of this chapter. That is: To what
extent is knowledge cumulative over time? As a civilisation, have we
become more collectively wise as a result of what we have learned from
history? The more educated we become, should not the general level of
wisdom in the world increase? If so, why do we still have wars, hunger,
disadvantage, and inequality? Of course, it is apparent that education is
not universally available for every world citizen in the same way, and for
36 T. Stehlik
many not at all. In addition there are many forms of knowledge that have
been lost over time which actually may have contributed to our better
survival as a species—practical, spiritual, and collective knowledge. The
modern era seems to be dominated by technical knowledge which in
many forms is destructive; but at the same time, we are experiencing an
unprecedented wave of global consciousness driven by the information age
and the very same technology. Some contemporary commentators believe
however that as part of the evolutionary process, human consciousness is
evolving, and that civilisation as we know it could be experiencing a shift
from the mechanistic/industrial model to a more integral/collective/spiri-
tual awareness (Dahlin 2006; Zajonc 2016).
The second chapter in Part I will then continue to address these ques-
tions in the light of what we have inherited and learned from educational
philosophy through history up to the present time and begin to explore
and unpack the function and purpose of education, then and now.
References
Biesta, G. (2012). George Herbert Mead: Formation through communication.
In P. Siljander, A. Kivela, & A. Sutinen (Eds.), Theories of Bildung and growth:
Connections and controversies between continental educational thinking and
American pragmatism (pp. 247–260). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven myths about education. Oxfordshire/New York:
Routledge.
Dahlin, B. (2006). Education, history and be(com)ing human: Two essays in phi-
losophy and education. Karlstad: Karlstad University.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin.
Frohnmayer, J. (2016). Socrates the rower: How rowing informs philosophy.
Champaign: Common Ground Publishing.
Fuller, B. A. G. (1955). A history of philosophy (3rd ed.). New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Gibson, J. (1917). Locke’s theory of knowledge and its historical relations. London:
Cambridge University Press.
Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Viking Books.
Kramer, R. (1976). Maria Montessori: A biography. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Livingstone, R. (1959). The rainbow bridge and other essays on education. London:
Pall Mall Press.
Lovelock, J. (1989). The ages of Gaia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, S. (2017, April 13). Shop till you drop belongs to a long-gone decade of
boom. The Guardian, p. 5.
Patterson, S. (1971). Rousseau’s Emile and early children’s literature. Metuchen:
The Scarecrow Press.
Pikkarainen, E. (2012). Signs of reality: The idea of General Bildung by JA
Comenius. In P. Siljander, A. Kivela, & A. Sutinen (Eds.), Theories of Bildung
and growth: Connections and controversies between continental educational
thinking and American pragmatism (pp. 19–29). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Read, H. (1948). Education through art. London: Faber and Faber.
Rousseau, J. J. (1921). Emile, or on education (trans: Foxley, B.). London: Dent.
Strayer, J. (1955). Western Europe in the Middle Ages: A short history. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc.
Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). Vindication of the rights of woman. London:
J. Johnson.
Zajonc, A. (2016). Contemplation in education. In K. A. Schonert-Reichl &
R. W. Roeser (Eds.), The handbook of mindfulness in education. New York:
Springer.
Zeichner, K. M. (1993). Action research: Personal renewal and social construc-
tion. Eduational Action Research, 1, 199–219.
3
The Purpose of Education
This chapter discusses the purpose of education in modern societies,

given the systems of thought that we have inherited, and addresses the
question of the extent to which the purpose of education is to develop the
individual as well as to benefit society. Notions of reciprocity are exam-
ined—for example, individual uniqueness balanced with the common
good and reproduction of society balanced with developing character.
Should school-based learning be oriented towards a vocation or for life-
long learning? How do we develop and value human and cultural
capital?
3.1 Definitions, Meanings, and Models

‘Education’ is a word loaded with meaning, and with different meanings.
The word itself comes from the Latin educationem, meaning ‘a rearing,
training’.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_3
40 T. Stehlik
Definitions of education from the Online Dictionary include:
1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, devel-

oping the powers of reasoning and judgement, and generally of pre-
paring oneself or others intellectually for mature life
2. the act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or
skills, as for a profession
3. a degree, level, or kind of schooling: for example, a university

education
4. the result produced by instruction, training, or study: to show one’s
education
The first two definitions refer to the word education in its verb form,
as an act or process that can be experienced; the others imply the noun
form, of education as a ‘thing’ that an individual can possess or show, for
example, by a diploma or certificate, by a title or position.
These definitions are also rather limited in terms of the holistic and
universal view of education taken in this book and easily demonstrated
with practical examples. For example, ‘preparing oneself or others intel-
lectually for mature life’ is a purely academic view of education and is not
inclusive of the possibility of preparing oneself physically, emotionally, or
spiritually. Given the quote at the head of this chapter, Plato believed that
‘spiritual ignorance’ was a fatal flaw in education at both the individual
and societal levels, which, as will be discussed later in the chapter, should
be considered as reciprocal parts of a larger whole. We have also seen
emotional intelligence emerge in the last few decades as a framework for
identifying and even measuring human emotions, attitudes, and behav-
iours. If we can measure IQ (intelligence quotient), the argument is that
we can also measure the emotional quotient, or EQ (Goleman 1995).
Finally, physical development is critical for young children as manifest in
physical education, sport, movement, and also the manual arts, which
have long been part of school curricula.
Holistic education by definition includes the whole child or person,
and attending to the ‘head, hands, and heart’ is reflected in the pedagogi-
cal approach of attending to respectively knowledge, skills, and attitude in
all subject areas. In psychology, this trilogy is referred to as the cognitive,
The Purpose of Education 41
psychomotor, and affective domains. While the second definition above

includes ‘knowledge or skills’, this cancels out the notion of needing to
combine both knowledge and skill, and leaves out the affective domain
altogether. One could think of many professions where the affective
domain would be as crucial as the other two in daily work-life situations,
for example—nursing, social work, and teaching, to name a few.
A well-known and pervasive model popularised in the 1950s by
American psychologist Benjamin Bloom (1913–1999) actually separates
the act or process of learning into these three domains and attempts to
map a sequential taxonomy of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, starting at
basic levels and building cumulatively to mastery level in each domain.
Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956) has received criticism over the
years as being too instrumental and simplistic, but as with any model, it
is worth considering as a representation of what might actually be hap-
pening in the act or process of learning, especially in considering educa-
tion as a lifelong process, where an individual at any age may find
themselves on a ‘lower rung’ of one or more of the domains in Bloom’s
ladder when confronted with new learning situations. In the realm of
skills, the classic example is learning to drive a car—a complicated series
of manual skills that become second nature after practice, but at first puts
one in the situation of novice at the level of basic fundamental move-
ment. We even describe someone who is a novice in a given situation or
context as ‘being on L plates’. In the affective domain, human interac-
tions and relationships are constantly requiring adjustments in attitude
and understanding. Becoming a parent is a significant example of this
and will in fact be explored in more depth in Chap. 7.
‘Imparting or acquiring general knowledge’ is reflected in what is gen-
erally referred to as a liberal education, providing a sound basis in a range
of subject areas that will be useful for life, or as a foundation for further
specialised study, as distinct from a vocational education which is aimed at
a specific trade or occupation. At this point we need to interrogate the
word training, which is one of the initial Latin meanings of education,
but nowadays has different connotations. We apply the word in a wide
spectrum of contexts: for example, from training for athletics or sport,
training animals such as horses, right down to toilet training. But is train-
ing the same as education? If not, how is it different? We often associate
42 T. Stehlik
training with skill-based activity, not ‘intellectual preparation’.

Unfortunately, this has produced a two-tiered system of education where
those pursuing a vocational path are often seen as less academic than
those pursuing a general or professional path.
Even though I believe training should be seen as a sub-set of education
in the holistic and inclusive view of education this book is promoting, as
we shall see in the next chapter, school systems and educational institu-
tional structures have often developed along dual lines, serving to pro-
mote and maintain this distinction between the practical and the
academic. ‘Developing the powers of reason and judgement’, as suggested
above in the first definition of education, could equally apply to learning
a practical trade as to gaining a liberal education, which we assume
involves learning about the society one has been born into, and becoming
socialised into the morals and values of that society. This brings us back
to two philosophical questions: (1) the difference between applied learn-
ing and learning for its own sake and (2) reciprocity between the indi-
vidual and society.
3.2 Practical and Contemplative Activity

Practical activity is undertaken for a purpose or goal. For the benefit of
society, it is therefore described as self-centred and focused on bettering
ourselves, for example, through technology and the applied sciences by
creating and improving products, services, and quality of life. The ques-
tion asked is ‘What good is it?’. If an activity cannot be shown to have
practical application and contribute towards the survival and develop-
ment of the species, is it worth pursuing? Is it rather an indulgence and a
waste of time to pursue at all?
Compare this with contemplative activity which is an end in itself,
may serve no apparent practical purpose, and is purely a result of curios-
ity and inquisitiveness. Instead of being self-centred, it is self-transcending.
It may come from a desire to explain things, to look for patterns and
meaning. The questions asked are ‘Why is it?’ and ‘What is it?’. This is
exemplified by the pure sciences (such as mathematics or logic) as distinct
from the applied sciences (such as engineering or medical science). Or in

the social sciences, examples include theorising about very obscure ques-
tions such as ‘whether Jesus was gay’, which was the actual topic of an
Australian PhD thesis. Many would consider this kind of study to have
no practical use whatsoever, but it is still a form of education, with the
potential to inform or at least get other people thinking, debating, and
probably arguing about the topic…and if so it would be a perfect exam-
ple of the Socratic Method, developing the powers of reasoning and
judgement.
According to classical philosophy, education needs to serve both pur-
poses—practical and contemplative. The act or process of discourse, criti-
cal thinking, and contemplation are seen as educative even if they produce
no perceived outcomes. Moral values and building character should be
seen as equally important to society as learning a craft or a skill. Compare
this with our education systems now which are based on learning objec-
tives, achievement, testing, and outcomes—all focused on pre-determined
goals. Contemporary commentators like Ken Robinson believe that
‘schools kill creativity’ through this approach, and that creativity leads to
discovering things for the sake of interest only with no immediate useful-
ness (Robinson 2006). If we take the view that we need to understand the
world in order to better it, then contemplative activity can equally lead to
applied and practical outcomes. Albert Einstein is a great example of this
process.
Equally, if we are always just ‘eyeing the prize’, or focussing on out-
comes, achievements, or goals, then all human activity would consist of
concentrating entirely on the ends without considering the means. In
reality, for example, in working life, the practical and the contemplative
should be intertwined. ‘Job satisfaction’ is a concept that is inclusive of
doing things for some motive or practical outcome required by the job,
as well as enjoying the process of the work as an end in itself. In an edu-
cational setting, the equivalent would be focussing on academic outcomes
as well as recognising that the education process itself is part of the bigger
picture. The job satisfaction argument loses its attraction however, the
more mundane and labour-intensive a job is—for example, working on a
production line, factory work, repetitive unskilled labouring—where
44 T. Stehlik
there is not much to contemplate about the process of repeating the same
act day in, day out. For this reason, early industrialists tried to interest
factory workers in ‘bettering themselves’ through offering evening classes
in liberal studies subjects—not at all related to their trade or vocation.
A classic example of this occurred in Germany after World War I when
the industrialist Emil Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette
factory in Stuttgart, organised free afternoon lessons in foreign lan-
guages, painting, history, and geography as an introduction to the
broader questions of life and learning, generously counted as paid work
time. Molt was trying to put into practice the recognition of contempla-
tive activity in economic life, not just for the goal of increased productiv-
ity for his business but to give an opportunity for second chance learning
to the workers who had experienced very limited formal education pro-
vided by the state. However, despite the best of intentions, Molt soon
found participation in these classes declining; the workers were not
interested in developing themselves beyond the immediate needs of the
workplace. Molt came to a realisation that a predisposition for learning
how to learn was generally lacking in the consciousness and outlook of
his employees:
What soon became apparent was that learning has to be relearned by

adults…From this I concluded that one must begin with the young if
forces are to be successfully schooled and interests awakened. I became
absorbed by the idea of providing for children what was no longer possible
in later years, and of opening the door to education for all children, regard-
less of their parents’ income. (Murphy 1991: 136–137)
This realisation led to the founding of the first free Waldorf School in
1919, which will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 10. Meanwhile,
this story reinforces another key ingredient in education—the motivation
to learn. In distinguishing between adult learning and educating chil-
dren, it will be seen that the difference between extrinsic motivation
(imposed by rewards, for example, good marks or praise from the teacher)
and intrinsic motivation (wanting to learn for personal fulfilment) is
significant.
3.3 Reciprocity
The concept of reciprocity suggests some kind of learning contract
between the individual and society. State-funded public education is
therefore seen as an investment in future generations that will benefit
both the state and the individuals with returns on this investment. This
view has echoes of Friere’s ‘banking concept’ of education—in this case
implying that education will be of measurable value to society and gener-
ate human and social capital. The definition of education as personal
possession or property (such as a degree or diploma) also implies a
resource that can be translated into monetary value or wealth, which can
contribute to a person’s social capital. As will be discussed in Part II,
merely by attending an elite school or university can generate personal
social capital and greatly improve a person’s chances in making their way
in the world. In this respect, education can be seen as a form of currency.
And just like money can be forged, parchments and academic transcripts
can be faked, assignments can be bought, false qualifications can be
claimed or bought online from dodgy universities (McDonagh 2017), so
how does one really ‘show one’s education’?
In 2012, every third adult in the OECD had attained a tertiary degree.
(Payton 2017: 3)
What we have seen in this capitalist view of education is the value of

credentials diminishing over time, so that, for example, a bachelor degree
might once have been highly thought of and be the minimum require-
ment for entry into a profession, whereas now a higher degree such as a
master’s might be the minimum qualifying degree. This concept of ‘cre-
dential creep’ turns education into an economic commodity, with the
laws of diminishing returns, and supply and demand applying, so that in
many OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development) countries one now finds PhD graduates driving taxis, their
qualification almost worthless as a job ticket. Recent developments in the
recruitment of graduates in the United Kingdom have even seen univer-
sity qualifications as irrelevant in assessing new employees by global firms
46 T. Stehlik
such as Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Penguin Random

House—with potential, creativity, and subjective qualities like ‘strengths
and ideas’ considered more important. Apparently, Ernst & Young has
found “no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education
correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications
undertaken” and that “screening students based on academic perfor-
mance alone was too blunt an approach to recruitment” (Sherriff 2015:
1). In Australia, the most recent census data at the time of writing showed
that in the five-year period between 2006 and 2011, postgraduate degree
completions rose from 413,093 to 631,121, an increase of 52.8%, while
the number of people who held a bachelor degree rose by 27.2%, from
1.8 million to 2.3 million (Hall 2012). All of the above begs yet another
question:
The more qualified a society’s citizens become, to what extent does that society
become more ‘educated’?
It also leads to the question: What are the reciprocal benefits for soci-
ety of investing in education? Reciprocity recognises that each individual
is unique and this uniqueness will be of value to the community. But
uniqueness has no value in isolation—therefore, education must be a
process not only of individuation but also of integration.
For Plato the supreme aim of education is human goodness, but goodness
of a far wider kind than our normal use of the word suggests….the igno-
rance most fatal to states and individuals is not ignorance in the field of
technology or of the professions, but spiritual ignorance. So he conceives
education essentially as a training in values. (Livingstone 1959: 118–119)
One of the perceived purposes of education is to socialise our children

by integrating them into the values, morals, and rules of our society and
culture, as well as ideally turn out individuals who will also benefit society
in some way, for example, as workers, parents, and model citizens. This
process of enculturation highlights the Platonic notion of ‘goodness’ in
the sense that is suggested in the quote above—a type of universal human
goodness “intimate with the eternal order of the music of the spheres”
(Plato, Laws, p. 689). Is the purpose of education then, a ‘training to

goodness’?
Herbert Read noted that “the individual will be ‘good’ in the degree
that his individuality is realized within the organic wholeness of the com-
munity”, but that there is potential for success or failure in achieving
social integration to become a ‘good citizen’, or not to become a ‘bad citi-
zen’…concluding that “education must discriminate between good and
evil inclinations, and therefore, in addition to its creative function, it
must have a destructive or repressive function” (Read 1948: 5).
Here is a significant observation about the purpose and function of
education in maintaining some sort of balance in society, and harks back
to the biblical story of the Tree of Knowledge—balancing knowledge of
the good with knowledge of the bad. Recognising that education can also
have a ‘destructive or repressive function’ is realistic in terms of the way it
can mould young people to a particular way of thinking that may be
positive but may also be negative, leading to the kind of bad experiences
of schooling that I mentioned in the Introduction, and to the ‘potential
for failure’. As Gidley notes, “education is both a product of culture and
a creator of culture and…it both contributes to psychological develop-
ment as well as potentially hinders it” (2016: 7). In this respect, we have
to acknowledge the hidden curriculum as well as the overt curriculum
presented in schools.
The hidden curriculum includes those things that are not taught
explicitly, but underpin what is presented in the classroom as well as the
way it is presented, which subtly and often unconsciously impose values,
beliefs, and even ignorance on impressionable young minds. This includes
what is left out or left unsaid as well as what is said. For example, a history
lesson on Aboriginal Australia may be presented from an entirely
Eurocentric view and unwittingly reinforce racism and bigotry. Children
who do not see themselves represented in pictures and stories of white,
middle-class people may feel excluded. Teachers who pay more attention
to the boys in the class can make the girls feel inferior. As will be dis-
cussed in Part IV, schoolteachers really do need to recognise the responsi-
bility they have in developing not only the knowledge and skills but the
attitudes of young people in their charge. Furthermore, who decides what
is taught and what is not taught in schools is a critical question that we
48 T. Stehlik
will return to in subsequent chapters, as it highlights the need for schools

(and teachers) to have an underpinning philosophy of education that
defines their purpose.
Finally, the notion of reciprocity is neatly encapsulated in a verse by
Rudolf Steiner that is often spoken at the beginning of meetings or group
activities in Waldorf School communities, sometimes labelled as his
‘Motto of the Social Ethic’:
The healthy social life is only found when in the mirror of each human soul
the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the community the
virtue of each one is living.
Steiner considered it a “fundamental social law” (1927: 1) that the

wellbeing of a community depended on the individuals working towards
the greater good rather than for their own personal interests or needs—
what we might acknowledge in general as the whole being greater than the
sum of its parts. Furthermore, however, as a result of every member work-
ing towards community wellbeing, an individual’s needs may also be sat-
isfied. This dynamic interacting interface between the whole and the
parts can be represented organically with the image of the lemniscate
(from the Greek: lemniskos, meaning ribbon). The “wonderful form of
the lemniscate” has been used to represent the dialogue and interaction
that maintain community relationships (Pietzner 1992: 86):
Individual
¥ Community
3.4 Forms of Education

It is also important to distinguish between forms of education and the
range of different learning processes that an individual can experience
over time, which in sum total can be considered their ‘education’. These
will include formal, informal, non-formal, experiential, mandated, self-
directed, and even accidental and unconscious learning events. They will
include learning from one’s family, friends, and peers as well as those who
are labelled as ‘teachers’, from books and the media in all its forms, from
institutions other than those labelled as ‘schools’ (such as the church, the
workplace, the sports club, community organisations), in fact learning
from life itself. I believe, from personal experience over a lifetime, that the
aphorism ‘You learn something new every day’ is almost always true. It
could involve the smallest and most trivial piece of information, often
happened upon by chance, but still new and of interest if the information
is turned into knowledge by reflecting on it, or associating it within our
existing knowledge structures. Sometimes this process involves re-learning
something that has been forgotten (unfortunately a function of ageing),
sometimes it requires unlearning something that was based on misinfor-
mation or ignorance in the first place. All of these forms and processes
will now be briefly discussed.
Formal learning is defined as that which is undertaken within some
sort of institutional setting (which could be face-to-face, by distance
learning, or online) that is accredited to award some form of credential or
qualification.
[School of the Air. In Australia, children living in remote and isolated
parts of the country are able to attend school via correspondence. This
used to occur over the airwaves via radio, and now can also include the
internet, email, skype or similar, provided there is internet connectivity].
These institutions could include schools, colleges, universities, training
institutes, and professional associations that provide in-service training.
In the case of schools, the accrediting body is an external organisation
such as a government-sanctioned Board of Studies or Inspectorate, and
schools are registered or licensed to deliver the relevant award (such as a
Higher School Certificate or A levels). In the case of the International
Baccalaureate which is taught in many schools worldwide, the accredit-
ing body is based in the United Kingdom and participating schools must
show their ability to meet the teaching and assessment criteria to enable
them to offer IB qualifications. Technical training institutes must be
closely aligned with the professions and trades for which they are deliver-
ing training and apprenticeship programs, to meet the criteria for award-
ing trade certificates and technical diplomas. Universities are
50 T. Stehlik
self-
accrediting organisations, working within national accreditation
frameworks. In Australia, for example, the AQF (Australian Qualifications
Framework) sets out a hierarchy of formal qualifications over nine lev-
els—from Level 1 ‘schools’ to Level 9 ‘doctoral degrees’.
Ideally, formal qualifications should be transferrable across jurisdic-
tions and recognised beyond the state or country in which they are
awarded, depending on the accrediting body. However, for example, a
pharmacist trained in Australia cannot work as a pharmacist in the United
Kingdom without undergoing a further two years of UK-based training
on top of their three-year Australian pharmacy degree. In comparison, an
Australian trained hairdresser can work anywhere in the United Kingdom
on the basis of their three-year Australian trade certificate (as long as they
have a working visa). Furthermore, in comparing formal educational
awards merely in terms of time served, it is immediately apparent that
there is a vast difference in the amount of content, assessment, theory,
and practice between, say, a three-year pharmacy degree and a three-year
hairdressing apprenticeship. This is starkly reinforced by their differing
entry requirements—a matriculation score of 95% or more for phar-
macy, no pre-requisites for hairdressing except having completed Year 10
at school.
Non-formal learning is also associated with undertaking some form of
learning in an organised, institutional setting, but in this case, the learn-
ing is not accredited. Often labelled as Continuing Education, examples
include extension or enrichment courses, which by definition offer content
that is of interest to people wishing to enrich or extend their knowledge,
about topics as obscure as the history and appreciation of coffee, to
undertaking guided tours of archaeological sites in Ancient Greece.
Participants sign up and pay course fees, and may receive a certificate of
attendance or completion, but not a qualification or award in the formal
sense. Teachers or tutors need not be officially qualified but usually have
significant experience and knowledge in their subject area, and quite
often might even offer their services on a voluntary basis, so keen are they
to share their interests. Some well-known and established institutions
offering non-formal courses include the WEA (Workers Educational
Association) and the Volkhochschule (Folk High Schools) of Scandinavia.
The WEA was established in the United Kingdom by Albert Mansbridge

in 1903 as another example of providing liberal education to workers
who may have received little formal education before beginning their
working life in an industrial society. An early example of further educa-
tion, the WEA evening classes proved to be successful, with the model
successfully transplanted to Australia where the WEA also continues to
flourish, providing enrichment courses on topics ranging from digital
media to dance. Sweden has a rich history of providing non-formal and
second chance education for its citizens, and the Volkhochschule are an
example of community-based education aimed at increasing the general
knowledge, wellbeing, and civic interaction of the population to main-
tain the Platonic idea of ‘the good life’ in a social democracy. NFS
Grundtvig (1783–1872), the Danish pastor who has been called the ‘ide-
ological father of folk high schools’, firmly believed that “exams [are]
deadening to the human soul” (New World Encyclopedia). Some of the
founding principles of the Volkhochschule movement were that there
would be no assessment or qualifications awarded for participating in and
completing courses, and that class leadership would be shared democrati-
cally in a learning model that has led to established adult learning peda-
gogies today, including study circles and communities of practice.
Informal learning implies a form of self-education—learning that is
experienced through daily interactions with people, places, and things.
Much formal education can be associated with surface learning—infor-
mation that is retained just long enough to reproduce at an exam, after
which it inexplicably recedes into oblivion (contrary to this of course is
rote learning, such as memorising the multiplication tables in elementary
school through constant repetition). By contrast, informal learning can
lead to a process of internalisation, where deep learning occurs, due to
the often surprising and memorable nature of the learning experience.
Examples of informal learning include learning on the job—which could
include workplace learning as well as learning how to cook from your
grandmother, coming across a book in the library that changes your
whole view of history, visiting an art gallery and finding out about a
wonderful artist you never heard of, or surfing the internet and discover-
ing the origins and meaning of your surname. This type of learning
52 T. Stehlik
could be accidental, by literally stumbling over something—a process of

serendipity—or even unconscious learning, that is, we are not even aware
at the time that we are learning something.
[Serendipity: Making desirable discoveries by accident, good fortune,
or luck]
Learning that can have a profound effect on one’s world view and
meaning perspective has been labelled transformative learning. Research
by the American educator Jack Mezirow (1923–2014) investigated the
extent to which adult women enrolled in a continuing education pro-
gram, which was ostensibly about something rather mundane, experi-
enced a change in their view of themselves in the world as a result of
expanding their educational perspectives—in effect undergoing a trans-
formation from which there was no return. For some of these women it
meant the end of a relationship or marriage, as their male partners could
not understand or empathise with their new level of consciousness, hav-
ing not experienced it. A similar process has been observed in the phe-
nomenon of ‘Men’s sheds’—where mature aged men, often retrenched
from work, widowed, or otherwise alone, gather in sheds to make toys or
mend things for charity. In the process they find themselves sharing life
experiences and supporting each other in what can be a lonely and con-
fusing phase of life transition—so that the shed becomes a site for trans-
formative learning and social support—a happy outcome even though it
was not its original purpose.
The process of informal learning is well known in the adult education
literature with self-directed learning being an accepted pedagogy. This
rather self-evidently involves learning that is not directed by a teacher or
educator, but by the individual themselves pursuing an interest or knowl-
edge path through a program of study that can range from casual to rigor-
ous. The term auto-didact is often applied to this kind of person, with
didactic meaning ‘instructive’ (dictionary.com). An auto-didact is literally
someone who is self-educating on a voluntary basis, under their own
impetus and guided by intrinsic motivation. We can contrast this with
education that is mandated, for example, by state regulations which man-
date that all children up to a certain age must attend formal schooling.
Homeschooling is a very interesting take on this idea and will be dis-
cussed in Chap. 11. It acknowledges that ‘learning on the job’ can occur
in the home, and that in fact the home is a child’s first learning environ-
ment, where the meaning of education in terms of ‘rearing’ first takes
place.
Given the fact that learning can be ‘credentialled’ with a formal cre-
dential such as a certificate, parchment, or diploma as its outcome, we
must acknowledge that the process or means of leading up to that out-
come is just as important as the end itself. In addition, we must also
acknowledge the other side of that coin, which is known as uncreden-
tialled learning. This is a term to describe and give recognition to all the
learning that a person experiences that is not able to be shown by the
evidence of a certificate or qualification. It takes into account a person’s
life and work experience, background knowledge, and demonstrated
understanding, and gives authenticity to the concept of learning from
life. For many adult learners, uncredentialled learning has been the path-
way back into formal credentialled learning—for example, the woman
who did not finish school, worked her way up through the fashion indus-
try, then applied to enter art school as a mature age student on the basis
of her self-directed learning in art and design, or the early school leaver
who was a retail manager for many years and was able to enter university
to undertake management studies at degree level on the basis of recogni-
tion of prior learning.
Finally, all these forms of education imply some sort of relationship.
The teacher-learner relationship is important and will be discussed
further in subsequent chapters. However, relationships also exist
among learners, between the learners and the content or curriculum,
with educational administrative and regulatory bodies, and even
within the learner and their own motivation or reason for engaging in
any learning process. While learning as an adult can be transformative,
the following discussion focuses more closely on the formative years of
education, in which we inculcate our children into their family, com-
munity, and society in a range of ways that are both planned and
unplanned. It will be seen that the process of education is not neces-
sarily a linear and sequential one—even though our education systems
are structured that way.
54 T. Stehlik
3.5 Educational Philosophy

‘Education’ is a broad concept. It encapsulates everything from struc-
tured schooling to unconscious learning. It affects, guides, and influences
us on a daily basis. Education as a discipline, or field of study however, is
a relatively recent category in academic circles.
[Discipline meaning…from disciplere, ‘to follow’… compare with the
word ‘Disciple’]
As we have seen, it has grown out of the study of philosophy, as have
the other relatively recent disciplines of psychology and sociology, two
areas in the social sciences that also inform educational theory. It has
really only been since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
that we have seen education as a specialised study, with a separate body of
literature, university faculties and professors of education, and specialised
conferences for educationalists and educators. Scholars labelled as ‘educa-
tionalists’ or ‘pedagogues’ only appeared as distinct specialists in educa-
tion in the literature within the last two to 300 years.
Yet we have seen that the concept of educational philosophy has been
around for several thousands of years in western history and culture. The
question for us in the twenty-first century which we have begun to
address in Part I of this book is:
What have we learned from history that will inform and guide us in our rela-
tionships with the discipline of education now and into the future?
If the purpose of education is therefore more than just learning to take

one’s place in society and the workplace, then what is it? Nearly 400 years
ago, Comenius clearly stated what he believed to be the purpose of edu-
cation: that through “teaching all things to all men … a general educa-
tion for all can lead to commonly shared insights into the True and the
Good”, and that “this would lead to eternal Peace and a unified world
under the government of Wisdom” (Dahlin 2006: 18). If Plato believed
that the ultimate purpose of education was ‘a training in values’, is that
still relevant today? Can we develop personal and communal philoso-
phies of education that will build on all that we know so far about
humanity and its relationships with education, yet apply them in a way
that takes into account the rapidly changing world we live in?
There have always been radical moves to change the education systems
that we have inherited, and the early twenty-first century has seen much
debate around schools and their purposes, around teachers and their effec-
tiveness, even questioning the need for schooling at all. Continued debate
and discourse is healthy and can be informative and even educative, but in
the meantime, we still have to prepare succeeding generations for future life
on the planet. A thorough examination of schooling as a concept follows in
Part II, in order to understand where we have come from, where we are
now, and where we might be going in the discipline of education.
References
Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R.
(1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational
goals. New York: David McKay Company.
Gidley, J. (2016). Postformal education: A philosophy for complex futures. Basel:
Springer.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Hall, B. (2012). Postgraduate numbers double in ten years. Sydney Morning
Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/postgraduate-
numbers-double-in-10-years-20121030-28gz3.html. Accessed 29 Mar
2017.
Pall Mall Press.
McDonagh, D. (2017, April 16). My PhD is fake. The Irish Mail on Sunday,
p. 1.
Murphy, C. (1991). Emil Molt and the beginnings of the Waldorf School.
Edinburgh: Floris Books.
Payton, A. (2017). Skilling for tomorrow. Adelaide: NCVER.
Pietzner, C. (1992). Community relations and outreach. In D. Mitchell (Ed.),
The art of administration: Viewpoints on professional management in Waldorf
Schools (pp. 83–97). Boulder: A.W.S.N.A.
Robinson, K. (2006). www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_
Creativity.html. Accessed 14 Apr 2017.
56 T. Stehlik
Sherriff, L. (2015). Ernst & Young removes degree classification from entry criteria
as there’s ‘no evidence’ university equals success. http://www.huffingtonpost.
co.uk/2016/01/07/ernst-and-young-removes-degree-classification-entry-
criteria_n_7932590.html. Accessed 28 Mar 2017.
Steiner, R. (1927). Reordering of society: The fundamental social law. http://
wn.rsarchive.org/Articles/FuSoLa_index.html. Accessed 23 Mar 2018.
Part II
Schooling Versus Education
4
School: History, Meaning, Context,
and Construct
The history, meaning, context, and construct of schooling are explored in

this chapter, which includes a discussion of definitions, origins, and early
examples and investigates the extent to which schools function as social
sorting and socialisation agencies as well as knowledge factories. Schools
are analysed in terms of their establishment, development, and purpose
with case study examples of experimental schools attempting to break the
‘factory model’ of universal mass education that resulted from the
Industrial Revolution.
4.1 Definitions, Distinctions, Developments

Q: Why are fish so smart?
A: Because they live in schools.
The modern word schooling comes from the Greek word skhole, which
actually meant ‘spare time, leisure, rest or ease; idleness’ as well as ‘learned
discussion’, implying that initially, learning was not associated with work

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_4
60 T. Stehlik
but was something one engaged in almost as a pastime. This reinforces

the fact that schooling is just one aspect of the broader concept of educa-
tion discussed so far, which includes things like learning on the job and
learning from life. The Online Dictionary now defines schooling as:
1 . the process of being taught in a school

2. instruction, education, or training, especially when received in a

school
3. the act of teaching
4. (Archaic) a reprimand
How interesting that the archaic form has negative connotations, that
once upon a time children were ‘schooled’ by being told off, and although
that form of the word is no longer in common parlance, it would still
align with many people’s experiences of schooling today. The rather banal
joke at the head of this chapter is also there to reinforce the image of
schools as places where children and young people are massed together
and treated as a collective body, all seen as being able to swim and turn in
the same direction at the same time, much like the way a school of fish
behaves. Despite what we now know about individual development, dif-
ferent learning styles, and differentiated curricula, we still put children
into classes according to their age and expect them to swim as one against
the various tides and currents acting upon them. And the question would
still remain, does being in school necessarily make all children ‘smart’?
As we have seen, the concept of schooling as an act or process has a long
history, but schools as the institutions that we know today are considered
to be a relatively recent construct. In fact, it has been claimed that:
…formal publicly funded universal school education began little more

than 200 years ago in Europe. (Gidley 2016: 71)
While schools for the elite, the wealthy, the professions, and the mili-
tary (and mostly males) had been around earlier in Plato’s Athens and
also in China and Egypt, by the early 1800s these had morphed into the
sort of exclusive private schools that we are familiar with today (rather
confusingly known as public schools in Great Britain, for example,
School: History, Meaning, Context, and Construct 61
Eton, Harrow, etc.). ‘Universal school education’, available to all chil-

dren in a given society, is a concept that has been mentioned as being
developed in theory by Comenius back in the 1600s. However, it was
not until the early 1800s that his educational theories were put into
practice by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) in Prussia, now part
of Germany. As the Minister for Education, Humboldt developed the
Prussian educational system, defined by standardised public instruc-
tion, assessed by examinations, and regulated by inspections. This has
provided a template that is still in use today. In fact, it is quite interest-
ing to note that when Japan made a conscious effort to modernise and
take on western ideas of education during the nineteenth century, they
modelled their schooling system on Humboldt’s plan—and modern-
day Japanese school uniforms still have a Prussian military look about
them.
Humboldt was influenced by the idealistic romantic notions of
German philosophers such as Hegel, Goethe, and Schiller, as represented
by the German word Bildung, and his vision for public education was
more aligned to the Platonic ideal of ‘the good life’. Humboldt would go
on to found the Humboldt University in Berlin, providing a template for
most modern universities as cultural institutions independent of the
state, but equally importantly, introducing the concept of Bildung into
the educational lexicon has had a lasting legacy not only in the German-
speaking world but in the bigger picture of the development of educa-
tional philosophy. The word Bildung is not easy to translate directly into
English, but it helps to know that Bild in German means ‘picture’ or
‘image’. One definition is that “philosophy and education are virtually
synonymous… [Bildung is] an ongoing process of personal and cultural
maturation” (Gidley 2016: 87). The notion of learning being an ongoing
process in which the individual’s personal agency is central and incorpo-
rates all aspects of personality and identity also distinguishes Bildung
from the German word Erziehung which refers more to traditional con-
cepts of training. In this sense, Bildung can be conceived as an outcome of
training and formal education, incorporating the notions of cultural
development and awareness, and taken together with all other aspects of
learning, leading to the formation of an individual’s essence (Danner
1994).
62 T. Stehlik
In Britain meanwhile, the influence of the Industrial Revolution

from the early 1880s onwards drove a more mechanistic and instru-
mental approach to mass public education, according to the increasing
demands of industry and the mass migration of working people from
the country to cities. The demands of the rapidly developing urban and
working class way of life introduced the ‘factory model’ of schools that
we still have today. In fact, many early schools in Great Britain were not
established by the state, but by industrialists and factory owners who,
out of a sense of responsibility or philanthropy, saw the need for look-
ing after their workers, including their families and their children. The
example of Emil Molt founding the Waldorf School for the children of
his German workers has already been mentioned. Some captains of
industry went as far as building whole towns for their workforce, inclu-
sive of schools, social activities, and community centres, for example,
the model village of Port Sunlight built in the 1880s by the Lever
Brothers soap manufacturers at Merseyside in the United Kingdom.
This occurred in Sweden as well as in England, where the eventual
development of ‘garden cities’ aimed to soften the industrial working
life with an environment that was less Dickensian than the smoky
grimy cities as characterised by William Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’ in
the poem and anthem Jerusalem (Blake 1808).
Speaking of Charles Dickens (1812–1870), his graphic descriptions of
schools in books such as Hard Times and Nicholas Nickleby record the fact
that they could also be established by any enterprising person, with little
or no educational qualifications or teaching experience required. While
some of these private schools were run by ‘ladies’ for young ladies, the
‘schools for boys’ described by Dickens were characteristically run by
severe men who often mistreated the children and barely provided any
real education, being interested only in collecting fees from parents who
were quite happy to have the responsibility of their boys taken off their
hands and could afford to pay for it. As we shall see later in this chapter
and in Part III, children were treated very differently in early Victorian
society; educating girls beyond learning how to be a homemaker was not
seen as necessary as they would only be married off; and there was no
concept of adolescence as children transitioned straight into adulthood,
often entering working life at an age when we would consider them to
still be teenagers—a term that would not even emerge until the twentieth
century.
The link between schools and with industry and the economy is there-
fore very clear in the early development of universal public education in
the English-speaking part of Europe. From this we can see the develop-
ment of schools and their purposes growing in several different direc-
tions, especially in Great Britain. On the one hand, well-endowed elite
schools for the wealthy and titled upper class thrived and maintained the
hereditary class system embedded in British political and social tradi-
tions, as ultimately represented by the House of Lords. The graduates of
these schools were able to indulge in a liberal rather than a vocational
education as their careers would already be assured in the clergy, the offi-
cer class of the military, or through inheritance in business or the land.
On the other hand, there was a need for the children of the working class
and the rapidly developing middle class to learn basic literacy, numeracy,
and general knowledge in order to fill the increasing range of jobs required
in the new industrial economy. From this we begin to get a picture of
schools as sorting agencies—with children being sorted by class, by gen-
der, by location, and by what we would now know as differences in socio-
economic status and equality of opportunity. The gap between those who
are included and those who are excluded still exists, even if it is more
subtle in many ways, such as in the hidden curriculum. However, school
choice is still to a large degree determined by socio-economic circum-
stance and intergenerational traditions (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2).
4.2 Which School or College Did You Go to?

There can be no doubt that the formative years of a child’s life will deter-
mine and influence the sort of person they will grow into as an adult—
their character, temperament, interests, and life choices, to name a few.
While inherited characteristics and family of origin are of course part of
the developmental picture (see Part III), there is undoubtedly a direct
causal link with a child’s experience of formal education, especially if they
are going to spend up to 12 years of their developing life in institution-
alised schooling. The curriculum, the teachers, the other children, the
64 T. Stehlik
Fig. 4.1 Sorting by age and gender began even as the children entered school in
1898. (Greenwich, London, England)
Fig. 4.2 Separate entrances for students and everyone else…but given the place-
ment of the apostrophe, did St Patrick’s have only one student?! (Ballycastle,
County Mayo, Republic of Ireland)
school environment, the level of involvement of parents—all of these

relationships will have a shaping and directing influence on a child’s
physical and psychological as well as intellectual development.
There is plenty of evidence to support this view. For example, the
‘Growing up North’ project in the United Kingdom has found empirical
data to support what would appear to be obvious anyway, that “growing
up in a particular area affects the chances a child has going into adult-
hood” (Pidd 2017: 10). In this case the project has been comparing chil-
dren growing up in the north of England with those in the south, finding
a general difference in school achievement and development of more
than 10%, in favour of those in the south. “These figures are a stark
reminder that there are hundreds of thousands of children growing up in
the north who are falling behind children in the south – in many cases
before they’ve even started their school lives” (Pidd 2017: 10).
A number of points are raised by this project. Firstly, that place is
important in terms of access to schooling opportunities. Secondly, that
children can be disadvantaged by place and circumstance even before they
66 T. Stehlik
have started their school lives. Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori saw
schools as places where children could experience a ‘remedial effect’ from
the pressures of modern life and disadvantages of upbringing; however, if
those disadvantages and pressures are merely reinforced by the school
environment, the child will have even less chances to flourish. Thirdly, in
interpreting any such research data, we need to question what is meant in
this case by ‘achievement and development’, and what measures these are
determined by, in the light of the bigger picture questions around the
purpose of education and the role of schooling in that picture.
While international organisations such as UNESCO and the British
Council have recently been promoting the rhetoric of Education for all,
espousing increased access to schools for more children globally through
various international projects, there are still barriers to be overcome in con-
flict zones and in the many ethnic, cultural, and geographical differences;
questions around whether increased school attendance will directly increase
learning and life opportunities; and no guarantees that the dominant model
of school education that is being subscribed to will actually meet the future
needs of the children and their communities (Gidley 2016; UNESCO
2015). ‘Education for all’ is a noble idea; however, the history and structure
of schooling as we know it, and the analysis of education as followed in
Chap. 3, mean that ‘education’ is still not a level playing field or equal expe-
rience for all children, that in fact some are more equal than others:
There are still 58 million children out of school globally and around 100
million children who do not complete primary education. Inequality in
education has increased, with the poorest and most disadvantaged shoul-
dering the heaviest burden. The world’s poorest children are four times
more likely not to go to school than the world’s richest children, and five
times as likely not to complete primary school. (UNESCO 2015: 4)
This inequality is no more obvious in western countries than in com-

paring private or independent schools with those that are part of a
national or state government education system—especially those private
schools that are elite, exclusive, well-funded, and well-founded. In
Australia, the proportion of students attending a non-government school
has now exceeded more than one-third of all school students (Reid 2017).
The reasons for this are as many and varied as are the schools t hemselves—
ranging from wealthy single-sex schools such as Church of England Girls
Grammar School in Sydney or Melbourne Grammar, large co-educa-
tional Lutheran and Anglican schools, small Catholic Parish schools and
Islamic schools, and Montessori and Steiner schools. As will be seen,
schools outside state-run systems are either established along religious
lines or according to a particular educational philosophy, and sometimes
both, presenting a choice to parents for schooling that either aligns with
their religious beliefs or is perceived to provide the type of education,
ethos, and opportunities not otherwise offered in government schools.
The concept of ‘the old school tie’ is also alive and well in Australia as in
other countries, where career opportunities, business networks, family
connections, and even which church you attend are seen as giving young
people distinct life advantages.
The Catholic Education sector in Australia makes up a large part of the
non-government sector alone, reflecting the influence of the early
European settlers, many of whom came from countries like Ireland. The
tenacity of organised religion to maintain schooling traditions is starkly
presented in Irish history, when Jesuit schools were outlawed under
Protestant English rule in the early nineteenth century, and the Penal
Laws prevented Catholics from openly attending school as well as any
religious gatherings such as mass. This gave rise to the Irish ‘hedge
schools’, where clandestine classes would literally gather in secret under
the shelter of a hedge or a barn, with a learned person in the neighbour-
hood providing basic literacy and numeracy to Catholic children. The
image of hedge schools highlights the importance of faith and belief in
maintaining a community’s strong desire to educate its children in the
prevailing values and ethos. Even more significantly, this tenacity for edu-
cation kept the Irish language alive and promoted Gaelic culture and lit-
erature, leading to what would eventually be the movement for Irish
independence which was finally achieved in 1922 (Foster 1989).
South Australia however saw a large proportion of German immigrants
in its early colonial occupation, and the Lutheran tradition is noticeably
strong in that state, with the Lutheran education sector still providing
specific training for teachers in Lutheran schools, similar to Catholic
teacher education. This popularity of religious schools in Australia is
68 T. Stehlik
despite the fact that the country as a whole does not have an official
religion, with census figures showing one-third of Australians have ‘no
religion’, although almost all religions are represented to some extent,
with by far the largest cohort being the 25% who identify as Catholic
(ABS 2017). Contrast this with countries like Sweden and Finland,
which are officially Lutheran, to the extent that all Finns, for example, are
automatically born into the Lutheran faith and, if they do not want to be
a member of the church, must formally apply to the state for a ‘divorce’
from it. Yet while religion is a subject in Finnish state elementary schools,
it is more concerned with morals, values, and ethics (Plato’s ‘good life’)
than the type of dogmatic preaching that occurs in some Australian
Lutheran schools. Finland is a very interesting educational case study and
is given more attention in Chap. 10.
While still subject to the same rules and regulations in terms of accredita-
tion, mandatory attendance, and teacher registration as state schools, in
addition to religious beliefs, private or independent schools can also be
established according to particular educational methodologies, philoso-
phies, and pedagogies. Montessori Schools, for example, offer a curriculum
founded on Maria Montessori’s views of child development based on man-
ual manipulation of objects, embodied learning, and freedom of expression.
Steiner or Waldorf Schools are also based on Steiner’s philosophy of educa-
tion and his unique research into child development and teaching-learning
relationships, with the first school which opened in Stuttgart in 1919 named
the ‘Waldorf Free School’, in recognition of being free of state control and
established educational dogma, which by then was entrenched in the
Humboldtian system in Germany. This yearning for freedom from the
inherited ‘factory model’ of schooling which inevitably resulted from cen-
tralised and regulated state systems has led to other interesting and ongoing
variations on the concept of schooling over time, and still today, as follows.
4.3 Evolution and Revolution

Schooling is a process that has evolved over time, sometimes in a gradu-
ally planned and managed way, at other times driven by political, social,
or cultural upheavals and paradigm shifts in educational thinking. Such
revolutions can be characterised by the various experimental schools that

have appeared, mostly flourishing briefly before losing momentum (or
funding), while others are still with us today. Such a shift occurred at the
beginning of the twentieth century when utopian ideals combined with
the growing influence of psychological science brought to a head the
Enlightenment aim of improving the world, leading to what Dahlin
(2006) describes as ‘psychological utopianism’. This envisioned not only
a new approach to education but a new vision of a reformed society and
the transformed human being:
The basic principle of psycho-utopian thinking is that an ideal society can

be created by the application of psychological knowledge in order to trans-
form the human personality, consciousness or psyche. Sometimes this even
seems to imply the possibility of a fundamental change in human nature.
(Dahlin 2006: 7)
Perhaps the most well-known and enduring experiment in utopian

schooling is Summerhill, which was established in 1921 by the Scottish
teacher AS Neill (1883–1973), first in Germany and then in England,
where it is still functioning to this day. Neill’s educational philosophy was
based on the ‘innate goodness of the child’ who could be ‘self-regulating’
if given the chance to identify their own learning needs and interests
(Summerhill website). Rather than being directed by teachers and a set
curriculum, children would be free to choose when, where, what, and
how they wanted to learn. This methodological approach and an account
of the school’s first 40 years are set out in Neill’s 1960 book Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing. Even the title of the book suggests
that Neill saw his role as rearing children, not teaching them. As such, the
school’s website claims it to be ‘the oldest children’s democracy in the
world’ and ‘the original alternative free school’ (Summerhill website).
There are always questions about the continued survival of any institu-
tion that is founded by a charismatic personality when that individual
passes on, that the momentum will fail and the model may not be repli-
cable. In this case, Summerhill is still pursuing its seemingly successful
alternative approach, currently and since 1985 under the guidance of
Neill’s daughter Zoe.
70 T. Stehlik
As ‘the original’, Summerhill has inspired many other such free schools
around the world, many of which remain small and struggling with a
dedicated teaching staff and parent population keeping them alive, often
maintained by pure will and a commitment to providing children with
freedom of educational choice. Others however appear to be flourishing
and achieving remarkable results, like the Evangelical School Berlin
where:
…there are no grades until students turn 15, no timetables and no lecture-
style instructions. The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for
each lesson and when they want to take an exam. (Oltermann 2016: 1)
Another famous experiment in elementary schooling was established

by the pragmatist John Dewey in 1896, at the University of Chicago.
What became known as the Laboratory Schools were founded on an inte-
grated approach to subjects, based on ‘real life’ activities like cooking,
gardening, and crafts, and in an early version of problem-based learning,
students were tasked with coming up with creative solutions to set prob-
lems. In a comparison with Summerhill, Dewey referred to his laboratory
school as an ‘embryonic democracy’, but the ideal of allowing children to
democratically run the school and the curriculum quickly faded to a
more structured approach, and gradually the Laboratory Schools at the
University of Chicago have evolved into high-status private co-educational
institutions that today have over 1700 students enrolled from nursery to
Grade 12 (https://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/).
Readers who have gotten this far and remember Chap. 2 will recall
that the educational ideal of freedom was the central plank of Rousseau’s
philosophy and ideas about rearing children, showing how such ideals are
not new, and persistently surface in the evolution and revolution of
schools. Revolutionary ideals however contributed in the early twentieth
century to another example of experimental schooling, this time in
Ireland.
St Enda’s school was founded in Dublin in 1908 by Patrick Pearse, an
Irish Republican and activist who was one of the leaders of the Irish
Republican movement, eventually executed by the British after the failed
Easter uprising of 1916 (Edwards 2006). As an educator, Pearse believed
strongly that the movement towards Irish nationalism and freedom

would be inspired by the native Gaelic language and culture, and he
established St Enda’s as an experimental school that would re-create the
noble traditions of Ireland’s glorious past:
Here the theories of William Morris and fashionable European ideals of

active, open-air education were mingled with Pearse’s obsessional Celtic
motifs: notable the mythical hero Cuchulainn, pictured by him as a slim,
beautiful boy dying happily for Ireland. (Foster 1989: 458–459)
Here we can see the purposes of education being bound up in nation-

alism, in this case the language of sacrificial politics. As will be seen in
Chap. 10, nationalism and maintenance of the ‘mother tongue’ also
drove the development of education in Finland, but in a much more
subtle and inclusive way. St Enda’s was also an example of schooling tak-
ing up ‘fashionable ideals’ and current theories of the time, such as those
of William Morris (1834–1896) who was one of the leading lights in the
Arts and Crafts and ‘return to nature’ movements in late nineteenth-
century England, which spearheaded the beginnings of a return to
Platonic aestheticism in culture and education. Pearse also attempted to
start a school for girls, but St Enda’s was established as a Catholic school
for boys only, driven by romantic patriotic ideals bound up in notions of
manliness, honour, and the glories of self-sacrifice for the higher good,
starkly demonstrated by its founder’s own martyrdom in 1916—yet ulti-
mately doomed.
Patrick Pearse had been an essential and irreplaceable part of the school. It
limped along until 1935, always operating at a loss, and suffering by com-
petition with other more successful colleges. Numbers were low, ranging
between about sixteen and thirty. When the school finally closed, it was
tacitly admitted by many of those who had helped in its running that is
should have died with its founder. (Edwards 2006: 309–310)
In the example of St Enda’s, we see schooling appropriated as a tool—

some would say a weapon—and a means to a particular end, in this case
political, with children being caught up in the idealism and subject to the
72 T. Stehlik
educational experiments of obsessive individuals. In a further example,

‘active, open-air education’ was also a hallmark of National Socialism in
Nazi Germany in the 1930s, with the staged athleticism and fitness of the
Hitler Youth not only harking back to classical Greek ideals of ‘perfection
in form’ in the beauty of the youthful human body but clearly having a
political and nationalistic agenda as well. Hitler also called on ‘mythical
heroes’ and noble deeds as templates for youth to aspire to, although in
his case these were Aryan and Wagnerian, not Irish. In Finland, the
mythical heroes of the Kalevala folk sagas still provide Finnish schoolchil-
dren with examples and archetypes for moral development and social
values; and the importance of stories, myths, legends, and archetypal
characters to a child’s developing consciousness is a thread that weaves
through most educational endeavours throughout history, to be further
explored in later chapters.
One hundred years ago when Waldorf Schools first appeared, they
were also be considered as experimental schools driven by utopian ideals
and a vision for social renewal through education. As discussed in more
detail in Chap. 10, they introduced radical new pedagogical approaches
and teaching methods and pursued an independent form of governance
aimed at being self-regulated rather than externally controlled. However,
their ethos, while also being child-centred, was highly structured and far
from the kind of approach taken at Summerhill where children were free
to learn what they felt like. Steiner actually developed a formal and
detailed curriculum that provided definite and prescribed subjects and
topics which progressed in a logical sequence from year to year according
the child’s developing needs. The fact that Waldorf Schools have spread
worldwide and continue to be one of the fastest growing independent
school movements in the world proves that there is room within the con-
cept of ‘schooling’ for many and varied educational philosophies, ranging
from almost total freedom to virtually total control, with many possibili-
ties in between.
While we can see that the basic concept and structure of schooling
has remained almost unchanged, experimentation within that structure
in terms of curriculum, pedagogies, and methodologies continued
through the twentieth century and continues today. In South Australia,
for example, the 1960s saw the introduction of ‘Demonstration

Schools’—primary schools which introduced and experimented with
teaching methods and ideas that were driven by an increased interest in
educational theory and research, and also borrowed from trends in other
countries and from alternative education movements. As a child during
the 1960s, I attended several different primary schools, as my parents
moved house a lot. One of these schools was Rose Park Demonstration
School.
To all intents and purposes, it operated as a primary school with classes
from Grades 1 to 7, but the South Australian Education Department
identified the school as one of several in the metropolitan area of Adelaide
where teachers were expected to test various ‘new’ teaching methods and
resources in different subject areas. In English we had ‘Reading
Laboratory’, and rather than reading whole books, we worked through
selected extracts of comprehension exercises which were sequenced in a
lockstep fashion according to vocabulary, with our progress recorded and
compared with the whole class. In mathematics we had ‘attribute
blocks’—pieces of wood in various different shapes and colours—that we
were supposed to manipulate and arrange in various patterns as a way of
understanding geometrical forms. We also went out into the quadrangle
and drew intersecting circles of chalk on the asphalt and stood in them in
various configurations, which is where I first learned about Venn dia-
grams. (This idea of a hands-on rather than a purely abstract approach to
maths is taken directly from the Montessori Method, where the use of
colour, shape, and embodied experience in learning is central.)
While experimenting with new methods, teachers at Rose Park were
also locked into educational traditions that can be traced back to the
nineteenth-century ‘cellular classroom’ in which “students were not ran-
domly distributed within the rank and file structure of the classroom but
were rather placed according to a variety of well-defined criteria such as
their ability, their behaviour, or diligence” (Schratzenstaller 2010: 25).
For example, every Friday we would have a test of the week’s work, and
each child’s test score would determine where they would sit for the com-
ing week. The top scoring students would sit right at the back, and so on
down to the lowest achievers who ended up in the front row right in front
74 T. Stehlik
of the teacher’s desk, where their behaviour could be ‘managed’. In this

way it was immediately obvious not only to the children but to anyone
coming into the class who were the ‘bright good kids’ and who were the
‘dumb naughty kids’. This odd mixture of new-fangled and old-fashioned
pedagogical methods was represented by the diversity of the teaching
staff. Some of the teachers were young and embraced the new ideas, while
others were entrenched in the traditional methods of chalk-and-talk,
speak-only-when-spoken-to, and corporal punishment administered by
‘cuts’ to the hand or legs with a cane. These experiments with method did
not yet extend to more enlightened approaches to behaviour manage-
ment or discipline, and it was at a time when physical punishment of
children was accepted and even seen as necessary.
At Rose Park Demonstration School, children were also assessed for
any musical ability and those who were deemed as having some talent
were then given instruments and music lessons which regularly took
them out of the mainstream classroom, leaving those of us who were
left behind feeling somehow left out. This notion of ‘special treatment’
was an early indication of the policy of treating ‘gifted children’ differ-
ently from the rest of the class, which continues to be an issue within
the traditional schooling model of a classroom of 25 or so children
who are not necessarily at the same level of development just because
they are in the same age group. This also applies to the other end of the
spectrum in consideration of children who would be considered as
slow learners, with remedial learning needs and other developmental
issues. For those children with serious intellectual disabilities, Rose
Park had a special ‘Opportunity Class’, operating out of a transport-
able building on the edge of the campus, in an early approach to work-
ing with children with special needs. Everyone referred to these kids as
‘the Oppos’, and the threat of ending up with the Oppos was tacitly
used as a way of getting some of the more recalcitrant children to ‘pull
their socks up’.
This duality between ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ approaches to
schooling, which could be inclusive of any of the examples given so far
above, highlights a constant quest within the traditional model of school-
ing to address the need for universal mass education on the one hand and
on the other hand to accommodate various specialisations in ability,
interest, outcome, and method that constitute the reality of the reciprocal
needs of individuals and the society in which—and for which—they are
being educated. This differentiation has been addressed in a number of
ways over the evolution of schooling and has led to these various evolving
and developing experiments, some of which have been quite radical,
while others have just tinkered around the edges. Some have been passing
fads, while others have endured. Demonstration schools still exist, for
example, in New South Wales where they “provide evidence based and
innovative teaching practices to ensure a quality 21st Century education
for all” (www.nthsyddem-p.schools.nsw.edu.au, my italics). But in some
parts of the world, whole education systems have actually developed
along different pathways according to perceived ideas about the purpose
of education, creating, for example, the entrenched dual systems to be
found in Germany, Sweden, and other European countries.
4.4 Differentiation and Dual Systems

We explain nature, but we understand the inner life. (Wilhelm Dilthey
1894, cited in Biesta and Tröhler 2008: 10)
When we refer to someone colloquially as a ‘Renaissance man or

woman’, what is meant by the description is that they are interested/
educated/involved in a number of diverse subject areas ranging widely
across the arts and sciences, in comparison to someone who is a ‘special-
ist’ or ‘expert’ in one particular field, and labelled as such: for example,
an astrophysicist or a pharmacist. The subdivision of knowledge and
occupations into increasingly narrow and specialised areas is a relatively
recent development. Isaac Newton (1643–1727), for example, is
famous for his law of gravitation, but it is only in hindsight that we
label him a ‘scientist’; he saw himself more as a natural philosopher
interested in a wide range of interests and observations of the natural
world, which he saw as interconnected. Johann Wilhelm von Goethe
(1749–1832) was a celebrated poet and writer but was also keenly
interested in nature and made a number of important scientific discov-
eries. However, both of these men would be considered part of the
76 T. Stehlik
Enlightenment era, when we have seen that science gradually came to

dominate intellectual life through the application of technology and
the resulting industrialisation of society.
During this era the gradual separation of the arts and sciences became
entrenched and manifested in the way that universal mass education
began to diverge into separate and distinct pathways. As mentioned
above, the modern system of education we have inherited can be traced
back to Comenius in theory and Humboldt in practice, through the con-
cept of Bildung. However, Bildung in its pure form can be seen as apoliti-
cal, in which knowledge is presented uncritically and theoretically in
ways that may be disconnected from the realities of daily life (Siljander
et al. 2012). This can be seen in the Humboldtian model of liberal educa-
tion in which Bildung was represented by the ‘Seven Liberal Arts’: gram-
mar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. Harking
back to the educational ideals of the Ancient Greeks and entrenched in
Medieval Philosophy, these seven arts (some of which we would now
consider to be sciences) represented higher forms of knowledge that were
associated with higher status and of relevance only to those who could
afford to indulge in them without having to worry about where their next
meal was coming from—in other words, the elite of society. In this sense
then, during the nineteenth century, education did become politicised as it
contributed to the formation of the middle classes:
Bildung had become a code word for a newly emerging social class. In the
German language, this social class became known as “the educated class”
[representing] the urban bourgeoisie that had attended a higher school or
had undertaken an academic course of study (Konrad 2012: 109)
In Europe, this educated class attended schools that were known as

Gymnasia. Again, the word comes from the classical Greek ‘Gymnasion’,
which was the name of an exercising ground in ancient Athens and from
which the use of the word to describe a place of sport and exercise still
applies. The concept of the Gymnasium as a place of learning was revived
during the Renaissance and became the universal title for a secondary
school that would specifically prepare young people for higher education,
by order of the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires during
the nineteenth century. Today, young people in Germany, Sweden, and

many other European countries still attend a Gymnasium if they aspire
to go on to a university education.
Contrast this with the development of education for purely vocational
purposes, which also evolved from the Industrial Revolution and the
need for skilled labour in the new trades and professions that were
emerging. In educational terms, the German word Erziehung describes
vocational learning as a distinctly separate construct from Bildung, and
refers to skills training as a specifically different type of learning process
that is not so bound up in higher ideals or associated with identity and
personal development. Erziehung is the pragmatic, applied, and practical
side of education and provides the balance to the liberal arts approach to
education, reminding us of the duality of contemplative and practical
activity as discussed in the previous chapter. Here we really see differences
in the purpose of education—on the one hand, to develop citizens within
a civil society, and on the other to train workers who would keep the
machinery of the civil society turning.
This differentiation has led to dual education systems and pathways
through school which channel young people either into an academic
higher education pathway or into a vocational pathway. In some coun-
tries like Sweden, this occurs within a unified education system with
high schools specialising in either academic or vocational subjects,
while in Germany secondary education is very complicated and actu-
ally includes five types of schools. After elementary school German
children are more or less channelled into three pathways according to
their grades—the Gymnasium is the highest form and leads to univer-
sity, the Hauptschule the ‘lowest’ form and generally leading to voca-
tional school, and the Realschule somewhere in between. Contrast this
with the concept of a comprehensive high school which aims to educate
students of all abilities and does not sort them according to some form
of examination or grading; this is the system that is mostly adopted in
the United States.
Historically, Australia featured an approach to sorting secondary stu-
dents not only by achievement but by gender, with Boys’ Technical
High Schools being a feature until the late 1960s, and high schools for
girls concentrating on vocational subjects relating to commerce, such as
78 T. Stehlik
typing and shorthand. Most of the larger comprehensive co-educational

high schools now offer vocational pathways within the senior secondary
certificate, often based on industries associated with the local region. A
perceived ‘skills gap’ in Australia in the early 2000s saw history repeat-
ing itself with the establishment of a new form of technical high school
called vocational colleges. At the same time, initiatives under the banner
of Social Inclusion saw early school leaving and student disengagement
being addressed through alternative approaches to schooling based on
vocational, adult learning methodologies outside of the traditional
school structure (see Chap. 11).
Further back in history, from 1857 onwards we find Industrial schools
established in England for homeless children aged between 7 and 14. By
the end of that century, there were around 275 such schools in England
and Scotland. In Ireland Industrial schools were established from 1868,
to care for neglected, orphaned, and abandoned children, or children
whose parents deemed them ‘uncontrollable’, with over 5000 children
living in these schools by 1884 (Ryan 2009). Modelled on German,
Swiss, and Scandinavian farm schools, these were an early example of
vocational training, as they not only dealt with the ‘problem’ of aban-
doned and uncontrollable children but provided:
…practical training which would equip the children for employment

rather than academic learning. This approach fitted with the Victorian idea
of utilitarian progress and also helped provide skills to fuel the Industrial
Revolution. (Ryan 2009: 36)
Originally intended so that boys would be ‘trained to be industrious’

by learning woodwork, shoemaking, and other trade skills, separate
schools were established for girls who were trained in housework duties
with the clear intention that they would then go into domestic service as
housemaids. These children were lodged, clothed, and fed, but also
‘reformed’ as it was believed that for many of them, “home was a bad
influence” (Ryan 2009).
This gap between ‘home’ and ‘school’ has hopefully closed since the
1800s. However, as recently as the 1980s, these two dominant influences
in a young person’s life and upbringing were still in danger of being com-
pletely out of step with each other. As English farmer and author James
Rebanks recollects:
The whole time I was at school, I wanted to be at home on the farm. I was
convinced then, and still am, that home was a more interesting and pro-
ductive place to be for me. Making anyone do something they don’t want
to do with thirty other bored kids seemed to me absolutely pointless.
(Rebanks 2016: 90)
Rebanks writes of learning more practical and useful life skills from his
father and grandfather while working alongside them on their farm than
what was on offer at school, which he left as soon as he was able to at the
age of 15. Apart from painting a picture of ‘thirty bored kids’ which is
every teacher’s nightmare, this passage really begs a question of great
import to the consideration of educational philosophy:
At what point in our lives are we able to take responsibility for our own educa-
tion rather than be subjected to what someone else believes we should be
learning?
The whole notion of compulsory education suggests that we put our

children under compulsion to attend school until a certain age that has
been defined by legislation, varying from 15 to 17 depending on where
you happen to live. Proponents of public education in South Australia,
for example, suggest that “ever since the late 19th century… there has
been community agreement that education is so important that it
should be compulsory to a certain age” (Reid 2017: 4). While the
important relationship between school and community will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter, at this point we also should question how
this particular ‘community agreement’ has been maintained since the
late nineteenth century, and whether it is well over time in the early
twenty-first century for society to re-visit this agreement and question
whether it is still valid, or whether we are simply taking it for granted
based on tradition.
80 T. Stehlik
The negative aspects of compulsion are represented by the sort of ‘fac-

tory’ approach to schooling which not only channels young people into
life pathways according to such variables as gender, place, religion, socio-
economic status, or parental influence but also produces potentially
harmful effects on the developing child and adolescent who is compelled
to be there by society, with some of these effects being introduced at the
beginning of the following chapter.
In closing this chapter, a brief mention must be made of post-
compulsory education, which necessarily follows on from the compul-
sory years. As a distinct sector of education, this suggests a phase in
one’s life where one is no longer under compulsion to attend an educa-
tional institution but instead can attend one by choice. By definition it
includes everything post-school: universities, colleges, adult and com-
munity education centres, professional institutes, and so on. Post-
compulsory education also brings with it a completely different
approach to pedagogy, associated with adult teaching and learning
methodologies in which the student is there (generally) because they
want to be, and has had some choice in the matter including making a
conscious decision about why they are there.
Malcolm Knowles (1913–1997) popularised the term andragogy to
make a distinction between the types of learning undertaken by adults in
post-compulsory settings with that of pedagogy, which he argued applied
more to the formative years of teaching children than to the type of trans-
formative learning that could be facilitated with adults. Knowles’ defini-
tion of andragogy, the science of understanding and supporting lifelong
education of adults (Merriam 2001), includes informal and self-directed
learning processes, as described in Chap. 3. Although the separation
between andragogy and pedagogy has been critiqued as too simplistic,
the main difference between the two concepts relates to intrinsic self-
motivation in comparison with the types of extrinsic motivation associ-
ated with compulsory schooling. However, the point at which pedagogy
might merge into andragogy could be seen as the process of ‘education’
morphing into ‘lifelong learning’. It is important to the theme of this
book which suggests that, in the end, learning must be a self-directed pro-
cess (Fig. 4.3).
Fig. 4.3 Post-compulsory education: specialisation of schools, Amos sports

college
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5
School: Rhetoric, Reality,
and Revisionism
In this chapter I compare the rhetoric of school with the reality of what
children experience, then query how, why, when, and where we educate
our children, arguing that school choice should be an informed decision
but has become an emotionally charged and hotly debated issue in a com-
modified educational marketplace. The massification and marketisation of
education are examined in the light of such trends as globalisation and the
Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), accountability standards
for teachers, and a curriculum focused on narrowly defined vocational out-
comes. Responses to these trends are examined, including the alternative
view that ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’. How do we understand
and work within these opposing positions in the twenty-first century?
5.1 Schools as Places and Spaces

The physical manifestation of ‘the school’ as a building or structure looms
large in the history and mythology of schooling and has a profound effect
on the teaching-learning relationship as well as the socialisation of the
occupants.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_5
84 T. Stehlik
The school we go to is called Burnham High School. It’s recently built,

oblong in shape, flat-roofed, undecorated, unrevealing, sort of like a fac-
tory. It’s the latest thing in modern architecture. (Atwood 1988: 218)
Margaret Atwood’s description of a Canadian high school from the

early 1950s in her novel Cat’s Eye (1988) gives a classic visual image of the
physical reality of post-World War II universal mass education; the bland
building that resembles a factory where education has become a com-
modified product, just another outcome of modernism and suburban
planning. This bricks-and-mortar reality can be seen repeated endlessly in
the planning and architecture of not only Commonwealth and other
‘western’ countries, but in Eastern Europe too: in Russia, for example,
schools were so numerously mass-produced on an industrial scale that
they are still designated only by a number, not even by a name.
In Atwood’s novel, the brutal blandness of the school’s façade only
serves as an allegory for what actually goes on inside its walls. The main
character Elaine experiences all of the horrors that school in the 1950s
could deliver: sadistic and cruel teachers, discrimination by gender, cor-
poral punishment, organised bullying by other girls, loneliness, fear, inse-
curity, and desperate attempts to fit in and appear ‘normal’, eventually
leading to self-harm. This is fiction but it is based on fact, and many
people could relate to these experiences. And while it is hard to believe
that we would put our children through this sort of thing in public, state-
funded and government-sanctioned schools, the experiences of children
in Catholic institutions are also unfortunately well known:
From the age of ten, I was taught by the Christian Brothers: the carrot and
stick method of education, but without the carrot. (McCarthy 1988)
It reminds me of that awful saying: ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’.
I am sure that many children survived such schooling and possibly even
enjoyed it, growing up to be happy and normal people; but from an edu-
cative point of view, what does this approach tell us about how we treated
our children (and ourselves) in the past, and how we treat them now? On
what educational qualifications and theories did such teachers base their
practices of literally beating children into becoming submissive learners?
School: Rhetoric, Reality, and Revisionism 85
For those working under some form of religious dogma, one could say
their philosophy of education was based on their faith. One would hope
that things have improved in terms of pedagogy and methodology, and
one of the aims of this book is to show that trust is emerging as a better
educational paradigm than faith; but in terms of children experiencing
bullying, it has probably gotten worse—and not only since the concept
of cyberbullying has been identified as an unfortunate twenty-first-
century phenomenon.
The other side of this coin which highlights the extremes that can be
experienced in institutionalised education is the fact that schools can also
be places of refuge for children coming from domestic family situations
that are dysfunctional, abusive, and even dangerous. It is a sad fact that in
many documented cases, children and young people are living in domes-
tic environments that expose them to neglect, physical, psychological,
and sexual abuse, drug abuse, hunger, deprivation, and situations of
extreme squalor. This may be due to poverty, unemployment, overem-
ployment, family breakdown, criminal activity, and just plain ignorance
on the part of adults who are given the responsibility of looking after the
wellbeing of the children in their care. For example, children could be
disadvantaged simply by not having a quiet place or space to do their
homework. In extreme cases, children may experience a home environ-
ment where they are not protected from strangers or relatives exposing
them to alcohol, drugs, pornography, or inflicting abuse (Barnes 2016).
For these children, school is a safe haven and a place where they might be
fed and protected and even experience love. A close friend recalled to me
her own upbringing in a dysfunctional family of seven children where the
home environment was chaotic and disorganised, with the parents often
absent or disengaged, while she and her siblings were just left to fend for
themselves—even in finding something to eat and somewhere clean to
sleep. After her oldest sister started school, she immediately began to play
‘schools’ at home with her younger siblings, who loved this game and
played it continually as it provided some order and stability in their oth-
erwise chaotic home life—even when their big sister always insisted on
being the teacher and controlled them with a childish iron fist. (This sis-
ter grew up to become a teacher and then a school principal, possibly a
common story!)
86 T. Stehlik
Child development and parenting practices will be addressed in Part

III and teacher education in Part IV. In this chapter, I want to tease out
where we have gotten to in the twenty-first century, given the weight of
historical experience, theoretical experimentation, and cumulative every-
day practices that continue to drive the global education project along
like ‘a giant oil tanker’:
In education, you can only create change from the bottom—if the orders
come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers:
it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little
speedboats to show you can do things differently. (Oltermann 2016: 3)
Do we need to create change? In education, some things evolve as has

been shown, while others have stayed remarkably the same since the con-
cept of schooling began. Some of these changes have been positive, others
have been driven by agendas that are perhaps outside the best interests of
those for whom education is apparently for—current and future
generations.
5.2 T
he Massification and Marketisation
of Education
Globalisation is a phenomenon that Gert Biesta has defined as being
“about the creation of interdependence and at the same time about the
creation of new dependencies”, further suggesting that it is “the contem-
porary face of colonialism” (2006: 104).
However, globalisation is nothing new. During the Roman Empire,
humans were very mobile and established trading and migratory patterns
along with the conquest and occupation of countries and regions in the
known world at the time. We can see archaeological evidence of this with,
for example, Syrian artefacts turning up in places like Bath in England,
where the Romans established public baths which must have attracted
tourists from all over Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East around
2000 years ago. The age of exploration and global navigation that took
western civilisation to the Far East, the East Indies, the Americas, and even-
tually Australia also established the image we now take for granted of the
earth as a sphere with a fragile surface containing the finite environments
in which we now live, defined as continents, countries, nations, and oceans.
While the reality of our planet as a defined ecosystem has driven envi-
ronmental awareness with local and global movements in conservation and
sustainability increasingly recognising the fragility of this system over the
last century, the image of the world as a whole and the human race as a
global tribe has been brought into stark focus by technology. With a com-
puter and a fast internet connection, one can cruise the globe in the com-
fort of one’s living room simply by manipulating Google Earth. One can
communicate with people on the other side of the world in real time via
email, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and a range of other ICTs (Information
and Communication Technologies). International air travel has created the
greatest and fastest mobility yet available to humans; on any given day
there are between 1 and 2 million people up in the air flying in commercial,
military, or private aircraft. Online media can broadcast news, information
(and advertisements) in real time all over the world as it happens; so that
whether we want to know or not, we are only too aware of what is happen-
ing in places far away from where we actually live. In fact, the 24-hour
media cycle has contributed to the information society that we now live in,
with a concomitant result of conflating and confusing information with
knowledge (refer to the image in Chap. 2). Again, it is a matter of being
able to discern between what we need to know and what may just be nice
to know—as well as all the things we just don’t even need or want to know!
This mobility across borders, communicating in cyberspace, being
involved in virtual communities, in fact being a global citizen, has been
characterised by what contemporary sociologist and philosopher
Zygmunt Bauman has termed liquid modernity. Bauman (2012) uses the
term to describe a modern way of life in which change is so rapid that
social institutions which we have previously relied on to maintain a pre-
dictable and firm foundation no longer have time to ‘solidify’:
The most successful people nowadays are flexible and rootless; they can live
anywhere and believe anything…liquid modernity is a more or less
unstoppable force—in part because capitalism and technology are unstop-
pable. (Rothman 2017: 48)
88 T. Stehlik
In the field of education, this liquid modernity can be seen in the mas-
sification, commodification, and commercialisation of education as a
global economic phenomenon, what has in fact become known in gen-
eral terms as the knowledge industry. In higher education, universities are
now competing for market share in a global market that transcends bor-
ders, as exemplified by MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) that
can be taken online from anywhere in the world and have seen institu-
tions such as Melbourne and Harvard Universities enrolling literally mil-
lions of ‘virtual’ students in topics ranging from financial analysis to the
French Revolution (www.edx.org/school/harvardx; www.unimelb.edu.
au). In Australia, education has for a long time been one of the country’s
largest export ‘products’, at the time of writing coming fourth in export
revenue after primary resources such as iron ore, coal, and natural gas
(dfat.gov.au). This has occurred as a result of the targeted marketing of
higher education to overseas countries, mainly from the South East Asian
region, attracting a continual influx of international students who are
paying high tuition fees as well as living and travel expenses to study in
Australia.
As courses that are generally not accredited or assessed, MOOCs are a
form of non-formal learning and could be seen as an example of
‘Education for all’ according to the UNESCO agenda discussed in the
previous chapter. However, they also exemplify the notion of massifica-
tion—which simply means delivering a service or product on a mass
scale—as well as turning education into a commodity that can be com-
mercialised and sold, resulting in the increasing need for educational
institutions to market themselves aggressively, relying on status and pres-
tige, often creating niche products in an attempt to carve out a distinct
market edge, or even undercutting entry requirements and course fees.
Massification also implies a transformation from an elite form of educa-
tion to one that provides wider access to universities and colleges for
more and more applicants, with the resulting credential overload and
overcrowded labour market for the increasing number of university grad-
uates as discussed in Chap. 3.
The blurring of commerce and higher education can be no better
exemplified than in the phenomenon of the ‘McDonald’s Hamburger
University’, which by 2002 had produced over 70,000 graduates of
hamburgerology who went on to work in outlets of the fast food chain that
established the institution (Hayes and Wynyard 2002). This has led to
the term the ‘McDonaldisation of higher education’, coined by George
Ritzer in 1998 to refer to the general and pervasive trend for the rationali-
sation of university education according to commercial interests and the
financial power and influence of consumer society.
School education has also experienced McDonaldisation. In America,
this has now been branded as ‘Pearsonisation’ (Ravitch 2010) for the
multinational company Pearson that owns papers like the Financial Times
and respected textbook imprints like Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, and
Longman, and which, from being the world’s largest education publisher,
has since moved aggressively into the education provision market, in par-
ticular online testing.
Today standardized testing seems to many to have become the goal of edu-
cation—as embodied in the [American] No Child Left Behind program
and the new Common Core standards—rather than a means of imple-
menting it. Add in the increased use of technology to teach students, gov-
ernment cutbacks, and the private-sector-funded reform movement, and
companies have more clout than ever when it comes to what and how kids
are taught. (Reingold 2015)
Pearson is one of the largest and most visible of those companies, and its
perceived control over school education has received strong criticism from
parents, principals, and teachers, particularly in America where Pearson
now controls much of the process of high-stakes testing (60% of the mar-
ket in 2015) and has plans to own and operate its own education institu-
tions. Again, it is being sold as an inevitable outcome of globalisation, and
not just a corporate grab for profits in an emerging online education mar-
ket, according to Pearson’s chief education advisor, Michael Barber:
“It’s not remotely true to say we are setting the global standards,” he says.
“What is happening is a global economy and technological change and
that affects every walk of life. It’s not caused by Pearson. It’s caused by glo-
balization. Students are going to be part of a global labor market.” (Cited
in Reingold 2015)
90 T. Stehlik
A similar trend has been observed in the United Kingdom, where the
policy response to globalisation and international comparisons of student
performance led to the Blair Labour government advocating in the late
1990s for the creation of ‘Academy Schools’. These schools are a kind of
public/private partnership. Academies are independent, state-funded
schools which receive funding directly from central government, rather
than through a local authority, but the big difference is that they are allowed
to be run by charitable bodies known as ‘academy trusts’. The trend towards
Academy Schools in the United Kingdom has snowballed under subse-
quent conservative governments, so that at the time of writing 60% of
secondary schools and 12% of primary schools are now academies (bbc.
com). So far they have achieved mixed results, but much of the criticism is
based on concern about the extent of control over schools by interest groups
who qualify for charitable trust status—such as evangelical Christian
groups—and the growth of ‘academy chains’ in which schooling has
become a sort of franchise for particularly large and ambitious providers.
Microsoft Corporation has also stepped into the global education
business. “Microsoft has been working with schools across the globe for
the past decade”, with some newly established schools no longer using
textbooks in favour of all resources and content created in a virtual learn-
ing environment “with all students and teachers using Microsoft Surface
devices” (Irish Times 2017: 6). The perceived benefits of a virtual learn-
ing environment are that parents can also log in to the system, and that
by learning this way the students are being prepared for careers that ‘don’t
exist yet’. These are possibly good things but are as yet untested and
assumed and will require not only ongoing evaluation to determine if this
is the right track to take education in the future but also imply that edu-
cation of the future will undoubtedly look very different.
5.3 The Global Education Reform Movement

Policy is multidimensional and multilayered and occurs at multiple sites.
Globalised discourses and agenda setting and policy pressures now emerge
from beyond the nation … Global agents and agencies, both public and
private, are now often involved in the gestation and establishment of edu-
cation policy agendas. (Rizvi and Lingard 2010: 14–15)
All of these trends related to the globalised influence on education

including privatisation, massification, and marketisation can be sum-
marised and explained by what has been termed the Global Education
Reform Movement by the Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, with the inten-
tional acronym of GERM (Sahlberg 2012). This movement, which has
gained traction and momentum since the late 1980s, parallels other
developments in politics and policies such as economic rationalism and
neo-liberal agendas which have laid the ground for such concepts as
McDonaldisation and Pearsonisation to emerge. The Global Education
Reform Movement can be defined in terms of five key characteristics
which have consistently taken hold in education policy and practice in
western capitalist societies.
These five globally common features are:
1. Standardisation of education—Based on measurable outcomes; set-

ting performance standards for schools, teachers, and students; test-
based accountability
2. Focus on core subjects—Such as literacy and numeracy and STEM
(science, technology, engineering, and maths) at the expense of sub-
jects which become marginalised, for example, social studies, arts, and
music
3. Low-risk ways to reach learning goals—Minimising experimenta-
tion, creativity, and alternative pedagogies in teaching and learning
methodologies, with a defined focus on ‘guaranteed content’
4. Corporate management models to drive improvement—Policies
and ideas borrowed from the business world, including managerial-
ism, key performance indicators, accountability requirements, and
so on
5. Test-based accountability policies—School performance closely tied
to processes of accrediting, inspecting, and rewarding or punishing
schools and teachers, based on high-stakes testing and national and
international comparative data (Sahlberg 2012)
Processes that drive the GERM agenda include PISA, the Program for
International Student Assessment, a triennial international survey which
aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and
92 T. Stehlik
knowledge of 15-year-old school students living in countries that are part

of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development). To date, students representing more than 70 economies
have participated in the assessment, with the most recent round occur-
ring in 2015 (oecd.org). Countries and schooling systems can compare
their results across a range of literacy and numeracy indicators, and as
never before in the history of education, countries like Australia can com-
pare their students’ achievements with countries like Singapore and
Finland, which, although having completely different education systems,
cultures, and even languages, are held up as benchmarks as if there was a
level international playing field. Other international comparative surveys
of educational achievement include TIMSS (Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study) and PIRLS (Progress in International
Reading Study).
To further unpack the GERM agenda, the five features are now dis-
cussed in more detail, with acknowledgement to Pasi Sahlberg (2012).
1. Standardisation of education
• Outcomes-based education reform became popular in the 1980s,
followed by standards-based education policies in the 1990s, ini-
tially within Anglo-Saxon countries
• These reforms, quite correctly, shifted the focus of attention to edu-
cational outcomes, that is, student learning and school
performance
• Consequently, a widely accepted—and generally unquestioned—
belief among policy makers and education reformers is that setting
clear and sufficiently high performance standards for schools,
teachers, and students will necessarily improve the quality of

expected outcomes
• Enforcement of external testing and evaluation systems to assess
how well these standards have been attained emerged originally
from standards-oriented education policies
• Since the late 1980s centrally prescribed curricula, with detailed
and often ambitious performance targets, frequent testing of stu-
dents and teachers, and test-based accountability have characterised
a homogenisation of education policies worldwide, promising stan-

dardised solutions at increasingly lower cost for those desiring to
improve school quality and effectiveness
2. Focus on core subjects
• Basic student knowledge and skills in reading, writing, and maths
are elevated as prime targets and indices of education reforms
• As a consequence of accepting international student assessment
surveys, such as PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS as criteria of good
educational performance, reading and mathematical and scien-
tific literacy have now become the main determinants of per-
ceived success or failure of pupils, teachers, schools, and entire
education systems
• This is happening at the expense of social studies, arts, music,
and physical education that are diminishing in many school
curricula
3. The search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals
• This minimises experimentation, reduces use of alternative peda-
gogical approaches, and limits creativity and risk-taking in schools
and classrooms
• Research on education systems that have adopted policies empha-
sising achievement of pre-determined standards and prioritised
core subjects suggests that teaching and learning are narrower and
teachers focus on ‘guaranteed content’ to best prepare their stu-
dents for tests
• The higher the test-result stakes, the lower the degree of freedom in
experimentation and risk-taking in classroom learning
4. The use of corporate management models as a main driver of
improvement
• Educational policies and ideas are often borrowed from the busi-
ness world, and often motivated by national hegemony and eco-
nomic profit, rather than by moral goals of human development
94 T. Stehlik
• Faith in educational change through innovations bought and sold

from outside the system undermines two important elements of
successful educational change:
–– First, it often limits the role of national policy development and
enhancement of an education system’s own capabilities to main-
tain renewal
–– Second, it paralyses teachers’ and schools’ attempts to learn from
the past and also to learn from each other
5. Test-based accountability policies for schools
• School performance—especially raising student achievement—is
closely tied to processes of accrediting, promoting, inspecting, and,
ultimately, rewarding or punishing schools and teachers
• Success or failure of schools and teachers is often determined by
standardised tests and external teacher evaluations that devote
attention to limited aspects of schooling, such as student achieve-
ment in mathematical and reading literacy, exit examination results,
or intended teacher classroom behaviour
5.4 Responses to GERM

In Australia, one of the most visible and controversial responses to this
global trend is the introduction of national high-stakes testing for all
Australian school students: the National Assessment Program—Literacy
and Numeracy or NAPLAN. Since 2008, students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9
are assessed annually via a series of tests developed by an independent
statutory body specifically set up to manage this process—the Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
NAPLAN tests the sorts of skills that are essential for every child to prog-
ress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling and numer-
acy. (ACARA 2017)
At the same time, the federal government set up a system whereby the
results of the NAPLAN tests would be required by all schools to be made
publicly available on a website entitled ‘My School’. This website also

contains detailed information of school finances, student characteristics,
staffing, and other quite confidential information which is readily avail-
able to anyone able to log on (http://www.myschool.edu.au/).
The result of all this has been that Australian schools are now exposed
‘warts and all’ to scrutiny not only by government inspectors but by par-
ents who are making choices about schools, producing a sort of leagues
table where the ‘high performing schools’ (according to NAPLAN results)
are able to market themselves as academic success stories at the expense of
those which do not perform so well, for a range of reasons. Of course the
NAPLAN is a blunt instrument and does not measure other important
considerations like student wellbeing, the health of the school commu-
nity, or successes in other not-so-academic areas (arts, music, sports, and
so on). In fact, the test creates so much stress for children that it can nega-
tively impact on their wellbeing. Teachers and principals realise that so
much is at stake that they also stress about their schools’ performance and
how they will be judged on the My School data. Instances of manipulat-
ing test scores to try and make them look better have been reported, but
the main criticism of mandatory testing like NAPLAN is that teachers
‘teach to the test’, with the analogy of the tail wagging the dog in terms of
curriculum delivery.
A review of NAPLAN after its first four years of implementation found
a number of problems with the approach (Polesel et al. 2012):
• NAPLAN data is not a reliable measure of a school’s performance, as

it is only a measure of performance at the time of testing
• Due to the five-month lag between testing and the receipt of results,
data cannot be used as a diagnostic tool to improve student perfor-
mance until the following year
• Teachers may focus on tested areas, perhaps reducing the time spent
on curriculum areas not tested
• The publishing of testing data puts pressure on schools to perform—in
extreme cases, meaning that schools may deter low-performing stu-
dents from sitting the test
Apart from the dubious effects on teaching and learning, the other
outcome from the introduction of responses to the GERM such as
96 T. Stehlik
NAPLAN and My School has been the reality that public as well as pri-
vate schools are now competing with each other in an open and aggres-
sive education market.
In the United States, a similar response saw the George W. Bush admin-
istration’s No Child Left Behind Act introduced in 2001. This required
districts to measure student and school progress through increased test-
ing. “The viewpoint was clear: Schools were failing their students, and the
best way to improve was to understand—and measure—what teachers
and students were getting wrong” (Reingold 2015: 1). The view that
‘schools were failing their students’ also put the spotlight (or blowtorch)
onto teachers, with ‘teacher quality’ now becoming an issue and another
area of reactive policy with consequences for teacher training programs,
national teaching standards, and teacher performance measures.
It was not surprising then that also in 2001, the Australian Institute for
Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) was set up by the federal gov-
ernment as a body charged with the oversight of developing and admin-
istering standards for teachers and school leaders as a response to concerns
about ‘teacher quality’. As a result, all teachers in Australia, whether pub-
lic, private, pre-service, or in-service, are now accountable to the Australian
Professional Standards for Teachers (https://www.aitsl.edu.au/). There are
seven standards in three domains:
Domains of teaching Standards
Professional knowledge 1. Know students and how they learn
2. Know the content and how to teach it
Professional practice 3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and
learning
4. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning
environments
5. Assess, provide feedback, and report on student
learning
Professional 6. Engage in professional learning
engagement 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/
carers, and the community
These accountability requirements include the need for all teachers to

be annually assessed against the standards by their principal or school
manager, and to demonstrate that they have undertaken a certain
prescribed amount of approved professional development. Principals in

turn can be assessed and appraised against the Australian Professional
Standards for Principals, also developed and administered by AITSL. As a
clear example of the standardisation of education under the GERM
agenda, the way in which these developments are playing out will be
discussed in more detail in Part IV.
Finland is a nation that has been able to resist succumbing to such
accountability agendas, yet retain a very high performing education sys-
tem that has become the envy of other western countries. According to
Sahlberg, it appears that:
…the Finnish education system has remained quite uninfected to viruses

of what is often called the global education reform movement or
GERM. And the reason for that is clear: professional strength and moral
health of Finnish schools. (Sahlberg 2012)
What Sahlberg means by professional strength and moral health is out-

lined in some detail in the case study of Finland in Chap. 10, but suffice
to say that high-stakes testing is voluntary not compulsory, teachers and
principals are not measured against performance standards, with high
academic outcomes resulting from a central focus on student wellbeing in
all pedagogical activity rather than the reverse approach of ‘teaching to
the test’. What Finland has achieved is equality of educational o pportunity
across the country, with all schools being fully funded and supported so
that “parents don’t have to shop around for schools…they are all the
same” (Finnish teacher cited in Moore 2015).
5.5 It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child

In concluding this section on ‘schooling vs education’, the story of
Finland is appropriate in leading into a consideration of how schools
operate within and are influenced by the community in which they are
located, since another ‘secret’ to the Finnish success story is that the whole
country, culture, and society is united in supporting education as the key
to developing a modern civil society in which both the individual and the
community benefit.
98 T. Stehlik
The word community implies a group that has something in common.

It is a widely used—and often abused—term and could apply to humans,
plants, animals, or insects, in contexts that are social, geographical, eco-
logical, and even virtual. We talk about the community in which we live
as somehow being more immediate and localised than the society in which
we live. Yet we may also be members of a work community, a sporting
community, a musical community, or an online community—all outside
the immediate geographical area where we live. We speak of having a
sense of community, feeling part of a community, of community values,
of communal interests and the common good. Community permeates
our lives:
We are fortunate, because adults are community-forming beings. Our

capacity to create social coherence is always there. We need community to
find security, identity, shared values and people who care about us and
about whom we care. (Wlodkowski 1999: 91)
Humans needing to find security and identity in community groups

can be traced back to earlier times, when survival depended on coopera-
tion and organisation in tribal or kinship groups, and being ostracised or
excluded from the community meant certain death. Even now, we can see
how social exclusion can lead to a struggle for survival in the modern
world and social inclusion has become a policy agenda for some govern-
ments. The notion of individualism however is a relatively recent histori-
cal construct.
The concept of individuality can be considered to be culturally con-
structed and not an absolute state, having evolved in western civilisation
to the point where modern society is more than ever geared towards
meeting the rights of the individual, in contrast to feudal society, for
example, where the masses were not considered to be individuals in con-
trol of their own destiny. In medieval times, institutions such as the
church, the state, or the monarchy had absolute power over individuals
whose destinies were entirely determined by limitations imposed by class
structures and accidents of birth.
The rise of individualism in the twentieth century can be seen in the
development of a competitive free market economy, broadcast media, the
cult of the personality, the notion of everyone experiencing ‘15 minutes

of fame’, the idea of the ‘star’ (e.g. rock star, film star), concepts such as
the tall poppy, the overachiever, the genius, and so on. Most recently,
social media truly has enabled global exposure for anyone with a com-
puter, iPhone, or tablet to have their own profile or blog with any num-
ber of ‘followers’ or ‘friends’ in a virtual community. Our identities,
therefore, are also not absolute but established in relation to significant
others and our various roles as parent, sibling, child, friend, worker,
teacher, learner, citizen….all defined by some form of community,
whether they are intentional, random, determined by birth or joined by
choice.
The idea of schools as communities emerged in the 1970s when, accord-
ing to Merz and Furman, a gradual shift in thinking occurred in relation
to schools as communities rather than as bureaucratic organisations, with
more of a focus on relationships and values as well as academic outcomes
and structured learning, or what could be generalised as “a sense of com-
munity” about the school (1997: 68). To extrapolate, the concepts of
school and of community can be defined in terms of social relationships,
roles, and situations as much as by organisational frameworks, physical
boundaries, and hierarchical structures. The functional and brutalist
architecture of the school described in the quote that opens this chapter
reinforces the ‘bricks and mortar’ image that we might have when the
word school is mentioned. However, the example of the Irish hedge
schools mentioned in the previous chapter shows that school can occur
anywhere, even in the open air as long as the tenacity and desire are there
for teaching and learning.
A school therefore could also refer to the idea of a school—the non-
physical aspects including the people, the ethos, and the philosophy of
the school. For example, when we say that ‘the Australian artist Tom
Roberts was a member of the Heidelberg School’, we are referring to an
ideated construct, a movement in art that can be represented as a school of
thought or a school of practice; not a physical edifice. When we refer to any
organisation, we often think in terms of its physical presence or spatial
aspects, but it is the people who actually make up the organisation.
‘Organisation’ really means people coming together to organise them-
selves around a common interest or endeavour.
100 T. Stehlik
As organisations, schools are in danger of being viewed and managed

as corporate bureaucratic entities, as if education were a commodity or
product, according to trends identified in the GERM agenda outlined
above. It is more important than ever then, to keep the image of schools
as communities alive. Diane Ravitch, the American educator and former
Assistant Secretary of Education who became a vocal critic of the US No
Child Left Behind agenda in her book The Death and Life of the Great
American School System (2010), believes that standardised testing and the
marketing of education create unhealthy competition between schools.
“Schools operate fundamentally—or should operate—like families,” author

Diane Ravitch said in a Morning Edition interview. “The fundamental prin-
ciple by which education proceeds is collaboration”. (Inskeep 2010)
The image of schools operating like families is an attractive one, espe-

cially if we believe that the values and beliefs that we would want to
develop in our families of origin should align with those of the schools
our children attend. As shown in the previous chapter, the gap between
home and school can still be unfortunately wide. However, taking a big-
ger picture view, if we consider that home and school are both part of the
wider community in which children live, then this leads to the realisation
that a child’s education consists of a lot more than what they might expe-
rience at school.
Lo Shan (2000) notes that this has both positive and negative aspects:
The most illuminating and the most troubling Platonic lesson is that a
well-formed education involves nothing less than a well-formed politeia.
(“It takes a whole village to raise a child”). If education is to promote eudai-
monia, if it is to form sound habits of perception and thought, desire and
action, it encompasses the smallest details of the political system. In short,
the ethos and nomoi of a polity, its economic and family arrangements, its
popular arts and even its architecture are the fundamental educators of the
city. (LoShan 2000: 45)
The Greek word politeia incorporates the notions of citizenship, a form

of government, and the constitution of a polis, or state. Eudaimonia is a
wonderful word that translates as wellbeing, having a good spirit, and

general human flourishing. Nomoi translates as laws, customs, or what we
might now understand as norms. So the Platonic lesson is that in order to
promote wellbeing in our children and society, the whole state or polis
and the norms of society are involved in the education process, proving a
context and environment which cannot be discounted in their potential
overt and covert influences. That art and architecture are considered just
as important as economic arrangements reinforces the discussion in
Chap. 2 around the importance of aesthetics in education. Therefore, the
‘whole village’ is part of the picture of a child’s education, or putting it
another way: the community in which the child, the home, and the
school exist.
While there are great examples of how this works in practice, some of
which will be presented on the case studies in Part V, the ‘troubling’
aspect of it can be illustrated by the trends discussed in this chapter,
which reinforce the fact that the involvement of the state in education
can be overdone to the point of legislative control over social institutions
and practices such as schools, governed by rigid and extensive rules and
regulations. As Dahlin notes, “it is not so much ‘the smallest details of the
political system’ that is of crucial importance as the basic constitutional
laws” (2006: 65). Aristotle identified that the moral condition of a society
depended on a good constitution, and there is no reason to think this does
not hold true for modern society as it did for the Ancient Greek republic.
It therefore suggests that in the bigger picture of the education move-
ment, we could take a leaf from the conservation movement in thinking
globally and acting locally: to be aware of global trends but also work to
ensure the constitutional state in which we live supports and encourages
Eudaimonia. The task for us all will be to address the question: What is
my village?
This chapter concludes the section that discusses schooling as a distinct
and historical form of education, addressing the overall question that con-
siders the present and the future in the light of the past: How have we
applied what we have learned from history? Chapters 6 and 7 in the follow-
ing section now focus on the education and development of those mem-
bers of society who have the most to gain or lose from education and
102 T. Stehlik
schooling while at the same time being the most disempowered in terms
of being able to make decisions about what their education and schooling
look like—our children.
References
ACARA. (2017). https://www.acara.edu.au/. Accessed 19 May 2017.
Atwood, M. (1988). Cat’s eye. New York: Doubleday.
Barnes, J. (2016). Working class boy. Sydney: Harper Collins.
Bauman, Z. (2012). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future.
London: Paradigm Publishers.
Hayes, D., & Wynyard, R. (2002). The McDonaldization of higher education.
London: Sage.
Inskeep, S. (2010). Former ‘No Child Left Behind’ advocate turns critic. http://
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124209100. Accessed 20
May 2017.
Irish Times. (2017, March 30). Tablets help school cure problem of rote learn-
ing. The Irish Times, Business Technology and Innovation.
Lo Shan, Z. (2000). ‘Plato’s counsel on education’, chapter 3. In A. Oksenberg
Rorty (Ed.), Philosophers on education, historical perspectives. London/New
York: Routledge.
McCarthy, P. (1988). McCarthy’s bar: A journey of discovery in Ireland. London:
Hodder & Stoughton.
Merz, C., & Furman, G. (1997). Community and schools: Promise and paradox.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Moore, M. (2015). Where to invade next. IMG Films.
Polesel, J., Dulfer, N., & Turnbull, M. (2012). The experience of education: The
impacts of high stakes testing on school students on their families: Literature
review. Sydney: University of Sydney Whitlam Institute.
Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the Great American School System: How
testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books.
Reingold, J. (2015). Everybody hates Pearson. Fortune. http://fortune.

com/2015/01/21/everybody-hates-pearson/. Accessed 16 May 2017.
Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalising education policy. Oxon: Routledge.
Rothman, J. (2017, May 1). The seeker. The New York Times, pp. 46–55.
Sahlberg, P. (2012). https://pasisahlberg.com/. Accessed 17 May 2017.
Wlodkowski, R. (1999). Enhancing adult motivation to learn. San Francisco:
Jossey Bass.
Part III
The Kingdom of Childhood
6
Development over the Life Span
Paedology: The study of the character, growth, and development of children

Dictionary.com
This chapter provides an overview of development over the life span, with
reference to key educational theorists whose work has influenced con-
temporary thinking and practice around human physical, mental, emo-
tional and spiritual development. It refers to the early work of Friedrich
Froebel who recognised that play is a child’s work, and to the work of Jean
Piaget and Rudolf Steiner in child development and human develop-
ment. The debate about the influence of nature vs nurture in child devel-
opment is examined with reference to the literature on ‘wild children’.
6.1 The Kingdom of Childhood

The term ‘Kingdom of Childhood’ which is the overarching theme of
Part III has been deliberately taken from the work of Rudolf Steiner, spe-
cifically his lectures on education and child development which were

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_6
108 T. Stehlik
given in England in 1924 and subsequently published under that title

(Steiner 1982). The term provides a strong picture of that precious and
special time in an individual’s life when the world is new and the realities
and responsibilities of ‘grown up’ life are still a long way off. In recognis-
ing this ‘kingdom’ as a special place and time that needs to be respected,
protected, and nourished, several important consequences become appar-
ent: that forcing formal instruction too early can be damaging to a child’s
development, that what occurs in the early years can manifest later in
adult life in both positive and negative ways, and that the years before a
child even experiences any formal schooling will be crucial to their social-
isation and development as an individual. It is no wonder that the period
from birth to seven or eight years of age is referred to by Steiner Early
Childhood Educators as the vital years.
Steiner gave a picture of the child incarnating into the physical world
in a gradual process that recognises the child as a threefold human
being—body, soul, and spirit. The physical body reflects an earthly stream
in terms of the laws of biology and heredity—the genetic history the
child inherits from its parents. The spirit is subject to the laws of reincar-
nation and karma and represents a cosmic stream which presumes that
the individual not only has a spiritual history which it brings with it to its
earthly incarnation, but will have a future spiritual potential. The soul
then is the expression of the meeting of these two streams in the present,
the higher self and the physical self which create an individual identity, or
psyche (remember, psyche = Greek for soul). While the concept of des-
tiny is acknowledged in this view, past lives plus spiritual potential create
a certain choice or freedom in the present. Teachers are concerned with
the soul of a child in this sense of the word, but must recognise and work
with the fact that each child has a spiritual history and that very young
children are still incarnating until about their third year.
This view of the child as a being that incorporates a cosmic history was
not new—in fact Steiner acknowledged that this was part of the classical
Greek ideal of education:
Up to the seventh year of life, the Greek child was brought up at home.
Public education was concerned with children only after the age of seven.
They were brought up at home, where the women lived in seclusion, apart
Development over the Life Span 109
from the ordinary pursuits of social life, which were an affair of the men.
This in itself confirms a truth of education, without knowledge of which
one cannot really educate or teach, for the seventh year of life is an all-
important period of childhood. (Steiner 1981: 54)
The all-important characteristic of the seventh year that Steiner was

referring to is the change of teeth. During the sixth year of life, the nature-
forces of growth which replace infant teeth with adult teeth culminate
with an incarnation process that is significant, since this happens only
once in our lives, around the seventh year (the appearance of wisdom
teeth is an exception!).
What did the Greek see in the little child from birth to the time of the
change of teeth? A being sent down to earth from spiritual heights! He saw
in man a being who had lived in a spiritual world before earthly life. And
as he observed the child he tried to discover whether its body was rightly
expressing the divine life of pre-earthly existence. It was of importance for
the Greek that in the child up to the seventh year he should recognise that
a physical body is here enclosing a spiritual being who has descended.
(Steiner 1981: 56–57)
When applied to an educational philosophy, this creates a picture of

the child as an “unfolding personality” who “requires nourishing by car-
ing adults” (Miller 1997: 5), according to certain pre-destined rhythms
and patterns. While this is important for teachers, it can also be a revela-
tion for parents, particularly for the nursing mother to realise that her
infant’s soul has a ‘dreamlike consciousness’ which is still in the realm of
the angels and therefore should be regarded with reverence. However, the
most important aspect of child development, both from a parenting and
teaching point of view, is the recognition of the rhythmic progression of
the unfolding soul in accord with the “rhythmic processes of the uni-
verse” (Childs 1991: 39), and the importance of understanding the
appropriate ways of responding to a child’s needs at particular stages in
this process.
This philosophical idea holds that as we observe children going through
the bodily phases of growth from newborn, to infant, to toddler, and so
on, at the same time they are experiencing soul development and changes
110 T. Stehlik
in their consciousness. Consistent with a biological science view that the

body cells are ‘replaced’ every seven years, a way of mapping and under-
standing this developmental process in consciousness can also be viewed
as a seven-year cyclical pattern. The first seven years are characterised by
rapid growth of the physical body and learning by imitation and play, in
which the child largely relates to the world through its will. Around the
age of six or seven, the change from milk teeth to adult teeth signifies a
change in consciousness that goes beyond dependence on immediate
experience to an ability to create mental pictures and to interpret con-
cepts through feeling. This phase continues until the next great physical
change, the onset of puberty around the age of 13–14 when a capacity for
abstract thinking and an ability to make meaningful judgements unfolds,
leading up to the full development of the individual ego by the age of 21.
These first three phases can therefore characterised by the progressive
development of the three ‘soul forces’—willing, feeling, and thinking
(Easton 1997; Childs 1991; Ruenzel 1995).
These seven-yearly milestones continue throughout life and can simi-
larly be mapped against phases of development in adult life that coincide
with major life transitions. For example, ‘coming of age’ is associated
with the age of 21 in many societies, not coincidentally also the age at
which the physical body is deemed to be anatomically fully formed. The
age of 28 is associated astrologically with the ‘Saturn return’ experience,
when the planet Saturn returns to the position it occupied in the heavens
at birth, a time in an individual’s life often characterised by an emotional
or spiritual upheaval such as a relationship, career, or life change. The ages
of 42 and 56 are also significant in similar ways, although all of these
should be seen as “milestones, averages, ideal distances around which
individual development moves” (Lievegoed 1993: 42), and not absolute
fixed dates.
In the book Phases (1993), Bernard Lievegoed examines in some detail
the literature on the division of human life into phases, also noting that
the seven-year cycle schema which is fundamental to Steiner’s educational
philosophy originated in classical Greek times. He is careful to make the
point that while it may be apparent that an individual develops through
clearly definable phases of life such as childhood to adolescence, adoles-
cence to adulthood, and so on, the transition from each change is gradual
and will differ according to social and environmental contexts. At one

end of this interpretation of the process of gradual change is the view that
the course of life evolves in a continually unfolding series of develop-
ments in an almost seamless way, making the notion of separate phases
redundant. A more critical view suggests that “the concept of self-
development over the life course, with its putative phases and stages of
development, is itself a social construct”, and that individuals actually
live out expectations placed upon them at particular ages and phases in a
predictable fashion (Tennant and Pogson 1995: 4).
Another approach to contextualising personal identity as a social con-
struction is the understanding of development as an ongoing dialectical
process, in which “the person is construed as a changing person in a
changing world”, and is not only created by the society in which they live
but also contributes to its creation (Tennant 1997: 54). Tennant further
suggests that a view of the life course as evolving in predictable stages also
presumes movement towards some end goal, whereas change can be
irregular and unpredictable and does not necessarily imply improvement
or progression to higher levels of development.
Linked to this is the recognition that the meaning of the word develop-
ment itself can also be contested, as a social as well as a psychological
construct. That is, what it means to be ‘developed’ may differ according
to whose interests are being served, much the same way as the distinction
between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries is based on a western
capitalist perspective of economic growth, which tends to devalue and
ignore cultural and spiritual development. Therefore, development, as
applied here to the individual, is distinguished from change, a term which
merely signifies that nothing is static, and growth which describes a quan-
titative increase in size or number. Development is defined as “growth in
which structural changes occur at critical points throughout the system”
(Lievegoed 1993: 18).
It follows then that for the individual, these structural changes at criti-
cal points are more than just physical. While physical changes can be an
indicator of critical points of development, such as the change of teeth in
the developing child, it is self-evident that biological development is only
one aspect of human development. Based on the previously discussed
picture of the threefold nature of the human being as body, soul, and
112 T. Stehlik
The Spirit descends Reworking process The Spirit ascends
The Soul unfolds --------- Soul deepening process --- Potential for soul maturing
1 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 etc
Fig. 6.1 The threefold development of life over seven-year cycles
spirit, Lievegoed (1991, 1993) clearly identifies three human develop-

ment patterns in the course of the life span—biological development,
psychological development, and spiritual development. This schema is
represented in Fig. 6.1 and overlaid over the seven-year cycles. The dia-
gram represents this linear model of development as 21-year phases and
shows how in the first 21 years the body is growing up while the spirit is
descending or ‘incarnating’, while the soul, which represents the meeting
of these earthly and cosmic streams, is unfolding. In the second 21-year
phase, the body has reached maturity and is physically ‘stable’, giving the
opportunity for ‘true psychological development’ or soul deepening.
Around the age of 42, when physical-biological development decreases,
soul-spiritual development may become the focus of an individual’s per-
sonal life journey.
An archetypal illustration of this spiritual searching is the metaphor of
the Holy Grail, which has been recognised as representing the universal
search for meaning in the context of western culture. This eleventh-
century narrative story of Parsifal was considered by the psychologist Carl
Jung to be an important allegorical myth, informing the psychological
development of western consciousness in the past millennium with sym-
bolism and archetypes which can be related to the individual’s quest for
knowledge, understanding, and identity. The young hero of the story is
confronted with the question of what it means to ‘know thyself ’ (Von
Eschenbach 1980).
Lievegoed goes on to suggest that this ongoing development of the

spirit (which he also terms the ‘mind’ and equates with the Jungian
notion of the higher ego) occurs in the polarity between extroversion and
introversion, manifested in creativity and wisdom. Creativity represents
the outward expression of the ego and a person’s individuality, and plays
a major role in spiritual development during youth and the expansive
period of adulthood. He also suggests that wisdom does come with age,
from being able to reflect and learn from life, and characterises such
development in the later period of life:
Wisdom is based on inspiration, and inspiration, literally, means ‘breathing

in’. Wisdom is breathing in, filling oneself with spirit, with norms and
values, with meaning, with humanity. (Lievegoed 1993: 24, original
emphasis)
This analogy of the rhythm of breathing, of expiration and inspiration,

is a powerful metaphor for the balancing forces of earthly and cosmic
development and is representative not only of the development of an
individual but of organisations, communities, and humanity in general.
It is a fundamental natural process that can be observed in the rhythm of
the seasons in a literally global sense; for example, mid-winter can be seen
as the deepest in-breath of the earth, while mid-summer is conversely the
extent of nature’s out-breathing. In his 1922 book The Aims of Education,
Alfred Whitehead also stressed the importance of the cyclical, rhythmic
nature of education:
There are also subtler periods of mental growth, with their cyclical recur-
rences, yet always different as we pass from cycle to cycle, though the sub-
ordinate stages are reproduced in each cycle. That is why I have chosen the
term ‘rhythmic’ as meaning essentially the conveyance of difference within
a framework of repetition. Lack of attention to the rhythm and character
of mental growth is a main source of wooden futility in education.
(Whitehead 1922: 226)
A fundamental aspect of this theory of the unfolding being is the sig-

nificance of the effects of education and upbringing on an individual’s
later development in body, soul, and spirit, which is encapsulated in
114 T. Stehlik
William Wordsworth’s well-known aphorism—‘The child is the father to

the man’. The meaning of this saying can be interpreted as:
Everything that the child experiences will affect the way in which the adult
relates to the world later in life
Or more literally:
Children bear the seeds of that which they will become within themselves.
The task for parents and educators is to nourish this seed and allow it
to grow naturally, in order to lay the foundation for effective learning
throughout life.
Allowing children to simply be children is a simple yet significant reali-
sation in acknowledging and nurturing the Kingdom of Childhood. Yet
in modern western societies, this has not always been so self-evident, with
an increasing focus on institutionalising children from a very early age
and exposing them in infancy to cognitive stimulation based on theories
of psychological development and more recently technological innova-
tions whose long-term effects are yet to be assessed. As noted, the field of
psychology developed into a coherent discipline in the early twentieth
century and then proceeded to dominate thinking around child develop-
ment and consequent educational responses, with the influence of theo-
rists like Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and Lev Vygotsky now deeply
embedded in contemporary approaches to education and particularly
teacher education.
Piaget in particular, “who is widely regarded as ‘the father of develop-
mental psychology’ particularly as it applies to children and adolescents”
(Gidley 2016: 48), was responsible for the theory of cognitive develop-
ment developed in the 1930s that was taken up with alacrity in the 1970s
so that it is still taught in universities and teachers’ colleges today. It is so
pervasive that readers may well be very familiar with it. In brief, his four
stages of human cognitive development are set out as:
1. Sensori-motor stage, up to two years old (pre-language, non-

representational)
2. Pre-operational stage, from two to seven years (language acquisition,

symbolic play, mental imagery)
3. Concrete operational stage, from 7 to 11 years (logical reasoning based
on concrete objects or events)
4. Formal operational stage, from adolescence to adulthood (higher

order and hypothetical reasoning)
Although still popular enough to be taught in university subjects in

educational psychology, Piaget’s model has come in for some criticism.
One criticism concerns the limitations of such ‘stage theories’. Piaget
himself acknowledged that transitions between stages can be blurred and
gradual rather than abrupt, and the same could be said of the seven-year
cycle model. Of more concern perhaps is the idea that ‘cognitive develop-
ment’ ends with the formal operational stage which then presumably is
the state in which an individual stays from adolescence to death, resulting
in further research which suggests that “the formal operations stage is not
the highest point in human development” (Souvaine 1990, cited in
Tennant and Pogson 1995: 26).
This has led to the identification of postformal stages of cognitive devel-
opment, in line with trends in holistic thinking, integrated knowledge,
and a move away from focussing purely on cognition in development and
education to acknowledge the affective domain, emotional intelligence,
and higher levels of consciousness. Jennifer Gidley notes that the Piagetian
notion of formal operations comes directly from Aristotelian categorical
logic:
The binary categorical nature of formal operations leads to dissection, spe-

cialisation and fragmentation of knowledge rather than synthesis and inte-
gration. The failure of much contemporary psychology, and indeed
education, is that it is based on the primacy of formal operations and that
it tries to emulate natural science in its approaches to the psyche, which
cannot be measured in the same way as physical objects. (Gidley 2016: 56)
A scientistic/psychological view of human development is therefore

bound to be fragmentary and not inclusive of a holistic perspective that
should recognise traits such as imagination, inspiration, creativity, and
116 T. Stehlik
artistic ability which are not simply cognitive processes and as Gidley says
difficult to measure, therefore requiring subtler approaches to teaching
and learning than relying on standardised content delivery and testing.
This leads to the age-old question of whether such character traits are
inherent and latent within the developing child, only needing to be
‘drawn out’ through effective education, or whether they can be incul-
cated and transmitted as if all children were a ‘blank slate’ or an empty
vessel waiting to be filled, as suggested by Locke’s theory of tabula rasa.
Not surprisingly, the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate has also been presented
and analysed as a binary ‘either/or’ categorical dilemma: between either
genetic heredity or environment and upbringing.
6.2 Nature or Nurture?

The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the
idea that education is development from within and that it is formation
from without; that it is based upon natural endowments and that educa-
tion is a process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its
place habits acquired under external pressure. (Dewey 1963: 17)
The classic experimental approach to determining the extent to which

children are a product of their natural environment or their upbringing
includes the literature on ‘wild boys and girls’—those who have been
found running with wolves or brought up by animals other than humans,
then captured and brought into some form of civilisation with attempts
to tame and teach them (Newton 2002). One of the first documented
and published cases was that of ‘Victor – the wild boy of Aveyron’, a wolf-
child found in the forests of France at the end of the eighteenth century
(Itard 1802; Lane 1976; Malson 1972). At the time—well before Charles
Darwin—contemporary debates ignited by the Enlightenment included
questions around what distinguished the human animal from all other
animals, with one of the most significant factors considered to be the
ability to learn language. As such, the physician and psychologist Jean
Itard (1774–1838) took on this feral child when he emerged from the
woods at about the age of 11 or 12, treating him as an experiment in
education to try and prove some of the latest theories around knowledge
being empirical rather than inherent, as well as the importance of sociali-

sation and civilisation in being able to learn.
By “awakening the boy’s mind” (Malson 1972: 72), Itard hoped to
disprove prevailing views that the child, who he named Victor, was a
congenital idiot who had been abandoned by his parents for this reason
and was therefore uneducable. Over a five-year period, Itard was partially
successful in his quest—‘taming’ Victor and teaching him some very
basic living skills and a few words, although he never gained speech or
understood language even though he lived to the age of 40. As psychol-
ogy was seen with suspicion at this time as a new and untested form of
social science, many critics pointed to the failure of Victor to be fully
rehabilitated into civilised society as proof that Victor’s nature “destined
him to be a savage” and that he had suffered “arrested development” not
only at birth but in spending the majority of his early life in the wild
(Malson 1972: 78–79).
Itard however continued to work at the Deaf and Dumb Institute in
Paris for almost 40 years and established himself as a pioneering peda-
gogue and the founder of education for what were known as ‘backward
children’, based on some of the novel techniques he had invented for
working with Victor. His work and his writings were later taken up with
keen interest by Maria Montessori in Rome, after she too had been work-
ing with children regarded as ‘mentally deficient’ and after achieving suc-
cess in teaching them, had applied her remedial methods to the teaching
of ‘normal’ young children, resulting in the Montessori method now
active in many countries. In 1907 when Montessori was working with
these culturally deprived children in San Lorenzo, Italy, she also aimed to
disprove the prevailing view among educators and psychologists that
“intelligence was still thought to be determined by heredity” (Kramer
1976: 375).
Other studies have shown that while intellectual capacity may be geneti-
cally determined, interaction with the environment – early stimulation –
has a great deal to do with whether an individual will realise his full
potential or not. Enriched environments in the preschool years are now
seen as possible antidotes to cultural deprivation – just what Montessori
was providing in her work with the children in San Lorenzo in 1907.
(Kramer 1976: 376)
118 T. Stehlik
Enriched environments for very young children are today seen as nor-
mal and necessary aspects of the education and socialisation process, yet
around 100 years ago this was still an emerging educational philosophy,
and was even vigorously criticised and resisted by establishment authori-
ties, under the prevailing Victorian mindset of the purposes of public
education. This was partly an economic argument—why spend public
money on three-year-olds?—and partly to do with the place of children
in society at the time. In fact, only a century earlier, at the beginning of
the nineteenth century “it was generally believed that human infants,
with the rare exception of those with physical defects, were miniature
adults already fully equipped for life” (Malson 1972: 77).
The ‘miniature adult’ paradigm gradually gave way during the nine-
teenth century to the concept of childhood as a distinct and different
phase of life, but not before the dreadful exploitation of children in fac-
tories, mines, and industries that fed the new industrial society and sent
them to do the same work as adults at a very young age. As we have seen
in Chap. 4, school was reserved for the few and privileged. Kindergartens
were yet to be conceived and established. Books for children were rare
and children’s literature slowly developed during the 1900s, with some
early didactic and strident attempts to educate children in Victorian mor-
als and values by scaring the daylights out of them, for example, the
German Struwwelpeter stories that featured—with graphic pictures—the
girl who played with matches and burnt herself to death, the boy who
sucked his thumbs and had them cut off by the scary Scissor Man, and so
on (Hoffmann 1845). The well-known folk tales collected and published
by the German Grimm brothers appeared in 1812 in a first edition which
was not ‘sanitised’ like later versions that watered down to some extent
the scenes of cruelty and violence deemed inappropriate for children.
It was a German educationalist, Katharina Rutschky (1941–2010),
who introduced the idea of ‘poisonous pedagogy’ in her 1977 book
Schwarze Pädagogik (literally black pedagogy), to describe child-raising
approaches that damage a child’s emotional development. Psychological,
physical, and emotional abuse or manipulation is unfortunately still a
feature of some children’s upbringing and will be discussed further in the
following chapter. However, this comes from a long history starting with
original sin, and in the eighteenth century, children were actually seen as
inherently ‘evil’ and therefore needed to be ‘tamed like animals’, so that

the Struwwelpeter and Grimm stories then appear to be unremarkable in
the context of a society in which a German child-raising book advised
parents that:
These first years have, among other things, the advantage that one can use
force and compulsion. With age children forget everything they encoun-
tered in their early childhood. Thus if one can take away children’s will,
they will not remember afterward that they had had a will. (Sulzer 1748)
So even though it was recognised that will was the guiding soul force
in early childhood, it was seen as something that should be conquered
with force and compulsion, not nurtured as a precious gift of individuality.
The Polish/Swiss psychologist Alice Miller (1923–2010) went even fur-
ther to suggest that German traumatic childrearing was responsible for
producing such a damaged character as the dictator Adolf Hitler (Miller
1980).
Having no rights and no voice in society and no real identity as a vul-
nerable group needing protection and nurturing under the responsibility
of society and the state, children in Victorian times were at worst exploited
in Dickensian fashion in the workforce, relegated to industrial schools as
orphans or ‘uncontrollable children’ (see Chap. 5), or at best expected to
be ‘seen and not heard’ by the emerging middle class in both private and
public situations.
How contrary then that by the second half of the nineteenth century
and into the twentieth, a vision of childhood as a romantic ideal gradu-
ally emerged, popularised, and sentimentalised by fantasy fiction such as
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), Edward Lear’s nonsense sto-
ries (1846), and culminating in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, ‘the boy who
wouldn’t grow up’ (1904). Influenced by Romantic poets such as
Wordsworth, and strangely curtailed by Victorian morals and Edwardian
values, these books, followed by Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the
Willows (1908) and AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (1926), created an ide-
alised view of perpetual, pastoral childhood innocence that not only
spawned a genre of children’s literature but “lay at the core of a powerful
fantasy [that] adults worked out in response to their own hopes, fears and
120 T. Stehlik
doubts about themselves and their world” (Wullschlager 1995: 13). Adult
parents living vicariously through their children is a theme that is explored
further in Chap. 7.
It is not surprising then that the ‘nurture’ side of the binary argument
about nature vs nurture was confused and divided and while gaining trac-
tion over the last 200 years or so is still the subject of inquiry and research.
Much like wild children, twins have provided opportunities for social
researchers to test various theories around the development of intelli-
gence and character, with the possibility of comparing identical (mono-
zygotic) twins who are considered to have exactly the same genetic and
hereditary characteristics with variables such as having experienced the
same environmental upbringing; or even better, though rare, having been
separated at birth and experiencing differing upbringings. The University
of Minnesota Twin Family Study conducted from 1979 to 1999 is one of
the more well-known studies:
A 1986 study that was part of the larger Minnesota study found that genet-
ics plays a larger role on personality than previously thought. Environment
affected personality when twins were raised apart, but not when they were
raised together, the study suggested. (Lewis 2014)
Of interest is the general finding already established in the 1960s that

“identical twins show far fewer psychological than physiological similari-
ties” (Malson 1972: 21), because physiological development is also
undoubtedly influenced by environment and upbringing as well as by
genetic inheritance. This is clearly apparent in countries where children
suffer malnutrition as a result of growing up in situations of poverty or
famine, and fail to thrive physically due to deprivation. The link between
intellectual and physiological development is harder to establish because
lack of educational opportunity goes hand in hand with socio-economic
disadvantage.
Recent research by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has
shown that even in a developed country like Australia, poverty affects
physiological development. A longitudinal survey of 3700 children found
significant differences in the age that they reached puberty depending on
their socio-economic circumstances:
Boys who grow up in hardship are more than four times at risk of starting
puberty aged 10 than those who grow up in safer, wealthier households.
And girls who grow up disadvantaged are twice as likely to start puberty
earlier than others. (Spooner 2017)
The findings go on to discuss some of the reasons for early matura-

tion—associated with emotional, behavioural, and social problems dur-
ing adolescence—and some of the consequences, including health
problems in later life (Sun et al. 2017). Adolescence itself, however, is a
relatively recent social construct, as discussed in the following chapter.
To conclude this brief discussion on nature vs nurture, it is apparent
that a binary oppositional view of genetic heredity on the one hand and
environmental influences on the other is too simplistic in considering the
possible effects on the developing child and adult, which literally cannot
be generalised but are unique to practically every individual case—much
like an individual’s fingerprints are unique. However, one could think of
the two sides of this coin more as two ends of a spectrum or continuum,
along which one could be placed according to situation and opportunity.
Returning to the threefold picture of the human being presented earlier
in this chapter, it also needs to be pointed out that the individual has
some agency as well, that life is not entirely pre-destined by the inheri-
tance of the spirit and the physical manifestation of the body, but can be
shaped and developed by consciously working on the soul—by the indi-
vidual from within and by society, through education, from without.
Man’s genetic inheritance is quite formless until it has been given a shape
by social forces, yet the direction of these forces themselves may always be
changed by the intervention of consciousness. (Malson 1972: 24)
6.3 Play Is a Child’s Work

Enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion and let
your children’s lessons take the form of play. (Plato, The Republic)
From being considered as ‘miniature adults’, to being recognised as

unique entities with emerging consciousness, physical and intellectual
122 T. Stehlik
developmental needs, very young children have gradually established a

place in society as needing a different form of educational approach, lead-
ing to the specialised field of Early Childhood Education. In line with the
developmental theories discussed in this chapter, this roughly equates to
the first seven or eight years of life, from birth until the time that a child
is deemed ready for formal education. In those first few years, children
experience a whole world of learning long before they encounter formal
schooling and a place where adults are referred to as teachers. A child in
its first three years of life learns to walk, talk, comprehend, and commu-
nicate with others all by the process of imitation and experiment—not by
formal schooling. What the young child learns about the world into
which it is born, it learns from its significant kinship relations—parents,
siblings, grandparents—and “it is important to realise that cultural learn-
ing begins at birth, is mostly non-verbal and 90% unconscious”
(Khoshkhesal 1995: 14).
Just as a child’s physical body is developing unconsciously according to
the laws of nature, so are their other faculties developing without their
conscious input. Recognising and working with this unconscious devel-
opment and allowing it to blossom naturally, rather than forcing abstract
adult-oriented thinking and rational-logic expectations onto the child
too soon, is a significant realisation for parents and educators. Pestalozzi
and Froebel, introduced in Chap. 2, were pioneers in early childhood
education, recognising this significant reality about young children at a
time when mainstream society still viewed them as miniature adults.
Pestalozzi was influenced by Rousseau and the ideal of ‘the natural life’,
establishing a school in rural Switzerland for poor country children, with
a radical (for its time—the end of the eighteenth century) curriculum
based on training the senses through natural activity and observation of
concrete objects before moving onto abstract concepts.
Friedrich Froebel was one of Pestalozzi’s student teachers, who went
on to become famous as “the German schoolmaster who gave the world
the kindergarten” (Kramer 1976: 65). Froebel became interested in the
pre-school years, eventually establishing a school for very young chil-
dren in Thuringia which, in an inspired moment, he named a
Kindergarten—literally a garden where children would be allowed to
grow like unfolding flowers. A radical and innovative move at a time

when early childhood education was not yet institutionalised, the kin-
dergarten movement only flourished because it was taken up as a cause
by a wealthy German patroness—Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow—
who spread the word abroad, opening the first kindergarten in London
in 1851. Charles Dickens was impressed and helped to raise public
awareness of kindergartens through his writings in the popular press,
which at the time was emerging as a platform for more broadly promul-
gating influential ideas about education. By 1873, kindergartens had
become part of the public school system in the United States, with
Dewey incorporating the philosophy into his Laboratory Schools at the
University of Chicago.
The Froebel society, founded in 1875, spread the kindergarten philosophy.

In a context of romantic mysticism in which growing children were
described as flowers unfolding, Froebel presented his contributions to edu-
cational thought. He saw all education as basically a process of self-activity,
the natural endowments of the individual unfolding according to the uni-
versal laws of organic development. Convinced of the value of play in early
childhood learning, he introduced a series of toys or apparatus he called the
“gifts”, to stimulate learning through play. (Kramer 1976: 66)
The value of play in early childhood learning is one of the enduring lega-
cies of Froebel’s philosophy, in addition to the fact that the kindergarten
is now a well-established and embedded aspect of formal education sys-
tems. In Edwardian England, the social reformer Margaret McMillan,
influenced by Froebel and also William Morris (see Chap. 4), champi-
oned the role of nature play for very young children (McMillan 1919). In
the field of early childhood education, free play is now a recognised activ-
ity and play-based learning an accepted methodology. Anyone watching
young children engrossed in play activity will realise that for them, it is a
lived experience, being in the moment, and very often incorporating all
their sense faculties to the extent that the real and the imagined are
merged. In this respect, we could say that play is a child’s work—they are
actively working out their identities and relationships with the natural
124 T. Stehlik
world and with others through exercising imagination, creativity, nego-

tiation, and empathy.
Van Hoorn et al. (2011) summarised play as the fundamental driver that
fosters physical, social-emotional, linguistic and intellectual development,
as well as personality and sense of self in the child. (Pryor 2014: 34)
Adventure playgrounds were established in Britain in the years after

World War II, in recognition of the need for children to be able to experi-
ence outdoor activities that involved some form of risk and therefore
self-regulation, and initially utilising vacant land that had been bombed
or made derelict by the conflict. Providing children with cast-off goods
that were considered junk but could be recycled into resources for cre-
ative play, these playgrounds became hugely popular and have influenced
a resurgence in community-based pop-up play spaces in the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Australia (https://www.popupplay.net/;
http://www.playwales.org.uk/eng/home).
Play is a subtle construct. It should be spontaneous, voluntary, and
intrinsically motivated in order to be meaningful and satisfying for the
child—so what is the role of the parent, play worker, or early childhood
educator in encouraging play, and how do we know if play is meaningful
and beneficial, not just random and trivial?
Firstly, play in a pre-school or kindergarten setting can be seen as a
continuum, with spontaneous child-directed ‘free play’ at one end,
moving to teacher-guided play, and continuing to the other end of
the spectrum where play is teacher-directed (Pryor 2014; Van Hoorn
et al. 2011). Knowing when and how to negotiate this continuum is
part of learning to be an effective parent and educator; providing a
safe but enriching learning environment is a vital first step, with
attention to detail such as the kindergarten in a Waldorf School
(Fig. 6.2):
Round in form and soft in feel, to support the oneness of the group, the
Kindergarten building has a soft inner space devoid of detail – the room,
without corners, is filled with warm, low light. The roof is domed complet-
ing the gesture of gentleness. (Keyte 2010: 68)
Fig. 6.2 The kindergarten at Willunga Waldorf School—a safe, nurturing, and
enriching environment
The ‘toys’ that Froebel introduced in the first kindergartens need not
be anything manufactured or even educationally significant—children
will make use of chairs, sticks, bits of wood, cloth, or stones to invent
imaginative play objects.
Secondly, play is all about the process and the activity, and unlike most
other forms of education, not concerned with any perceivable outcome or
product. The same game may be played over and over again, the same
cubby house constructed and pulled apart and re-built again. The end
result is not important, it is the lived moment that matters.
The fragile and delicate nature of play as a spontaneous child-centred
activity is therefore open to being rationalised, commodified, commer-
cialised, and over-regulated just like other aspects of education. The cul-
tural historian Howard Chudacoff published a history of child’s play
(2008) in which he points out that:
126 T. Stehlik
…for most of human history what children did when they played was
roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in
freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats
and action heroes…they spent most of their time doing what looked like
nothing much at all. “They improvised their own play; they regulated their
play; they made up their own rules”. (Speigel 2008)
Chudacoff then argues that during the second half of the twentieth
century, this kind of play changed radically:
Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, chil-

dren were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined
scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played
Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization
and co-optation of child’s play – a trend which begins to shrink the size of
children’s imaginative space. (Spiegel 2013)
So began the influence of popular culture, advertising, commerce, and

the emergence of children as a cohort who could be aggressively targeted
as a distinct sector of the consumer market, effectively reached through
the growth and exploitation of mass media, especially television. In this
milieu, the twenty-first-century child now finds itself as never before con-
fronted with a modern world bombarding it with stimuli that increas-
ingly needs to be mediated by discerning parents, guardians, and teachers,
making it even more important to respect the sanctity of the kingdom of
childhood so that children do not grow up ‘too fast’. Chapter 7 considers
these issues and further addresses the key question: How should children
learn? as well as the coterminous question for those of us tasked with their
wellbeing and education: How should adults learn?
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Easton, F. (1997). Educating the whole child, “Head, heart and hands”: Learning
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7
The Twenty-First-Century Child
This chapter unpacks the notion of the ‘twenty-first-century child’ in the

light of contemporary and often challenging and complex contexts in
which children are now growing up. Children and young people are now
labelled as ‘digital natives’, tangled up inextricably in the world wide web,
with toddlers, tweens, and teens seen as consumers of education as well
as consumers of goods and products. As a result, education has also
become a commodity. Reactions and responses to these modernist trends
driven by information technologies and the media include various ‘back
to nature’ initiatives such as the Forest School movement in the United
Kingdom and Europe and bush kindergartens in Australia. This chapter
also addresses those who are charged with the care, support, and upbring-
ing of our children—parents, guardians, and families. Parenting as a voca-
tion is introduced and discussed, in the light of the various roles that
parents have in educating their children and managing their own learn-
ing about parenting.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_7
130 T. Stehlik
7.1 From Infancy to Adolescence and Beyond

From occupying a place in society as miniature adults who should be
seen and not heard, to being placed within an idealised picture of fan-
tasy and innocence, to today’s view of the child as a yet unformed indi-
vidual, children now find themselves in the twenty-first century being
represented and categorised in complex and contradictory ways based
from a bewildering variety of adult and societal perspectives, not only
educational but economic, psychological, sociological, medical, legal,
and familial.
This can be no better illustrated than in pointing out the variety of
labels applied to children in various stages of development, partly as a
result of the sort of psychological stage theories described in the previous
chapter, but also driven by progressive policy shifts in thinking about
childhood and an apparent desire to pigeon-hole children into cohorts as
convenient units of analysis. Even in the pre-natal period before birth,
children have an identity, with ultrasound images of the developing foe-
tus now forming part of the suite of baby photos displayed and shared by
proud parents, increasingly via online platforms such as Instagram,
Twitter, and Facebook. In its first month of life, the baby is medically
labelled as a neonate (Latin for newborn), after which it is generally
referred to as an infant up until about one or two years of age, then per-
haps a toddler when it starts to walk. The term infant can also be applied
to children between the ages of four and seven, and there are still schools
in England and parts of Australia catering to this age group known as
infant schools. In the English legal system however, the period of infancy
has an entirely different meaning and continues from birth until the age
of 18.
Kid, when referring to a child, is a colloquialism and a pejorative use
of the word for a baby goat. It does not help in defining what the age of
the child might be and has a range of connotations including negative
implications, as exemplified by sayings such as ‘kid stuff’, ‘kidding
around’, ‘acting like a kid’, and so on. There seems to be no actual term
to cover those first seven years of life that were considered by Plato to be
significant, at a time in history when we could say that from being a child
The Twenty-First-Century Child 131
in the context of the family and household, at seven the young person
became the responsibility of the state and a student in the more general
sense: that is a student of the world.
The related terms of teenager and adolescent have become well known
as representing important stages of childhood for consideration in mod-
ern western society, yet are relatively recent concepts in child and human
development. Adolescence comes from the Latin adolescere, meaning ‘to
grow up’, and is understood to represent a transitional period of physical
and psychological development generally occurring from puberty to legal
adulthood, which in most cases is at the age of 18.
As we have seen in the previous chapter however, the age at which
puberty can occur is not necessarily fixed and can be affected by environ-
ment (Sun et al. 2017), and over the centuries the onset of puberty has
gradually been observed to happen at an increasingly earlier age, due to a
number of factors that are thought to include improved nutrition and the
increasing presence of hormones in the environment and food chain.
Moreover:
The concept of adolescence, as generally understood and applied, did not

exist before the last two decades of the nineteenth century. (Demos and
Demos 1969: 632)
Demos and Demos (1969: 632) further claim that adolescence “was
on the whole an American discovery”, related to broad changes in
American life such as changes in the structure of the family as part of the
new urban and industrial order, as identified and popularised by the work
of American psychologist G Stanley Hall from the 1890s into the early
twentieth century. Other sources such as the Oxford Dictionary, how-
ever, suggest that the word and the concept of adolescence, to mean
‘young adult’, was in use as early as 1762.
The associated concept of the teenager is also credited as having first
appeared in America during the 1920s and 1930s, and in this case specifi-
cally referring to the teen years from 13 to 19, rapidly becoming associ-
ated with a specific adolescent culture as well as a developmental stage.
Interestingly, it is suggested that:
132 T. Stehlik
The dramatic rise in high school attendance was the single most important
factor in creating teenage culture … The proportion of fourteen- to-
seventeen-year olds in high school increased from 10.6 percent in 1901 to
51.1 percent in 1930 and 71.3 percent in 1940. (Encyclopedia of children
and childhood in history and society http://www.faqs.org/childhood/
So-Th/Teenagers.html)
The experience of secondary education with its increased focus on

abstract and critical thinking, plus the close proximity of adolescent girls
and boys in social groupings that encouraged the development of peer
relationships, reshaped the experiences of 13–18-year-olds and led to the
development of adolescent identity. In America, the word teenager was
first applied to young girls who were identified as a cohort influenced by
romantic ideals as fed by popular culture and the emergence of the popu-
lar male idol, and rapidly targeted by marketing, manufacturing and
retail companies as a new consumer cohort with disposable income
fuelled by increasing affluence, followed later by the same targeting of
teenage boys.
The result was that for the first time, adolescents could see themselves
represented as having a collective identity and a collective strength, even-
tually leading to the ‘rebellious’ teenager image that arrived in the 1950s
with cultural icons like James Dean, films such as Blackboard Jungle, and
the emergence of a new musical style and associated sub-culture—rock
and roll. Children’s literature also caught up with the trend, with books
like JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye addressing teenage angst, alien-
ation, and emotional turmoil in a story that resonated with American
youth and eventually became a hugely popular, while controversial, part
of mainstream studies in high school English literature, along with other
similar titles that are now considered as adolescent literature (Salinger
1951). Adolescent angst and teen relationships in literature, however,
were nothing new—early examples include Shakespeare’s ‘star-crossed
lovers’ Romeo and Juliet (1597) and the unrequited love and suicide of the
hero of Goethe’s book The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
Cultural theorists such as Neil Postman (1994), however, consider that
the 1950s also heralded the ‘disappearance of childhood’ in modern west-
ern society, with the advent of television which became the dominant
source of information and did not discriminate between the ages and
genders of those to whom programs, news, and commercials were
broadcast.
Television… requires no specialized learning, further diminishing the dis-

tinction between children and adults. Some television content adultifies and
eroticizes children; some television infantilizes adults. (Postman 1994: 99)
Fashion is a good indicator of cultural shifts, and the fact that grown
men can be seen wearing sneakers and shorts while little girls wear high
heels and make-up reinforces Postman’s argument that the lines between
child and adult boundaries are increasingly blurred. It is not surprising
then that one of the more recent appellations to be applied to a stage of
childhood is the word tween. This is defined as “a youngster between 10
and 12 years of age, considered too old to be a child and too young to be
a teenager” (Online Dictionary), and literally comes from a conflation of
the words teen and between, first appearing in popular parlance in the
1980s. It is representative of the early exposure of 10–12-year-olds to
fashions, fads, and products that would normally be targeted at older
teenagers and shows not only the increasingly tight focussing and label-
ling of the marketing and media worlds but the ever-increasing incursion
of consumerism, popular culture, and social stereotyping into the realm
of the kingdom of childhood.
7.2 The Millennial Child

Concurrent with changes in how we think about childhood have been
changes in how we think about and label generations, according to recent
periods in history. The post-war baby boomer generation, which includes
those born somewhere between the mid-forties and mid-sixties, was so
named because of the increased birth rates that occurred after the trauma
and mass casualties of World War II. This generation is characterised in
modern western societies by increased economic prosperity and opportu-
nity, but also by disaffection and turning away from establishment
traditions fuelled by threats of nuclear war as well as counterculture
134 T. Stehlik
ideals. Generation X was so identified as those children born from the

early 1960s, when the birth control pill became commonly available,
through to about the early 1980s. Consequently this generation is char-
acterised by lower birth rates, but also by increased migration and border
crossing, resulting in a more ethnically and culturally diverse demo-
graphic cohort.
The children of baby boomers and older Gen X parents were therefore
labelled as Generation Y, also known as millennials: those born from the
early 1980s through to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Depending on social and economic conditions, millennials are generally
characterised by increased familiarity with and use of media, communi-
cation, and digital information technologies, but also have been affected
by global financial recessions resulting in less stable employment oppor-
tunities and conditions. Millennials are more likely to be working in
what has been termed the ‘gig economy’, in which full-time permanent
employment is replaced by part-time, casual jobs that offer more work-
life balance but consequently less opportunity to generate savings and be
able to afford to enter the housing market (Baldwin 2016). The higher
cost of housing—and also higher education in those countries where uni-
versity fees are not subsidised by the state—means that millennials are
more likely to be delaying adult ‘rites of passage’ such as marriage and
starting families and as a result are more likely to still be living at home
with their parents. However, some American studies have shown that
those in the millennial age group, currently 18–34, are consciously mak-
ing choices such as favouring career and education over families and chil-
dren and are so far the most educated generation (US Census Bureau
2017).
As millennial children however (Schwartz 1999), this generation was
the first to be globally recognised as having basic human rights and need-
ing special protection under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
leading in the late 1980s to the United Nations Convention on the Rights
of the Child (UNICEF 1989). Everyone under 18 years of age has rights
under this convention, by definition enshrining the notion that child-
hood ends, and adulthood begins, at the age of 18. The convention has
54 articles, many of which relate to a child’s health, safety, right to pri-
vacy, and protection from abuse. Articles 28 and 29 relate to education:
Article 28: Children have the right to an education. Discipline in schools

should respect children’s human dignity. Primary education should be
free. Wealthier countries should help poorer countries achieve this.
Article 29: Education should develop each child’s personality and talents
to the full. It should encourage children to respect their parents, their
cultures and other cultures. (UNICEF)
Of interest is the fact that education as a pathway to jobs, careers, and

individual economic prosperity is not stated in the convention. The main
focus of the most of the articles in the convention is on a child’s wellbeing,
and by association the purpose of education for young children begins to
hint at this being a central and global concern, rather than a focus on
academic achievement, cognitive development, and intellectual capacity.
This is a feature of education for millennials and beyond and will be dis-
cussed further later in this chapter, but it is interesting to note the 1989
convention appearing at about the same time that the Global Education
Reform Agenda was also beginning to take effect, creating a tension that is
now apparent in considering the purpose of education and the way young
people are caught up in this tension: between education to develop each
child’s personality and talent on the one hand, and education to be mea-
sured against global academic benchmarks on the other.
Also of interest however is the international agenda implicit within the
convention, for respecting all cultures and for sharing educational fund-
ing between the poorer and wealthier countries. UNICEF itself was
established in 1946 as the United Nations International Children’s
Emergency Fund, in response to post-war re-development and re-
settlement needs. Seventy years later, it is still a non-profit body dedi-
cated to raising funds for international programs and advocating for
children’s rights in 63 countries.
The current (at the time of writing) ‘post-millennial’ generation is
still establishing an identity, but indicative of the way in which these
demographic cohorts are associated with marketing and branding, the
label which has gained traction is Generation Z. Born anywhere
between the early 2000s and 2010s, Gen Z children are also referred
to as the iGeneration or the Internet Generation for obvious reasons
136 T. Stehlik
and are also considered, like most millennials, to be digital natives—a

term attributed to Marc Prensky (2001). They are, however, the first
generation to have widespread access to Internet technology at a very
early age and to have been exposed to an unprecedented amount of
technology in their upbringing. As a cohort that has experienced access
to and the regular use of personal devices such as i-phones, laptops,
and tablets on a daily basis not only in the home but in the school set-
ting, it will be interesting to see how this generation of digital natives
respond to the world of work and the world in general, and whether
their technological-educational experiences will result in different out-
comes to those of previous generations.
Early indications show that they have however developed a social con-
science, perhaps through the regular use of social media and constant
peer-to-peer interaction, for example, the Gen Z girls at a 14-year-old
birthday party who agree to put their phones in a pile on the table so they
won’t be distracted and can ‘talk to each other’. The negative effects of
such online activity and connectivity of course include cyberbullying,
sexting, and other abuses of privacy and trust at worst, but also an
unhealthy focus on the virtual world at the expense of the natural world.
Gazing at screens with images and information that are not direct experi-
ences of the real world but representations of it can be seen as just a
modern digital version of looking at the shadows on the wall in the alle-
gory of Plato’s cave.
The digital age however is upon us, and is an undisputed phase in
human and social development. From an evolutionary perspective, com-
puters and other ICT devices could be seen as just another more sophis-
ticated tool, and from an educational perspective as just another teaching
resource; in other words they are means to various ends and not ends in
themselves. Early in the twenty-first century, social commentators were
coming up with other descriptive labels for the emerging ‘e-Generation’,
including the rather clever screenagers, and the even more anthropological-
sounding Homo Zappiens:
They are young. They seem inattentive. They do seven things at the same
time. They communicate continuously. They are Homo Zappiens. (Veen
2004; cited in Dahlin 2006: 27)
Without doubt we have evolved from the modernity of an industrial

society which was characterised by the constructability of the world, to
the post-modernity of an information society. One could say that the
natural world is no longer mechanised; it is digitised (Dahlin 2006).
Children growing up in this brave new world will know no other envi-
ronment and so will only have subjective experiences of living in a digital
world. Those of us from previous generations are able to make objective
comparisons of what life was like before, but our children cannot. It has
been ever thus with intergenerational change, as has been the inevitable
trend for subsequent generations to reject or rebel against the fashions,
values, and ideals of the previous generation.
At the same time, those of us from previous generations find it difficult
to look outside our own subjective experience of what education and
learning should look like, and by extension project that assumed logic
onto the current generation. If the millennial and Gen Z students seem
inattentive, distracted, and unable to concentrate on one thing during a
40-minute lesson at school, it is because they cope with information and
communication in a different way:
Homo Zappiens has learnt to deal with information overload by clicking

and zapping. It has learned how to navigate efficiently and effectively
through information, how to communicate, and how to build effectively
on a network of peers. (Veen 2006: 2)
Rather than force traditional teaching methodologies onto this mind-

set therefore, it makes sense to build on the strengths and skills of this
approach to dealing with information, through encouraging an explor-
atory learning approach, and even focussing on play and gaming as a
positive and effective way of problem-solving and developing strategies.
Figure 7.1 summarises the different learning approaches between Homo
Sapiens and ‘Homo Zappiens’, adapted from Veen (2006).
While this is important to recognise in terms of the characteristics of
the current generation of school students, there is also a danger in putting
all of the eggs in one basket and completely embracing the digital online
world, losing sight of the human and social traditions that still occur
‘outside the cave’. In education, for example, some schools have reacted
138 T. Stehlik
Homo Zappiens Homo Sapiens

High speed Conventional speed
Multi-tasking Mono tasking
Non-linear approaches Linear approaches
Iconic skills first Reading skills first
Connected Stand alone
Collaborative Competitive
Learning by searching Learning by absorbing
Learning by playing Separating learning and playing
Learning by externalising Learning by internalising
Using fantasy Focussing on reality
Fig. 7.1 Homo Zappiens vs Homo Sapiens
to these trends by removing all books from their libraries, arguing that
everything their students need is available online via e-books and the
internet, accessible via their own personal tablets. This seems a rather
short-sighted over-reaction to the digital world and what Merga and
Roni (2017) call the ‘myth’ of the digital native, pointing to research that
shows children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens. The
‘death of the book’ was predicted because of such practices, but books are
more popular than ever and thankfully do not look like disappearing any
time soon as many people still appreciate holding a hard copy object in
their hands when reading for pleasure or information. Furthermore, old,
rare and interesting books do not always become digitised or available
online, and there is nothing like coming across an interesting and excit-
ing text just by trawling through the shelves of a library or bookshop.
7.3 The Quantified Self

In addition to being tangled up in the world web, another feature of the
millennial generation is the unprecedented focus on their health and
wellbeing, as shown in the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the
Child. While this is a positive trend, concern for their wellbeing has
partly arisen as a response to alarming developments in the increasing

exposure of children to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, neglect,
or manipulation; to increased pressure from peers, parents, and schools to
perform and conform; and to an ever-growing number of children and
young people presenting with medicalised and diagnosed disorders such
as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autistic spectrum
disorder including Asperger syndrome, anxiety, depression, and mental
health problems sometimes leading to self-harm and even suicide.
ADHD in particular has been the subject of controversy with
debates around its causes, diagnosis, and treatment, and detailed dis-
cussion of this is to be found in literature elsewhere than space in this
book allows (Hicks 2013; George Washington University Milken
Institute School of Public Health 2015). However, it is symptomatic
of the way in which the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and psychology
are overlapping with the field of education, in a medicalised model of
the child that some critics believe leads to over-diagnosis and places
too much emphasis on a ‘deficit’ approach to child behaviour. This can
be clearly seen in the kind of education policy in which parents receive
extra funding or support for a child exhibiting behavioural and learn-
ing difficulties if they receive a formal diagnosis of autism or ADHD
from a health professional. Again, there are many and varied conse-
quences of this sort of policy, for example, on the one hand a tendency
for over-using the diagnostic approach, while on the other hand a
reluctance from parents to seek such diagnoses because they perceive it
will label their child as ‘backward’, ‘remedial’, or ‘special’ and there-
fore stigmatise them.
Of similar concern is the number of young people presenting with a
range of other mental health disorders, ranging from actual depression to
unspecified anxiety issues which can affect not only their education but
their self-esteem, socialisation, and life trajectory. Certainly in the univer-
sity sector, I have personally observed an increase in the number of young
students—mostly young women—presenting with such issues and apply-
ing for a ‘disability access plan’ for special consideration in attendance,
time management, and engagement in class. If an undergraduate teacher
education course causes anxiety, one wonders how these young people
will cope in the real world of school and classroom environments, with
140 T. Stehlik
timetables, deadlines, responsibilities, and challenges when—or if—they

graduate. But more of this is in the next section.
Young people can put themselves under pressure to achieve, either
from personal ambition and motivation, or to please their parents and
even their teachers who may have high expectations of them. Peer pres-
sure can also create competition to perform which can be healthy and,
in a classroom, on the sports field, or in ensemble situations such as
musical or dramatic performances, may push individuals to aim higher
or at least conform to the norm. Peer pressure can also cause individuals
to disengage and under-perform in order not to appear ‘too smart’ or
stand out from others. This has especially been shown to affect teenage
girls, and in co-educational high schools where girls generally achieve
better academic outcomes, they have been observed to hold themselves
back in order not to ‘show up’ the boys, to whom they often defer. This
may be due to the hormonal processes that are taking place in adoles-
cence, but also no doubt to an ingrained patriarchy in the system and
to the additional observation that boys tend to receive more attention
from teachers in class because of their attention-seeking behaviours.
While these are perhaps generalisations, there is some basis in fact, and
one of the central arguments for single-sex schools is that girls perform
better without this gendered influence, free from the distractions of
boys, and vice versa.
Negative peer pressure also takes the form of bullying, an unfortunate
reality in schools, and in my opinion a result of putting children and
young people together in age-specific groupings, every day of the school
week, competing with and comparing each other against norms that are
often established outside of their control through institutionalised school
and social systems as well as the media, often influenced by the sort of
values, attitudes, and behaviours that have been inculcated in the home,
in those vital seven years before schooling even starts. In a kind of herd
mentality, it seems to be very similar to the sort of pecking order that
establishes itself in any grouping of animals or birds in a confined space.
I wonder if such bullying occurs among children growing up in what
might be called ‘tribal’ situations: for example, in mixed age groups where
the older children look out for the younger ones? As a baby boomer, I and
my peers experienced bullying in school, not only from other children
but from teachers, which shocks me to think of it even now. Yet at least
we were not subject to the kind of cyberbullying, online stalking, and
‘Facebook friending and un-friending’ that our millennial children can
suffer.
Facebook did not exist before 2004. Over a decade later, there were
two billion users signed up to this social media site, which according to
its founder Mark Zuckerberg “stands for bringing us closer together and
building a global community” (cited in Hopkins 2017a: 13). The prob-
lem in having such a vast virtual community is regulating what gets
posted on the site, and determining what is acceptable according to the
values and standards of such a diverse global population. The guidelines
that Facebook uses to moderate content attempt to strike a balance
between allowing free speech and limiting censorship while also being
concerned about issues such as violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornog-
raphy, racism, and self-harm. There are some real concerns however, in
guidelines which state that:
Some photos of non-sexual physical abuse and bullying of children do not

have to be deleted unless there is a sadistic or celebratory element. (Hopkins
2017b: 1)
How such qualifying criteria are determined is obviously a very grey

area and open to subjective opinion. Critics argue that Facebook should
be subject to the same scrutiny and regulations as other publishers and
broadcasters, but its management believes it is “a new kind of company.
It’s not a traditional technology company. It’s not a traditional media
company…We don’t write the news that people read on the platform”
(cited in Hopkins 2017b: 13).
So we are in a new kind of territory with this new kind of media, one
that is very difficult to regulate and also to predict how it will evolve. As
a new ‘platform’ for instant communication and venting of opinions,
images, and casual remarks, it has the potential to be informative but also
to be damaging, especially to children. It is like a genie that has been let
out of a bottle. How do we control something like this? How do we know
how much impact social media has on the kinds of increased anxieties
and pressures that children and young people are experiencing?
142 T. Stehlik
Social media is one of the many external factors that the education
system has to deal with in the twenty-first century. Within the education
system itself however, the kind of high-stakes testing discussed in Chap.
5 is an internally imposed pressure. Putting children under such pressure
contributes to anxiety to perform that is now being seen in children as
young as ten years old (Reingold 2015). We have also seen how early
physiological maturation can be one of the consequences of invading the
kingdom of childhood with adult expectations such as academic success
based on examinations and tests. In China, this pressure is so embedded
in parental and societal expectations that an alarming number of students
suffer extreme psychological distress and even take their own lives if they
do not do well in the Zhongkao (Senior High School Entrance
Examination) or the Gaokao (National Higher Education Entrance
Examination).
These examples of measuring, testing, analysing, and sorting children
according to statistically based standardised instruments and formulae
are part of the mega-trend for gathering data on every aspect of our lives,
which seems to have grown exponentially with the ability to capture,
store, and manipulate detailed information with computer technology.
We are in an age of Big data and the Quantified self.
[Big data: extremely large data sets that may be analysed computation-
ally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to
human behaviour and interactions. (Dictionary.com)]
Everything from people’s browsing history, email traffic, credit card
payments, mobile phone logs, down to their shopping habits in the local
supermarket can be captured and manipulated to reveal highly personal
information in a complex matrix of data. Another genie that is difficult
to control, big data require big hardware and software systems to control
and manage. Regular hacking of supposedly secure databases such as the
May 2017 incursion into the data files of the United States National
Security Agency and the United Kingdom National Health System shows
how difficult it is to keep such personal information secure from interna-
tional ‘cyber extortionists’ (Corderoy 2017).
In the education sector, big data has become manifest in the concept
of learning analytics. The rise of online education and virtual learning
environments using learning management systems such as Moodle and
Blackboard has resulted in the ability to capture every interaction and log
on between and among students and their online instructors. For exam-
ple, in my online university classes I have access to detailed information
for every student including the number of times they have logged on to
the course home page. This does not mean, of course, that they have actu-
ally engaged with and understood the content or completed the activities
required, nor does it assess the depth or meaningfulness of their learning,
but it gives some very convenient statistics that can then be used to make
decisions about course content and delivery at a management level, since
this big data is available to the university’s Business Intelligence Unit.
This means educational institutions can now:
…let the algorithms do the work…because statistical correlation tells us

what we need to know; and that scientific or statistical models aren’t needed
because, to quote “The End of Theory”, a provocative essay published in
Wired in 2008, “with enough data, the numbers speak for themselves”.
(Harford 2014: 1)
Learning analytics allows for the profiling of students and monitoring

of their study habits and also monitoring of teaching staff and their teach-
ing habits. It can be used as a carrot and also as a stick. It gives a com-
pletely quantified and empirical slant to the concept of assessment of
learning, a sort of ‘learning by numbers’, and an assessment of teaching
performance based entirely on statistics. This has obvious implications
for the teaching-learning relationship and the role of the teacher, which
can be compromised and sidelined by the sheer weight of the trends dis-
cussed so far in this chapter.
Education has now undergone the digital turn and to a large extent been
captured by big data systems in administration as well as teaching and
research. Criticality has been avoided or limited within education and sub-
stituted by narrow conceptions of standards, and state-mandated instru-
mental and utilitarian pedagogies. (Peters 2017: 565)
Peters places these shifts in criticality within the context of the ‘post-
truth’ era that we currently find ourselves, with post-truth defined as
“relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less
144 T. Stehlik
influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and per-

sonal belief ” (Oxford Dictionaries). Peters argues that in a post-truth era,
facts and evidence have become replaced with feelings and emotions in
the political media landscape, with the result that “the role of teachers as
arbiters of the truth has become challenged” (Peters 2017).
We now have so much data available on ourselves that we refer to the
Quantified Self. In addition to big data being captured by external means,
we can now capture it for ourselves. Those people who wear a ‘Fitbit’ or
similar activity tracker will know exactly how many steps they take every
day, exactly how long they have slept every night, and what their heart
rate is at any given moment. They can share this information and chal-
lenge and compete with other people who are similarly inclined or
obsessed with personal fitness and/or measuring everything. Such
wireless-based wearable technology has been with us for a while, and
being able to track biometric data has benefits for medical conditions
such as diabetes—but it still feels like something from a futuristic science
fiction trope. Smart phones, even smart televisions, can track our move-
ments and our personal devices can track our spending habits. Can we
harness this sort of technology in a positive way for education in the
future? Will the corollary of machines becoming ‘smarter’ mean that
humans will become less smart?
7.4 Nature Versus Technology

A number of reactions and responses to these post-modernist trends
driven by information technologies have emerged however as a kind of
balance to the ubiquity of the high pressure machine world. In the field
of psychology, the positive psychology movement has found its way into
school curricula through a focus on student wellbeing, with its main the-
orists suggesting that depression and suicide are linked to a lack of ability
to imagine a positive future, which can be developed through learned
optimism (Seligman 1995; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000).
Mindfulness meditation has similarly become popular in school settings
since 2000, especially in America, where its practice is said to reduce
anxiety and stress in students (Zajonc 2016); and in Australia mindful-
ness training for teachers is a growing trend, as well as showing some
success in clinical therapy for children on the autism spectrum (Albrecht

2014; Burrows 2017). It is interesting to note that mindfulness is based
on Buddhist meditation practices and is part of the emerging philosophy
of wellness—“the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind,
especially as the result of deliberate effort” (Dictionary.com).
In education, we have also seen various ‘back to nature’ initiatives
emerge and become globally popular in response to the technologisation
of education, such as the Forest School movement in the United Kingdom
and Europe and bush kindergartens in Australia. As an example of educa-
tion outside the classroom, the idea behind Forest Schooling is literally to
take children into the outdoors and use the natural environment as a
stimulus for learning, building on the work of theorists like Froebel
whose work influenced the English sisters Margaret and Rachel McMillan,
who founded outdoor nurseries in the first decade of the twentieth cen-
tury in response to their observations that young children in industrial
settings were not thriving due to lack of fresh air and outdoor exercise
(Knight 2017; McMillan 1919). The Rachel McMillan Open-Air Nursery
School in Deptford became the template for subsequent nursery schools,
and laid the foundation for the recognition of the importance of play in
early childhood, as discussed in the previous chapter, as well as the health-
giving aspects of outdoor environments. Since the 1950s, forest schools
have been a feature in Scandinavia, and also in Germany where they are
recognised as an official form of childcare.
Since the 1990s, the UK Forest School movement has grown in response
to contemporary issues around children’s health and wellbeing; for exam-
ple, statistics quoted from the 2013 Health Survey for England by Sara
Knight in her book Forest School in Practice show that up to 30% of English
children aged 2–15 were identified as obese or overweight (2017: 17). The
movement also appears to be a response to the GERM outlined in Chap.
5, as suggested by UK early childhood teacher Emma Harwood who left
the schooling system to establish Dandelion Forest School:
“I love teaching reception but we’re closing the door – literally – and mov-
ing towards more testing. It doesn’t feel child-centric enough anymore.”
After taking primary schools on weekly forest school sessions, Harwood
noticed a huge difference in pupils’ “self-esteem and ability to assess risk
and make their own decisions”. (Barkham 2014: 1)
146 T. Stehlik
Forest school is also a response to an increasing risk-averse culture gen-

erated by concerns about safety and the fact that as a society, we don’t feel
comfortable letting our children ramble and play outdoors away from
adult supervision as once was the case. For city children who have been
described as ‘cotton-wool kids’, the opportunity to run around, light fires,
cook outdoors, climb trees, and make mud pies can be a novelty and a
liberating way to learn through play. The American founder of the Children
and Nature movement Richard Louv goes further to suggest that children
need such experiences to counter ‘nature deficit disorder’ (Louv 2005).
While outdoor learning can be successfully applied with primary and
secondary schoolchildren (see Adventure Playgrounds in Chap. 6 and the
case study of Green School Bali in Chap. 10), part of the theory and
philosophy behind the forest school method is that it works best with
pre-school children because they are still in an early stage of cognitive
development (the vital years before age seven) when particular habits of
mind can still be formed:
Being outside regularly and being free to stretch and grow makes a child
want to be outside regularly and be free to stretch and grow. It is much
easier to create these healthy ways of being while the brain is young and
plastic. (Knight 2017: 18)
In Australia, a similar movement for pre-school children has developed

under a different name: bush kindy. Bush kindergartens are a feature of
some Waldorf Schools as many of them have been established in natural
or bush settings rather than in urban environments, and an appreciation
for nature and a respect for the environment is already part of their ethos.
Bush kindy has followed the same approach as that of the forest schools;
to provide a safe but engaging environment in which to explore and learn
from the natural world according to the children’s own interests and play
activities. Whole group co-operative play appears to develop and unfold
spontaneously, which is often found as a feature of outdoor education.
From the abundance of experiences at bush kindy it is evident that each

child is enveloped in health-giving sense impressions, stimulating the
development of their sense of touch, life, movement and balance. They are
developing an intimate knowledge of nature through their senses and in

turn their senses are stimulated in a truly wholesome and life-giving way.
(Pridham 2014: 21)
Anecdotal evidence from parents includes comments that their chil-

dren eat and sleep better and tend to play outdoors more often when at
home while attending bush kindy. The time spent outdoors will of course
vary according to climate, geography, and age group. In Queensland,
where it can be hot and dusty, two to three hours outdoors is enough
before needing to go indoors to wash up, eat, and rest (Kearney 2014). In
Sweden and Finland, I have observed young children wanting to run out
of doors between lessons for 15 or 20 minutes of play, even when it is
below zero and snowing (see Chap. 10).
Research cited in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry supports this need
for exposure to the outdoors and links it to factors that may explain the
increase in medical diagnoses as discussed above, suggesting that in America:
…living in states with greater sunshine (solar intensity or SI) may protect
against the development of ADHD. There is a wide variation of reported
attention deficit disorder from a low of 5.6% in Nevada to a high of 15.6%
in North Carolina. Some of this can result from differences in diagnostic
practices, but something else may be going on as well…The authors believe
that use of modern media, including iPads and mobile phones shortly
before bedtime, results in delayed sleep onset, shorter sleep duration, and
melatonin suppression. Natural light may counteract the effects of modern
media in the evening. (Hicks 2013)
In Japan, the concept of ‘forest bathing’ (shinrin-yoku—walking and/

or staying in forests in order to promote health) has been shown to
promote positive health benefits for people of all ages and fitness levels,
with empirical research into reduced stress levels and increased wellbeing
concluding that “forest environments can be viewed as therapeutic land-
scapes” (Morita et al. 2007: 54).
Even without adopting a ‘nature deficit disorder’ perspective on the
health benefits to young children from being outdoors, the positive effects
on the cognitive development of all children have been linked with direct
experience with nature, an example of experiential learning:
148 T. Stehlik
Theories of experiential education contend that cognitive learning in early

and middle childhood can be more effective if preceded by spontaneous
play, free exploration, and direct personal discoveries in nature. (Moore
2014b: 17)
An interesting point arises from this move to get our children ‘back
to the woods’ and links not only with Rousseau’s theories about nature
but with the discussion of feral children in Chap. 6. Here we saw that
wild children who were brought up by animals ranging from wolves,
bears, monkeys, and dogs (Newton 2002) and then emerged from the
woods or the forest back into civilisation represented some form of
human innocence and a tabula rasa or blank slate that the philosophers
of the Enlightenment saw as a natural state of childhood grace. The
symbolism of the Tree of Knowledge and humanity in a state of inno-
cence before the Fall must also have been in their minds when con-
fronted with these children in their absolute natural state. The wood or
the forest is also a significant and symbolic image in European history
and mythology—a place where children can become lost, where witches
or trolls live, where the trees themselves can have magical powers, and
characterised by darkness, mystery, and danger. The Grimm Brothers
story Hansel and Gretel is a moral fable that warns children not to wan-
der into the woods and become lost as they may be cooked and eaten
by a witch, but it also represents the abandonment of children by soci-
ety, since it was Hansel and Gretel’s parents who took them into the
woods with the intention of abandoning them (Creed 2017). Have we
now come full circle by seeking outdoor play for our children and tak-
ing them back to the woods because we have ‘abandoned’ them to the
technological age?
7.5 The Millennial Parent

No formal or legal requirements exist that require parents to instruct their
children. However, common cultural assumptions regarding child-rearing
infer that parents will guide and prepare children for life in a community.
(Barbour and Barbour 1997: 97)
Becoming a parent is a significant life event, and for me, being a parent
has been the most informative and educative life experience, over and
above all of the formal learning I have done, such as the four degrees I
completed at university. Children are like a mirror held up to you, in
which you see yourself reflected in this remarkable being who is a part of
you but also a unique individual. Watching them grow and develop into
adulthood is a precious experience, at times challenging depending on
the temperament of the child and how they relate to—or clash with—
your own temperament. But it is always a learning experience, and the
most important lesson to be learned is that you as the parent or guardian
responsible for this incarnating soul will influence and direct the very way
in which they grow and develop. You are, in fact, your child’s first teacher.
It still amazes me then that there is very little formal training or educa-
tion in how to do this extremely important job, let alone how to do it
well. Parenting skills are acquired through learning by experience, by
repeating role models from childhood, by observing and taking advice
from other parents, from books or other ‘expert’ sources, and sometimes
through non-formal educational programs—but mainly it is learning by
doing. Public opinion also strongly dictates how we raise our children,
and while this is now heavily influenced by popular media, even back in
the 1860s, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer noted that “men
dress their children’s minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fash-
ion” (Spencer 1860; cited in Gross 1963: 81).
So when my daughters began attending a Waldorf School, I noticed
that a lot of attention was being paid by the school, in particular the kin-
dergarten teachers, to supporting and educating parents in childrearing,
and in gently suggesting ways to create a home environment that was in
harmony with the type of environment and ethos they were trying to cre-
ate with the children. This impressed me so much as an adult learning
model that I began to document my own learning through my children
and then started to research other parents’ learning journeys, a project
that became my doctoral thesis, later published as a book (Stehlik 2002,
2015).
During my research I came across a book popular in Waldorf circles
that explores this perspective and is actually entitled You Are Your Child’s
First Teacher (Baldwin 1989). The book validates the important role of
150 T. Stehlik
parenting as real work in educating children in their pre-school years, in

contrast to the dominant paradigm which views teaching as a profession
while parenting has lower status, and mothers especially are often labelled
as ‘homemakers’—a role that is non-paid, non-professional, and not rec-
ognised as real work, when it is probably the single most important and
responsible role an adult could have, contributing immeasurably to the
social fabric.
This paradigm represents a general shift away from recognition of the
family as the basic unit of socialisation and placing that expectation upon
schools, and to a certain extent on popular culture and the media. Barbour
and Barbour consider that child-raising practices have become much less
influenced by extended family and the wider community in a modern
world where “daily lives now are more frenetic, and all too often families
come close to abandoning responsibilities for a home curriculum in favor
of that offered by the entertainment industry – a community force that is
not always appropriate” (1997: 97). In other words, busy working par-
ents who park young children in front of the television or tablet while
trying to make dinner or do the chores might once have had the help of
a grandparent, aunt, or uncle with this. The combination of the nuclear
family model plus both parents working plus technology has been embed-
ded in our society for some time, and is the current situation now being
experienced by many millennial parents. In addition, couples in the
twenty-first century are delaying having children until later in life, with
the average age for a first-time mother in Australia now being over 30
(ABS). Older parents are more independent and bring their own experi-
ence but also their own ‘baggage’ to the job of parenting. How to
proceed?
Creating an appropriate home environment is a recurring theme not
only in the literature but in the discourse of Waldorf School communi-
ties, as parents are drawn to an understanding of the importance of
supporting the ethos and environment that the teacher seeks to create in
the classroom, especially in the early years. For example, not exposing
very young children to television is one of those very basic changes that
parents can make in the home. A typical Waldorf kindergarten in turn
seeks to re-create the environment of the home. The kindergarten teacher,
almost always a woman, represents a mother figure who does not ‘teach’
in a formal sense but creates form and rhythm and a nurturing environ-
ment by leading activities that would also take place in the child’s home—
storytelling, painting, cooking, singing, playing games, and allowing the
children to play freely and imaginatively. As documented above, bush
kindy can be a part of this picture.
Maria Montessori recognised the important link between the home
and early learning centres, and in particular the way in which formal
structured learning could influence and inform approaches to parenting
and mothering:
Not all mothers, she felt, understood how to care for their children. The
experience of the Case dei Bambini showed that children could develop
outside their homes, and in fact that when the children returned home
their mothers and families were educated through their children. The impor-
tant thing was that mothers and teachers should cooperate in helping the
child to become independent. (Kramer 1976: 190, my italics)
The more consistency there is between the child’s world at home and
in the kindergarten, the more secure they can feel about the school envi-
ronment and be able to grow into an attitude that will prepare them for
the more formal schooling that should begin around the child’s seventh
year. In the secure and almost domestic situation in the kindergarten, the
‘teacher’ is playing out the role of ‘homemaker’, to the extent that the
distinction between the two roles is so diffuse as to be almost blended.
Parenting is one of the most important jobs, but perhaps the most under-
valued. It really is a vocation, and one that takes constant work, both inner
and outer. (Dowling 1999; cited in Stehlik 2015)
This is an interesting notion as it gives rise to the idea that if vocational

training is linked to a work-specific job role, then parenting as a vocation
also requires the acquisition of work-related skills and knowledge. If we
further consider the classical rather than the contemporary meaning of
vocation, as “a divine calling” (Dictionary.com), then we can see the con-
nection with parenting as a higher calling and even a spiritual task.
Even more curious then that parenting is not recognised as a vocation
or acknowledged as a skill that could be taught during the compulsory
152 T. Stehlik
years of schooling. A broader curriculum focus on relationships and how

to maintain them would at least be more practical, especially for teenag-
ers experiencing relationship conflict with parents and/or first-time
romantic relationships. Sex education as part of the Health and Physical
Education curriculum can attempt to address some of these issues; how-
ever, in reality it is in the realm of self-directed adult learning that parent-
ing education occurs, requiring individuals to engage in constant inner
and outer work.
The ‘outer work’ of parenting involves many practical factors such as
learning about feeding and caring for infants, establishing sleep patterns,
doing lots of washing, and guiding their development in addition to
looking after their wellbeing. The ‘inner work’ involves coming to terms
with the responsibilities of parenting and making sacrifices of lifestyle, of
one’s personal space and time, of being able to spend time with partners,
friends, and maybe other children. This does require constant work, as
the developing child has increasingly different wants and needs; for
example, a toddler requires stimulation, interaction, and interest and
can’t just be put down in one place while you get on with the house-
work—which is also constant. Not attending to this inner work can result
in problems such as post-natal depression, not being able to bond with
one’s child, relationship issues, or just general fatigue and negativity
about the pressures of parenting.
A lot of parenting education is done by trial and error, and the first
child can often be a bit of a ‘guinea-pig’ while first-time parents figure out
what to do and what works best, so that by the time the second or third
child comes along, they have more experiential learning to draw on.
However, the second (and third, and so on) child may have a completely
different temperament and character and what worked for number one
may not work for others. Back to the drawing board! Here is another
reason why parenting takes constant work—it is an ongoing individual
process of self-education and part of lifelong learning. Even with adult
children, one is still their parent and the relationship still requires some
form of continuing maintenance.
Parents are therefore partners in the process of teaching children. We
have seen that the first vital three years of life represent the foundation of
the child’s life ahead, and those formative years are critical in developing
language, social and behavioural skills for life. By the time children get to
the age where it has been recognised since classical Greek times that they
need some more formal schooling, parents still need to see themselves as
partners in the education project.
Parents need guidance in directing their children on the road that leads to
responsible educational independence. (Illich 1971: 69)
Sometimes parents do not want to ‘let go’ of their children as they

reach school age. Homeschooling, for example, has become an increasing
trend, with an estimated 50,000 Australian children being educated at
home by their parents—usually the mother (ABC TV 2017). Reasons for
parents making the decision to homeschool and the effects on children
will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 11. Another phenomenon that
has been observed among millennial parents is the tendency to ‘hover’
over children with overly high expectations of their performance, push-
ing their development with a full timetable of extracurricular activities in
addition to schoolwork, homework, and housework. Hence the term
‘helicopter parents’ to describe those who have probably read a lot of self-
help books about childrearing, perhaps believe their child is above aver-
age or gifted, and are often projecting their own educational ambitions
onto their children. The ease in which this label has entered the popular
lexicon is demonstrated by Lancaster University sponsoring an online
quiz in which you can find out in eight questions: Are you a helicopter
parent? (theguardian.com/parents-guide-to-uni).
The book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother published in 2011 by Amy
Chua coined the term ‘tiger mums’ to describe the type of mothers who
practice intensive parenting and adopt a strict academic regime for their
children. Interestingly, such women are generally highly educated and
qualified themselves, but have been shown to suffer lower levels of happi-
ness and satisfaction as well as higher levels of stress and tiredness (Bennett
2016). At the same time, it has long been established that there is a posi-
tive correlation between academic performance at school and parental
education levels. Supporting children without smothering them is a fine
balancing act and also suggests that parents who do not necessarily have
high levels of social, cultural, and economic capital also need support.
154 T. Stehlik
Who will provide this—schools, the community, the state… or is it an

expectation for self-education?
Recent US research has further suggested that such micromanaging
parenting approaches can cause children to become anxious and actually
diminish their academic ability and performance (Young 2017). One
could make the connection between this sort of parenting approach and
the pressure that millennial children face, leading to the increase in the
types of childhood disorders discussed in this chapter.
Not only does intensive motherhood mean less leisure time for the moth-
ers, it also generates pressure … Young children often do not want to sit
down at a table with a book when they could be running around and older
children can be reluctant to do homework after a long day at school.
(Bennett 2016: 1)
It highlights the fact that encouraging independence in children is also

an important part of their development, and the eventual ability to enable
the next generation to stand in the world on their own two feet with
confidence is actually one of the main goals of parenting. Psychologist
Erik Erikson used the term generativity to describe the need for parents to
work selflessly towards leaving something for future generations.
“Generativity has the benefit of helping your personality flourish, even
while you provide vital sustenance and support to the next generation”
(Whitbourne 2013). It also reinforces the fact that parents should not
lose sight of the preciousness of the kingdom of childhood in developing
an attitude of generativity.
When my eldest daughter was in Year 11, we sent her on a student
exchange to Sweden for six months. She was 16 and seemed very young
to go far away from us and live on the other side of the world with a
strange family. She had a great time but I missed her terribly. I found the
verse by Kahlil Gibran On children to be immensely comforting in
explaining what my role as a parent actually was. I remember when my
daughter returned, she had turned 17 and had changed. She actually told
me: “I’m independent now”.
Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of
Life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you
yet they belong not to you (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923)
As parents, how do we know when to support our children and when

to let go? When they are of school age it is important to realise that there
is a certain partnership with their teachers in working with each indi-
vidual child. This chapter has highlighted the important influence that
the environment and technology can have on the developing child, but
also the importance and lasting influence of positive relationships with
peers and particularly with adults responsible for nurturing the child and
its development, then knowing how and when to guide the child into a
transition from dependence to independence. These relationships are
critical but need to be clear: parents have children; teachers have students.
Parents have been addressed in this chapter; Chap. 8 now addresses
teachers.
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Springer.
Part IV
‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’
8
Teaching the Teachers
Teaching the teachers is a critical aspect of the whole education system,

but one where educational philosophy has taken a back seat to educa-
tional pragmatics. Pre-service teacher education is regularly under the
media spotlight in terms of concerns about teacher quality, lowering stan-
dards and ideological biases. A brief history over time shows that ‘teacher
training’ in teachers colleges has gradually been replaced by ‘teacher edu-
cation’ in universities, where educational theory is meant to inform edu-
cational practice and vice versa. The perennial question of whether
teachers are sufficiently prepared to meet the challenges of the profession
on graduation is still debated and remains largely unanswered, while
approaches to their education and development continue to be largely
based on historical tradition:
There has been remarkably little change in the ways in which teachers work in
classrooms and schools, or in the ways in which teachers are educated for a
lifetime of preparing young people for their future worlds. (Menter 2016: 1)
At the same time, in-service teacher education and ongoing profes-

sional development of teachers should be given just as much attention.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_8
162 T. Stehlik
With a move towards continual reflective practice and professional

learning communities among beginning as well as experienced teachers,
a consideration of personal and professional educational philosophies
becomes paramount, as argued in this chapter.
8.1 ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher…’

The university where I taught for 25 years has one of the largest schools
of education in the country, and every year I saw hundreds of young
people enrolling in the teacher education programs, either the four-year
undergraduate Bachelor of Education or the two-year postgraduate
Master of Teaching. Each year I asked the students in my classes the same
question: Why do you want to become a teacher?
I found that the responses generally fell into two camps: those who
were inspired by a great teacher or teachers during their own school days
and want to follow in their footsteps; or those who had negative experi-
ences at school and believed they could do a better job, sometimes want-
ing to get into the profession to ‘change the system’ for the better. Often
there was a family member who was a teacher and influenced the young
person’s career choice, and in addition there were many who had always
wanted to be a teacher, identifying teaching as a preferred vocation
because they liked the idea of working with children as well as being
involved in what is seen as one of the helping professions (like social work,
nursing, etc.). By the time the pre-service teacher experiences their first
practicum placement in a school however, the romantic idea of working
with children may quickly fade with the reality and responsibility of
being in a classroom with up to 30 students.
My first placement after graduating and qualifying as a secondary
English teacher was to a high school in the outer northern suburbs of
Adelaide, in an area that was developed as a ‘satellite city’ in the 1950s
and populated largely by migrant families who had been lured there by
the South Australian government with promises of work, sunshine and
big backyards for the kids to run around in. It was promoted as ‘The City
of Tomorrow’ (Barnes 2016: 82). By the late 1970s, it had become a
working-class, low socio-economic area with a reputation for social prob-
Teaching the Teachers 163
lems including intergenerational unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse,

dysfunctional families, domestic violence, and disengaged youth. The
high school buildings were ‘the latest thing in modern architecture’; that
is, bland brick monolithic structures resembling a factory. There were
over 1000 students enrolled. On my first day, the headmaster took me
aside and instructed me ‘not to smile or be nice to the kids for at least six
weeks or they will take advantage of you…’. He himself was a very severe
and unsmiling character whose actual name I can’t remember as he was
known universally by the students as well as the staff as ‘Spike’.
I found myself trying to teach poetry and literature to ‘30 bored kids’
who had other things on their minds—mainly hormones, since they were
Year 9 students aged around 14 and dealing with puberty, adolescence
and teenage hopes, dreams and dramas. Most of the time was spent just
trying to keep a lid on their behaviour, as conflict between students and
the gangs that operated outside of the school sometimes got out of
hand—one memorable day the school was in lockdown because a stu-
dent had come to school with a firearm. There were many such critical
incidents, but the one that really affected me as a beginning teacher and
educator had to do with my own attitude towards these kids.
I had set an assignment task to the Year 9 class to write an essay. One
female student had written a page and a half on the topic but her spelling,
grammar and punctuation were very poor, and being the pedantic English
teacher that I was, I used my red pen to make a lot of corrections before
returning the paper with a low mark. I was then very surprised to receive
a request from the girl’s mother for a meeting, since parents were gener-
ally not at all interested in or engaged with what went on at the school.
At the meeting, the girl sat there while her mother angrily waved the
assignment in front of me. It was covered in red marks and slashes, words
were crossed out, sentences re-written, exclamation and question marks
stood out, and the final comment was not very encouraging. What did I
mean by doing this to her daughter’s paper? She had worked hard on it
only to have it returned looking like a dog’s breakfast. What about the
content? I had only focused on the presentation and given it a low mark
as a result. Who did I think I was just because I had been to university?
And so on and so forth … I was mortified and apologised profusely. Ever
since then I have never used red pen to mark student work on hard copy
164 T. Stehlik
assignments—I always use pencil, which looks softer and also allows me
to erase a comment that might have been written in undue haste!
But there were several other lessons for me to take away from this criti-
cal incident in my first teaching job. Firstly, I realised that behind every
student in the class was a mother, father, guardian, or other adults who I
needed to take into consideration as stakeholders in the education contract.
Secondly, I needed to consider each individual student’s perspective on
their efforts and not apply a one-size-fits-all perspective based on my own
middle class ideas about what constituted good work and appropriate
writing. Thirdly, assignments, tests, and written work should be second-
ary to the primary consideration in teaching, which was developing good
relationships with the students—including a consideration of each stu-
dent’s family situation. In this instance, for example, the poor girl was
trying to communicate something in her writing which I had completely
missed in my focus on the mechanics of the language, rather than its
meaning or message.
Since then just about all of my practical experience and theoretical
research in education have reinforced the importance of the teaching-
learning relationship. As a teacher and an adult, one tends to assume a
position of authority and even superiority over students, especially chil-
dren, sometimes just by the nature of the situation but often through
personal conceit and hubris. What I did not learn in my university pre-
service teacher education course was that becoming a teacher would
require continual questioning of my own assumptions, preconceptions,
and value judgements about the characteristics of students that I would
be working with, when the course mainly focused on delivering content to
them in an expository one-way fashion. In other words, assuming that
you have learned everything there is to know about teaching when gradu-
ating from a teacher education course is a big mistake.
Another critical incident that still stays with me occurred after I made
the transition from schoolteacher to university lecturer. Early on in that
career, I was delivering a lecture to a room full of adult education stu-
dents—mature-age learners who were educators themselves. Right in the
front row of the lecture theatre were students gazing at me intently as I
read from my lecture notes and emphasised words and phrases with ges-
ticulations and hand movements. One woman was nodding every time I
made a point, which encouraged me no end. Another woman however

would agitatedly wave her hands every now and then and point to her
mouth. I could not figure out what was going on, but at the end of the
lecture she came up to me and informed me that she was almost deaf and
relied on lip-reading in order to clearly understand people speaking.
Apparently I had a habit of putting my hands in front of my mouth when
speaking. This was another revelation! Firstly, to assume that all of the
students in front of me had the same abilities, secondly that some dis-
abilities are not visible, and thirdly that unless one finds out whether all
students are able to participate fully in the learning process, some of them
may be excluded.
These critical incidents give examples of two fundamental beliefs that
I still hold in my own teaching as well as in working with pre-service
teachers—the importance of developing meaningful teaching-learning
relationships with students and the recognition that within any group of
students there will be differences of ability, background, interest, and
motivation requiring an understanding of differentiated learning. Over
and above these beliefs is the ‘meta belief ’ that a teacher must model being
a learner until they finish teaching. This not only means undertaking con-
tinual professional development and being accountable to external regu-
lations like the teaching standards mentioned in Chap. 5 (AITSL) but
adopting an attitude of lifelong learning that is driven by internal curios-
ity and a desire to keep growing and developing as a person as well as an
educator. What then are we teaching the teachers in our pre-service pro-
grams if they are not the be-all and end-all of teacher education? Why do
a large proportion of beginning teachers drop out of the profession in the
first five years after graduating? What is the best way to prepare for the
profession of teaching?
8.2 History of Teacher Education

The history of teacher education in Australia makes an interesting case
study as it reflects trends and developments in education that were occur-
ring internationally. As a British colony, early influences on Australian
teacher education mainly included practices imported from Great Britain,
166 T. Stehlik
such as normal schools and the pupil-teacher system. ‘Normal schools’ were
so named to reflect the fact that they not only taught children but estab-
lished teaching norms which could be imparted to the teachers as a form
of initial training. The term is still in use in Finland where the teacher
training schools attached to universities are known as Normaalikoulu
(translation: normal school—see Chap. 10). The pupil-teacher system
was basically an apprenticeship model, in which promising school stu-
dents were recruited at age 13 or 14 by the ‘Master teacher’ who mod-
elled basic teaching competencies that they were expected to learn over a
period of several years.
Given the fact that the pupil-teacher model was really a form of
cheap labour, in which the young apprentice was paid a pittance to
look after junior classes while supposedly in training, this approach was
more popular and was exploited in Great Britain and also in Australia
from the 1860s until early into the twentieth century, by which time it
was apparent that some system of dedicated teacher training institu-
tions was needed to service the growing population and expanding
schooling sector. Prior to federation in 1901, the various Australian
colonies (now states and territories) had developed differing approaches
to institutionalised teacher education, and this continued into the new
century with the emerging teachers colleges being funded and directed
at state level, compared to the federally funded universities. This dis-
tinction remained right up until 1988 when a unified national tertiary
system was established, resulting in teachers colleges being subsumed
by universities, or amalgamating to form new universities (Dawkins
1988). The university where I teach is one such latter institution, estab-
lished in 1991 with the amalgamation of three state Colleges of
Advanced Education with an Institute of Technology, creating the larg-
est but youngest university in the state of South Australia. The first
university in the state had been established way back in 1874 and still
enjoys status as the ‘Ivy league’ or ‘Sandstone’ university compared
with the ‘Gumtree’ universities of the 1960s (usually established on the
metropolitan fringes of capital cities) and the ‘Bessa brick’ universities
of the ‘post-Dawkins’ 1990s.
However, this historical two-tiered system created a perception that
teacher training was a lower status, practical, and craft-based learning
process that belonged in the vocational category, compared with the

higher status of university education that was seen as more theoretical
and research based.
A pronounced binary system of education emerged in Australia between

the two world wars. An elite university system remained essentially discon-
nected from teacher education which, in turn, became firmly embedded in
training colleges which ranked as second-tier institutions. (Aspland 2006:
146)
As outlined in Chap. 3, here was a classic example of a distinction

being made, at the level of higher education, between practical and con-
templative activity. There have been variations to this model over time,
such as initial university study followed by pedagogical studies in a teach-
ers college, but this ‘theory vs practice’ divide is still prevalent today, not
only in teacher education but in higher education more generally.
Historically, university lecturers have not required formal teaching quali-
fications in order to teach in higher education; expertise and content
knowledge based on studies in their particular field or discipline were
seen as sufficient to impart that knowledge on to their students. So, for
example, an Astrophysicist might be an expert in astrophysics based on
empirical research and peer-reviewed publications, but not be very good
at actually teaching the fundamentals of their subject to undergraduate
students. While many universities have implemented some sort of ter-
tiary teaching credential requirement for academic staff, it still begs the
question as to why schoolteachers need a formal teaching qualification
and many regulatory requirements such as state registration, national
teaching standards, and so on when educators in the vocational and
higher education sectors do not. Even when teachers colleges were first
established, the lecturers were initially former schoolteachers themselves
without requiring higher qualifications, further reinforcing this theory/
practice divide.
Students in those early teachers colleges were taught with the same
practice-based teaching methods regardless of whether they were training
to become primary or secondary teachers. They were very conservative
institutions, reinforcing the curriculum that was controlled by the state,
168 T. Stehlik
and the attitudes and values that were entrenched in the schools where
students undertook their practicum placements. In this regard teachers
colleges maintained the status quo and did not involve themselves in the
scholarship of teaching or research into educational change, as this was
seen as the role of universities. Fast forward to today, and university-
based teacher education now expects beginning teachers to not only
engage with research but to become educational researchers or practitio-
ner enquirers themselves, since “‘research literacy’ should be seen as a fun-
damental element of teaching and therefore of teacher education” (Menter
2016: 3). This has been an important shift in moving on from the initial
apprenticeship model of teacher education to one in which beginning
teachers are encouraged to explore new and emerging ideas about teach-
ing content, classroom pedagogies, and assessment practices and bring
those ideas with them into school settings where professional learning
communities involve long-serving teachers who can benefit from this
ongoing professional development. This is the lifelong learning approach
to teaching the teachers; fine in theory but often in practice meeting with
resistance from teachers who are entrenched in established ways of
thinking.
8.3 C
ontent Knowledge Versus Pedagogical
Knowledge
In Australia in the 1960s, a teaching credential consisted of a two-year
Diploma of Teaching. By the 1970s this had been extended to a three-
year award, the equivalent of a bachelor degree, required to qualify as a
primary schoolteacher. At the same time, secondary teaching had devel-
oped a higher status. As documented in the introduction, I completed a
three-year bachelor degree majoring in English and then a one-year
Graduate Diploma in Education to qualify as a secondary English teacher.
Since teachers’ pay scales were linked to credentials, the salaries of sec-
ondary teachers were therefore higher than those of primary teachers,
creating another two-tiered system. This credential creep (see Chap. 3)
continued into the 1990s, so that at the time of writing, the minimum
primary teaching qualification in Australia is a four-year bachelor degree,

while for secondary teaching it requires ‘three plus two’ years of time
served at university—an undergraduate degree in one’s subject or disci-
pline area, then a two-year Master of Teaching or equivalent to cover the
pedagogical aspects of being able to teach that subject.
The ‘three plus two model’ was adopted in response to the process
established in the Bologna Declaration (European Commission 1999), in
which European Ministers of Education agreed to a system of consistent
and comparable university qualifications across the European Higher
Education Area, at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.
While not a member of this area, the fact that Australia followed the
Bologna Process in upgrading professional qualifications in higher educa-
tion demonstrates the impact of globalisation and the movement of
knowledge across borders, boundaries, and nations into the twenty-first
century.
A significant shift in conceptual thinking also occurred around the fin
de siecle, and this was a purposeful change in nomenclature from teacher
training to teacher education. The importance of this shift cannot be
underestimated, since it represented a recognition of teaching as a profes-
sion requiring higher order personal and professional development,
reflecting the progression from preparing teachers in a ‘second-tier’ train-
ing institution to the level of university, with a symbolic increase in status
and creating parity with other similar professions such as psychology and
social work. Educating teachers rather than simply training teachers shifts
the focus from ‘recipe-based’ content and pedagogical knowledge that is
predictable and stable to a recognition that educational contexts and con-
tent are unpredictable and fluid, evolving and changing, as discussed so
far in previous chapters. Training implies a skills-based approach to learn-
ing, while the teachers of today and the future require a broader under-
standing of the educational landscape that covers all domains—cognitive,
psychomotor, and affective.
But here we have a conundrum, inviting questions around the separa-
tion between content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. The acronym
‘PCK’ represents pedagogical content knowledge, a synthesis of the two
types of knowledge, or the ability to translate knowledge of a particular
subject or learning area in a meaningful way to learners—what ‘expert
170 T. Stehlik
teachers’ should be able to understand and deliver in a range of

contexts.
A further ‘branch of knowledge’ has since been added in the twenty-
first century with the increased application of ICTs, which is technological
knowledge, creating the acronym TPACK—shorthand for a teacher’s
Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge:
The expertise embodied in the TPACK of a teacher is different from the

knowledge of a discipline expert (say a scientist or a historian), a technolo-
gist (a computer scientist), or an expert on learning (a psychologist).
Teaching mathematics to Year 5 learners requires different pedagogical uses
of ICT than teaching history in secondary school or literacy in the early
years. In each case, the expert teacher needs to make creative links between
what is being learned (content), how it is taught (pedagogy), and the
appropriate tools (technology). (TTF 2017)
For a long time, teacher education was mainly driven by a focus on

content knowledge and curriculum studies—the craft of teaching—with
some academically influenced ‘professional studies’ in sociology and psy-
chology increasing in more recent times, addressing theories of education.
As we have seen so far, some of these theories have been with us for a very
long time. For example, theoretical frameworks developed in the 1950s
and 1960s from the cognitive and behavioural psychological sciences still
dominate the professional studies curriculum, with pre-service teachers
continuing to study Piaget’s stages of development and Vygotsky’s views
on constructivism. It is interesting to note the suggestion in the quote
above that psychologists are ‘experts on learning’. If that is the case, why
are psychologists not teaching our children? The answer is fairly self-
evident: teaching requires a complex range of attributes and a combina-
tion of expert knowledge, such that a teacher is not only part psychologist
but part social worker, part administrator, part manager, part instructor,
part entertainer—to name just a few professions that are wrapped up in
this unique role.
The way in which content knowledge can be seen as entirely separate
from pedagogical knowledge is entrenched in the ‘three plus two’ model
of teacher education. As an undergraduate studying a degree in science,
for example, one learns about scientific facts and concepts which are
taught and assessed in the language of science. It is well known that many
occupations have their own unique jargon, terminology, and acronyms,
and teaching is no different; so the shift from studying science as an
undergraduate to studying education in a postgraduate program such as
a Master of Teaching requires a shift in mindset and coming to terms
with a whole new language of concepts and ideas. Terms like pedagogy,
methodology, evaluation, behaviour, objectives, and so on acquire a whole
new meaning in the context of education.
For myself as a Bachelor of Arts graduate majoring in English, then
becoming an English teacher, it seemed self-evident that English was my
discipline—the learning area and subject content that I had studied and
specialised in for three years and was now ‘passing on’ to high school
students. It was not until I had been teaching for ten years and eventually
went back to university to study a Master of Education that the penny
dropped and I realised that education was actually my discipline. This was
brought home quite clearly by the recognition that I myself was experi-
encing continuing further education, that learning did not stop when
one finished school, and that a whole new world of adult and lifelong
learning had just opened up in front of me. Here I have to acknowledge
some very inspiring and influential lecturers who expanded my mind to
these ideas. A great teacher can inspire students at all stages of the learn-
ing process!
But this raises a question about initial teacher education:
At what point does one transcend being simply a content expert and become an
educator?
The realisation that teaching is about more than just subject and
specific curriculum areas should come sooner rather than later—and
hopefully not ten years later! Of course it is recognised that a begin-
ning teacher will need time and experience in which to develop their
professional abilities, according to standards like those developed in
Australia which incorporate four distinct career stages (AITSL 2017).
However, there is no indication in the AITSL standards framework of
how long it might take to progress from the graduate career stage to
172 T. Stehlik
become a proficient and eventually highly accomplished and even a lead

teacher. This despite the fact that graduate teachers will remain provi-
sionally registered until such time as they can show progression to pro-
ficiency and achieve full registration, linking the standards to
professional development as well as performance management require-
ments. As discussed in Chap. 5, as an accountability mechanism, the
AITSL standards framework presents as a clear example of the GERM
agenda at work.
As a framework for ongoing teacher education however, the standards
are useful but necessarily generalised and generic (e.g. Standard 3.1—
Establish challenging learning goals) and also very reductionist and instru-
mental. For example, within the seven AITSL standards there is a total of
37 sub-categories (sub-standards…?!), each described at the four career
stage levels, therefore 148 permutations in all to consider—a rather over-
whelming matrix of statements for categorising and ‘measuring’ good
teaching. How to make sense of all of this and try to think in a more
holistic way about the complexity of the teaching role?
Like any model, the TPACK model is a good place to start at being
able to conceptualise and think about teaching as a synthesis of various
types of knowledge and skill, as exemplified by the higher stages of
Bloom’s taxonomy of expertise and also reinforced by understanding the
combination of praxis, techné, episteme, and phronesis that is involved (see
Chap. 2).
However, the single word ‘context’ at the edge of the TPACK model
diagram is perhaps the most important consideration in understanding,
let alone applying, the model in a holistic way. Context should incorpo-
rate any number of possible questions such as: How appropriate are ICTs
for young children? How accessible are they in the ‘village’ that is raising
the children? How relevant are they to the ‘village’? How do they affect a
child’s emotional life? These questions then lead to meta-questions such
as: What actually is the village? What is the teacher’s role when the village
has ‘disappeared’ in the face of globalisation and liquid modernity? Is
teaching about more than developing expertise in TPACK? If so, what is
it and how do we incorporate it into teacher education?
8.4 The Philosophy of Teaching

A two-year qualifying degree (sometimes accelerated into an 18-month
program) does not allow much time to cover all the bases that are consid-
ered necessary to prepare a graduate to become a qualified teacher. A
four-year undergraduate degree should provide an opportunity for more
time and space to be inclusive of extended theory and practice. However,
much like the teachers colleges before them, university teacher prepara-
tion programs are highly regulated and controlled by what the teaching
profession itself perceives as important and non-negotiable content. For
a primary teaching degree, this includes covering all the learning areas
and curriculum content that are delivered by general classroom teachers:
science, maths, art, English, humanities and social studies, design and
technology, health and physical education, and possibly a second lan-
guage. In Australia, the professional teacher associations and state regis-
tration boards require mandatory subjects in special needs and Aboriginal
studies, then there are one or two courses on psychology and child devel-
opment, and the professional experience practicum components to fit
into the program—the ‘on-the-job’ experience that is still seen as the
most important aspect of the learning as strongly influenced by the tech-
nocratic and craft-based teachers college model.
In the teacher education programs at my university, there is currently
one course on ‘managing learning behaviours’ and one course which
introduces students to educational research—which I teach. While I also
believe that research literacy is a fundamental element of teaching and
teacher education, every year it is a struggle to get the students to believe
this too, as they are so focussed on curriculum content, how to deliver it
and how to survive in the classroom. In their feedback about my course
they often can’t see the connection between research and teaching, don’t
believe that the course is relevant, and express a desire for “more courses
in behaviour management instead”. Trying to shift the students’ mindsets
from seeing teaching as mainly crowd control to understanding that as
practitioner inquirers they can actually develop a bigger picture view of
the contexts that lead to behaviour management issues, is based on incul-
cating an appreciation of existing educational research as well as encour-
174 T. Stehlik
aging involvement in their own action research. Sometimes I can observe

this light bulb of understanding switching on by the time the students
graduate, but it is really not until they have had time to grow into the role
and reflect on their experiences in the context of the complexities of ‘the
job’ that this might really become internalised and fully embraced.
In this process and perspective, each individual student teacher, begin-
ning teacher and even experienced teacher really needs to develop and be
able to articulate their own personal philosophy of teaching.
I have stated that this is not a book about how to teach, it is a book
about why we teach. In the Introduction I pointed out that the intention
of this book is to put educational philosophy back on the agenda of
teacher education, educational policy and educational practice. As a dis-
tinct topic for consideration and discussion, it seems to have disappeared
from the discourse of global reform movements in education driven by
technology, marketisation, and managerialism and has certainly dropped
off the program in university teacher education courses where the cur-
riculum has become crowded with all the regulatory content required by
the profession and the state. It highlights the fact that there is an inherent
tension between schools and universities operating as institutions of the
state and government, as well as institutions of culture where we as a
society would want to develop free-thinking citizens who are not neces-
sarily bound or limited by such regulatory systems. The curriculum of
teacher education programs is a case in point—they are regulated and
prescribed by tradition, legislation, and formality, yet at the same time we
want these programs to produce educators who are creative, reflective,
and innovative. With no control over the curriculum they are studying,
this seems like a contradiction in purpose. The same could be said of the
curriculum that is being offered in our schools and which teachers are
expected to maintain and reproduce. Who owns these curricula and
decides their structure and content? The next chapter will address this
specific question in detail, but it is just one of the deep questions that
need to be asked if one is to begin articulating a personal teaching
philosophy.
It is unlikely that the ‘giant oil tanker’ of education that we have con-
structed will change course quickly or easily, but rather than waiting or
hoping for top-down improvements, change can be effected by a grass-
roots approach at the local and individual levels, to influence things from
the bottom up. However, first we need to ask the big question: Where is
the oil tanker heading?
It seems self-evident to me now (although I did not understand this at
all when I first started teaching) that before one can develop the practical
skills, the content knowledge and the appropriate attitudes required to be
a good teacher, one first needs to have a clear idea of what one is aiming
for in the activity of teaching and for the broader education project. One
therefore needs to address a number of questions, some of them rhetori-
cal but still necessary I believe as part of the process of self-talk, self-
reflection, and self-development:
1 . The big picture first—where are we going?

2. What is the purpose of schools in my village/community/society?
3. What is my philosophy and why am I a teacher?
4. Can I make a difference even when the socio-economic circumstances
are massive?
5. What are my values—do they align with the school’s values?
6. What are the influences of history, religion and politics, and where do
I sit?
7. What should be the outcomes of education and how will we know if
we have achieved them?
8. Whose interests are being served in delivering the prescribed

curriculum?
Hopefully some of the discourse and discussion around the history,

development and critique of educational philosophy in earlier chapters,
and in those still to come, provide food for thought in consideration of
these questions. There are certainly no straightforward answers as such
questions should be addressed individually and in context, and in a pro-
cess of continual reflection, since contexts—and individuals—will not
necessarily remain static over time.
There is nothing new in adopting a questioning attitude towards one’s
profession, and particularly in the profession of teaching. One of the
underlying themes of this book is that we can learn from history, from
past mistakes as well as successes, and with the benefit of hindsight all of
176 T. Stehlik
the questioning, thinking and reflecting on education undertaken by

educators and philosophers over the centuries can be useful in consider-
ing education today. A more recent contribution to the educational debate
has been that of critical pedagogy, a philosophy of education and a social
movement that grew out of the field of critical theory. Critical theory is a
school of thought that arose in 1930s Germany, whose main thesis is a
critique of traditional sociological theory which is aimed at understanding
society, to arrive at a theory aimed at changing society. Critical theorists
stress that human acts are inherently political and driven by ideology, and
that the first consideration of any act or intention is to ask: ‘Whose inter-
ests are being served by this?’, and then go beyond initial and surface
impressions to look for underlying influences and assumptions.
One of the originators of critical pedagogy was Paulo Friere (introduced
in Chap. 2) who applied critical theory to his analysis of radical, commu-
nity-based adult education in Brazil. Critical pedagogy applies a critical lens
to the field of education, so that its advocates view teaching as an inherently
political act, reject the idea that knowledge is neutral, and question whose
interests are being served by both the espoused curriculum as well as the
hidden curriculum. Friere is probably best known for his concept of consci-
entisation (conscientização), which means realising one’s consciousness and
becoming aware of one’s own assumptions, beliefs, and implicit biases, in
order to be able to challenge them (Friere 1996). This process of developing
critical awareness of one’s social reality involves a cycle of reflection and
action for which Freire adopted the term praxis to describe and explain.
Recalling the definition of praxis, this is a type of knowledge that combines
practical action with awareness of the social context and one’s agency in
influencing and being influenced by social settings.
Critical pedagogy focuses in particular on challenging and even radi-
calising teachers by asking them to examine “ideological postures” that
often unconsciously inform their perceptions and actions, particularly
“when working with linguistic-minority and other politically, socially,
and economically subordinated students” (Bartolomé 2004). While it is
admirable and important to aim for a ‘level playing field’ in attempting
to overcome disadvantage and create equality of educational opportunity
for all, the type of praxis for developing a personal teaching philosophy I
suggest should look beyond just this minority deficit view to embrace a
more holistic picture that takes in the mainstream and majority as well.
In other words, taking a stance against discriminatory and hegemonic
practices in education is all well and good but it is still operating within
the playing field. Pulling back and taking a ‘helicopter perspective’ of the
playing field exposes bigger picture questions to be asked, such as: Which
players are included or excluded? What is the purpose of the game? Who
has decided the rules of the game? What happens when the rules keep
changing? Where is the playing field even located?
8.5 Who Teaches the Teachers?

A further question to be considered in teacher education and in develop-
ing a philosophy of teaching is: Who is responsible for teaching the teachers?
As discussed earlier in the chapter, a traditional apprenticeship model was
for many years seen as adequate for passing on teaching skills from master
to novice, and even when teacher training institutions were established,
the instruction was delivered by practising teachers. There are even recent
moves in the United Kingdom to return to this type of apprenticeship
model with a policy shift towards allowing “schools to directly recruit
their own students and train them to be teachers on the job” (Menter
2016: 2). This model is rather insular and self-referential and, unless the
teacher educators themselves are also engaged in reflection on their own
beliefs and biases, can produce a self-regulating system that maintains the
status quo and never looks outside itself to take that helicopter view.
Therefore, even in a professional teacher education program of inte-
grated theory and practice such as those now offered at universities, it is
incumbent upon the individual themselves to take responsibility for own
career and professional development, including a consideration of how,
why, and from whom they are being educated. Encouraging pre-service
teachers to see themselves as practitioner enquirers is based on this notion,
but also implies that those of us who are teacher educators should be
modelling this professional practice. Enquiring into the practice of those
who are passing on the ‘received wisdom of experience’ should also be
part of this model, creating an interactive and collaborative learning
experience rather than a one-way transmission of information based on
178 T. Stehlik
an assumption of authority, wisdom, or position. In other words, if I am

going to be any kind of educator, I need to be open to continually being
educated myself. I need to act as a role model, much like those teachers
who inspired me at school were my role models.
It is interesting to note that the word mentor, which has been adopted
into the English language to refer to someone who imparts wisdom and
shares knowledge with a less experienced colleague, has also been passed
down to us from classical Greek mythology and literature. In the tale of
The Odyssey, most famously told by Homer (2003), when the hero
Odysseus leaves for the Trojan War he asks his friend Mentor to look after
and advise his son Telemachus until such time as he returns. Odysseus is
away for more than ten years and in his absence the relationship between
the older and younger man has been characterised as one of passing on
wisdom and advice, from the voice of experience to the ears of youth.
The mentoring relationship is an interesting one since it is often
unplanned, usually developing spontaneously through circumstance and
existing acquaintance or connections, and a person could have many
overlapping mentoring relationships over time. Mentoring programs
have of course been instigated and contrived in many workplace and
educational settings as deliberate programs for inducting, supporting,
and educating novices, often with success although some involve measur-
ing and monitoring. These are more formal, highly structured, short-
term relationships compared with informal, possibly longer-term
relationships, sometimes referred to as ‘friendship mentoring’.
The reciprocal nature of the relationship is also interesting, with the
word ‘mentee’ being used to describe the person being mentored, and
assumptions often made about the mentor being an older person and
usually of the same gender. The fact that the mentor may require some
training in the process of mentoring and could also be learning from the
mentee makes the traditional top-down master-apprentice idea of men-
toring a little redundant. While there is no real term for a mentoring
process that might actually be equal and co-dependent, ‘reciprocal men-
toring’ and ‘peer-to-peer mentoring’ are terms used to describe this type
of relationship, which can occur in school settings among colleagues as a
result of team teaching, working in faculty groups or project teams.
A ‘whole of school’ mentoring program has also proved to be success-

ful in encompassing all of the staff in an educational setting, from novice
pre-service teachers right through to school leaders (Earp 2017). The
importance of mentoring support especially for beginning teachers is
highlighted by the fact that:
Teacher attrition is a current issue in Australia and other economically

developed countries, with up to 50 per cent of teachers resigning from
teaching within the first five years. (Arnup and Bowles 2016: 229)
In the ‘Start Well’ study conducted by the Hunter Institute of Mental

Health into the mental health of beginning teachers, it was found that
99% of respondents reported the importance of support from peers and
mentors in their first years after graduation (Bennett et al. 2016). This
reinforces the position already stated that ‘teaching the teachers’ does not
conclude with graduation from a teacher education program but is an
ongoing necessity, and introduces the suggestion that those who ‘teach
the teachers’ will range from university lecturers to mentors, colleagues,
peers, family, and friends—in fact anyone who is involved either formally
or informally in helping teachers develop and maintain not only the skills
and knowledge for effective teaching but a clearly articulated philosophy
of teaching that underpins them. To be able to look forward to ‘a lifetime
or preparing young people for their future worlds’ and not become an
attrition statistic, a philosophy of continual lifelong learning is vital as
part of this process, for maintaining resilience and not only keeping up
with the current demands of the profession but embracing its unfolding
future. Regardless of who, where, and when however, the responsibility
to take advantage of all available learning experiences rests with the
teacher themselves, since self-education is at the heart of it all.
References
AITSL. (2017). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. https://www.aitsl.
edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list.
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Arnup, J., & Bowles, T. (2016). Should I stay or should I go? Resilience as a
protective factor for teachers’ intention to leave the teaching profession.
Australian Journal of Education, 60(3), 229–244.
Aspland, T. (2006). Changing patterns of teacher education in Australia.
Education Research and Perspectives, 33(2), 140–163.
Bartolomé, L. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education: Radicalizing
prospective teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31, 97–122.
Bennett, G. A., Newman, E., Kay-Lambkin, F., & Hazel, G. (2016). Start Well:
A research project supporting resilience and wellbeing in early career teachers –
Summary report. Newcastle: Hunter Institute of Mental Health.
Dawkins, R. (1988). Higher education: A policy statement. Canberra: Australian
Government.
Earp, J. (2017, March 9). A whole school mentoring program. Teacher Magazine.
https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/article/a-whole-school-mentoring-
program. Accessed 18 June 2017.
European Commission. (1999). http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/higher-
education/bologna-process_en. Accessed 14 June 2017.
Friere, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin.
Homer. (2003). The Odyssey. London: Penguin.
Menter, I. (2016). What is a teacher in the 21st century and what does a 21st cen-
tury teacher need to know? www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=1516. Accessed 16 May
2016.
TTF. (2017). Teaching teachers for the future. http://www.ttf.edu.au/what-is-
tpack/what-is-tpack.html. Accessed 13 June 2017.
9
The Role of the Teacher
The role of the teacher in the bigger picture of education is discussed in

this chapter, in which I suggest that teachers need to see themselves as
part of a cluster of professional roles providing an integrated and holistic
contribution to education that goes beyond the classroom and school to
the wider community. Teaching can be seen as one of the ‘helping profes-
sions’ similar to the professions of psychology, social work, and primary
health care. Educating and nurturing children and future citizens is a
huge responsibility and can put unreal expectations on teachers to do it
all alone, and sharing this important task in a joined-up approach with
other professions and providers can reduce stress and burnout. In this
chapter, some examples of enlivening teaching as an art as well as a sci-
ence are given via creative and imaginative ways of thinking about peda-
gogy and curriculum as well as content.
If pedagogy is defined as “the art or science of teaching” (dictionary.
com), to what extent can we say teaching is a science, and equally what
aspects of teaching might define it as an art? How is the practice of art
different from the practice of science? We have seen in the previous chap-
ter how teaching has evolved from a craft-based apprenticeship model to
a professional occupation requiring tertiary qualifications and knowledge

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_9
182 T. Stehlik
of theory as well as practice. Yet there are still many myths, assumptions,
and questions about the role of the teacher in the education process,
about what makes a ‘good’ teacher, about how teachers should be edu-
cated, and to what extent they are able to influence or change the educa-
tion systems and traditions in which they are defined. This chapter goes
deeper into identifying and analysing the role of the individual teacher,
suggesting that they are just one part of the bigger picture of the educa-
tion project, which includes a consideration of the curriculum and who
owns it; socio-economic factors that affect the life-worlds of children and
their families; other adults and professionals who are involved; educa-
tional policies that drive the schools agenda; conditions under which
teachers are employed and supported; and the interactions and relation-
ships between all of these various factors that actually determine to a large
extent the effectiveness of teaching. We have already identified the impor-
tance of the physical environment and its possible positive or negative
effects on teaching and learning, and in fact the founder of the Reggio
Emilia movement in Early Childhood Education, Loris Malaguzzi
(1920–1994), referred to it as the third teacher:
There are three teachers of children: adults, other children, and their physi-
cal environment. (Edwards et al. 2012)
9.1 Teaching as Art and Science

Chapter 8 introduced the distinction between content knowledge, peda-
gogical knowledge, and technological knowledge. Content knowledge is
clearly associated with the prescribed curriculum or the specific subjects
that are deemed important and form the basis of not only the school
timetable but the teacher education programs and the way in which
schooling is structured and sequenced. A random glance at any school’s
weekly timetable will show that the school day is usually divided into les-
sons or periods in which classes are meant to focus on a particular learn-
ing area, or defined content. This reductionist and instrumental approach
to knowledge being compartmentalised into separate subject areas, as
inherited from modern philosophy and the Enlightenment (see Chap. 2),
The Role of the Teacher 183
could be seen as the science aspect of teaching and will be unpacked later
in this chapter. The pedagogical knowledge required to not only deliver
this content but to enliven it, make it interesting and engaging, and
motivate students to want to learn it, is the more artistic side of the role.
It requires creativity, imagination, and thoughtful planning as well as the
ability to respond flexibly to the students and the situation. It speaks
much more to the personality of the teacher and their own temperament,
motivation, and interest in the content. Of course, we have also assumed
there is a distinction between the arts and the sciences and acknowledge
that it is contrived and simplistic, since it is possible, for example, to
teach science in an ‘artistic way’ and to teach art in a ‘scientific way’. Even
better is to view this as an integrated approach, for example, teaching
colour theory with the science of the light spectrum.
However, if Comenius was right, and “the secret of teaching lies in the
method” (cited in Dahlin 2006: 16), then the artistic side of pedagogy
would seem to be the more important aspect to focus on. Here we raise
an interesting point about the art of teaching which has been implied
already; that having content knowledge alone is not sufficient to effec-
tively be able to share that knowledge without some requisite pedagogical
skills and knowledge. In fact, the converse is also apparent, as it is anec-
dotally well known that there are some educators who can take any con-
tent and make it engaging, interesting, and motivating for students,
regardless of their depth of knowledge of the subject. Such people have
often been labelled as ‘natural born teachers’. Popular culture has often
presented teachers who are charismatic, inspiring, and passionate about
their work as somehow gifted, special, and above average, for example, in
films like To Sir, with love (1967), Stand and Deliver (1988), and Dead
Poets Society (1989).
Famous names who have been described as born teachers also include
those whose main occupation was something else entirely, such as the
composer Leonard Bernstein:
People often say that Leonard Bernstein was a born teacher, but actually it’s
more accurate to say that he was a born student who just couldn’t wait to
share what he learned. In his whole life, he never stopped studying.
(jamiebernstein.net)
184 T. Stehlik
Here we have further reinforcement of the importance of self-study

and lifelong learning in keeping teaching practice vibrant and alive. But
the question still remains, are some people ‘born teachers’ while others
are not?
Elizabeth Green (2015) suggests that teaching is a craft which anyone
can learn, but that the difference between competence and excellence in
teaching is still down to the individual, and that while teaching is not
some intangible inherited gift, it does require personal qualities of tenac-
ity and instinct to be able to navigate the complex skills, contexts, and
relationships involved.
But is teaching a craft or a vocation? Recall that the definition of voca-
tion included the implication that it is a ‘calling’… so that while the ideal
of the natural born teacher may be a romantic one, the idea of being
called to the profession is perhaps more realistic. As noted, there are many
people who aspire to the profession because they love children and always
wanted to be a teacher…but if you love aeroplanes and always wanted to
be a pilot it is not simply a matter of getting into a cockpit and being able
to fly a plane! Neither should the profession of teaching be an assumed
skill, but even when educated to the same theoretical and practical level,
undoubtedly some people seem to ‘naturally’ do better than others.
What are the role attributes of the teaching situation? You could find
out by taking a quiz to see if you have the natural attributes and inclina-
tions to thrive in the teaching role, including ‘reality check’ questions
like: “Do you really mean it when you say ‘I Iove kids’?” and “Are you
inspired to work long hours?” (Kangan Institute 2017).
As discussed so far, in addition to the content, pedagogical and tech-
nological knowledge now required in the profession, teachers also require
knowledge of the regulatory and legal requirements that are increasingly
incumbent upon them, as well as knowledge of the changes occurring in
the characteristics of children and their parents and society in general.
Dealing on a daily basis with the type of chaos, complexity, unpredict-
ability, paradox, and contradiction apparent in the post-modern world of
educational bureaucracy, classroom teaching is just one role among many
that are now required in the profession. Teachers also act as administra-
tors, managers, social workers, counsellors, psychologists, nurses, men-
tors, assessors, advisors as well as learners themselves. In reality, not
everyone will be able to fulfil all of these roles, and the art of teaching
becomes lost in the scientistic world of high-stakes testing, mandated
reporting and accountability requirements, curriculum frameworks, and
performance standards. One way to cope with this and build teacher
resilience and effectiveness is to take an inclusive view of the teaching role
and emphasise one of the major themes of this book: that teachers should
not be alone in carrying out the important job of educating our
children.
9.2 You Are Not Alone

98% of respondents to the study said that the teaching profession leaves
them feeling inundated by pressure. (Start Well study report, The World
Today, ABC RN June 2, 2017a)
Loris Malaguzzi rather starkly referred to the ‘pitiful isolation’ of the

teacher in conjuring up the image of the lone adult in a classroom full of
children or adolescents, single-handedly delivering a curriculum, manag-
ing behaviours, assessing learning, and trying to develop meaningful rela-
tionships with up to 30 diverse individuals. No wonder some people are
naturally better at this than others! In the development of the Reggio
Emilia movement, Malaguzzi believed that the burden of teaching should
be shared in the classroom by at least two teachers, but also by children
themselves who could teach and learn from each other, as well as from the
physical environment (Edwards et al. 2012). However, a move towards
an even more holistic view in which the teacher has the support of ‘the
whole village’ in the education process is occurring in many instances, so
that teachers are part of a larger group of people and services ‘wrapped
around’ the students.
The teacher as member of a team of professionals and ancillary support
workers can be seen as part of a ‘joined-up approach’ to dealing with ‘the
problem of education’ that initially arose out of working with disadvan-
taged and at-risk young people, for example, through programs devel-
oped as a result of social inclusion initiatives. In South Australia, for
example, the state Labour government set up a Social Inclusion Unit in
186 T. Stehlik
the early 2000s after a similar initiative in the United Kingdom by the
Blair Labour government in the 1990s. The programs that came out of
the South Australian unit targeted youth homelessness, early school leav-
ing, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health issues among young peo-
ple. I was involved in evaluating the School Retention Action Plan, which
had committed $28 million over four years to a number of strategies and
programs addressing the rate of school retention in the state, which was
very low in comparison with other states and territories.
Some of the specific social inclusion education programs will be dis-
cussed in more detail in Chap. 11, but a number of salient findings which
came out of that evaluation report relating to the role of teachers included
the following:
• The goodwill of the local community and input from unpaid volun-
teers are significant factors in many educational programmes, and a
whole-of-community approach to education is emerging as a key factor
in successfully engaging young people at risk.
• The role of social workers and youth workers is crucial in providing
support for students at risk. At the same time, teachers are increasingly
taking on counselling and welfare support roles, often without ade-
quate training. However, working in partnership, teachers and social
workers can become more aware of social work and educational prac-
tice respectively, a process which could be formalised in pre-service and
in-service training in both professions. (Stehlik 2006: 3)
While researching the social inclusion programs in education, what

became apparent to me was the extent to which teachers and schools
relied on the input of the local community as well as other professionals
in delivering education for all, not only in working with students identi-
fied as ‘at risk’ (at risk from disadvantage, domestic dysfunction, mental
health issues, etc.). This really reinforced for me that the aphorism ‘it
takes a village to raise a child’ was not just rhetoric but reality.
Many schools have a ‘welfare team’ in place that may include counsel-
lors, psychologists, nurses, and social workers, all working together with
teachers as a team to provide the kind of individualised support that is
‘wrapped around’ a particular student identified as at risk. In Finland, for
example, the welfare team is a part of the school staffing structure and
works with all students to reinforce the concern for wellbeing that is cen-
tral to their educational ethos (see Chap. 10).
In some of the alternative learning programs that were developed from
the South Australian social inclusion initiative, I observed teachers taking
on the roles of social worker with young people and social workers actu-
ally delivering teaching to school students. Despite both professions hav-
ing distinct and differing qualification and registration requirements, it
was obvious that the roles were increasingly overlapping and becoming
blurred. The suggestion in my 2006 report for an integrated approach to
training in both professions must have been prescient, since now there
are professional preparation programs being offered that combine both
social work and teaching, such as the Master of Social Work with a
Secondary Education Teaching Certificate at the University of Pittsburgh.
However, such innovative programs are few and far between, and uni-
versities, employers, and even professional associations continue to
uphold the traditional separation of disciplines, job roles, and careers that
maintain the status quo:
We want to create a nation of critical thinking, creative, flexible and inno-

vative people who understand the importance of collaboration. Yet teach-
ers are not supported to be truly innovative and the system is far from
flexible, creating barriers to desired practice, and frustration. (McKinnon
2016)
The importance of collaboration is clearly needed in all the ‘helping

professions’ working together rather than in isolation at the school and
community level; however, a joined-up approach is also needed at the
policy level. A large part of the social inclusion initiative was to get gov-
ernment departments to work together rather than in isolation, with
their conventional approach of focussing on just one or two portfolios
producing the effect of a number of unconnected ‘silos’ beavering away
while missing the bigger picture. Examples of ‘the left hand not knowing
what the right hand is doing’ are rife in the public sector and reinforced
by having separate departments for education, health and social work
when not only experience but research tell us that in practice these port-
folios should be interconnected.
188 T. Stehlik
For example, programs offering parenting education and support to vul-

nerable and disadvantaged families are generally provided by social services
departments, yet they should be directly linked to schools and the children
under compulsion to attend them—although that portfolio belongs to
education departments. Similarly, absenteeism and school truancy will nec-
essarily involve social service departments working with families, so it is
vital that they adopt a joined-up approach and work with education admin-
istrators in addressing such issues. Legislative requirements can make this
seemingly simple and obvious task complicated; for example, in some juris-
dictions a teacher is allowed to get into a car with a student if they require
emergency transport, but social workers are not permitted unless there are
two of them, not always a workable proposition.
As Lawson points out, most of the specialised human services profes-
sions “also have a specialized organizational home. Educators have
schools, social workers have children’s service organizations, and nurses
have hospitals and health clinics” (2016: 4). However, human needs and
wants cannot be reduced to one or more discrete technical problem(s)
that conveniently fall within the jurisdiction of a specialised profession
and their home organisation, and are not necessarily transferable or trans-
portable to different contexts, places, and cultures. The challenge is to go
beyond such traditional structures and develop ways of thinking about
human services in a more holistic way.
Since the health and wellbeing of young children has been shown to be
a central aspect of the education project, then an integrated or joined-up
approach to this at the policy level should also include government agen-
cies that are responsible for these portfolios. This is clearly demonstrated
in working with Indigenous communities and schoolchildren, for exam-
ple, in Australia where the life expectancies and health levels of Aboriginal
people are well below those of the general population (ABS), which
directly affect and limit educational outcomes. Policy responses to
improving school attendance and life opportunities for Aboriginal chil-
dren therefore require collaboration and cooperation between govern-
ment departments for health, education, and social services in working
together to ensure that basic needs are attended to before any effective
education can occur. In remote Aboriginal communities in Australia, for
example, poor nutrition can directly disadvantage learning opportunities,
and the prevalence of ear infections (otitis media) in young Indigenous

people can result in hearing loss and difficulty in understanding speech.
Add to this the fact that English is a second language for many of these
children, and it is apparent that a teacher alone cannot address all of these
issues and will need support from other professionals and services, includ-
ing Aboriginal Education Workers with local language and cultural
capability.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the mental health and resilience
of teachers—particularly in the first few years in the classroom after grad-
uation—can be fragile, and to avoid feeling ‘inundated by pressure’,
teachers need to know that they are not alone and that their role is one
part of a larger community of people who are also involved in raising
children. Resilience, relationships, and responsibility could be seen as the
‘three Rs’ of the role of teacher. Relationships are key in working with
students and parents, but also in collaborating with colleagues outside of
the classroom and even outside of the school, and the responsibility for
developing and maintaining those relationships rests with the teacher as
part of their professional practice and hopefully, personal philosophy of
education.
9.3 Who Owns the Curriculum?

Although teachers may be responsible for their own practice and for
modelling appropriate behaviours, attitudes, and values in the classroom
as part of their pedagogical knowledge, they are not always responsible
for the actual content that is required to be delivered, and generally must
work within the bigger picture of curriculum frameworks and assessment
requirements that are laid down, again through the policy interventions
of government agencies and many other interested parties. It has been
suggested a number of times so far in this book that the curriculum
mostly taught in schools today is a product of historical tradition and
assumptions around how knowledge should be constructed, understood,
and passed on through the generations. One of the questions we need to
address in considering the future of education and schooling is: Who
owns the curriculum?
190 T. Stehlik
[Curriculum: Latin: action of running, course of action, race, chariot,

equivalent to curr(ere) to run (dictionary.com)]
The dictionary definition and etymology of the word ‘curriculum’
demonstrate that it really applies to a course of action, or a process, rather
than a fixed set of subjects and content—yet that is how we now think of
it when we refer to the curriculum of a school, college, qualification, or
credential. The link with the verb to run is very interesting, and reinforces
the idea of a curriculum as a journey with some form of destination. The
colloquial usage of the term ‘CV’ is an abbreviation for Curriculum
Vitae, which literally means ‘the course of one’s life or career’. Here one
would refer to formal qualifications but also to life experience and per-
sonal skills and qualities, developed and acquired over time. For most
people this is a work in progress with a CV being continually brought up
to date as the course of one’s life and career unfolds, or to refer to the
dictionary definition, as the ‘race is being run’.
So curriculum is a slippery concept, and we have already mentioned in
Chap. 3 that there can be an overt or espoused curriculum as well as a
hidden curriculum, which can include the beliefs and values of teachers
and educational institutions that influence the way in which the stated
curriculum is taught. For example, a school motto, just like any organisa-
tion’s mission statement, will subtly suggest the underlying philosophies
and values that students will be expected to respect and internalise. A
teacher’s own biases and value judgements may be quite unconscious and
unwittingly transmitted, reinforcing the need discussed in the previous
chapter for a critical self-appraisal of one’s own beliefs and assumptions as
part of self-education and professional development.
However, the espoused curriculum that teachers work with and that is
made publicly available in syllabus statements, school brochures, and
education department policy statements is one that I suggest needs criti-
cal examination. We have seen with the GERM agenda that there has
recently been a shift towards focussing on core subjects at the expense of
subjects which become marginalised (see Chap. 5). While literacy and
numeracy are capabilities that should be developed through the course of
the curriculum, they now tend to be treated as actual subjects and
associated with the teaching of the mother tongue (e.g. English) and the
teaching of mathematics, rather than being embedded and integrated
into all aspects of the curriculum. Furthermore, other literacies that are
important for successful participation in modern society are assumed to
be embedded in the general curriculum, such as computer literacy, tech-
nological literacy, social literacy, aesthetic literacy, and so on.
For a first world country with a high standard of living and a robust
economy, Australia has a remarkably high level of illiteracy among the
adult population, with figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
showing that 44% of Australian adults don’t have the literacy skills they
need to cope with the demands of everyday life and work (Better
Beginnings 2017). Concerns about the levels of literacy in Australia have
therefore driven the focus on language and literacy learning and once
again put the spotlight onto teachers and the curriculum as not being
effective enough in teaching functional literacy, grammar, and spelling.
Similarly, a secondary school curriculum that provides a range of sub-
ject choices has seen less students choosing ‘hard science’ subjects like
chemistry, physics, and mathematics, with a perceived drop in the num-
ber of graduates interested in careers in the natural and physical sciences.
Young girls are particularly turning away from subject choices in science
and maths, prompting a number of programs aimed at encouraging them
into considering careers in science with mentoring by female role models
sponsored by the scientific community (ABC RN 2017b). Of even more
concern to the curriculum policy makers has been the decreasing number
of graduates with science degrees going on to become schoolteachers,
creating a shortage of qualified science and maths teachers—in particular
women—who would be the role models for school students becoming
interested in science and maths, hence the recent focus on STEM (sci-
ence, technology, engineering, and maths) subjects as well as literacy.
‘Science’ however is not neutral or values-free. Historically, the link
between science and religion has been shown in the great paradigm shifts
in knowledge of the natural world, such as proving that the earth is round
and not flat—a proposition which at the time was seen as complete her-
esy. Remarkably, at a time when science is making great advances in our
understanding of the universe, controversies like this between opposing
scientific theorists continue to the present day. For example, creation sci-
ence is on the curriculum in the United Kingdom, the United States, and
Australia under the strong influence of fundamentalist Christian groups
192 T. Stehlik
in promoting the biblical version of human development rather than the

evolutionary version, not only in faith-based private schools that receive
public funding, but also in some public schools (Ricci 2015). The actual
management of Academy schools in the United Kingdom by such doctri-
naire organisations, as discussed in Chap. 5, is an example of the way in
which the school curriculum as a whole is not neutral or values-free and
can be ‘owned’ by particular interest groups. In working within any cur-
riculum framework therefore, teachers must ask: Whose interests are
being served by the curriculum?
The religious influence on our contemporary understanding of cur-
riculum as a course or path of life rather than the original Latin meaning
of a chariot race has been attributed to John Calvin (1509–1564), the
French theologian who was a major instigator of the Protestant
Reformation of Christian theology during the sixteenth century, with a
critical pedagogical perspective suggesting that since then “the word and
concept of curriculum have been embedded in a Protestant, bourgeois,
commercial/capitalist culture” (Doll 2008: 181). Examples of the com-
mercialisation of education have been given in previous chapters, with
capitalist interests being reflected in the general view that a major func-
tion of schooling is preparing young people for the workforce; but the
notion that the modern western curriculum maintains a culture of
Protestantism is based on the related idea of the ‘Protestant work ethic’,
which pervades the contemporary practice of schooling as characterised
by hard work, discipline, and duty. The German sociologist Max Weber
(1864–1920) first proposed this concept and its links with modern capi-
talist society and economic rationalism in his book The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism published in 1905.
The first educational use of the word curriculum can also be traced
back to the sixteenth century when it was used to describe a systematic
study of the Seven Liberal Arts (see Chap. 4) by Petrus Ramus, a French
philosopher and Professor of Logic (1515–1572). Ramus was one of the
first to propose a structure of sequenced study from the general to the
particular that could be represented on a chart, with this ‘simple order’
having the effect of organising and methodising the curriculum. With the
aid of the printing press, Ramus was able to widely distribute his ideas
which became influential enough for universities to begin structuring
their curricula into separate discipline areas and to form the foundation
of the subsequent work of Comenius, who as we have seen not only
championed the importance of method but also proposed the modern
education system and curriculum which evolved through Humboldt,
Descartes, and others to what we have inherited today (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2014).
9.4 Curriculum Responses

Teachers must somehow work within the kind of highly structured and
ordered curriculum that has been shaped by such historical and deeply
entrenched influences, but also be able to respond to reactive policy shifts
such as those coming from the GERM agenda, driven by concerned poli-
ticians and policy makers who demand that more attention be given to
core subjects and assessment of literacy and numeracy through the use of
high-stakes testing. There are ways in which the received curriculum can
be creatively manipulated and even subverted however. One way is to
take an integrated and more holistic approach to the curriculum rather
than viewing it is a matrix of discrete subject areas. A number of examples
of this approach are now presented.
At the conceptual level, there have been concerted moves to make the
STEM agenda more integrated with Art and Design principles. The
STEM to STEAM initiative argues that the high technology economy of
the twenty-first century will require innovative thinking that can be
enhanced by incorporating ‘A for Arts’ into what has been seen as a purely
technological and scientistic domain. In the United States, this extends to
encouraging the integration of Art and Design into all levels of school
education, placing Art and Design at the centre of STEM research, and
influencing organisations to hire artists and designers as innovative think-
ers (http://stemtosteam.org/). Arts-based approaches to teaching have
long been a feature of creative and integrative ways to make curricula
come alive. Research into using performance art and drama with young
learners has shown a number of value-added benefits in various areas,
such as reading comprehension, writing, motivation, problem-solving,
communication strategies, critical thinking skills, empathy, and socio-
194 T. Stehlik
emotional learning as well as artistic skills and creative imagination

(Belliveau 2014).
Another variation on the acronym is STEEM which introduces E for
the environment into the equation, in recognition of the importance of
education for sustainability and a global concern for environmental issues
that on the one hand are the product of science and technology and on
the other are perceived to require scientific and technological solutions
for addressing them. Two case studies in the following chapter give more
detailed examples of STEAM and STEEM: the central place of the arts
in the Steiner/Waldorf curriculum and environmental awareness at the
heart of the curriculum of Green School Bali.
At a whole-of-school level, the middle school movement was based
around the concept of an integrated curriculum and a more holistic
approach to teaching the core subjects and major learning areas to chil-
dren in the ‘middle school’ years from about Grades 6 to 9, or Grades 7
to 10 in some countries and jurisdictions. These grades straddle the tra-
ditional gap between upper primary and lower secondary, and middle
schooling approaches and methodologies aim to create a more gradual
pathway between junior and senior schooling, since research has shown
that young people often fall through this transitional gap. The movement
gained momentum in Australia in the 1990s with the National Middle
Schooling Project, which defined the middle school curriculum as being
learner-centred emphasising self-directed and co-constructed learning,
community oriented, flexible and responsive to local needs, and collab-
oratively organised and ideally delivered with a team teaching approach
(ACSA 2017).
Middle schooling is really a pedagogical approach and a philosophy
concerned with the appropriate education of children in the age range
10–15 years, which has been discussed in Chap. 6 as representing the
stage of development that includes a change from pre-pubescence into
adolescence. These years have been identified as ‘difficult’ and are associ-
ated with the beginnings of disengagement from learning, or ‘switching
off’ which can then lead to behavioural problems that may escalate in
high school. The middle schooling philosophy is therefore more func-
tional than structural, and generally applied as a distinct approach to
teaching the middle years in schools that offer kindergarten to Year 12,
although some separate middle school campuses have been created with
mixed results (Dinham and Rowe 2008).
A response to the middle school movement in Australia has included
influencing the way in which teacher education programs are structured
and conceptualised, with some universities introducing specialisations in
Primary/Middle teaching in their Bachelor of Education degrees. At the
University of South Australia, for example, the Bachelor of Education
(Primary/Middle) aims to graduate generalist primary teachers who are
also qualified to teach one or two specialist subjects up to Year 10 in sec-
ondary school. Generalist teachers are seen as preferred to specialist
teachers in the middle years where it is also considered important for
students to have fewer teachers in order to be able to develop positive
teaching-learning relationships. However, there is some criticism of this
approach which argues that depth of subject material cannot be achieved
without specialist teachers and with the type of interdisciplinary approach
that may not give enough time for students to develop expert knowledge
in individual subjects.
This interdisciplinary approach is characterised by integrated curricula
which can take various forms, including a synchronised approach in which
similar content and processes are taught across a number of subjects, a
thematic approach which links subjects around a particular theme, a
project-based approach in which subject boundaries are blurred, a school-
specialised approach with long-term projects such as a school garden or
performing arts program, and a community-focused approach reaching out
beyond the school into the wider community (Dinham and Rowe 2008).
One example of a thematic approach to the integrated curriculum was
based around a particular work of art, which was presented to students to
stimulate and generate a number of responses that incorporated visual
art, language arts, history, geography, and social studies. St Michael’s
Church of England Primary School in the United Kingdom refers to it as
part of their ‘Creative Curriculum’:
A unique curriculum designed to meet our children’s needs in a changing

world and to create above all, lifelong learners who are self-motivated and
curious to learn. Each term a new title is introduced and artefacts, non-
fiction books, pictures and information provided act as an initial stimulus.
Certain skills are planned and taught within each topic, such as chronol-
196 T. Stehlik
ogy, timelines, note-taking or map reading, and then the children have the
opportunity to develop and pursue the topic into the areas which most
interest them. (st-michaels-school.org)
In this example the students viewed the painting Seaport with the
Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba by Claude Lorrain, painted in 1648
and now in the National Gallery, London: https://www.nationalgallery.
org.uk/paintings/claude-seaport-with-the-embarkation-of-the-queen-of-
sheba. While contemplating the painting, students also listened to a
selection of music from the period. The rich detail of the painting, its
historical provenance, and its mythological subject matter provided a
range of responses including paintings, drawings, poetry, stories, and
maps, both as individual and group efforts. The role of the teacher in this
‘creative curriculum’ approach is therefore not so much to deliver content
as to provide stimulus and a resource-rich and safe environment in which
students can respond individually, collectively, and creatively.
Project-based learning has long been a feature of curricula across both
primary and secondary schools, and is not limited to a middle school
methodology. The curriculum of Steiner/Waldorf schools, as presented in
the following chapter, includes a capstone project in Year 12 that is a
major part of the assessment contributing to the matriculation result and
in some jurisdictions to a university entrance score. My eldest daughter
studied black and white portrait photography for her final year project,
which included learning to use a camera and a darkroom as well as work-
ing with live models and presenting artistic work. It must have consti-
tuted a form of deep learning, as she went on to university art school,
majored in photography and at the time of writing is completing a PhD
in visual art practice.
The International Baccalaureate program is unique in presenting a cur-
riculum that is managed and moderated on a global level in comparison
to state-based or national curricula, but delivered locally in IB World
Schools across the globe. Since 1968 the IB curriculum in the senior
years has also required a capstone project that is a major part of the assess-
ment, and since 1994 there has also been a separate middle school cur-
riculum (http://www.ibo.org/).
The revised South Australian Certificate in Education (SACE) that was

developed after a ministerial review of secondary education in 2006
introduced a number of educational reforms for the senior years of high
school. Interestingly, one of those reforms included introducing a man-
datory research project subject, which at the time of writing is the only
subject that all students must take—all other subjects can be elective
choices, given various guidelines and university entrance requirements
(www.sace.sa.edu.au/). Such project-based learning not only provides the
opportunity for deep learning in a particular area of the students’ own
interests but encourages the improvement of research skills including the
development of critical thinking.
However, it has been interesting to observe the response of teachers to
the introduction of the SACE research project and reinforces the way in
which secondary teachers see themselves as subject/content experts
according to their education, training, and self-identity as a specialist. As
part of their teaching role, they must supervise students undertaking the
research project, which requires a particular set of skills that does not
include delivering specialised content as they would do in a traditional
subject or classroom. Many teachers have been confronted by their lack
of understanding in responding to student-centred projects on a one-to-
one basis, and even resent not being able to practice their usual teaching
methods based on their subject expertise. For some this has been a steep
learning curve in pedagogical practice and suggests that a focus on the
teaching-learning relationship may still be seen as secondary to a focus on
the prescribed curriculum. In presenting role models to secondary stu-
dents, I suggest that teachers have a duty of care to not only model a
passion or at least an interest in their subject areas but to recognise the
importance of modelling lifelong learning through inquiry-based prac-
tice and a research orientation. This addresses the key question for this
section: What is my role and purpose as a teacher?
As discussed earlier in this chapter and the previous one, great teachers
can inspire students to follow their dreams and have happy and successful
lives, including making career decisions based on the adult role models
they admire. However, with regard to the teaching profession, the cycle
of ‘teachers influencing students who may become teachers and therefore
go on to influence more students’ can be seen in a number of aspects of
198 T. Stehlik
schooling, and not just in subject areas like science and maths. For exam-
ple, Indigenous students often do not complete school without the inspi-
ration and support provided by the role models of Indigenous teachers in
their classrooms, who in turn represent a far smaller percentage in the
profession than in the general population partly because of this cycle of
early school leaving. In Australia the number of Aboriginal people who
complete a university degree is growing but still representatively small,
and that smaller pool of graduates will often go into professions other
than teaching where there are similar needs for role models. So quite
often the role of the teacher is subtle and includes many other things than
just delivering content and providing appropriate methodologies. A
diverse teaching workforce will model and reflect the diversity of the soci-
ety or ‘village’ in which the children are being educated and socialised.
In creating the environment for learning, teachers must also model
creativity themselves; in developing moral character and appropriate
social values with students, teachers have a responsibility to be aware of
their own moral character and model the kind of affective behaviours
that society would assume to be appropriate. These various roles are
examples of the hidden curriculum, and qualities over which teachers
have some agency and control if they are aware of them. The stated cur-
riculum, however, is generally presented as a given, and while teachers
may be able to contribute to consultations and be part of working groups
that develop curriculum materials, they are very often on the receiving
end of curriculum frameworks and documents with very little control or
input into what they are expected to teach. In this scenario, their role in
developing and maintaining social relationships with all stakeholders
involved in the education project is more critical than ever.
References
ABC Radio National. (2017a, June 2). The World Today. Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
ABC Radio National. (2017b, June 20). Life Matters. Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
ACSA. (2017). Australian Curriculum Studies Association. Principles of middle
schooling. http://www.acsa.edu.au/pages/page28.asp. Accessed 27 June 2017.
Belliveau, G. (2014). Stepping into drama: A midsummer night’s dream in the

elementary classroom. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.
Better Beginnings. (2017). https://www.better-beginnings.com.au/research/
research-about-literacy-and-reading. Accessed 26 June 2017.
Dinham, S., & Rowe, K. (2008, September 3). Fantasy, fashion and fact: Middle
schools, middle schooling and student achievement. Paper presented to BERA
conference, Edinburgh. http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=1005&context=tll_misc. Accessed 27 June 2017.
Doll, W. (2008). Complexity and the culture of curriculum. Chapter 13. In
M. Mark (Ed.), Complexity theory and the philosophy of education. Chichester:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (2012). The hundred languages
of children (3rd ed.). Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Green, E. (2015). Building a better teacher: How teaching works (and how to teach
it to everyone). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Kangan Institute. (2017). Signs you were born to be a teacher. https://www.
kangan.edu.au/students/blog/be-a-teacher. Accessed 21 June 2017.
Lawson, H. (2016). Categories, boundaries and bridges: The social geography of
schooling and the need for new institutional designs. Education Sciences,
6(32), 1–14.
McKinnon, M. (2016, January 11). Teachers are leaving the profession – Here’s
how to make them stay. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/teach-
ers-are-leaving-the-profession-heres-how-to-make-them-stay-52697.
Ricci, C. (2015, May 18). Evolution or revolution needed to oust creationism?
Creationism may be gone from the curriculum but it still finds its way into
some schools. Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/national/
education/evolution-or-revolution-needed-to-oust-creationism-
20150514-gh1bf3.html. Accessed 27 June 2017.
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ford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/ramus/#Met. Accessed 27 June 2017.
Stehlik, T. (2006). Levels of engagement: Report of findings prepared for the social
inclusion unit on the action research project across school retention initiatives.
Adelaide: UniSA/South Australian Government.
Part V
Case Studies of Educational
Philosophies
10
International Comparisons and Case
Studies
This section of the book compares education systems, philosophies, and

approaches in a number of different countries and cultures and shows
that place, space, and ethos do make a difference to educational out-
comes. Three case studies are introduced and discussed in this chapter.
Firstly, a whole of country case study is made of Finland, its education
system and its culture. Secondly, Steiner Education as an example of a
holistic educational philosophy and a worldwide network of alternative
schools is outlined and analysed. Thirdly, Green School Bali is presented
as an example of a school purpose built to develop and deliver education
for ecological and social sustainability.
10.1 F inland: Equality Begins

at the Blackboard
Ever since Finland quietly emerged as a country which topped the inter-
national polls in educational achievement and student outcomes such as
PISA (www.oecd.org/pisa/), educators and policy makers around the

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_10
204 T. Stehlik
world have been turning their gaze on this small Nordic country in the
hope of finding out the secret to their success (Tamkin 2014). A number
of significant factors have been determined and are well established:
teaching is a high-status profession in Finland; all teachers have a master’s
degree; education is well-funded by the state and free to all; school reten-
tion rates are high; and the country whose economic revival was led by
companies such as Nokia had become a world leader in high level infor-
mation technology applications, including in education.
I was as interested as anyone else in Finland’s education system, having
visited the country in 2006 and 2008 when I had the opportunity to
meet and talk to teachers, school principals, and university educators. At
the time, the message I received was something like: “Yes, we have
achieved good educational success…but we ourselves are not so inter-
ested in academic outcomes…we are more concerned that our children
are happy” (Tonder, 2006, personal communication). This sentiment
stayed with me, and in 2013 I applied for an Endeavour Executive
Fellowship from the Australian government with the proposal to spend
some time in Finland investigating their schools’ structure and culture as
well as their teacher education programs and processes, to try and find
out whether their school students were indeed happy as well as perform-
ing well academically.
I spent ten weeks in Finland from July to September 2014, for most of
the time being based at the University of Eastern Finland in Savonlinna,
at one of its three campuses. Visiting schools, talking to teachers, princi-
pals, students, parents, university lecturers, student teachers, and
education bureaucrats was an informative experience, and I learned much
about not only the Finnish education system but the cultural, societal,
and historical factors on which this system is founded. I found that rela-
tionships between students, teachers, parents, and even educational
administrators are based on trust and that the wellbeing of children is
central not only to schooling but to Finnish society and culture. In addi-
tion to realising that equality of educational opportunity is fundamental to
the Finns, the notion of pedagogical love emerged as the most salient term
and concept which describes and encapsulates the ‘secret’ to the Finnish
approach to education.
International Comparisons and Case Studies 205
Background and History
Finland is a relatively small country (population 5 million) situated in a

unique geographic position at the edge of Europe, up against its massive
neighbour to the east, Russia. Finns do not really consider themselves to
be Scandinavian as the Finnish language shares no common roots with
the other Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Nevertheless Finland’s history is bound up with both Scandinavia and
Russia as for 300 years it was under Swedish rule, then for more than
100 years under the control of Russia, to whom it lost some territory after
World War II—a fact which is still in living memory and a sore point in
Eastern Finland.
Achieving independence in 1918 as a state in its own right was there-
fore a significant moment in Finnish history and an achievement that
Finns still hold on to and fiercely protect. Together with the unique
Finnish language, this underpins their particular national character and
drives the social democratic welfare state that has since developed, which
foregrounds equity and equality of opportunity for all Finns regardless of
gender, socio-economic, or regional status. Some important figures
responsible for achieving independence and promoting Finnish national-
ism included the composer Jean Sibelius and the educator Uno Cygnaeus.
These ‘movers and shakers’ realised early on that education was going to
be the key to achieving independence for Finland and creating a civilised
state founded on knowledge rather than ignorance, preparing the c ountry
for a prosperous future and creating an egalitarian society. Contemporary
commentators such as Michael Booth suggest this direct link between
education and social welfare is still a salient feature; that in Finland
“equality starts at the blackboard” (2014: 279).
The basic right to education is therefore enshrined in the Finnish con-
stitution. Public authorities must secure equal opportunities for every
resident in Finland to receive education and be able to develop them-
selves, irrespective of their financial standing. Legislation provides for
compulsory schooling and the right to free pre-primary and basic educa-
tion, which includes among other things daily meals for students and
subsidised transport. The Ministry of Education and Culture is the third
206 T. Stehlik
largest ministry in Finland and its share of the state budget was 12% (6.6
million Euro) in 2014. There are a very small number of independent
schools (e.g. Steiner and Montessori) but even these are fully funded by
the state.
Historically teachers were seen as ‘Candles of the people’ lighting the
way to Finnish independence, and this is still a very strong cultural and
societal view (Booth 2014). Teaching is seen as a high-status profession in
Finland and was described by a number of people I spoke to as a ‘favou-
rite occupation’. It is therefore competitive to enter teacher education
programs and requires a high standard of entry to university—based on a
matriculation score as well as an entrance exam and an interview. The
salient feature of the university teacher education programs is their
research-based approach, in which student teachers are taught to think
critically and must complete a thesis in the three-year bachelor program,
then another thesis in the two-year master’s program. At the University of
Eastern Finland, the students are introduced to the forest—which covers
most of their country—as a learning environment and a teaching resource
that can be utilised in a variety of cross-curricular research and teaching
projects (Fig. 10.1).
How the Finnish Education System Works
The Finnish National Board of Education works with the Ministry to

develop educational aims, content, and methods for primary, secondary,
and adult education. There is a national curriculum but it is enacted at
the municipal level: local administration is the responsibility of the
regional municipal authorities, which play a prominent role as education
providers. Kindergartens, day-care centres, comprehensive schools, upper
secondary schools, vocational, and further education centres are all
administered by the local municipality. This includes responsibility for
teaching staff salaries, employment conditions, and professional develop-
ment. The Director of Educational and Cultural Development for the
Municipality of Savonlinna, for example, was directly responsible for 24
schools and 900 staff in the region. The school principals reported to him
and met regularly as a group, as well as being linked in to centralised
policy developments in the capital, Helsinki.
Fig. 10.1 The forest as a teaching resource: trainee teachers on excursion, Eastern
Finland
Teachers and schools however are afforded a great amount of indepen-

dence from bureaucracy and centralised control. There are no school
inspectors or quality control processes imposed from above—rather there
is a kind of collective compliance based on self-evaluation and self-
referential assessment. High-stakes testing such as the Australian
208 T. Stehlik
NAPLAN scheme is not mandated and national tests (such as PISA) are
voluntary and schools can opt to engage in them for benchmarking
against other schools but this does not result in publically available
‘leagues tables’ such as those associated with the MySchool website infor-
mation required of Australian Schools (www.myschool.edu.au/).
Higher education is also the responsibility of the Ministry of Education
and Culture and all university tuition is free, including for foreign stu-
dents. Finland has 14 universities, eight of these offer teacher education
programs. Every teacher in Finland (apart from kindergarten teachers)
has a master’s degree as a minimum requirement. Teacher training is
organised in a unique way in comparison to the Australian situation: the
eight universities offering teacher training all have University Teacher
Training Schools which belong to the Faculties of Education. Teachers in
these schools are actually employees of the university, while the schools
themselves still follow the National Curriculum and enjoy the same inde-
pendence that other schools do. In Finland they are known as
Normaalikoulu (Normal schools); also referred to as Training Schools or
Practice Schools.
There are 11 Finnish Teacher Training schools that not only provide an
education for students at comprehensive and upper secondary levels but
also offer supervision of teaching students undertaking professional expe-
rience and act as demonstration schools for teaching experiments and edu-
cational research, as well as providing and supporting in-service teacher
training. The number of students in the Teacher Training Schools totals
around 8000, and every year about 3000 teaching students complete
their teaching practice there.
Surprisingly, it is interesting to note that despite the high status of
teaching in Finland, teacher salaries in general are significantly less in
comparison to Australia. On average in 2014, they were 32,400 Euro
(AUD$45,600) per annum; by comparison in South Australia, annual
salaries ranged between AUD$61,500 for Tier 1 and AUD$89,000 for
Tier 9. However, the apparently lower Finnish salaries are offset by the
fact that many basic services in Finland—including health, childcare, and
education—are heavily subsidised by the state. For example, some early
learning centres offer 24-hour childcare—fully subsidised—for working
parents.
Finnish children attend kindergarten and pre-school until the age of

seven, when they enter comprehensive school which covers Grades 1–9.
They are therefore at least a year older than Australian children who cur-
rently begin their Reception school year at age five. Senior high schools
are separate institutions offering Grades 10, 11, and 12 for students who
are usually around 16 when they transition into high school. This transi-
tion could involve moving from home to attend high school, particularly
for one of the many specialist high schools that offer programs in music,
art, or dance. A 16-year-old Finnish high school student could therefore
be living independently while studying, supported by a living allowance
from the state.
This is not uncommon in Nordic countries, and underpins the
approach to senior school in which students are treated and respected as
young adults rather than adolescents and given responsibilities which
they must honour. For example, Taidelukio School in Savonlinna is a
specialist art and music high school with fully equipped music and art
studios. On enrolment, all students are given a key to the school by the
principal, who trusts them to come and go after school and on weekends
to be able to access the facilities. No teachers are required to supervise and
there has never been a problem in the ten years that this practice has
occurred. Students sign a contract and know that if anything happens,
this entitlement will be taken away. Trust is the key to making this work.
In all the schools I visited, behaviour management did not appear to
be an issue—teachers were addressed by their first name and the relation-
ship between student and teacher appears to be much closer than the
more formal approach adopted in many countries. A significant factor in
developing and maintaining this relationship is the daily school lunch,
where students and teachers sit and eat together in the school canteen. I
observed this in every school, even the kindergartens, since I was always
invited to partake in lunch. I firmly believe that the simple fact of eating
and socialising together every day has a number of significant educational
benefits: the children learn appropriate social manners and rituals related
to eating and putting away their dishes; they have a healthy and nutri-
tious meal every day (and I believe this is linked to improved behaviours);
they learn to mix freely and socially with each other as well as teaching
staff and other adults; teachers can observe social behaviours and peer
210 T. Stehlik
groupings and whether particular children are eating alone or not mixing
with their peers; and parents do not have to worry about packing school
lunches!
Of course, once again the free meals are a big expense but the Finnish
education budget covers this as well; and despite the cost of introducing
a free meal scheme, if there was one thing I would recommend adopting
in Australian schools, it would be this, as I believe the benefits would
outweigh the costs in the long term. We know that in many parts of the
country children come to school hungry and do not eat well, and if they
do eat are often consuming unhealthy processed foods containing sugar
and preservatives which hype up their behaviour and cause problems for
teachers and other students, as well as learning difficulties for the child.
Another feature of the Finnish school is the way the school day is
structured, again centred on the wellbeing of the whole child. In the
Comprehensive Schools, the first lesson generally starts at 8.30 in the
morning and goes for 45 minutes. The children are then given a 15-minute
break and inevitably they will go outside into the school yard and play—
even in winter when the weather can be snowing and well below 0 °C. This
pattern is repeated throughout the day—a lesson, then a break, a lesson,
then a break. There is a Finnish word for this 15-minute break time—
vӓlitunti. The word has more than one meaning, and can be translated as
‘the best time’ and also ‘a lecture between’, or in effect a ‘gap lesson’.
Vӓlitunti can therefore be seen as not just random playtime but a key part
of the pedagogical approach. The school day itself is not that long, usually
finishing by 2 pm, so that ‘hothousing’ or cramming content through
accelerated intensive study and hours of homework is certainly not one of
the secrets to Finnish educational success—quite the opposite in fact. It
was described to me as ‘unhurried working’, giving each child time to
grow and learn according to their needs, with healthy living, healthy
food, sport, culture, art, and creativity being valued more highly than
homework.
The Finnish education system therefore can be characterised by trust,
freedom, flexibility, and a concern to put the wellbeing of children at the
centre of the system, with teachers contributing to a supportive and close
relationship with their students balanced with delivering appropriate
content and providing a high standard of academic direction. The notion
of pedagogical love provides an interesting and engaging conceptual term

that can be used to capture all of these features in one overarching idea.
Pedagogical Love
Uno Cygnaeus (1810–1888) was one of the founding educators respon-

sible for developing and promoting elementary schooling as well as
teacher training in Finland. He was influenced by the work of contempo-
raries such as Friedrich Froebel and in turn influenced the thinking of
others such as John Dewey with his views on the importance of craft and
technology studies in schools. In 1910 Cygnaeus described ‘good teach-
erhood’ by noting that just delivering content knowledge will not enno-
ble young people to learn, but that “every teacher has to blaze with the
spirit of sacred love” (Cygnaeus 1910: 197). Pedagogical love has been
defined as a form of love that is distinct from other, perhaps more famil-
iar forms, for example: romantic love, maternal love, love for fellow
humans, or love of one’s country (Mӓӓttӓ and Uusiautti 2011).
Over a century later we know from research and experience that posi-
tive relationships between teachers, students, and parents are central to
effective teaching and learning (Stehlik 2011), and the concept of peda-
gogical love is no different in starting from the premise that human beings
are fundamentally emotional creatures and that intellect and will can often
be secondary drivers of interest. The German philosopher Max Scheler
(1874–1928) strongly promoted this view in his writings on ‘the phe-
nomenological attitude’, which he regarded as being based on primal
impulses such as those characterised by love, further proposing that love
can arouse intellectual and logical thinking (Solasaari 2003).
Max Scheler’s philosophy of love emphasizes how important it is for peo-

ple’s development and learning that they learn to direct their interest and
love, in addition to temporary pleasures, toward higher mental values and
goals. (Mӓӓttӓ and Uusiautti 2011: 33)
Theoretical evidence to support this philosophy of love includes

Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, which led to Daniel Goleman and
212 T. Stehlik
others identifying emotional intelligence as a valid concept for guiding

thinking and behaviour (Gardner 1983; Goleman 1995). Other contem-
porary versions of this concept in education settings include the notion
of a strengths-based approach to learning, which recognises that learners
are individuals with particular strengths that can be directly addressed
and enhanced in teaching methodologies, harking back full circle to the
early theories of Froebel and his first kindergartens, in working with the
active power and strength of children (Lopez and Lewis 2009). Here
strengths can include emotional intelligence and creative imagination as
well as academic ability or physical prowess. Contemporary responses to
this in a curriculum sense include play-based learning as discussed in
Chap. 6 and individual learning plans and personal development goals as
manifest, for example, in senior school Certificates in Education such as
the South Australian Certificate in Education (www.sace.sa.edu.au/).
In the same way, “pedagogical love would rather aim at the discovery
of pupils’ strengths and interests and act based on these to strengthen
students’ self-esteem and self-image as active learners” (Mӓӓttӓ and
Uusiautti 2011: 34).
In Finland however, pedagogical love appears to manifest at a far
deeper level than just as curriculum frameworks or individual learning
plans. In fact, while all children and young people are valued as individu-
als, there appears to be a more collective approach to learning in which
all children experience the same curriculum, the same opportunities, and
the same support from the whole community to achieve collaboratively.
The greater good (or the good of the nation, the people) appears to be
more highly valued than individual competitiveness and achievement.
The Finns are well known for their modest and self-effacing characteristic
and this is also deeply embedded in their cultural history, which is
founded in part on their hard won independence, but also on their
mythology.
A number of teachers spoke to me about the importance of The
Kalevala—the nineteenth-century epic poem compiled from Finnish oral
history and folklore and recognised as one of the most significant works
of Finnish literature—in underpinning their whole culture. The stories
and characters in The Kalevala promote certain values and morals which
are respected and upheld in Finnish culture, and by association in Finnish
education. These include the idea that the way to solve problems is by the
intellect rather than brute force, that all children are loved and respected,
that all Finns strive to be part of a civilised nation (Lönnrot 1835; Synge
1977).
In the schools this can be observed in the level of trust that is apparent
at all levels—teachers trusting pupils, parents trusting and respecting
teachers, principals trusting teachers to do their job well without formal
performance management, municipal directors trusting principals to
manage their schools without formal inspectors, and so on. As mentioned
earlier, teachers are relatively independent—free to teach in the way they
want, but without abrogating their responsibilities for good teacherhood,
which relies on establishing reciprocal relationships of trust. Mӓӓttӓ and
Uusiautti consider that a teacher who is aware of pedagogical love as a
way of teaching will aim for a balance between keeping pupils in constant
dependency and allowing complete independence: “Pedagogical love
speaks to interdependence – the recognition and acceptance that we need
others” (2011: 34).
This two-way relationship between teacher and learner also requires
the teacher to recognise that teaching is personal, relational, and depen-
dent on their own personality and the impact of their influence and guid-
ance. The importance of believing in their learners’ abilities, with the
consequent effect of the learner also coming to believe in their abilities, is
an example of another well-known educational conundrum—expectancy
theory (Rosenthal and Jacobsen 1968). Pedagogical love therefore is not
a form of sentimentalising or watering down of standards and expecta-
tions, but an acknowledgement of achieving well and aiming high accord-
ing to the expectations of self, school, and society—and where these are
aligned as in the case of Finland, ‘education for all’ is not an empty piece
of rhetoric.
Finally, the unique Finnish language holds another key to understand-
ing Finnish culture, schooling, and society. No other country or culture
speaks or reads this language or any language remotely similar, and it
brings the Finns together as a nation in a way that English-speaking
countries may not fully be able to understand. The fact that teaching the
Finnish language is referred to in the school curriculum as ‘the Mother
Tongue’ demonstrates how deeply embedded it is in the Finnish national
214 T. Stehlik
psyche and imbued with a personification of unconditional love and care.

The word suomalaisuus encapsulates this notion; loosely translated as
“Finnishness; it should be noted that the word in Finnish has a double
meaning, relating both to nation and language” (Klinkmann 2010: 99).
All of the above provides food for thought for educators in other coun-
tries, such as Australia. To what extent could we apply the principle of
pedagogical love in our schools, given that our country has completely
different history, climate, culture, and language as well as educational,
teacher training, and school funding systems? Could we become a nation
which is child-centred and in which every family respects the child and
considers education the foundation to national prosperity as well as per-
sonal wellbeing? Many Australian parents have a view of schools that has
been coloured by their own experiences—often negative as suggested in
the Introduction—and would require a massive cultural shift in mindset.
Could we ask Australian teachers to accept a lower salary and invest the
funding balance into subsidised school meals instead? If we want to learn
from the Finns, these are some of the questions that would need to be
addressed at a macro level. At a micro level however, I would like to think
that we could still encourage and develop ‘good teacherhood’ in Australia
through practising pedagogical love in the classroom.
10.2 T
he Worldwide Waldorf School
Movement: Education Towards Freedom
Our task is to educate the human being in such a way that he or she can
bring to expression in the right way that which is living in the whole human
being, and on the other side that which puts him/her into the world in the
right way. (Rudolf Steiner 1968: 35)
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) was an Austrian philosopher and scientist

who in his lifetime initiated many practical applications of his theories on
human and social development in fields as diverse as agriculture, medi-
cine, art, architecture, human movement, and education. The essence of
Steiner’s world view was that a study of the evolution of humanity
through various stages of civilisation and consciousness will reveal the
true direction for the development of society and the individual person
in modern times. He coined the term Anthroposophy to explain this, of
which various definitions have been given, but according to Shepherd
(1983: 73):
… perhaps no one definition would contain its whole meaning. The word
“sophia” always denotes the divine wisdom, and “Anthroposophy” indi-
cates that this wisdom is to be found in the knowledge of the true being of
man and of his relation to the universe.
Given Steiner’s considered and wide-ranging interests in the renewal of

social forms through individual development, he was asked by the
German industrialist Emil Molt in 1919 to establish a school for the
children of the workers in his Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, and the
first ‘Waldorf Free School’ opened in Stuttgart in September of that year.
It was to be ‘free’ in the sense that it would be accessible to all social
classes and not limited by bureaucratic constraints, denominational doc-
trine or dogmatic ideology. The success of this first school went on to
inspire one of the fastest growing independent movements in education
which has since spread to all corners of the globe, and at the time of writ-
ing there are over 1200 Steiner schools worldwide and 2000 Early Years
settings in a total of 60 different countries (Steiner Waldorf Schools
Fellowship 2017). The fact that Waldorf schools are to be found in places
as diverse as Israel, Africa, Moscow, Thailand, the Philippines, Argentina,
and India as well as Europe, America, and Australia reinforces the univer-
sal application of Steiner Education that seems to transcend language,
religion, culture, and place.
It is remarkable therefore that the original curriculum and teaching
methodologies which Steiner developed over a period of three months in
1919 still form the basis of the pedagogical approach taken in Waldorf
Schools around the world today, despite—and possibly because of—the
rapid rise of teaching technologies and educational theories based on cog-
nitive and educational psychology which became popular over the last
century, as discussed in previous chapters. Even more notable is the fact
that this pedagogical approach is firmly rooted in its basis in
Anthroposophy, providing an underpinning educational philosophy that
216 T. Stehlik
teachers find support from and parents respond to, something that is
increasingly absent from secular state schooling systems which strive to
be politically correct and values-neutral—yet as a consequence I would
argue suffer from a lack of cohesive direction. In this respect, Steiner
Education can be firmly placed within the Humanistic/Holistic tradition
and resonates strongly with the curriculum work that has been termed
mythopoetic (MacDonald 1981).
What Is Steiner Education?
This is a question that is frequently directed at Waldorf educators

around the globe, and several schools address ‘Frequently asked
Questions about Waldorf Education’ on their websites. The Cape Ann
Waldorf School, for example, replies in part: “Waldorf Schools seek to
educate the whole child, integrating rigorous academics with emotional
and spiritual growth and physical skills” (1999: 1). This whole-child
orientation is often referred to in the literature as ‘head, heart and
hands’, meaning that children learn with their body and their feelings
as well as their intellect (Barnes 1991: 54; Easton 1997: 87; Koetzsch
1997: 221).
While it is difficult to provide a full answer to the question in a few
paragraphs, a concise and useful summary is provided by Easton (1997),
who suggests that Waldorf educational theory and practice can be distin-
guished by the following six key elements:
1 . A theory of child development

2. A theory of teacher self-development
3. A core curriculum that integrates artistic and academic work
4. A method of teaching as an art that pays careful attention to synchro-
nising teaching methods with the rhythm of a child’s unfolding
capacities
5. Integration of teaching and administration
6. Building the school and the greater Waldorf community as networks
of support for students, teachers, and parents
C
hild Development
An important aspect of Steiner Education that is fundamental to a

Waldorf Teacher’s understanding of child development is the image of
the child as a threefold human being—body, soul, and spirit, as briefly
discussed in Chap. 6. Allowing the child to develop according to natural
and pre-destined rhythms and patterns is fundamental to an educational
philosophy which aims to nurture the kingdom of childhood and draw
out each child’s inner potential in a holistic way. This threefold view of
the human being and the changing soul qualities associated with the
seven-year cycles also determine the approach to education taken as each
phase develops: working with the child’s will in the first seven years as
they learn through imitation and play, with their feeling life during the
primary school years as they experience a change in consciousness, and
developing their thinking ability from puberty into adolescence and
young adulthood. As stated in Chap. 6, the task for educators (and par-
ents) is to nourish the seed that each child bears within itself and allow it
to grow naturally, in order to lay the foundation for effective learning
throughout life—another fundamental aim of Waldorf Schools.
The strength to do this [learn through life] lies within the core of the indi-
vidual, the “father to the man” who can never be an object of education but
who must rather be enabled to take on the process of self-education from
within. (Maier 1994: 13)
In this regard Steiner was also an early champion of the concept of

lifelong learning and self-education:
Consider for a moment that, as adults, you are still learning from life. Life
is our great teacher. (Steiner, cited in Murphy 1991: 58)
T
eacher Self-Development
This process of self-education also applies to teachers. It would seem

apparent that anyone seeking to become a Waldorf teacher would need to
218 T. Stehlik
develop a clear understanding of the view of child development, a small

part of which has been outlined above. They would also need to become
familiar with ways of understanding and working with children and their
behaviour, such as Steiner’s interpretation of the Greek doctrine of the
four temperaments—choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic.
Recognising dominant temperaments in children can be useful in relat-
ing to them and managing their relations with each other, but the teacher
must also recognise that their own temperament can dominate the dynamic
of a class and should be prepared to work with it in a positive way. A
significant aspect of the pedagogical approach in a Waldorf School is the
fact that during the primary years, the teacher stays with the same group of
children from Class 1 to Class 7, corresponding to the second seven-year
cycle from age seven to fourteen. They therefore begin with young chil-
dren who are just experiencing the change of teeth and end with young
adolescents who are experiencing puberty.
This demanding and challenging commitment by the main lesson teacher

requires that the teacher follow a path of self-development that makes it pos-
sible to keep pace with the changing needs of students. (Easton 1997: 89)
C
ore Curriculum
In the primary years especially, the Waldorf curriculum is based on

rhythm and repetition, so that students become attuned to the rhythm of
the day, the week, the seasons, and so on, learning similar content in dif-
ferent ways in subsequent stages that build on a foundation and deepen
their learning as new capacities unfold. Throughout the primary and high
school years, the main focus of intellectual activity occurs in the morn-
ing, with a long main lesson devoted to a specific topic for several weeks.
Afternoons involve more artistic, creative, or physical activities.
Whether the main lesson topic is history, science, social studies, or
writing, artistic work is incorporated into the learning activities—engag-
ing the head, heart, and hands. For example, a main lesson in botany
would involve not only identification of plants in the field, but the stu-
dents would produce paintings of the plants and write poems about
them. This is a classic example of the recognition of the integration of

science, art, and nature and goes right back to the influence of Goethe on
Steiner’s philosophy of education. At the same time, “activities which are
often considered frills at mainstream schools are central at Waldorf
schools: art, music, handwork and foreign languages” (Cape Ann Waldorf
School 1999: 1). In the full 12-year Steiner curriculum, all children learn
to play music and to knit, as well as experiencing woodwork, Eurhythmy
(a system of expressive body movement), and painting right through
from Class 1 to Class 12.
A mythopoetic approach to the universal nature of knowledge is clearly
represented in the more fundamental aspect of the Steiner curriculum
with its recapitulation of the development of human consciousness over
the centuries.
Curriculum content is shaped, or at least coloured, by what is understood

as the consciousness, soul-mood or life principles at work within a given
epoch (ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis). (Skewes 1996: 7)
[Ontogenesis: The development of an individual organism from the

earliest stage to maturity]
[Phylogenesis: The evolutionary development and diversification of a
species or group of organisms]
This recapitulation is reflected in the primary school curriculum in the
study of great epochs of human civilisation at the corresponding age at
which the child’s individual consciousness is unfolding. For example,
Norse mythology is introduced in Class 4 when the children at around
age 9 are able to identify with the moral and ethical issues arising from
the great sagas of the Norse gods as they battle with the forces of light and
darkness (Leah 1997). In Class 5 the study of Ancient Greece introduces
the allegorical and metaphorical nature of the characters of the Greek
gods, and by inference the children are made aware of the influence of
these archetypes on the collective psyche of modern society and culture.
To continue with this epochal chronology, Roman times are dealt with in
Class 6, which gives a picture of the origin of the modern-day state and a
highly regulated and martial society, at an age when the children are
beginning to question authority structures.
220 T. Stehlik
The notion of recapitulation is carried through into the high school

years when the students would progressively learn about the Middle
Ages, Shakespearean times, the Renaissance and Victorian England as
well as return to more detailed aspects of ancient cultures through the
core subjects of art, English, history, and comparative religion. There
are obviously regional variations to this curriculum, as well as a debate
in Australia as to whether it should be less Euro-centric and more
adapted to a regional and local cultural context (Skewes 1996; Van
Kerkhoven 1996); but the principle guiding impulse of basing the cur-
riculum on the evolution of human consciousness through an apprecia-
tion of the growing child in its natural environment is universal in
Steiner Education.
The use of storytelling is particularly important, and fairy tales, myths,
and legends can convey archetypal images and moral messages in a way
that speaks to the child’s consciousness more deeply than by simply tell-
ing as “stories are an age-old means of enlivening the learning process and
stimulating students’ imaginations” (Easton 1997: 90).
T
eaching as an Art
As discussed so far in this book, the prevalence and influence of cognitive

and behavioural theories of psychology in teacher education courses have
had the effect of turning education into a science, a process that can be
reduced to objectives, defined by subject matter and measured by testing.
Waldorf schools consider that enabling children to learn in a meaningful
and holistic way is an art, requiring creative and aesthetic input, a subjec-
tive expressive approach, and attention to intuitive and imaginal pro-
cesses. The beauty of nature is reflected in the pleasing environment of
the classroom, with its warm colours, the nature table with objects typical
of the season, and colourful artworks. The cycle of the seasons, the great
rhythms of nature, is brought into the classroom and into the curriculum
in a living way.
Waldorf teachers make a point of engaging young children by telling
stories using the oral tradition, without necessarily reading from printed
texts, especially picture books:
One of the key aims of our method of educating is to help the child toward
developing the faculty of free imagination. So, for example, we generally
tell stories without offering printed pictures. Our words provide the raw
materials. The child has to ‘clothe’ the story with his or her own images.
(Mt Barker Waldorf School 2001)
The methods of teaching therefore involve storytelling, poems, songs,

and movement, with an intentional use of rhythm in language to engage
children in learning—the power of language and the human voice are not
only recognised but embraced. A contemporary perspective of a Waldorf
classroom would dismiss it as being too teacher-centred, with the focus
always on the voice and words of the teacher taking the place of what
might otherwise be a text, a video, a worksheet, or some other curriculum
resource. However, this approach requires the teacher to continually
develop their own aesthetic sensibilities—student-centred, problem-
based, and self-directed pedagogies can also be exploited as an end rather
than a means to learning.
The overall picture of the Waldorf teaching method can be seen as one
of rhythm, respect, and reverence; an appreciation of natural beauty, and an
integration of art, music, and movement in all academic work. It there-
fore becomes important for the child to experience these qualities in the
home environment as well, in order to maintain a balance between the
values at home and those at school. This can be a challenge for parents as
it brings a consideration of what might be appropriate for the young
child to be exposed to: for example, natural toys as opposed to plastic
ones, dolls without pre-determined facial features, minimising exposure
to loud music or mass media, and ideally not exposing young children at
all to television or moving images for at least their first seven years.
Steiner was concerned that the modern world, even in 1919, was ‘speed-
ing up’ the development of children and ‘hardening’ them to the demands
of a fast-paced world when they should be allowed to just enjoy the king-
dom of childhood. In a Waldorf kindergarten therefore, the children’s play
is regarded as their work, and they learn through creative experimentation
and cooperation with each other in a safe and supportive environment. In
these early years it is considered that the child’s consciousness is not wide-
awake like that of an adult but still in a dreamy state, and therefore “pictures
222 T. Stehlik
presented to its imagination in story form should be in the nature of dream-

pictures from the world of make-believe” (Childs 1991: 85). As described,
the teaching methods reflect this by relying more on the oral than the writ-
ten tradition, and using art, music, movement, and rhythm to support the
absorption of content rather than abstract intellectual methods.
In the primary and high schools, each subject is presented in an artistic
and imaginative way whether it is science, maths, or English—art and
aesthetic appreciation are integrated into the curriculum and ideally even
the children’s very exercise books, in which “every page is to be an artistic
event” (Skewes 2002). For example, the teaching of the high school sci-
ence curriculum includes a series of field camps where students experi-
ence the natural world in situ and are given the opportunity to gain a
more experiential and holistic appreciation of the environment in rela-
tion to their own place in the bigger picture of evolution.
Integration of Teaching and Administration
The traditional structure of a Waldorf School, true to the original intent of

the very first school, requires leadership and school management to be
shared by the entire faculty, which selects members to a steering committee.
This committee—referred to as the College of Teachers—acts as the legally
constituted management body of the school and carries all of the decision-
making responsibilities that would normally fall to one person—a principal.
There are many variations on this structure, with some schools having a
separate administrator, or a school council whose members include parents.
However, in recent times more schools have been moving towards a leader-
ship model that includes a principal or Head of School as a response to
increasing bureaucratic demands and accountability requirements as driven
by the GERM agenda, as well as changing expectations from parents.
The School as a Learning Community
Easton’s statement that “the development of the school as a learning com-

munity is one of the major achievements of Waldorf education” (1997: 91)
sets Waldorf Schools apart from most other schools, with shared mission,
philosophy, educational theories, practices, and rituals seen as key factors

in building community. As established in my doctoral research, many par-
ents are drawn to this aspect of the schools which they perceive to be miss-
ing from most modern state school systems and feel that being able to
participate physically, intellectually, and spiritually in the Waldorf School
community can also be strong transformative learning experience. As one
parent stated in an interview:
In that process of seeing what your child goes through, you suddenly start
waking up to yourself and understanding your own path as an individual
more clearly. (Stehlik 2002: 129)
n Educational Philosophy for the Twenty-First

A
Century?
Despite its apparent successful transition to most countries and cultures

for almost 100 years, Steiner Education comes under some criticism for
the very fact that the curriculum has been adopted and applied fairly
unchanged in most instances and in most situations, since its introduc-
tion in 1919. From this perspective it could be argued that Steiner’s peda-
gogy is deterministic and does not allow for individual or regional
difference, or is in fact so prescriptive and controlling that each child’s
own mythologies are ignored and subsumed into an all-consuming ‘one
size fits all’ approach. While there is no doubt that the Steiner curriculum
and the associated teaching methodologies are highly structured and pre-
scribed, they are structured around the development of the whole child
and adopt processes which focus on their aesthetic and spiritual develop-
ment in addition to intellectual and physical development. These pro-
cesses by design require much more subtle and delicate pedagogical
approaches which evoke as well as instruct, and actually provide a foun-
dation for the individual child to be able to develop a reflective-imaginal
way of viewing the world as well as a logical-rational one.
It could be argued that a laissez-faire approach to education, such as
the Summerhill model discussed in Chap. 4, might equally allow chil-
dren to explore and experience the aesthetic and the numinous through
224 T. Stehlik
freedom of expression and choice (Neill 1960). Encouraging the natural

development of children’s emotional, intellectual and social development
according to this pedagogical approach also acknowledges that ‘the king-
dom of childhood’ should be nurtured and revered. Yet at the time of
writing, the original Summerhill school has an enrolment of less than 80
pupils, while other schools modelled on Neill’s ‘free’ approach to educa-
tion continue to struggle with small or shrinking enrolments or have even
failed. Steiner Education continues to grow worldwide because the
schools are founded through grass-roots networks by parents and teachers
who are looking for something new for their children, adopting an approach
that is ‘free’ in the original sense that Steiner envisaged for the very first
‘Free Waldorf School’—accessible to all social classes and free of bureau-
cratic constraints, denominational doctrine, or dogmatic ideology.
10.3 Green School Bali

The “Green School Way” is to prepare for the real world by being involved
in it now; to have impact now; to take responsibility now; and to model
and practice the skills and mindsets that we will need later on, now. (https://
www.greenschool.org/)
Green School Bali is a very recent experiment in a new form of school-

ing, established by the Canadian John Hardy and his American wife
Cynthia. In 2005 the Hardys had been living on the island of Bali in
Indonesia for many years and were looking for a school for their two
youngest children. They were interested in Steiner Education but realised
that the type of school they really wanted was not available on the island.
The result was an initiative to start an entirely new form of school,
inspired by the Balinese environment and Hindu culture as well as by a
focus on education for sustainability and education as sustainability. A site
of ten hectares in a natural environment near Sibang Kaja with the Ayung
River running through was purchased, and construction began in 2006
with a 22 metre bamboo bridge spanning the river. All school buildings
have subsequently been constructed from local bamboo, but given the
tropical climate, many of the learning spaces are open air, and the
grounds, forest, and river also provide spaces for learning.
Green School opened in September 2008 as a new international school
ready to ‘create a new paradigm for learning’ as encapsulated in its origi-
nal vision:
Our vision is of a natural, holistic, student-centered learning environment

that empowers and inspires our students to be creative, innovative, green
leaders. (https://www.greenschool.org/)
Students are enrolled from the early years through to primary, middle,
and high school, with an international cohort representing 25 different
countries and a conscious policy of achieving 20% enrolment of local
Balinese children. From an initial enrolment of 90 the school has grown
to 360 students at the time of writing. After being in operation for only
four years, the school won the 2012 ‘Greenest School on Earth’ award as
assessed by the US Green Building Council (http://www.centerforgreen-
schools.org/).
The Green School vision or ‘new paradigm for learning’ is enacted
through a pedagogical approach based on three major policy platforms or
initiatives: (1) a wall-less learning environment, (2) a purposeful learning
program, and (3) a passionate community of learners (https://www.
greenschool.org/).
A Wall-Less Learning Environment
Structurally the school is radically very different from the ‘factory school’
model. The physical environment and architecture of the school features
elegant soaring structures built and thatched with bamboo, classrooms
without walls with natural lighting and breezes blowing through, desks
that are not square, composting toilets and other environmentally sensi-
tive innovations. The centrepiece of the campus with its double-helix
spiralling design is the ‘Heart of School’, possibly the largest freestanding
bamboo building in the world. The buildings are consciously designed to
be outward-looking and connect with the outdoor environment, rather
226 T. Stehlik
than enclose the learning spaces within four walls. Located in a tropical
jungle, the students are reminded daily of the beauty and also the fragility
of nature and the importance of caring for as well as learning from the
local environment and community. Permaculture gardens in which the
students learn about growing and harvesting their own food are incorpo-
rated into the curriculum, agriculture and animal husbandry are included
in the daily school life, and as far as possible the school aims to be self-
sustaining in terms of waste management, water filtration, renewable
energy, and so on.
A Purposeful Learning Program
The pedagogical approach of holistic student-centred practice draws

inspiration from a number of different sources including Steiner
Education, permaculture practice (Mollison 1988), multiple intelligence
theories (Gardner 1983), integrated ways of knowing (Wilber 2000), and
project-based and experiential learning methodologies. A ‘Three Frame
Day’ approach was developed to acknowledge and incorporate three dif-
ferent learning styles: auditory, visual, and tactile that align with the
threefold classification of learners as ‘thinkers, feelers, and doers’ (Metcalfe
2017).
The three frames basically are this, that there is an integrated holistic child-
centred frame of the day, that there is an academically rigorous skills-driven
frame of the day and that there’s a frame which connects children to the
greater working world. (McGurgan 2013, cited in Metcalfe 2017: 122)
The three frames of learning are therefore labelled as integral, instruc-

tional, and experimental.
The integral frame offers thematic lessons on a particular cross-
curricular theme that is explored over some weeks. In the primary school
this manifests exactly like the ‘main lesson’ in a Steiner School program,
occupying the first hour and 45 minutes of the school day. In the middle
school, “themes with an inquiry-based approach draw on the critical
skills of problem solving, collaboration, communication, decision mak-
ing, leadership, management, organization, critical thinking and creative

thinking” (Green School, “Curriculum Overview, Middle School”,
2015).
The instructional frame concentrates on the core subjects that through
‘proficiency lessons’ will develop literacy and numeracy as well as lan-
guage skills (in this case, Bahasa Indonesia), with individual learning
plans guiding the progressive development of each child through the year
levels to aim for mastery of core skills.
In what has been described as a ‘Bespoke Curriculum’, the experiential
frame is designed to provide a context for solving ‘real-life’ problems
using technological tools and entrepreneurial skills in ‘real world’ situa-
tions and contexts.
The experiential frame includes ‘practical lessons’ in the performing, visual

and tactile arts; environmental education; health and physical education;
social skills; and enterprise education. As the children move through the
years this manifests through bringing experts into the classroom, experi-
ences of workplaces and participation in real world scenarios and making a
contribution. (Metcalfe 2017: 126)
Green School is not a free school like the experimental schools dis-
cussed in Chap. 5. The academic rigour is reflected in the curriculum
which is still largely centred on the familiar traditional subjects or learn-
ing areas. To achieve the accredited High School Diploma, for example,
students study English, maths, science, humanities, health and wellbeing,
and arts, but also environmental and enterprise studies, and complete a
capstone ‘Green Stone’ project in Year 12.
A Passionate Community of Learners
The multicultural international community of students and teachers

integrated with the local Balinese people has created a unique melting pot
of languages, traditions, and multicultural diversity, an example of global
consciousness enacted at the local level, all focused on education through
sustainability, and sustainability through education. Parents are encour-
aged to be involved in school activities and the local community is
228 T. Stehlik
included through outreach programs. Volunteer and internship programs

attract visitors from around the globe who are interested in learning
about the school through hands-on involvement.
The teachers are as diverse as the student body, and volunteers are popping
up …together with the teachers they are deeply committed to creating a
new generation of global green leaders. (Hardy 2010)
A boarding school experience is available for students from 13 to

17 years of age which enables immersion in the Balinese way of life.
Lunch is cooked every day in the traditional Balinese way using locally
grown ingredients and served to the entire school community. Becoming
a community and being part of the community is part of the ethos and
the curriculum, for example, the students are involved hands-on in the
‘rice cycle’, the process of planting, irrigating, and harvesting the staple
food of the region. The school actively pursues broader outreach to the
world through a number of communication channels accessible well
beyond the school community, including its website, a weekly school
newsletter, and staff and student blogs.
With 64 teachers and 360 students, the staff-student ratio is 1:7, sup-
ported by 15 classroom assistants, six learning support staff, and numer-
ous volunteers and interns (as of 19/6/17). This staffing model creates
opportunities to work in small groups, with individual students, and to
develop positive and meaningful teaching-learning relationships which,
despite all the Green Studies and the beautiful environment, are still the
key to making the school work.
How to Be Green
Green School Bali would seem to be an example of the type of ‘back to

nature’ initiatives in education that were described at some length in
Chap. 7, but going well beyond the idea of taking learning into the for-
est, by actually building the school in the forest and embedding the forest
throughout the curriculum. It appears to have taken on the challenge and
the dream expressed by Richard Louv and made it a reality:
Imagine a classroom that turns outward, both figuratively and literally. The
grounds would become a classroom, buildings would look outward, and
gardens would cover the campus. The works of naturalists would be the
vehicle by which we would teach reading and writing. Math and science
would be taught as a way to understand the intricacies of nature, the poten-
tial to meet human needs, and how all things are interlaced. A well-rounded
education would mean learning the basics, to become part of a society that
cherished nature while at the same time contributing to the well-being of
mankind. (Louv 2005: 192–193)
The salient questions are whether the Green School model, like many
alternative schooling models, is place-specific and reliant on the energy
and charisma of its founders to make it work and to what extent it may
be applicable in other places, contexts, and communities—particularly
inner-city urban environments. John Hardy is confident:
Is this doable in your community? We believe it is. Green School is a model

we built for the world. (Hardy 2010)
Hardy offers three simple rules to follow in establishing a school with

a green philosophy: be local, let the environment lead, and envisage how
your grandchildren will be affected by your actions.
10.4 Conclusion to This Chapter

The three case studies purposely presented in this chapter are clearly dif-
ferent in educational context, scope, and concept, yet many connections
and comparisons can be drawn between them. They all provide examples
of educational philosophies that share a common concern for the natural
environment and a respect for nature, as well a central focus on the well-
being of children and the education of the whole child: head, heart, and
hands.
From my personal experience in Finland, a country that is covered in
forests, I find that the theme of the forest as a learning environment reso-
nates with the rich description of Green School and its use of the Balinese
230 T. Stehlik
forest as a learning environment. Both are examples of enacting the

movement to reconnect children with nature as suggested by the US cam-
paign to ‘Leave No Child Inside’ (Louv 2005).
Green school Bali is also a case study example of parents who were look-
ing for something new for their children (and possibly even choosing an
education that they would have wanted themselves) founding a school,
which clearly resonates with the case study of Steiner Education and the
way in which Waldorf Schools continue to be established around the
world through grass-roots initiatives by parents.
All three case studies provide food for thought about how education,
schooling, teaching, and learning can be conceived, configured, and con-
textualised in many different ways in order to achieve good outcomes for
not only children but the community and society as a whole. They pro-
vide examples of clearly articulated educational philosophies from which we
can learn in the continual search for the best way to educate our children
and ourselves for the future.
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11
Thinking Outside the Classroom
This chapter introduces and discusses alternative learning programs that

operate outside of the traditional confines of school, usually applying
adult learning methodologies, often employing the creative arts as a point
of interest for young people otherwise disengaged from the standard cur-
riculum, and mostly delivered not by schoolteachers but by community
educators, parents, and many others. They are a form of education now
characterised as part of the ‘Not- school’ movement, which includes all
out-of-school educational experiences such as homeschooling, which
itself is part of an emerging trend of ‘unschooling’. School leaving age
and school retention are all issues related to how long we expect young
people to remain in institutionalised learning situations, while pathways
to further education and/or careers are no longer simply linear, and gap
years are becoming the norm. These trends require us to think outside
traditional classroom and school structures.
The well-known phrase of ‘thinking outside the box’ is a metaphor
referring to the process of viewing things differently, from new perspec-
tives, or in an unconventional way. It has become a shorthand way of
describing innovation and creativity in finding solutions to problems,
and is associated with the corporate management and marketing world

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_11
234 T. Stehlik
where the phrase supposedly appeared in the 1970s to describe lateral

thinking and brainstorming of new ideas. However, the related idea of
‘thinking outside the square’ is actually much older and originated with a
puzzle that can be traced back at least to 1914 with the publication of
Sam Loyd’s Cyclopedia of Puzzles.
I have always treated and considered puzzles from an educational stand-

point, for the reason that they constitute a species of mental gymnastics
which sharpen the wits and train the mind to reason along straight lines.
(Sam Loyd 1914: 5)
The ‘Nine dots puzzle’ presents a square comprised of nine dots

arranged in three rows. The trick is to connect all dots with only four
lines, but trying to connect the dots by staying within the square is not
possible and can be very frustrating. The solution as shown in the below
figure literally requires going outside the square. Like many puzzles, the
solution once seen looks obvious. However, it represents a new way of
seeing, and since there are no rules to suggest that you can’t go outside the
square, this is an example of how we impose rules on ourselves that are
not even there, limited by our pre-determined frames of reference
(Fig. 11.1).
This kind of lateral thinking that challenges existing frames of refer-
ence is often used in approaching and looking for solutions to what have
become known as wicked problems.
[Wicked problem: A problem that is difficult or impossible to solve
because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that
are often hard to recognise]
Wicked problems present the kind of puzzle for which there is no con-
venient answer at the back of the book; they are complex and unique and
attempting to address them may generate more problems (Lawson 2016);
and they arise in the context of social policy issues including environ-
mental, political, and economic, in which purely scientific-engineering
problem-solving approaches cannot be applied because of the lack of a
clear problem definition as well as the differing perspectives of multiple
stakeholders (Rittel and Webber 1973).
The point of all this in relation to ‘the problem of education’ is to apply
this same metaphor of thinking outside the square to thinking outside
Thinking Outside the Classroom 235
Fig. 11.1 Nine dots puzzle solution
the classroom, and even outside the school. This chapter describes and
unpacks examples of educational initiatives and practices that contribute
to the schooling of children and young people yet do not occur within
the physical boundaries of school, such as the forest school/bush kindy
movement already discussed in Chap. 7. Education outside the classroom
can take many forms, and not always because of political or religious
impositions such as the Irish hedge schools, or resource limitations such
as outdoor schools in Africa, but for purposeful, pedagogical, and philo-
sophical reasons.
11.1 Deschooling
In 1971 the Austrian philosopher, polymath, and Catholic priest Ivan
Illich (1926–2002) published a landmark book entitled Deschooling
Society, a radical discourse on modern society in which he systematically
critiqued formal institutionalised schooling as being responsible for
institutionalising society, ineffectual in educating young people, and
actually inducing ignorance. At a time when global ecological issues were
236 T. Stehlik
becoming wicked problems, when the military-industrial complex was

overtaking nation states in world politics, and when technological inno-
vations and economic prosperity in the developed world only highlighted
the disadvantage and poverty in the third world, Illich believed that
schooling was part of the problem:
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the
society as it is. (Illich 1971: 163)
Disestablishing schools and promoting networks of like-minded peo-

ple learning, sharing, and caring through educational webs would break
the nexus of schooling which—through both the overt and the hidden
curriculum—simply reproduced the bourgeois capitalist and commercial
culture that was responsible for the problems of society as Illich saw them
in 1971. As well as being critical however, Illich was actually very pre-
scient in offering innovative suggestions based on the use of computer
technology, with his reference to webs of learning as the reverse of the
funnels through which knowledge was transmitted in schools, even pre-
dicting social media with his descriptions of computer-based peer-
matching networks 30 years before Facebook.
Illich’s basic idea of ‘deschooling’ was centred on a model of self-
education, which would replace the need for institutions and bureau-
cratic structures. Instead, at birth every child would receive entitlements
in the form of tuition grants, or ‘education credits’ which they could
expend at ‘skill centres’ of their own choice. Again Illich was prescient in
foreseeing contemporary discussions around the perennial problem of
equitable funding of education, which still include debates around the
merits of such voucher systems. However, he also flagged the dangers of
interest groups stepping into such a free education market and more or
less predicted the UK Academy schools, the US Charter schools, and the
general McDonaldisation of education which has occurred, even if
deschooling has not.
Illich’s radical ideas did however spark a lot of interest at the time, and
have since led to various other movements away from traditional univer-
sal schooling. In his observations that educational activities are also
organised around common interest groups and themes found in organ-
isations as diverse as political parties, clubs, neighbourhood centres,

unions, and professional societies, Illich reinforced the view taken in this
book that much of what we learn occurs outside of and beyond formal
schooling. This brings us back to the role of ‘the village’ in raising chil-
dren, and also foregrounds the importance of lifelong and adult learning
approaches to education which have been seen to be more effective in
engaging young people who otherwise have switched off and dropped
out of school.
As Illich noted “because school is obligatory it becomes schooling for
schooling’s sake” (1971: 15). Operating within the rituals and ceremo-
nies of school then becomes self-referential and self-perpetuating and
limits thinking to ‘inside the box’. Compulsory schooling as discussed
earlier is seen as a basic responsibility of civil society, yet for many adoles-
cents it amounts to a sort of prison sentence in which they are required
to attend, behave a certain way, dress a certain way, and work in a certain
way—all prescribed by circumstances they have little control over. As
presented in Chap. 7, the developing adolescent or young adult does not
want to be treated like a child, yet this is what compulsion implies. It
again raises the question posed in Chap. 4:
At what point in our lives are we able to take responsibility for our own educa-
tion rather than be subjected to what someone else believes we should be
learning?
11.2 Not-school
Programs that have been shown to engage young people and offer educa-
tional opportunities in which they are able to contribute agency and learn
for their own sake, not just for learning’s sake, have been well docu-
mented. They comprise an emerging field of educational provision which
has been labelled ‘Not-school’ (Sefton-Green 2013). Not-school is a term
used to describe learning in educational settings that are generally non-
formal or informal, yet contribute to re-engagement, skill development,
and increased motivation for young people that can be ends in them-
selves, but also create pathways into formal learning and/or further
238 T. Stehlik
e ducation. The salient feature of Not-school programs is that they are

literally outside the box—outside the boundaries imposed by traditional
compulsory schooling, which include the physical requirements of daily
attendance on school grounds as well as more subtle boundaries such as
regulations that control dress, behaviour, attitudes, and authority
structures.
Programs based outside of school grounds appear to be a preferred
option for those young people who genuinely find it difficult to be in a
school environment for a range of personal, social, and emotional rea-
sons. During my research for the Social Inclusion Unit in South Australia
(see Chap. 9), a number of young people declared that they refused to set
foot inside a mainstream school not necessarily for behavioural or learn-
ing issues but because of the perceived restrictions of the environment:
“they treat us like kids, you have to wear a uniform, they have rules like
needing a note just to go to the toilet” (Stehlik 2006: 18). Off-campus
alternative learning settings encourage the possibility for young people to
be treated as individuals, and for older learners to be treated as adults,
usually in class settings where the teacher-student ratio is low (ideally a
median of about 1:8), with staff who are generally sympathetic to their
needs as well as being understanding of youth culture and the issues fac-
ing young people.
Programs operating outside of school restrictions like class timetables
and subject lines can also offer a more flexible approach to attendance,
which can be negotiated and in some cases includes a weekly afternoon
or whole day where attendance is not required. Students may not always
attend but keep in touch with teachers via mobile phones and text mes-
saging and often do work ‘at home’, but in some cases the learning centre
is the only constant and regular environment if they are couch-surfing or
finding home life dysfunctional, distracting, or even dangerous.
The Education Department in South Australia set up ‘Learning
Centres’ to provide this kind of environment for up to ten weeks for stu-
dents temporarily excluded from school. Most often these are boys who
have been suspended for behavioural issues including violence towards
teachers, and they include junior primary students, even students as
young as five years old who need some anger management or behaviour
modification. Taking them out of the school environment is almost like
respite from the situation and acts as a way to offer a program built
around each student’s needs, including literacy and numeracy, work
skills, fitness activities, cooking, and nutrition. The intention is to suc-
cessfully transition back into mainstream school, but this is problematic
for a number of reasons.
Transitioning back into ‘mainstream’ school settings can be a problem
for students who have been involved in entirely off-campus learning, as
schools can often make it clear that they are not welcome back, and for
students who have experienced a different learning experience, going
back into an environment in which nothing has changed is de-motivating
and frustrating. For some students, even experiencing off-campus learn-
ing for one or two days a week makes school seem more restrictive in
comparison.
A further issue for young people in transitioning from an alternative
back to a mainstream learning environment relates to the quality of their
home life. That is, if a young person is not living in a stable and secure
home environment, or receives little or no family support, caring or nur-
turing, then this situation would also need to change for successful transi-
tion to occur.
A number of case studies reinforce the gap between mainstream expec-
tations of compulsory schooling and the realities of life for many young
adolescents. One alternative learning environment case study in South
Australia was an inner-city state-funded community school, which
offered a ‘second chance’ or in some cases a ‘last chance’ for around 150
excluded and disengaged young people aged 12–15. The school staff
reported that they found themselves dealing more with health and wel-
fare issues rather than educational interventions, and often students were
coming to school for respite from dysfunctional domestic situations.
However, even this school had an off-campus program of its own, being
part of the ‘Step Into Learning’ program operated in a northern suburban
centre by the Service to Youth Council, a non-profit social services organ-
isation that provides case management support for young people. In
addition to taking on students excluded for four weeks or more from
other schools, this program offered negotiated education plans for stu-
dents, supported by case workers and with a community focus. Anecdotal
evidence suggested that ‘the kids behaved brilliantly’ and the program
240 T. Stehlik
was seeing at least 50% achievement by the cohort into various job pro-
vider pathways.
The model provided by this type of arrangement was also observed in
a ‘Youth Pathways Program’ supported by a larger southern suburbs high
school, in which students were enrolled at the school but attended pro-
grams conducted away from the school—through another non-profit
service provider Mission Australia, using community facilities as well as
those of the local vocational college. The young people enrolled in this
program who had disengaged from mainstream schooling included
young teenage mothers, a demographic cohort who also feel shunned and
judged by teachers and exclude themselves from mainstream schooling.
The school received the funding for each student and supplied a staff
member who worked exclusively off-campus, supported by case manag-
ers. These programs are an example of the emerging model of education
provision that involves community, non-government, and charitable
organisations as well as government agencies in partnership with schools
to provide successful alternative learning pathways.
Another model based on a similar arrangement was set up in a regional
centre in South Australia, using the facilities of the local vocational col-
lege to bring together students enrolled through the local public and pri-
vate high schools, offering flexible learning arrangements in a small group
environment in which the students were treated as adults, the same as the
other tertiary students on campus. In this setting the students felt less
restricted by the types of rules and regulations they had experienced in
mainstream schools where they found it hard to conform for a range of
reasons, and felt like they now had the opportunity to achieve personal
goals at their own pace. Interestingly, the college was established initially
to offer Year 11 and vocational pathways through work experience for
disengaged young people and some who had been out of school for more
than a year, but the students themselves identified the desire to achieve
Year 12 and the South Australian Certificate in Education (SACE), with
the three teaching staff trying to offer as many SACE subject areas as they
could. Students who were previously disengaged had gone on to achieve
this qualification, and with career guidance and support from the teach-
ing staff had begun to plan for the future and identify further education
courses and career options. A key part of the success of this program was
using part of the funding to employ a social worker for three days a week
to work with the health and welfare issues of the cohort and allow the
teaching staff to focus on educational tasks.
11.3 Doing School Differently

The clear advantage of ‘doing school differently’ (Bills and Howard 2016)
through alternative educational programs is to offer more flexibility to
young people through a range of indicators including attendance, cur-
riculum choice, learning pathways, and teaching methodologies. Some
students simply need more time to cope with studies—for example, com-
pleting Year 11 was a major achievement for a student who left school
early and later enrolled in an off-campus program because of the flexibil-
ity of being able to do two subjects at a time at their own pace. However,
schools are generally not flexible enough to accept a student taking three
years to complete one year of schooling. Furthermore, some students
simply cannot cope with a full day of school every day, so it is also impor-
tant to be flexible about attendance, and within the bounds of duty of
care obligations, being able to negotiate their own timetable empowers
students and actually contributes to increased attendance, rather than
enforcing attendance at school for a set number of hours each day which
does not seem to work for some young people. In fact with the increased
use of flexible and online learning methodologies in other education sec-
tors, it is surprising that more alternatives to face-to-face classroom teach-
ing are not being considered in schools. There is also a small but radical
movement towards viewing educational provision as a 24-hour-a-day
7-day-a-week concept in order to offer real choice and flexibility, with
teachers in alternative settings already reporting the importance of being
on call and available after hours by students. While this has all sorts of
industrial and resource implications, it is an idea worth expanding upon.
If the benefits of flexible and alternative learning environments are
accepted as given, the key question is how to incorporate such p rograms
into mainstream schooling without resulting in the inevitable drift back
to a regulated structure and therefore compromising their ‘alternative’
nature. If it is accepted that one educational size does not fit all students,
242 T. Stehlik
the challenge is to allow such programs to remain off to one side but still
be seen as a necessary and important part of the bigger educational pic-
ture. This is a dilemma for policy makers and for planning schooling for
the twenty-first century given the funding models, structures, traditions,
and legislated limitations that are still entrenched in the way we think
about schooling. However, there are examples of flexible alternatives to
learning that are clearly demonstrated as operating successfully wholly
within a school-based environment, and these demonstration projects
can provide a good practice model for other schools to take up within the
context of their local community and available resources.
11.4 Youthworx
A case study model of successfully re-engaging disadvantaged and disaf-
fected youth through generating interest and entrepreneurial opportuni-
ties in the creative industries is that of Youthworx, a program and an
enterprise that began in Melbourne in the early 2000s and is now provid-
ing a template for arts-based initiatives in other Australian states, giving
another example of Not-school that not only aims to educate but to pro-
mote alternative and innovative career opportunities in what has been
termed the purpose economy (Hurst 2014). For millennials, the concept of
a conventional career path in the traditional sense as experienced by pre-
vious generations is no longer viable, with unemployment and underem-
ployment fuelled by technology and automation leading to disappearing
jobs, but at the same time creating new purposeful opportunities to launch
technology-based start-up enterprises or develop freelance skills and
expertise, based in local communities, utilising social media, and operat-
ing outside the standard full-time, nine-to-five, job-for-life model that
was the norm through most of the twentieth century.
Youthworx has exploited this trend for social enterprise by focussing
on a particular niche market—the creative industries, which by defini-
tion include the visual arts, the performing arts such as music and dance,
and media including radio, film, and television. Beginning as an initiative
to re-engage young people who were not learning or earning and often at
risk from homelessness and other personal issues, the Youthworx pro-
gram initially applied for funding from the Salvation Army to set up a
workshop for teaching and learning radio broadcast skills. The success of
this eventually progressed to teaching and learning film-making, with
more funding to purchase the equipment and technology required.
Youthworx Media is now an established enterprise that not only offers
workshops and training in film-making but also provides film-making
services on a commercial basis, so that the participants can also experi-
ence a type of business model that is creative, sustainable, and
community-oriented.
Like many such programs, this one has been driven by one inspired
person, a former teacher who, despite little previous film-making or social
enterprise expertise or experience, had a vision based on a desire to help
young people escape the cycle of despair which can escalate through early
school leaving, homelessness, and complex social problems. Describing
this as “positive youth development theory” based on a strengths-based
approach rather than a deficit position, Youthworx Media operates as “a
three way relationship between training providers; Industry professionals
who provide mentoring and make sure we deliver on a program that leads
to job opportunities; and professional youth workers who provide sup-
port that goes the full distance” (http://youthworxmedia.org.au/index.
html).
Here we have another example of the wrap-around model of educa-
tion—providing support as well as learning opportunities for young peo-
ple, through a joined-up approach that involves a team effort with
educators, social workers, and industry professionals from the local com-
munity. The beauty and added value of the Youthworx model is also the
creative outlet that is offered through learning and working in media,
which enables and empowers the young participants to express them-
selves and affirm their identities through film and especially music, which
for millennials is usually through the genre of rap. Popular culture, which
forms such an essential part of the identity and life-worlds of young peo-
ple, can therefore work together with education in a positive way.
244 T. Stehlik
11.5 Unschooling, Homeschooling

A more radical response to the ‘problem of education’ has been the
unschooling movement, inspired by Ivan Illich’s call to ‘deschool society’
and taken up and promulgated by John Holt in the 1970s and 1980s,
which is now manifest in the expanding interest in ways to educate chil-
dren without sending them to school at all, such as the growing trend of
homeschooling.
John Holt (1923–1985) was an American teacher who became disil-
lusioned with compulsory schooling and eventually decided that the sys-
tem was too entrenched and difficult to change, and the only solution
was to withdraw from it completely. Holt believed that children did not
need to be coerced into learning, that they would do so naturally if given
a rich assortment of resources and the freedom to follow their own inter-
ests. This line of thought is directly descended from Rousseau, but in the
last few decades has developed into an identifiable movement that has
come to be called unschooling.
Holt believed that one of the main things holding children back from
learning in school was fear: fear of getting the wrong answers, fear of
being ridiculed by the teacher and classmates, fear of not being good
enough; and that this was made worse by children being forced to study
things that they were not necessarily interested in. Even without the per-
ceived negative influences of traditional schooling, Holt argued that
“home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call
learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good
the schools were” (1980).
When challenged about the lack of socialisation opportunities if chil-
dren were kept at home, Holt was outspoken about the ‘dark side’ of
social interactions that occurred at school, namely, bullying, cliques,
competitiveness, acting up, and peer pressure. We have already discussed
examples of this, including how girls can ‘dumb themselves down’ in
order not to appear smarter than boys in co-educational school contexts.
In fact, the effect of socialisation in compulsory schools is one of the
major reasons why many parents are choosing to home school their chil-
dren. Holt had many other reasons to back his claims for unschooling:
The great advantage is intimacy, control of your time, flexibility of sched-

ule, and the ability to respond to the needs of the child, and to the inclina-
tions. If the child is feeling kind of tired or out of sorts, or a little bit sick,
or kind of droopy in spirits, okay, we take it easy, and things go along very
calmly and easily. When the child is full of energy and rambunctious, then
we tackle big projects, we try tough stuff, we look at hard books. (Holt
1980)
Putting pressure onto children in general can also affect a child’s per-
formance in school. Holt pointed out that behavioural problems and
disengagement in the classroom often resulted from children reacting to
being put under pressure by setting their own limits, tuning out, not pay-
ing attention, fooling around, and often just saying that ‘they don’t get it’.
If teachers spend “70% of learning time trying to manage behaviours”
(ABC RN 2017), it makes sense to take a long hard look at the causes of
this and not just try to deal with the symptoms.
Holt wrote about his own learning experiences as an adult, which
influenced his thinking around the way we construct the very ideas of
learning and teaching, work and play as either/or constructs rather than
integrated contextual activities. For example, learning to play the cello
later in life led him to realise that learning to play the cello and playing the
cello are the same thing (Holt 2004). In other words, while one is learning
to play, one is also playing, and most professional musicians will agree
that every concert is also learning experience. When a concert pianist
goes to work, they go to play—playing the piano is their work. The blur-
ring of our entrenched ideas about the concept of work and the concept
of play recalls the discussion in Chap. 6 about play being a child’s work.
In the same way, the concept of practice in terms of practising a skill or a
profession can refer both to learning the skill or profession and carrying
it out on a daily basis, when we may then refer to someone as a practitio-
ner. How can we combine these seemingly disparate concepts or even
transcend them and come up with a new way of thinking about learning?
Doll (2008: 198) suggests that “what is needed is a multi-perspectival
view, one that moves beyond an either/or dichotomy to accept a both/
and frame”.
246 T. Stehlik
Blurring the boundaries between school and home could be one

approach, and homeschooling takes this approach to its extreme, by
keeping children at home and turning everyday activities such as cook-
ing, cleaning, and gardening into opportunities for learning, as well as
having dedicated study time and formal lessons which can be mediated
by information technology and guided by set curricula. Reasons given by
parents who are joining this increasing trend for homeschooling their
children include some of the issues mentioned above—bullying, peer
pressure, and a competitive environment focussing too closely on aca-
demic performance at the expense of wellbeing—as well as a range of
other positions such as religious beliefs, personal philosophies, having
children with special needs, and a general dissatisfaction with compul-
sory schooling (ABC TV 2017).
Despite the legislative requirements of compulsory schooling, home-
schooling is legal in Australia and parents do not require educational
qualifications, although each child must be registered according to the
appropriate guidelines and the relevant authorities, which vary between
the states and territories. Curriculum guidelines, resources, and support
for parents are available through a number of networks and organisations
such as Homeschooling Downunder, which also provides interesting statis-
tics and information on its website, such as the fact that in countries like
Germany and Sweden, homeschooling is illegal (www.homeschooling-
downunder.com).
The academic performance of homeschooled students is also claimed
to be slightly better than average compared with students who attend
school (Smith 2016), but in the main homeschooling parents seem, like
the Finns, to be more concerned that their children are happy and expe-
riencing a range of living and learning opportunities in a loving and safe
environment, based on the fairly solid argument that parents understand
their children more than anyone else.
Homeschooled children go on to university, further education and
working lives just like other children. There are some famous examples of
successful and influential people who did not go to school at all, like the
naturalist, environmentalist, and best-selling author Gerald Durrell, who
wrote about his unconventional upbringing surrounded by nature on the
Greek Island of Corfu in the 1930s in the book My Family and Other
Animals (Durrell 1962). However, not everyone is able to raise their chil-
dren on a Greek Island, or be able to afford to stay home to teach their
children, or have the necessary skills and support needed to take on such
a responsibility. So while homeschooling is a growing trend as part of the
unschooling movement, it is apparent that it is not necessarily a choice
available to all parents, but will depend on domestic and socio-economic
circumstances as well as philosophical ideals. In particular, and not only
just in families where the father is the main breadwinner, the role of the
homeschool teacher appears to fall mostly to mothers.
11.6 Gap Year

The final example of Not-school presented in this chapter can really be
seen as an aspect of, or perhaps an adjunct to, traditional schooling. It is
included because it raises more questions about the purpose, function,
and outcomes of schooling and the types of skills, knowledge, and atti-
tudes that are assumed will be required in the digital, global, and fluid
knowledge society of the present and the future, as will be discussed fur-
ther in the final two chapters.
A gap year can be defined as:
Any period of time between 3 and 24 months which an individual takes

“out” of formal education, training or the workplace, and where the time
out sits in the context of a longer career trajectory. (Heath 2007)
This definition could include post-university, career, and study breaks

as well as pre-university gap years; however, the most salient example and
the one to be discussed in this section is that period of time out compris-
ing a break from formal study after completing school, before resuming
formal studies at university, or some other further educational
institution.
As time out in the context of a longer career or learning trajectory, the
gap year phenomenon is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is
on the increase, with more young people choosing to take a break after
12 or 13 years of continuous schooling. Secondly, it has become an
248 T. Stehlik
institutionalised aspect of career education and spawned an industry in

which ‘time-off consultants’ charge fees for planning gap year experiences
for young people. Thirdly, the gap year has been marketed and promoted
as a time in which young people will develop what have variously been
termed ‘life skills’, ‘soft skills’, or ‘twenty-first-century skills’ through real-
world life experiences that typically should involve activities including
various combinations of paid and unpaid work, leisure, and travel.
In Australia, data gathered through the Longitudinal Studies of
Australian Youth (LSAY) show that in the ten years between 2000 and
2010, the rate of students taking a gap year after school increased from
about 10% to nearly 25% (www.lsay.edu.au), commensurate with trends
in the United Kingdom and the United States. With one in four young
Australians now taking time out from study, the gap year is becoming
part of the education landscape and being recognised as offering valuable
learning experiences for young people.
The term ‘gap’ is perhaps unfortunate as it implies a deficit view of
something missing, particularly in relation to a study or career path. For
example, it is well known that a gap in one’s CV is to be avoided, and we
have already seen how people are prepared to fabricate something or gild
the lily rather than suggest they were not productive for a period of time.
This is no doubt viewed differently in different cultures, but:
In our society [the US], people are suspicious of those who get off the train
to success, even for a brief time. (Hoover 2001)
In Australia, there is pressure on young people to be ‘learning or earn-

ing’, with various policies aiming at increasing school retention rates.
However, is retention at school always desirable? Most educators would
agree that engaging young people in meaningful learning or work is pref-
erable than simply staying at school, especially if the vocational sector
might better address their needs. There is also concern about dropping
out of the system—a ‘disconnect’ from formal study that might never be
re-connected.
Despite this, the gap year has not only become more popular as out-
lined above but has also become recognised and commodified to the
point where a ‘gap year industry’ has emerged in response to increasing

demand from the large market of young people looking for post-school
experiences before ‘settling down’ to study. There are hundreds of volun-
teer placement agencies, numerous websites, guide books (e.g. The Lonely
Planet Gap Year Book), and time-off consultants available to help young
people plan their gap year, often at significant cost (Hoover 2001;
Simpson 2004). These agencies and sites sell the gap year experience as an
important aspect of career development, and claims of benefits for par-
ticipants include:
• acquiring ‘soft skills’ needed in the modern world of work (e.g. com-
munication, organisational, team-working skills)
• self-development and personal enrichment
• shaping social values and a sense of community spirit
• adapting better to university life, less likely to drop out
• becoming more attractive to employers, improving ‘employability’
(Heath 2007)
Although one can find anecdotal evidence and testimonials from gap
year participants in the literature to support these claims, they do not
appear to be evidence-based or backed by any hard data, and assume inter
alia that soft skills are not acquired during schooling or tertiary study and
that qualifications alone will not prepare young people for the workplace.
Ernst & Young and other large companies hiring graduates seem to con-
firm this (see Chap. 3). Furthermore, one view of the gap year is based on
having the type of experience that has been termed ‘Voluntourism’ (ABC
RN 2008), where young people travel to a developing or third world
country and engage in voluntary community work while experiencing
the novelty of another country and culture which might ‘shape their
social values’. This is seen as contributing to citizenship, social capital and
development work, and a perceived trend:
In generations past, twenty-somethings would throw on a backpack and

hit the beer and festival trail. Today’s gap-year travellers are more socially
and environmentally aware. (Hurt 2008: 19)
250 T. Stehlik
The need for some sort of ‘other’ experience is reinforced by this state-
ment from 20-year-old Hannah, who spent five weeks volunteering in
Peru:
I wanted to have a complete culture shock. I wanted to go somewhere very

different. You don’t get to experience a lot…in Adelaide…I just wanted to
travel and see the world and do something meaningful. I’m studying
anthropology and it is almost impossible to study cultures when you’ve
never been anywhere. (Hurt 2008: 19)
Regardless of whether there is no culture to study in Adelaide, or

whether there is still a distinction between studying ‘them’ in anthropol-
ogy compared with studying ‘us’ in sociology, this kind of brief voluntour-
ist experience has been questioned as to whether it is really socially aware
development work, or just ‘seeing how the other half lives’ and realising
how lucky you are to live in a developed country (Simpson 2004). It’s as
though the experience has to occur in an exotic country for it to be valid,
as marketed by voluntourist agency The Leap on their website:
Want a different volunteering experience? Why not spend 4 Weeks in

Madagascar: Forest Conservation + Island Hopping + Teaching, where you
can study weird and wonderful wildlife in the beautiful surroundings of
Madagascar. (https://theleap.co.uk/)
The salient questions that arise are: What do volunteer travellers learn
about ‘the other’ that can’t be learned at home? Is this cultural imperial-
ism? Does it actually take away from community and social needs in so-
called developed countries? In the United Kingdom, a government policy
response has been to introduce citizenship education in the National
Schools Curriculum as well as financial incentives for young people will-
ing to volunteer locally (Heath 2007), as there are many possibilities in
the United Kingdom to have a ‘complete culture shock’ without going
further than some parts of South London. In fact, Heath suggests that if
students remain in their home town and work in their gap year, this is
“not as highly rated as the experiences of students who can afford to vol-
unteer or travel during their year out” (2008: 98).
This of course highlights another feature of the gap year—it is eco-

nomically determined and limited to those who can afford it, and gener-
ally an experience enjoyed by those from socially advantaged backgrounds.
According to the literature, the gap year is associated with privilege—par-
ticipants are usually white, middle class, and there is a higher proportion
of independent school students (Birch and Miller 2007; Cremin 2007;
Heath 2007; Hurt 2008).
Gap years, often promoted by private schools, were more likely to be

within reach of wealthier families. (Lane 2008: 23)
As the gap year has been defined as ‘time out from formal study’, what
about any informal learning that might take place during gap year experi-
ences? This seems harder to quantify or even qualify, although as men-
tioned above, it is claimed that ‘soft skills’ are better learned outside of
formal study programs or beyond school in the ‘real world’, ideally in
another country or culture.
For many students, a gap year is about crystallising their decision-making,

developing self-directed and self-regulation skills, broadening their compe-
tencies and self-organisation and perhaps their confidence. (Maslen 2013)
However, it is also clear that in the post-industrial knowledge society,

there is not necessarily a seamless pathway in a chronological sequence
from School-to-Further Education-to-Work. Working life is not only
‘beyond school’—up to 70% of Australian high school students in Years
10–12 are in paid part-time work (www.lsay.edu.au). This trend is rein-
forced by data from a study of independent school students, which found
that 56% of the cohort was working part-time while completing Year 12,
and in fact some students were working two or even three jobs, up to 15
hours per week (Stehlik 2010). The fact that all still managed to complete
Year 12 means that young people are already learning about managing
the work-life balance well before finishing school.
The job areas identified in the study include the predictable ones for
teenagers—retail, supermarket, waiting, kitchen hand, farm hand, and
other low-skilled jobs in the gig economy. National data from the
252 T. Stehlik
Australian LSAY studies suggest there is little correlation between paid

part-time work at school and eventual work destinations, yet it is valuable
for socialisation into the world of work and for developing employability
skills through authentic work experiences. In fact it has been suggested
that paid part-time work should be validated as not only vocational prep-
aration but as a recognised aspect of the senior secondary curriculum
(Billett and Ovens 2007).
There is also a disconnect in the experiences of senior secondary stu-
dents who are often in positions of adult responsibility at work such as
supervising staff, being responsible for stock, handling money, dealing
with customers, and so on, yet still being treated like ‘kids’ at school. The
gap year sits somewhere between being a ‘schoolkid’ and an ‘adult’ and
may provide a defining marker for this important transition stage of a
young person’s life.
If the gap year provides a sort of safety valve between school and the seri-
ous business of vocational study or work, and a process of ‘maturing’ and
putting things in perspective, should it be officially validated as a recog-
nised part of the post-school transition, or would this only serve to spoil
the very spirit of the gap year as ‘time-out’ from institutional interference?
In the Republic of Ireland, this seems to be happening with the
Transition Year, an optional year for secondary school students after com-
pleting their Junior Certificate, which can extend the senior school cycle
from two to three years. Introduced as a pilot in 1974, around 75% of
secondary schools in Ireland now offer the Transition Year, and in some
schools it is even compulsory (Turnbull 2017). Students undertake non-
classroom-based activities, voluntary work placements, and international
tours, engage in community-based projects, or attend the Bridge21 pro-
gram at Trinity College Dublin (see Chap. 12) and experience a whole
year free from the stress of examinations and continuing assessment
before returning to school for their final year of study.
The Transition Year or gap year experience reminds me of the tradition
that evolved before the Industrial Revolution, when, in order to be
accepted into a Guild, an apprentice tradesman or artisan needed to com-
plete a final year as a Journeyman, which required them to travel to other
places offering their skills and expertise pro bono, as a kind of c ombination
finishing school, grand tour, and community service. My grandfather was
an apprentice textile printer from Bohemia which in the early 1900s was
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We still have his Journeyman’s
notebook and diary, which lists all the places he visited and is stamped by
the various officials from the Textile Guilds who confirmed that he was
there offering his services.
It also strikes me that the Journeyman experience could be seen as a
rite of passage in which a young man makes the transition from apprentice
to master, from adolescent to adult, and to full identity as a tradesman or
artisan recognised as such by their guild and their community. Rites of
passage were important in earlier human societies and associated with
sacred—and often secret—rites such as initiation ceremonies in which
the lore of the tribe or clan group is passed on to the next generation. In
secular society we seem to have lost such formal milestones and rituals
which mark these important transitions and inductions into adulthood
and society, not only for young men but for young women too. Young
people are in a unique situation in which they need to feel that they
belong and are included, for example, in sports clubs, peer groups, and so
on, but also that they are recognised as being in a state of becoming inde-
pendent and unique individuals. This tension between being and belong-
ing can often go unresolved and result in alienation and withdrawal, or
joining up to something that may not be appropriate—such as a radical
religious organisation or a criminal gang. The gap year then may be an
important and necessary transition that also acts as a rite of passage,
allowing time to sort out such tensions.
However, what really interests me about the gap year is that it is clearly
an example of Not-school and education outside the classroom, in which
young people might experience the kind of real-world learning that they
have not learned in school, unencumbered by accreditations, assessments,
or evaluations. But it also raises a number of questions: Why is this real-
world learning not happening in schools? What is the school curriculum
doing if it is not preparing young people for the real world? What are
these twenty-first-century skills that can only be developed outside of
school, and why don’t we all follow Ireland’s lead and make the gap year
part of the education project? The final chapters will address such
questions in the light of all that has been discussed so far, but also pose
many other questions, some of which may not even be answerable.
254 T. Stehlik
References
ABC Radio National. (2008, April 28). Life Matters. Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
ABC Radio National. (2017, June 2). The World Today. Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
Corporation.
Billett, S., & Ovens, C. (2007). Learning about work, working life and post
school options: Guiding students’ reflecting on paid part-time work. Journal
of Education and Work, 20(2), 75–90.
Bills, A., & Howard, N. (2016). What then must we do? Rethinking social
inclusion policy for educational attainment in South Australia. Journal of
Educational Enquiry, 15(1), 25–43.
Birch, E. R., & Miller, P. (2007). The characteristics of ‘gap-year’ students and
their tertiary academic outcomes. The Economic Record, 83(262), 329–344.
Cremin, C. (2007). Living and really living: The gap year and the commodifica-
tion of the contingent. Ephemera, 7(4), 526–542.
Wiley-Blackwell.
Durrell, G. (1962). My family and other animals. Victoria: Penguin.
Heath, S. (2007). Widening the gap: Pre-university gap years and the economy
of experience’. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(1), 89–103.
Holt, J. (1980). The natural child project. https://web.archive.org/web/
20110923153702/http://www.naturalchild.org:80/guest/marlene_bumgar-
ner.html. Accessed 7 July 2017.
Holt, J. (2004). Instead of education: Ways to help people do things better. Boulder:
Sentient Publications.
Hoover, E. (2001). More students decide that college can wait. Chronicle of
Higher Education, 48(2), A51–A52.
Hurst, A. (2014). The purpose economy: How your desire for impact, personal
growth and community is changing the world. Boise: Elevate.
Hurt, J. (2008, June 21). Backpackers off to save the world. The Advertiser,
p. 19.
Lane, B. (2008, May 7). Gaps show failings of youth allowance. The Australian,
p. 23.

6(32), 1–14.
Loyd, S. (1914). Cyclopedia of puzzles. New York: The Lamb publishing
Company.
Maslen, G. (2013, November 11). Students find clarity in gap years. Sydney
Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-find-
clarity-in-gap-years-20131110-2x9p3.html. Accessed 9 July 2017.
Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning.
Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169.
Sefton-Green, J. (2013). Learning at not-school: A review of study, theory and
advocacy for education in non-formal settings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Simpson, K. (2004). ‘Doing development: The gap year, volunteer-tourists and
a popular practice of development. Journal of International Development, 16,
681–692.
Smith, A. (2016, February 7). Home-schooled kids perform better in NAPLAN:
Report. Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/home-
schooled-kids-perform-better-in-naplan-report-20160204-gmlgu9.html.
Stehlik, T. (2010). Mind the gap: School leaver aspirations and delayed path-
ways to further and higher education. Journal of Education and Work, 23(4),
363–376.
Turnbull, C. (2017, April 17). Every student should consider doing transition
year. Western People.
Part VI
The Future of Education
12
Predicting Unknown Futures
12.1 T
wenty-First-Century Skills: What Are
They?
‘Twenty-first-century skills’, otherwise known as ‘soft skills’ such as com-
munication, collaboration, cooperation, and creativity, are compared
with ‘hard skills’ such as literacy, numeracy, and content knowledge in
this chapter, in which I pose a number of questions. What will the class-
room of the future look like in delivering these contrasting aspects of the
curriculum, given the contemporary demands of the ‘fourth industrial
revolution’? Can creativity and imagination be taught? How do we turn
information into knowledge in a world of information overload? What is
the process of the ‘getting of wisdom’?
We have seen so far how the rapid pace of change in social, economic,
and technological domains has brought about unprecedented differences
in the way we live, consume, communicate, and even think; yet develop-
ments in education and schooling have been slow to catch up, with tra-
ditional models of teaching, teacher education, and assessment of learning
still dominating mainstream policies and practices. It is apparent that in
economic terms, the developed and developing worlds have largely

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_12
260 T. Stehlik
moved on from an agrarian and industrial-based model to a more

knowledge-based economy, driven by information and communication
technologies. Developments in artificial intelligence, automation of jobs,
e-commerce, online working, global networking, and the ‘internet of
things’ are increasingly becoming the basis of economies which rely more
and more on the transmission, translation, and even trading of knowl-
edge. For example, 20% of young Australians are experiencing their first
jobs in roles that will look different or be lost to automation in the next
10–15 years, and 40% of the Australian labour market, or 5 million jobs,
could be replaced by computers in the next couple of decades (FYA
2015).
We have moved on from an industrial society defined by the ‘construc-
tability of the world’ to a situation of post-modernity in which the world
we once knew has become deconstructed, chaotic, complex, and dynamic.
In the words of Bo Dahlin, “nature is no longer mechanised, it is digi-
tised” (2006: 31). Elsewhere this trend has been labelled as the ‘fourth
industrial revolution’:
The first industrial revolution used water and steam power to mechanise
production. The second used electric power to create mass production. The
third used electronics and information technology to automate produc-
tion. Now a fourth industrial revolution is building on the third, the digital
revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is
characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between
the physical, digital and biological spheres. (Sparrow 2017)
Declining employment opportunities in the agricultural and manufac-

turing sectors are balanced by increases in the service sector and higher
skilled jobs, which are in turn driven by more people gaining higher level
qualifications. Ideas are now a commodity; entrepreneurship is now a core
skill. So if we now find ourselves in the twenty-first century in a knowl-
edge economy and information society, how is knowledge packaged, pre-
sented, and understood in formal, compulsory education? How do we
prepare our children and young people for futures that will be deter-
mined by knowledge, and how do we even know what types of knowl-
edge will be useful or necessary? How do we distinguish between
information and knowledge?
Predicting Unknown Futures 261
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is no longer a realistic or

relevant question to ask of a young person when they might be looking
forward to possible multiple and simultaneous careers and job roles, in
‘pop-up’ jobs in the gig economy, as a flexible worker in situations and
contexts yet to be invented. The idea of a ‘dream job’ literally could be a
non-existent dream now, but a reality in the future.
Therefore, it makes sense to develop the interests and skill sets of young
people towards the possibility of them creating new job opportunities,
rather than just training them to fit the opportunities that exist now,
which we can’t be sure will exist in the future. A different way of thinking
about jobs and occupations and their attendant skill and knowledge
requirements is emerging in the idea of job clusters.
Using big data, the Foundation for Young Australians study analysed more
than 2.7 million job advertisements to reveal seven new job clusters in the
Australian economy where the required skills are more closely related and
more portable than we previously understood. The job clusters are the
‘Generators’, the ‘Artisans’, the ‘Carers’, the ‘Informers’, the ‘Technologists’,
the ‘Designers’ and the ‘Coordinators’. When a person trains or works in
one job, they gain skills for around 13 other jobs because employers
demand very similar skills in many jobs. (Payton 2017: 5)
What are these ‘very similar skills’ and are they actually transferrable
across jobs within such clusters? Three skill sets that have been sug-
gested by the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation) as increasingly important to future employees are those that
include communication skills, technical skills, and STEM (science, tech-
nology, engineering, and mathematics) skills. The communication skill set
comprises active listening, speaking, writing, coordination, service orien-
tation, instructing, and negotiation; the technical skill set comprises
operations analysis, operation and control, equipment maintenance, trou-
bleshooting, management of financial resources, management of person-
nel resources, and installation; and the STEM skill set includes science,
technology design, engineering, mathematics, programming, systems
analysis, critical thinking, and computer use (Reeson et al. 2016, passim).
It will be immediately seen that some of these descriptors such as ‘active
listening’ are more specific and could be associated with a particular skill,
262 T. Stehlik
while others such as ‘science’ and ‘mathematics’ could describe a huge

range of possibilities and are generally considered as disciplines or sub-
jects, not skills. Being able to use scientific enquiry and/or mathematical
applications in say ‘troubleshooting’ makes more sense, but it also implies
that such an activity requires a combination of skills but also an underly-
ing foundation of domain-specific knowledge (Hirsch 2009).
Critics of the ‘twenty-first-century skills movement’ suggest that while
being able to think critically, communicate effectively, work in teams,
solve problems, innovate, adapt and use computers are, more than ever,
important skills for uncertain futures, a focus on developing such skills
should not lose sight of the fact that they rely on having a solid founda-
tion of knowledge in order to apply them (Christodoulou 2014; Hirsch
2009; Ravitch 2009). Hirsch goes so far as to declare that “knowledge is
skill: skill knowledge” (2009: 3) and, furthermore, that such skills are not
necessarily transferable because the underpinning knowledge is specific
to its domain, context, or application; what will apply in one situation
may not apply in another. As Diane Ravitch argues, “people do not think
in the abstract; they need knowledge—ideas, facts, concepts—to think
about”, and furthermore she points out that “critical thinking skills, cre-
ativity, problem-solving, and cooperative group skills are not at all ‘21st
Century’”, but have been around in various education reform movements
throughout the past century (2009).
A 2016 survey of developments in job-specific skill areas undertaken
by the World Economic Forum further suggested that social and commu-
nication skills are experiencing the most significant and growing demand
(WEF 2016). These are not highly technical skills that require rocket
science responses in order to develop them, but they do require under-
pinning knowledge in key areas such as language and literacy, and a broad
understanding of culture and cultural differences as well as interpersonal
awareness and self-esteem in order to be able to interact in varying social
and work situations. As we have seen, communication skills can be
generic but also highly specific to the jargon of an industry or occupa-
tion, reinforcing the limitations of the transferability argument and the
strengths of the domain-specific argument. However, while we are
currently fixated on assessing communication skills with mandatory lit-
eracy testing, it does not necessarily follow that being an effective com-
municator is a simple matter of being able to read and write. How then
do we develop, encourage and assess a key skill like communication?
How are social skills defined? Are they generic or context specific?
We have seen that in a normally developing child, these skills evolve
naturally with language acquisition, patterns of communication and
social interaction being established well before formal schooling even
commences. These things are taken for granted and assumed by the time
a child starts school, but they can then be subsumed by a focus on testing
for academic achievement and content knowledge. Rarely would we
measure success in child development by recognising a child as ‘a good
communicator’ or ‘a good socialiser’; we tend to assess their grades
instead. Various moves to ‘re-envision what constitutes success in our
schools’ include the National Commission on Social, Emotional and
Academic Development in the United States, which advocates for the
integration of social and emotional learning in school curricula for a
more holistic approach to education (The Aspen Institute 2017). As part
of its work, the commission has recognised that schools need community
partnerships to promote social, emotional, and academic development
with students and the adults in their lives. Here we see another example
of the village being involved in schooling which goes beyond the
classroom.
Developing social and emotional skills without having to go outside
the classroom, however, has been shown to be successful in mixed-grade
classes with composite or multi-age groupings of children in primary
school settings.
Putting students into classes based on their age is an administrative conve-

nience … age is not always an accurate predictor of their actual develop-
ment. (Cornish 2015)
Yet as we have seen, schools are still structured in this way based on
assumptions that all children develop at the same pace, when we know
from research and experience that this is not the case. The advantages of
mixed age groupings in fostering a more holistic approach to learning
264 T. Stehlik
and development by allowing children to learn from each other is just one
example of a different level of thinking in addressing the ‘problem’ of
educating for so-called twenty-first-century skills.
The importance of this approach is recognised in the Bridge21 pro-
gram based at Trinity College in Dublin, which has been developed to
offer a new model of learning to secondary schools in Ireland, and is
reflected in the key values of their “innovative team based educational
model for 21st Century, technology mediated learning” based on the
notion that learning to learn is a key goal of education:
• Young people should be trusted to learn from each other

• Building positive relationships is vital to success in education
• Educational practice should follow the best of theory
• Young people benefit from the experience of working in mixed ability
teams
• Young people grow through being given responsibility
• Technology is central to 21st teaching and learning (Bridge21 2017)
These ideas will be discussed further in the final chapter. Other

responses to the changing work-education interface and landscape
include the re-vamping of senior secondary school curricula. In New
South Wales, for example, the Higher School Certificate (HSC) will now
feature a “cross-curriculum emphasis on work and enterprise to future-
proof its HSC students [and] ensure students have a depth of under-
standing of the topic, which means their skills are transferable” (Balogh
2017: 1). Such curriculum responses have already been discussed, but can
we claim that they will ‘future-proof ’ students when we cannot be at all
certain about what the future will bring, just in terms of the environment
and world politics, let alone in terms of work and enterprise? And claims
that their skills will be transferable are also dependent on the same uncer-
tainties and have already been shown to be questionable in terms of
domain-specific knowledge. However, regardless of their worth, these
approaches, ideas, and reforms do not exist in isolation and rely on many
other parts of the bigger picture lining up to make them happen, not least
of which is the role of the teacher and their own changing educational
needs.
12.2 The Classroom of the Future

The future of learning is not the same as the future of schooling. (Lawson
2016: 10)
How does all of the above manifest in the classroom, what will the
‘classroom of the future’ look like, and how will we prepare teachers for
this brave new world? If the kinds of skills we have been talking about are
better developed in a gap year or transition year, what is the role of schools
and teachers in developing them?
The Bridge21 program has some ideas:
We also think the physical space of learning is important. We configure the

learning space to provide for group learning with breakout areas and
alcoves, each facilitating information exchange, team collaboration and
individual reflection. We also incorporate a presentation area, for group
discussion and reflection. In this way both open space learning and private
conversation is supported. Within the space, mentors and teachers become
guides and facilitators, learning alongside the pupils. (Bridge21 2017)
The role of the teacher as ‘the guide on the side’ rather than ‘the sage
on the stage’ is not a new concept, deriving as it does from methodologies
and teaching-learning relationships influenced by a variety of theoretical
and philosophical positions. It is well known in adult education practice,
for example, where the role of facilitator to ease the learning situation
literally derives from the word facile: ‘easily done’; and in a Montessori
school, the label ‘teacher’ is replaced with the word ‘adult’. However,
teaching methods in twenty-first-century classrooms need to go beyond
just nominative determinism to embrace new ideas and different levels of
thinking that go outside the box while still trying to ‘work inside the
box’, regardless of the actual physical space.
Some basic principles which embody twenty-first-century teaching in
secondary education have been described as firstly involving more flexi-
bility, which aligns with the ideas of liquid modernity introduced in
Chap. 5 and the notion of the flexible worker as described above and
responds to the increasingly fluid environment which young people are
266 T. Stehlik
now used to, in being able to access and exchange information ‘anywhere,
anytime’. An emerging methodology therefore is the blended learning
approach in which online learning blends with face-to-face teaching so
that learning is accessible in multiple formats on a 24/7 basis. Here the
teacher adopts more of a facilitation role, moving from a “sole dispenser of
information to a highly skilled orchestrator of blended learning” (SASPA
2015: 5, original italics).
Dylan Wiliam expresses this in another, very simple way:
Teachers do not create learning, learners create learning; teachers create the
conditions in which students learn. (2006: 3, original italics)
This stark realisation can be very confronting for teachers who have
always operated under the professional assumption that they are the ones
controlling the curriculum, the content, the classroom, and therefore cre-
ating the learning. Furthermore, we have seen that the conditions in which
students learn can vary from being under a hedge, in a playground, at
home, from each other or by themselves, as well as being in a purpose-
built classroom environment full of resources and access to the latest IT
facilities. As Aristotle noted, the motivation, the desire, and the will to
learn are universal, even when the conditions can vary widely. How much
control teachers have over those conditions however is another
question.
Today’s classrooms still very much possess the rank-and-file structure

familiar from the 19th century and at the same time are expected to be
places in which constructivist concepts are put into practice. This is simply
contradictory. Historically speaking, the classroom of the present has the
shape of the 19th century and the contents of the 20th century.
(Schratzenstaller 2010: 35)
While it would be wonderful to combine architectural, technological,

and educational considerations into the design of learning spaces in the
twenty-first century, the reality is that most students, schools, teachers, and
communities have to make do with what they have, which in many cases
still looks like illustrations of classrooms from the early 1800s, unless, like
Willunga Waldorf School, for example, the school and the parents are able
to build custom-designed structures that reflect the needs of the age group
and the appropriate learning space for that cohort (see Figure 6.2, Chap. 6).
However, it is still important for educators as well as educational plan-
ners and policy makers to recognise that the classroom is not a “neutral or
passive container” (Burke 2005: 490), but will either encourage or con-
strain ways of teaching and learning that in effect make space and place a
key factor in consideration of the hidden curriculum, and that traditional
classroom design actually has more to do with maintaining discipline and
control than providing the optimum environment for learning. The ‘rank
and file’ idea of desks in rows clearly arises from a military model of
organisation and reflects other aspects of school cultures and structures,
such as ranking and sorting students by age, achievement, behaviour, and
so on.
Regarding the ‘classroom of the future’ then, it seems that working
within these existing structures is going to be the reality for a while yet,
and according to Wiliam:
… the future is further away than you think. I think that for the foresee-
able future we will have groups of between 20 and 40 students, with a
teacher, and most of the learning is going to be in classrooms that are the
size of classrooms we have now, with some IT of course, but the quality of
the learning is going to be dictated by what’s going on in that classroom.
(2006: 2)
While being aware that the learning space is not neutral or passive, the
key approach then is to focus on what’s going on in that classroom. This
brings us back to the role of the teacher, their philosophy of teaching, and
their understanding of pedagogical and methodological approaches that
will provide the kind of flexibility required to address the challenges of
twenty-first-century learning. It therefore reinforces the need for a re-
think of teacher education, both pre-service and in-service, as highlighted
by this reflective quote from an American high school teacher:
I am entering my third year teaching at a public high school, and at this

point have realized that my students’ social/emotional/academic skills,
268 T. Stehlik
like teamwork, perseverance, problem-solving, creativity, and critical

thinking, are much more important than any math I can teach them. But
my training and evaluation is based on teaching math. I would love to see
a more explicit effort made to teach these skills (and to train teachers in
how to do so, as I currently just do my own idiosyncratic best). (Price
2016)
What an interesting observation recalling the discussion in Chap. 8

regarding the way we still focus on content knowledge as the expense of
pedagogical knowledge and the distinction made in Chap. 2 between
types of knowledge. Just focussing on episteme, or facts and truths, with-
out an understanding of phronesis, or practical wisdom, will not provide
a holistic learning experience for both teacher and learner(s). Phronesis
implies being aware of the conditions in which the learning is occurring
and adjusting the pedagogical approach according to the situation, the
students, the time, the place, as well as the content—an ongoing process
of reflection-in-action. As discussed in Chap. 8, this kind of practical
wisdom takes time to develop, but I do believe that teachers can create the
conditions in which students learn by being open to new and different
educational ideas, as well as being open to the social/emotional aspects
and collaborative learning opportunities afforded by face-to-face, real-
time group interactions in classroom situations.
It seems imperative that teacher education critically expose pre-service

teachers to different ways of seeing, understanding and believing, and
unpack the philosophical traditions that underpin different worldviews.
(Evans et al. 2012: 9)
That is precisely the intent of this book, which can only provide an
introductory perspective on unpacking a sample of philosophical tradi-
tions and world views, in the hope that the reader will be inspired to seek
out more as part of their own lifelong learning interest in education. The
final chapter then attempts to bring together all of what has been dis-
cussed so far into a summary, a conclusion, and a reflection on what we
can learn from the past to inform the present and plan for the future.
References
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learning? The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/are-mixed-grade-
classes-any-better-or-worse-for-learning-38856. Accessed 15 July 2017.
Evans, N., Whitehouse, H., & Hickey, R. (2012). Pre-service teachers’ concep-
tions of education for sustainability. Australian Journal of Teacher Education,
37(7), 1–13.
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org/blog-posts/can-help-students-thrive/. Accessed 16 July 2017.
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century_skills.html. Accessed 15 July 2017.
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Australian Secondary Principals’ Association.
270 T. Stehlik
Sparrow, J. (2017, January 11). Can democracy survive the fourth industrial
revolution: Should it? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sustain-
able-business/2017/jan/11/can-democracy-survive-the-fourth-industrial-
revolution-should-it. Accessed 15 July 2017.
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commission-on-socialemotional-and-academic-development/. Accessed 26
Mar 2018.
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fourth industrial revolution. Geneva: The World Economic Forum.
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to the Cambridge Assessment Network Conference, 15 September 2006,
University of Cambridge.
13
A Holistic View of Education
13.1 ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’

The previous chapter noted that the age-old question ‘What do you want
to be when you grow up?’ is rather redundant in the light of the fourth
industrial revolution and the constantly changing uncertainty of the
modern workforce, and it is also loaded with assumptions about ‘being’
and ‘identity’ necessarily associated with a career, job, or occupation.
Why not aim for happiness?
The American educator Nel Noddings has long been a champion of
happiness as one of the main aims of education, in addition to the ‘3 Rs’
and the academic outcomes that generally take precedence in educational
policy provision:
These great aims are meant to guide our instructional decisions. They are
meant to broaden our thinking—to remind us to ask why we have chosen
certain curriculums, pedagogical methods, classroom arrangements, and
learning objectives. (Noddings 2005: 10)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_13
272 T. Stehlik
Noddings concedes that happiness is not readily defined or measured

by behavioural objectives or standardised testing, nor is happiness a com-
modity that can be easily acquired and transmitted as content knowledge;
instead more subtle approaches are required in the teaching-learning rela-
tionship in which “we must allow teachers and students to interact as
whole persons, and we must develop policies that treat the school as a
whole community” (2005: 13).
In fact we have seen from the case study of education in Finland in
Chap. 10 that making happiness and wellbeing the primary concerns for
children and young people can flow on to successful results not only in
social and emotional learning but in academic achievement, as measured
by empirical comparative assessment programs such as PISA. In addition
to testing for achievement in academic subject areas, since 2015 the PISA
has expanded to include an assessment of the cognitive, psychological,
social, physical, and material wellbeing of the 15-year-old age group of
students in participating OECD countries. Not surprisingly, the overall
findings show that:
Teenagers who feel part of a school community and enjoy good relations
with their parents and teachers are more likely to perform better academi-
cally and be happier with their lives, according to the first OECD PISA
assessment of students’ well-being. (www.oecd.org)
This reinforces at least two of the key messages that have been devel-
oped throughout this book: the importance of positive relationships for
young people and the importance of community in raising children. It
also brings us back to the questions raised in earlier chapters in relation
to what the overall purpose of education should be in contemporary soci-
ety, and how schools could or should be configured to achieve that
purpose.
Returning to the Ancient Greek world view, the concept of Eudaimonia
encapsulated a holistic notion of wellbeing, literally meaning having a
‘good spirit’ (eu ‘good’ and daimōn ‘spirit’), and related to our modern
notion of welfare. It was suggested that in order to promote Eudaimonia,
a more holistic view of education is required, one that goes beyond just
the institution of schooling to recognise the importance and impact of
A Holistic View of Education 273
the whole environment in which a child is raised, including the social,

political, and economic milieu. A multidimensional view of student well-
being will also necessarily take into account the wellbeing of those adults
who are influential in the students’ life-worlds—parents, caregivers, and,
in particular, teachers. If teachers are experiencing stress and burnout,
with many leaving the profession early in their careers, then we must also
pay attention to the Eudaimonia of the teaching profession.
In addition, we have seen how important it is for a child’s experiences
of home and school to be in harmony, or at least not in the sort of opposi-
tion which can result in a disconnect between the two, leading on the one
hand to responses such as unschooling where school is taken out of the
picture altogether or on the other to a situation where school is the only
safe place in a child’s world due to family dysfunction, domestic violence,
poverty, or just poor parenting. It is recognised that attending to the well-
being of young people today will influence the wellbeing of adults tomor-
row, and building human capital and social skills for the future should
actually address and begin to change the cycle of intergenerational dys-
function and disadvantage (Borgonovi and Pál 2016). I believe that a
significant aspect of the healthy development and education of our chil-
dren is that they should experience love. A loving home environment
should be the entitlement of all children, and should also be reflected in
the educational environments that they experience. The notion of peda-
gogical love was introduced in Chap. 10 as a foundational aspect of the
development of trust and positive relationships between students and
teachers in Finland, and is here re-affirmed as an aspirational goal for
teachers and educators, one that goes to the very heart of the teaching-
learning relationship:
The original meaning of pedagogy is grounded in the relational and inten-

tional responsibility of adult to child. The vulnerability of the child calls
forth a loving attitude from the adult, as pedagogue, that is directed toward
the physical security and the social, emotional and educational well-being
of the child as student. (Hatt 2005: 671)
We understand the notion of childcare in the early years, but it is easy

to forget not only that children are the most vulnerable members of
274 T. Stehlik
society but that they remain vulnerable and therefore entitled to love
and care right up until they are deemed adult, which according to the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is at the age of 18. Article 29
of the convention also highlights the reciprocity involved in the educa-
tional relationship, between developing each child’s potential, and in
turn each child respecting parents, cultures, and other cultures (UNICEF
1989). Pedagogical love is a concept and a term that encompasses this
relationship, described in Chap. 10 as interdependence, but it involves
much more. In Finland, it is manifest in the trust that is apparent at all
levels of society and therefore flows through the home and school envi-
ronments, so that teachers, parents, and most importantly children
know where they stand in relation to each other. For the Finns, this high
trust capital means that schools are open to anyone who wants to visit—
in stark contrast to the situation in Australia and many other countries
where visitors must report to the school office, volunteers need police
clearance checks, and strangers are treated with suspicion due to the
unfortunate increase in paedophile behaviours and child abuse.
Love in all its forms is a precious thing and not a commodity that can
be easily bought and sold. However, neither would it involve a huge cost
in terms of educational resourcing—unlike say new technologies, new
classrooms, and higher teacher salaries—to promote the idea of love in
our schools. Pedagogical love can be developed, encouraged, and applied
without having to make expensive structural changes to the education
system that we currently have; it would involve a change in mindset
across the board and for many would require thinking outside the box,
but it is not rocket science and would make a huge difference to the social
and emotional wellbeing, or Eudaimonia of all stakeholders. This should
be nothing new. Gidley (2016) offers “practical examples for letting love
into your classroom”; Montessori believed that “a love of learning lasts a
lifetime” (1912); Aristotle noted the importance of self-love (1998), Holt
wrote that “it is love, not tricks or techniques of thought that lies at the
heart of all true learning” (1983), and Steiner advised us to “receive the
children in reverence, educate them in love, and let them go forth in
freedom” (1968).
The importance of place, space, architecture, and aesthetics in contrib-
uting to Eudaimonia and to holistic learning has been discussed, but this
is also an issue related to how as a society we fund education. It is interest-

ing to note that PISA actually highlights the correlation between educa-
tion funding and school performance. For example, PISA results for
2015 showed Australian students “in absolute decline” despite record
spending on education, with even the Federal Education Minister argu-
ing that “the debate has concentrated too heavily on the amount of
money spent rather than how best to spend it” (Balogh and Hutchinson
2017: 2).
As a society, how do we make these decisions about how best to spend
the education dollar? Even in the 1970s, commentators like Ivan Illich
and John Holt were calling into question the fact that state education
budgets were inequitable, with the majority of funding mostly spent on
the education of children between the ages of five to 18 in publicly funded
schools, ignoring the very young, the adult, and the elderly as well as
alternative options. Not much has changed in the twenty-first century,
except for the fact that international comparisons are now highlighting
the ineffectiveness of this funding model:
Educational investment alone is not sufficient to boost educational perfor-

mance as well as global competitiveness…the way we actually run the
school seems to have a massive effect on how the students perform. (Balogh
and Hutchinson 2017: 2)
This seems to be stating the glaringly obvious, with the way we actually
run the school surely something we should have been looking at well
before now. The case study examples in Chaps. 10 and 11 suggest that
there are already ways in which we can think differently about running
our schools. I have often thought it a shame how wasted to the commu-
nity are the resources and facilities of the local school. Every weekday
afternoon after school finishes and for the entire weekend, the school
remains lifeless with its buildings empty and playgrounds under-utilised.
Schools should be the central focus of a community, school libraries
could be buzzing at weekends, many schools should have comprehensive
kitchens, workshops, studios, and other facilities where families could
gather and interact and get to know each other in a true learning exchange,
where children could experience school as something integrated with
276 T. Stehlik
their family and community life. Some sort of voluntary system of super-
vision would be required of course, but this is precisely how adventure
playgrounds and community organisations have always operated. It
seems incredible that instead, public school facilities are kept locked up
and inaccessible to the community, in particular those who are actually
paying for them through the taxation system. Is this really ‘public
education’?
Initiatives in the United States have recognised that schools “are viewed
as place-based assets for community development”, and that both
community-based “outside-in” strategies and school-based “inside-out”
strategies are required to enable local involvement in developing the
school as a community asset rather than a state-owned facility (Lawson
2016: 8). Once again, this would require a joined-up approach at the
policy level to make such ‘Collective Impact Initiatives’ happen, since
many communities already have partnerships for things like economic
development, crime prevention, and health; but usually these are struc-
tured separately, often working at cross-purposes and even competing for
the same limited resources and funding sources. As a type of ‘wicked
problem’, any change to the system of funding education therefore needs
to take into account a holistic view and will require massive intervention
at all levels and aspects of publicly funded services. Just focussing on one
service without taking in the bigger picture of a complex and chaotic
system is like looking at one tree at a time while ignoring the whole
forest.
13.2 Mother Nature’s Child

A major theme running through this book has been to investigate the
tension between the natural world and the technologised world in rela-
tion to child development and educational interventions, respecting the
precious nature of childhood while acknowledging the demands of the
modern world as well as the possible needs of the future. In Chap. 6 I
discussed the unique cases of ‘wild children’ who were brought up in the
forest without being able to develop natural socialisation skills including
language and in Chap. 7 made the link with various ‘back to nature’ ini-
tiatives which seem to act as an organic antidote to the digitised and
mechanised world. Returning to this theme now, I want to focus on chil-
dren who have been brought up not only in the natural world but by the
natural world, and in so doing demonstrate the possibility that children
can learn from each other and may not even need the type of formal insti-
tutionalised teacher-centred education programs that we think are impor-
tant. I am here referring to Indigenous children and, in particular,
Indigenous knowledges and ways of seeing and reading the world that, in
the case of Australian Aboriginal societies, have been successfully repro-
ducing and educating generations of human beings for at least 65,000 years
(Wright 2017).
If you want to put it visually, if you take the clock face of 60 minutes and
give each one of those minutes a thousand years, then you have the recorded
time that our people have been on this land. That means Plato was here a
minute and a half ago. (Price 2012: 2)
In terms of educational philosophy, we could learn a lot from the lon-

gest continual living culture on the planet. Far from being a primitive
culture, Australian Aboriginal people prior to European settlement pos-
sessed a complex and sophisticated world view and knowledge system
based on country, community, and kinship, with hindsight, insight, and
foresight combined into a seamless cosmology. The early colonisers and
settlers were, to put it mildly, “ignorant of other cultures, languages and
societies and were not attuned to different possibilities” (Price 2012: 3).
A western-style education system imposed onto traditional Indigenous
people ignored their own highly developed system of learning, since from
time immemorial the children had learned from inherited guidelines, and
for them “the world around us was our ‘class room’; the ‘five senses’ were
our means of learning. The grannies were ‘examiners’, the elders the ‘mas-
ters’ of our educational world” (Lester 1975: 187).
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their parents were
not familiar with western concepts such as ‘failure’, ‘competition’, and
‘truancy’. Theirs was a collaborative society in which the children looked
278 T. Stehlik
out for each other and were reliant on highly developed observational
skills from an early age in order to survive in harsh environmental condi-
tions, for example, the Pitjantjatjara children of the Musgrave Ranges in
far northern South Australia:
At three Kalatari was carrying her sister Rosemary, fourteen months, on her
back wherever she went, tending her like a small mother. Now almost four
she handles fire casually but quite safely, and no-one ever tries to prevent
her taking a fire-stick and building her own fire. (Wallace and Wallace
1968: 30)
In our risk-averse modern society, we worry about such things and

question how much responsibility a three- or four-year-old child can have
for their own learning or for the wellbeing of their peers and siblings.
Now we have to develop adventure playgrounds and forest school envi-
ronments in which children can be re-acquainted with things like build-
ing a fire, but still under the guidance of adults. Although it might be
confronting and controversial for many parents, the element of risk for
young children is important in setting their own boundaries, and the
motto of the adventure playground movement associated with ‘The Land’
in Wales is “better a broken bone than a broken spirit” (Moore 2014a).
Indigenous societies based on such deep knowledge of their physical,
social, and spiritual worlds are essentially self-regulating, much like the
science of what we now know to be a form of complexity theory which
also applies to social groupings as complex adaptive systems. In this holis-
tic perspective, the processes of ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ are not separate
from the processes of living and observing, as shown by a group of young
Pitjantjatjara boys:
When asked who had taught them about the ‘spear’ bush and how to
straighten the wood and make the spears, they laughed and said, ‘No-one’.
They have watched the men around the campfires from the beginning of
conscious thought, and before, as they made the beautiful seven-foot spears
that they use for hunting the kangaroo. (Wallace and Wallace 1968: 33)
Fast forward to the twenty-first century and the unschooling move-

ment, which is re-visiting the central idea that ‘children can be trusted to
learn from each other’. Experiments in self-organised learning environ-

ments have demonstrated that, given the right conditions, children can
teach themselves almost anything without the intervention of a teacher.
Professor Sugata Mitra from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom
is a champion of the ‘School in the Cloud’, a simple idea that gives groups
of children access to computers and the internet and allows their natural
curiosity and ability to self-organise themselves to guide their learning.
Successful examples of this have been documented in places as diverse as
remote parts of India as well as in England, showing that language is no
barrier and that children have a universal desire to be curious and find
answers to problems if they are genuinely interested.
Mitra’s conclusion is that “education is a self-organising system, where
learning is an emergent phenomenon” (Future Learning 2012). Emergence
is a fundamental concept of self-organising systems: that unexpected
things which the system was not intentionally planned for can just hap-
pen or emerge. I find this proposition fascinating, and can see a direct line
from the Aboriginal children learning to make spears and light fires
through observation, play, and practice, to children learning through
observation, play, and practice using technology in what may be the class-
rooms of the future—without a teacher. Certainly adults are involved
(Mitra refers to them as mediators) in setting up the learning space and
providing some form of guidance and encouragement, and in the ‘School
in the Cloud’ they are often mediating over Skype from another country,
maybe even in another language. This is truly global education enacted at
the local level.
13.3 The Future Is What We Make It

The key to the success of self-organised learning environments is the
interaction between the children themselves, showing that human relation-
ships are still important and that the synergy of a group is greater than
the sum of its parts. Even with online learning mediated by technology,
education remains a relationship activity. There are still some things that
cannot be done online—you can’t get a haircut on the internet for
example! And while many repetitive and low-skilled jobs are becoming
280 T. Stehlik
automated, the capacity for human creativity and imagination is yet to

be replaced by a robot. In terms of cognition, the schooling system we
have inherited appears to have been dominated by left-brain thinking:
the type of rational, logical approach to knowledge that has been in
ascendance since the Enlightenment. What is called for in the present
and the future is more right-brain thinking: creative, imaginative, inno-
vative, and aesthetic approaches to learning and problem-solving.
‘Playful thinking’ with the mind in a more relaxed state is bound to be
better for both achievement and wellbeing compared with stressful
thinking dominated by high-stakes testing of memorised facts.
Thinking about the classroom as a playground where curiosity drives
interest, and experimentation can lead to emergence, is a strong meta-
phor that I believe we can take with us as we look to the future of educa-
tion. If parents can create a home life that also facilitates learning through
play, and if local communities can also provide resource-rich environ-
ments for learning through play in all its forms—from nature to technol-
ogy—then this can only contribute to a holistic learning environment
where pedagogical love can flourish. The role of the teacher will continue
to be important but needs to become more flexible, to focus more on
relationships and to change fundamentally from content expert to
blended learning facilitator:
… assisting students in the formulation of inquiry questions and support-

ing them to conduct inquiry-based learning in real and online contexts as
a means for them to turn information into knowledge (and knowledge into
wisdom). (SASPA 2015: 5, original emphasis)
The key skills for students now and in the future, according to Mitra
(Future Learning 2012), involve three basic capabilities:
• Reading comprehension
• Information searching and retrieval skills
• Critical thinking skills, or knowing what to believe
Reading comprehension is important because information is still text-

based—whether the text is a Shakespeare play or a tweet—and being able
to search and retrieve information using whatever technologies are avail-

able is also paramount. Then being able to think critically and to make
informed judgements about the veracity and provenance of information
in order to translate it into knowledge and ultimately wisdom is the most
important skill. Interestingly, these are all process skills—none of them
are based in content knowledge. My daughter still talks about the single
most useful thing that she learned in high school that she makes use of on
a daily basis in her life and work, and that is the ability to think critically.
This was not a separate subject or a tacked-on elective course but was
integrated into the whole secondary curriculum, with a whole-of-school
approach that gives another example of a more holistic and ultimately
more effective approach to education for lifelong learning.
As a teacher, do you have a clearly articulated philosophy of education?
As a parent, what is your main concern for your child or children—do
you want them to be academic high achievers or do you want them to be
happy? As a society, can we agree on the purpose of education and how
to manage and fund it at all levels and for all sectors? These are questions
that we should be continually asking ourselves as we monitor the progres-
sion of the education project now and into the future.
There is hope, however, if these words of wisdom can come from a Year
12 student and millennial teenager in a 2016 graduation speech to the
current students of her high school:
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Year 12, or a result, defines you.
The beautiful thing about being as self-aware as we are, is that we can rede-
fine ourselves at any moment. One thing that helped me was imagining
myself in ten years’ time. Not so much where I was in life, but what quali-
ties I wanted to possess. Once I had figured out what kind of person I
wanted to be in ten years, I began to try to be that person now. So my
advice would be: figure out what kind of person you want to be and let Year
12, and the rest of your life as you continually grow, reflect that. (Mather
2017: 10)
I end on this lovely quote because it reinforces a number of important

points that I trust have been salient throughout this book—that, given
the right conditions, young people can embrace the future now, see
282 T. Stehlik
themselves as constantly evolving conscious individuals, with human

qualities that go beyond just being a number on a credential defined by
institutionalised schooling, and that the end of school does not mean the
end of education but the beginning of a foundation for lifelong
learning.
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Index
A Anthroposophy, 215
Academy, 1, 3, 20–22, 28, 40, 42, Aquinas, Thomas, 23, 24
43, 45, 46, 54, 76–78, 90, 95, Aristotle, 7, 17, 19, 21, 22, 33, 101,
97, 99, 135, 140, 142, 153, 266, 274
154, 167, 204, 210, 212, 216, Assessment, 1–3, 49–51, 92, 93,
221, 227, 246, 263, 267, 271, 143, 168, 189, 193, 196, 207,
272, 281 252, 253, 259, 272
Action research, 22, 34, 174 Attention deficit hyperactivity
Adolescents, 6, 13, 62, 80, 110, 114, disorder (ADHD), 9, 139, 147
115, 121, 130–133, 140, 163, Attitude, 18, 40, 41, 47, 140, 151,
185, 194, 209, 217, 218, 237, 154, 163, 165, 168, 175, 189,
239, 253 211, 238, 247, 273
Adventure playground, 124, 146, Augustine, 23–24
276, 278 Australian Institute for Teaching and
Aesthetics, 21, 23, 24, 28, 32, 34, School Leadership (AITSL),
101, 191, 220–223, 274, 280 96, 97, 165, 171, 172
Affective, 41, 115, 169, 198 Australian Qualifications Framework
Alternative, 4, 8, 11, 69, 73, 74, 78, (AQF), 50
83, 91, 93, 187, 203, 229, Autism, 9, 139, 145
233, 238–242, 275 Auto-didact, 52

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2
302 Index
B 95–101, 113, 141, 148, 150,

Baby boomer, 133, 134, 140 154, 162, 168, 181, 186–189,
Bamboo, 224, 225 191, 194, 195, 212, 216,
Behaviour management, 2, 6, 74, 222–223, 225–230, 233, 239,
173, 209 240, 242, 243, 249, 250, 252,
Big data, 142–144, 261 253, 263, 266, 272, 275–277,
Bildung, 61, 76, 77 280
Bloom, Benjamin, 41 Comprehensive school, 206, 209
Bloom’s taxonomy, 41, 172 Contemplative activity, 42–44, 167
Body, soul and spirit, 108, 112, 113, Content, 2, 3, 11–13, 21, 50, 53,
217 90, 96, 116, 133, 141, 143,
Bush kindy, 146–147, 151, 235 163, 164, 167–175, 181–184,
189, 190, 195–198, 206, 210,
211, 218, 219, 222, 259, 263,
C 266, 268, 272, 280, 281
Calvin, John, 192 Credential creep, 45, 168
Catholic, 3, 67, 68, 71, 84, 235 Critical pedagogy, 176, 192
Charlemagne, 24 Critical thinking, 24, 32, 43, 132,
Child development, 9, 27, 31, 68, 187, 193, 197, 227, 261, 262,
86, 107, 109, 114, 173, 268, 280
216–218, 263, 276 Curriculum, 1–4, 6, 8, 11–13, 32,
Classroom, 3, 5, 6, 11, 12, 32, 34, 34, 40, 47, 53, 60, 63, 68–70,
47, 73, 74, 93, 94, 139, 140, 72, 83, 92, 93, 95, 122, 144,
150, 161, 162, 168, 173, 181, 150, 152, 167, 170, 171, 173,
184, 185, 189, 197, 198, 214, 174, 176, 181, 182, 185,
220, 221, 225, 227–229, 189–198, 206, 212, 213, 215,
233–253, 263, 266–268, 271, 216, 218–223, 226–228, 233,
274, 280 236, 241, 246, 252, 253, 259,
Classroom of the future, 259, 263, 264, 266, 267, 271, 281
265–268, 279 Cygnaeus, Uno, 205, 211
Cognitive, 40, 114–116, 135,
146–148, 169, 170, 215, 220,
272 D
Comenius, 26, 54, 61, 76, 183, 193 Demonstration schools, 74, 75, 208
Communication, 12, 33, 87, 122, Descartes, Rene, 26, 193
134, 136, 137, 141, 164, 204, Deschooling, 235–237
226, 228, 249, 259–263 Dewey, John, 27, 31, 32, 70, 116,
Community, 10–12, 22, 32, 46–49, 123, 211
51, 53, 62, 66, 67, 79, 80, 87, Dickens, Charles, 62, 123
Index
303
Didactic, 27, 52, 118 Finland, 3, 11, 68, 71, 72, 92, 97,
Digital native, 9, 129, 136, 138 147, 166, 186, 203–214, 229,
Discipline, 2, 4, 18, 26, 33, 34, 54, 55, 272–274
74, 114, 135, 167, 169–171, Forest bathing, 147
187, 192, 193, 262, 267 Forest school, 145, 146, 235, 278
Dual system, 75–81 Freire, Paulo, 27, 32, 45, 176
Froebel, Friedrich, 9, 21, 27, 29, 107,
122, 123, 125, 145, 211, 212
E
Education
compulsory, 79, 260 G
continuing, 50, 52, 171 Gap year, 12, 233, 247–253, 265
liberal, 34, 41, 42, 51, 63, 76, 77 Generation X, 134
post-compulsory, 80, 81 Generation Y, 134
public, 27, 45, 61–63, 79, 108, Generation Z, 135–137
118 Gig economy, 134, 251, 261
self, 51, 52, 179, 190, 217, 236 Global Education Reform Movement
vocational, 41, 63, 167, 206 (GERM), 8, 83, 90–97, 100,
Education outside the classroom, 145, 172, 190, 193, 222
145, 253 Globalisation, 83, 86, 89, 90, 169,
Emergence, 24, 33, 126, 132, 279, 172
280 Goethe, J. W., 28, 61, 75, 132, 219
Emotional quotient (EQ), 40 Goodness, 19, 46, 69
Empiricism, 22 Graduate, 2, 45, 63, 88, 140, 168,
Enlightenment, 8, 25, 69, 76, 116, 171–174, 191, 195, 198, 249
148, 182, 280 Greece, 7, 17–19, 34, 50, 219
Episteme, 29–31, 172, 268 Green School, 11, 146, 194, 203,
Erziehung, 61, 77 224–229
Eudaimonia, 100, 101, 272–274 Grundtvig, N. F. S., 51
Experiential frame, 227 Gymnasium, 76, 77
Experimental schools, 8, 59, 69, 71,
72, 227
H
Happiness, 13, 153, 271, 272
F Hellenic culture, 18
Facebook, 87, 130, 141, 236 Hidden curriculum, 12, 47, 63, 176,
Facilitator, 265, 280 190, 198, 236, 267
Feeling, 6, 21, 47, 74, 98, 110, 124, Holistic education, 11, 13, 40, 42,
144–146, 151, 185, 189, 216, 263, 271–282
217, 223, 240, 245, 253, 272 Holt, John, 244, 245, 274, 275
304 Index
Homeschooling, 12, 52, 153, 233, K

244–247 Kalevala, 72, 212
Homo Zappiens, 136–138 Kid, 4, 5, 74, 79, 89, 130, 146, 162,
Humanism, 24 163, 238, 239, 252
Humboldt, Wilhelm, 61, 76, 193 Kindergarten, 9, 21, 26, 27, 118,
122–125, 129, 145, 146,
149–151, 194, 206, 208, 209,
I 212, 221
Illich, Ivan, 153, 235–237, 244, 275 Kingdom of childhood, 5, 9–10, 27,
Incarnation, 108, 109, 112, 149 107–116, 126, 133, 142, 154,
Individual, 7, 19, 20, 24, 25, 30, 33, 217, 221, 224
34, 39–42, 45–48, 52, 60, 61, Knowledge, 3, 8, 12, 13, 18, 20, 22,
69, 72, 75, 97, 98, 108, 23, 25, 26, 29–36, 40, 41, 47,
110–113, 115, 117, 121, 123, 49–53, 59, 63, 69, 75, 76, 87,
130, 135, 140, 149, 152, 155, 88, 92, 93, 109, 112, 115,
174, 175, 177, 182, 184, 185, 116, 147, 148, 151, 167–172,
195, 196, 212, 215, 217, 219, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181–184,
223, 227, 228, 238, 247, 253, 189, 191, 195, 205, 211, 215,
265, 282 219, 236, 247, 251, 259–264,
Individualism, 98 268, 272, 277, 278, 280, 281
Industrial revolution, 8, 12, 33, 59, Knowles, Malcolm, 80
62, 77, 78, 252, 259, 260, Kuhn, Thomas, 32
271
Infancy, 114, 130–133
Information, 9, 12, 25, 27, 29, 30, L
33–36, 49, 51, 87, 95, 129, Learning
133, 134, 136–138, 142–144, adult, 11, 44, 51, 53, 78, 149,
177, 195, 204, 208, 246, 259, 152, 171, 217, 233, 237, 245
260, 265, 266, 280, 281 credentialled, 53
Instructional frame, 226, 227 early childhood, 21, 29, 119,
Integral frame, 226 122–124, 145
Intelligence quotient (IQ), 40 formal, 48, 49, 53, 149, 237
Itard, Jean, 116, 117 informal, 48, 51, 52, 251
lifelong, 7, 39, 41, 80, 152, 165,
168, 171, 179, 184, 197, 217,
J 237, 268, 281, 282
Joined-up approach, 11, 181, 185, non-formal, 48, 50, 88, 149, 237
187, 188, 243, 276 online, 241, 266, 279
Index
305
project-based, 196, 197, 226 N

self-directed, 32, 48, 52, 53, 80, National Assessment Program–
152, 194 Literacy and Numeracy
uncredentialled, 53 (NAPLAN), 94–96, 208
Liquid modernity, 87, 88, 172, 265 Nature, 9, 18, 26, 27, 32, 33, 41, 51,
Literacy, 5, 12, 63, 67, 91–94, 168, 69, 71, 75, 107, 109, 111,
170, 173, 190, 191, 193, 227, 113, 115–123, 125, 129,
239, 259, 262–263 144–148, 164, 178, 219, 220,
Locke, John, 25, 26, 116 222, 226, 228–230, 241, 246,
Lutheran, 67, 68 260, 276–280
Neill, A. S., 69, 224
Neonate, 130
M Nomoi, 100, 101
McMillan, Margaret, 123, 145 Normaalikoulu, 166, 208
Mainstream, 4, 74, 122, 132, 177, Not-school, 12, 233, 237–242, 247,
219, 238–241, 259 253
Malaguzzi, Loris, 182, 185 Numeracy, 5, 12, 63, 67, 91, 92, 94,
Marketisation, 8, 83, 86–90, 174 190, 193, 227, 239, 259
Massification, 8, 83, 86–91 Nurture, 9, 107, 116–121, 217, 224
Mead, George Herbert, 31
Mentor, 178, 179, 184, 191, 243, 265
Methodology, 3, 11, 22, 68, 72, 78, O
80, 85, 91, 123, 137, 171, Organisation for Economic
194, 196, 198, 212, 215, 223, Co-operation and
226, 233, 241, 265, 266 Development (OECD), 45,
Mezirow, Jack, 52 92, 272
Middle school, 194–196, 226
Millennials, 133–138, 141,
148–155, 242, 243, 281 P
Mindfulness, 144, 145 Paradigm shift, 32, 33, 68, 191
Molt, Emil, 44, 62, 215 Parenting, 9, 10, 13, 86, 109, 129,
Montessori, Maria, 28, 66, 68, 117, 149–154, 188, 273
151 Parents, 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 41, 44,
Motivation, 29, 44, 52, 53, 80, 93, 46, 62, 65, 67, 70, 73, 78, 85,
124, 140, 165, 183, 237, 89, 90, 95–97, 99, 108, 109,
266 114, 117, 119, 120, 122, 124,
MySchool, 95, 96, 208 126, 129, 130, 134, 135, 139,
306 Index
140, 147–155, 163, 184, 189, Post-millennial, 135

204, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, Practical activity, 42–44, 77, 167
216, 217, 221–224, 227, 230, Pragmatism, 2, 26, 31, 32, 70
233, 244, 246, 247, 267, Praxis, 30–32, 172, 176
272–274, 277, 278, 280, 281 Pre-service teacher, 96, 161, 162,
Pedagogical content knowledge 164, 165, 170, 177, 179, 186,
(PCK), 169–170 267, 268
Pedagogical love, 204, 211–214, Proficient, 172
273, 274, 280 Program for International Student
Pedagogy, 11, 21, 24, 34, 51, 52, 68, Assessment (PISA), 3, 91, 93,
72, 80, 85, 91, 118, 143, 168, 203, 208, 272, 275
170, 171, 181, 183, 221, 223, Protestant work ethic, 192
273 Psyche, 20, 69, 108, 115, 214, 219
Pestalozzi, Johan, 27, 122 Psychology, 2, 11, 20, 40, 54, 114,
Philosophy 115, 117, 139, 144, 169, 170,
ancient, 7, 17–19, 22, 29 173, 181, 215, 220
educational, 1, 10–12, 27, 31, 32, Psychomotor, 41, 169
36, 54–55, 61, 67, 69, 72, 79, Purpose economy, 242
109, 110, 118, 161, 162, 174,
175, 203, 215, 217, 223–224,
229, 230, 277 Q
medieval, 22–24, 76 Quantified self, 138–144
metaphysical, 19, 20, 22
modern, 24–29, 182
moral, 19, 20 R
natural, 19, 20 Read, Herbert, 32, 47
Phronesis, 30, 31, 172, 268 Recapitulation, 219, 220
Plato, 7, 17, 20–22, 40, 46, 54, 60, Reciprocity, 7, 39, 42, 45–48, 274
121, 130, 277 Relationship, 3, 10, 13, 20, 41, 48,
Plato’s Cave, 20, 136 52–54, 65, 68, 79, 83, 99,
Play, 3, 9, 21, 27, 66, 85, 92, 97, 110, 123, 132, 143, 152, 155,
107, 110, 113, 115, 118, 164, 165, 178, 182, 184, 185,
120–126, 137, 145–148, 151, 189, 195, 197, 198, 204,
176, 177, 206, 210, 217, 219, 209–211, 213, 228, 243, 264,
221, 245, 279, 280 265, 272–274, 279, 280
Politeia, 100 Religion, 18, 19, 23, 67, 68, 80,
Positive psychology, 144 175, 191, 215, 220
Postformal, 115 Renaissance, 24, 25, 34, 75, 76, 220
Index
307
Risk, 121, 124, 145, 186, 243, 278 Social inclusion, 98, 185–187
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 27, 28, 31, Social work, 11, 41, 162, 169, 181,
70, 122, 148, 244 186, 187
Socratic method, 21, 31, 43
Soft skills, 12, 248, 249, 251, 259
S South Australian Certificate in
Schiller, Friedrich, 28, 61 Education (SACE), 197, 212,
Scholastic tradition, 24 240
Schooling, 1–13, 28, 34, 40, 47, 52, Standardised testing, 94, 100, 116,
54, 55, 59–61, 63, 65–72, 74, 272
75, 78, 80, 83, 84, 86, 90, 92, STEAM, 193, 194
94, 101, 102, 108, 122, 140, STEEM, 194
145, 151–153, 166, 182, 189, Steiner, Rudolf, 5, 9, 27, 48, 66, 68,
192, 194, 198, 204, 205, 211, 72, 107–110, 214, 215,
213, 216, 224, 229, 230, 217–219, 221, 223, 274
235–242, 244, 246, 247, 249, Summerhill, 69, 70, 72, 223, 224
259, 263, 265, 272, 280, 282 Sustainability, 11, 87, 194, 203, 224,
Schools, 2–6, 20, 40, 59–81, 227
83–102, 118, 130, 161, 181,
203, 214–224, 229, 233,
241–242, 263, 272 T
Schoolteacher, 12, 47, 164, 167, Tabula rasa, 25, 116, 148
168, 191, 233, 267 Techné, 30, 31, 172
Science, Technology, Engineering, Technological, Pedagogical, and
and Maths (STEM), 91, 191, Content Knowledge (TPACK),
193, 261 170, 172
Self-organising systems, 251, 279 Technology, 9, 25, 30, 31, 33, 36,
Serendipity, 52 42, 46, 76, 87, 89, 129, 134,
Seven liberal arts, 76, 192 136, 141, 142, 144–148, 150,
Skills, 12, 13, 24, 32, 33, 40, 41, 43, 155, 170, 173, 174, 191, 193,
47, 77–79, 91, 93, 94, 117, 194, 211, 215, 236, 242, 243,
137, 149, 151, 153, 172, 175, 246, 260, 261, 264, 274,
177, 179, 183, 184, 190, 191, 279–281
193, 195, 197, 216, 224, 226, Teenagers, 6, 63, 131–133, 152,
227, 236, 237, 239, 242, 243, 251, 272, 281
245, 247, 251–253, 259–268, Thinking, 9, 11, 12, 20, 22, 25,
273, 276, 278, 280, 281 32–34, 43, 47, 68, 69, 99,
Skill sets, 261 101, 107, 110, 114, 115, 122,
308 Index
130, 168, 169, 176, 181, 188, V

193, 211, 212, 217, 233–253, Victor, 116, 117
261, 264, 265, 271, 274, 280, Vӓlitunti, 210
281
Toddler, 9, 109, 129, 130, 152
Training, 1, 10, 39–42, 46, 49, 50, W
54, 60, 61, 67, 77, 78, 96, Waldorf schools, 28, 44, 48, 62, 68,
122, 144, 149, 151, 161, 166, 72, 124, 125, 146, 149, 150,
167, 169, 177, 178, 186, 187, 196, 214–224, 230, 267
197, 208, 211, 214, 243, 247, Welfare team, 186
261, 268 Wicked problems, 234, 236, 276
Transition Year, 252, 265 Willing, 110, 250
Tree of Knowledge, 23, 47, 148 Wisdom, 7, 12, 17, 18, 30, 31, 35,
Trust, 85, 90, 136, 204, 209, 210, 54, 109, 113, 177, 178, 215,
213, 264, 273, 274, 278, 281 268, 280, 281
Tweens, 9, 129, 133 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 28
21st century skills, 12, 136, 248, Workers Educational Association
253, 259–268 (WEA), 50, 51
U Y
United Nations Convention on the Youthworx, 242–243
Rights of the Child
(UNICEF), 134, 135, 274
Unschooling, 12, 233, 244–247,
273, 278

Educational Philosophy For 21st Century Teachers

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Educational

ISBN 978-3-319-75968-5 ISBN 978-3-319-75969-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935412

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: © Andrea Kamal, Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

My thanks and acknowledgements to: Christobel for the many conversa-

1 Introduction: What Is Education for? 1

Part I The History of Philosophy and the Purpose of

2 The Importance of Philosophy 17

2.5 Medieval Philosophy 22

3 The Purpose of Education 39

Part II Schooling Versus Education 57

4 School: History, Meaning, Context, and Construct 59

5 School: Rhetoric, Reality, and Revisionism 83

Part III The Kingdom of Childhood 105

6 Development over the Life Span 107

7 The Twenty-First-Century Child 129

Part IV ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’ 159

9 The Role of the Teacher 181

Part V Case Studies of Educational Philosophies 201

10 International Comparisons and Case Studies 203

11 Thinking Outside the Classroom 233

Part VI The Future of Education 257

12 Predicting Unknown Futures 259

13 A Holistic View of Education 271

Fig. 2.1 Joining the dots—turning information into knowledge 35

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

underpinned and influenced the very e­ ducational institutions, teaching

1.1 ‘I Hated School…’

school and undertaking alternative learning programs outside the main-

1.2 Why This Book?

1.4 Part II: Schooling Versus Education

Chapter 4 examines the history, meaning, context, and construct of

1.5 Part III: The Kingdom of Childhood

1.6 Part IV: ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’

Equality begins at the blackboard: Finland

Chapter 11 explores alternative learning programs that operate outside

creative arts as a point of interest for young people otherwise disengaged

1.8 Part VI: The Future of Education

2.1 A Brief History Lesson

In considering the history of philosophy, I am here taking a particu-

© The Author(s) 2018 17

on the development of modern western education. For the purposes of

Ancient: Greco-Roman (circa seventh century BC to fifth century AD)

2.2 Ancient Philosophy

2.3 Branches of Philosophy

2.4 Plato and the First Academy

character, through dialogic communities incorporating the dialectic

2.5 Medieval Philosophy

to education included recognising the importance of critical thinking

2.6 Modern Philosophy

Romans had built up magnificent civilisations based on their native tal-

independence movement in America. Locke also developed a theory of

Comenius was not only a theorist but also a pragmatist, introducing a

produced expressly for children, subsequently published in many differ-

Education and the Waldorf School approach will be discussed in some

The Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952)

1 Introduction: What Is Education for? 1

Part I The History of Philosophy and the Purpose of

2 The Importance of Philosophy 17

2.5 Medieval Philosophy 22

3 The Purpose of Education 39

Part II Schooling Versus Education 57

4 School: History, Meaning, Context, and Construct 59

5 School: Rhetoric, Reality, and Revisionism 83

Part III The Kingdom of Childhood 105

6 Development over the Life Span 107

7 The Twenty-First-Century Child 129

Part IV ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’ 159

9 The Role of the Teacher 181

Part V Case Studies of Educational Philosophies 201

10 International Comparisons and Case Studies 203

11 Thinking Outside the Classroom 233

Part VI The Future of Education 257

12 Predicting Unknown Futures 259

13 A Holistic View of Education 271

Fig. 2.1 Joining the dots—turning information into knowledge 35

underpinned and influenced the very e ducational institutions, teaching

1.1 ‘I Hated School…’

1.2 Why This Book?

1.4 Part II: Schooling Versus Education

1.5 Part III: The Kingdom of Childhood

1.6 Part IV: ‘I Always Wanted to Be a Teacher’

1.8 Part VI: The Future of Education

2.1 A Brief History Lesson

2.2 Ancient Philosophy

2.3 Branches of Philosophy

2.4 Plato and the First Academy

2.5 Medieval Philosophy

2.6 Modern Philosophy

2.7 Types of Knowledge

3.1 Definitions, Meanings, and Models

3.2 Practical and Contemplative Activity

3.4 Forms of Education

3.5 Educational Philosophy

4.1 Definitions, Distinctions, Developments

4.2 Which School or College Did You Go to?

4.3 Evolution and Revolution

4.4 Differentiation and Dual Systems

5.1 Schools as Places and Spaces