Although we all found ourselves drawn to Leadership Calgary for different reasons I think that we all had some significant similarities; a deep yearning to understand HOW we can make this world a better place, a true sense of caring and an understanding that to know what needs to be done we must continue to learn and seek truth. Naturally, we tend to be driven to particular sectors or areas of interest. Some of us try to better understand community development, others venture out to develop better leadership models within the business world; my passion always takes me back to education.
“Education, everything that a society does to prepare its members to face the challenges of its time and place in history (Ken Low).” When I first began Leadership Calgary I probably would have said that I was passionate about educational reform because my husband and I (also LC alumnus) have 4 fabulous little humans of our own. As parents it is a daunting and very deep-rooted responsibility that we have to try our best to prepare these little people to anticipate and to know what needs doing in this world.
Like many, I am sure, we go through the first year of LC and think that we will come out with some profound answers to the BIG questions we have about our world and our own unique place within it. I have learned that these answers (or rather awakenings or understandings), come in very subtle ways for me. I was again humbled by this as I attended the screening of an important documentary in Calgary.
I recently attended a TED X Calgary event and afterwards while chatting with other LC Alumnus heard that they were trying to bring a screening of the documentary, A Race to Nowhere, to Calgary. My husband and I immediately jumped on board and wanted to be involved with bringing this important movie to Calgary. The plan was that a ‘public conversation’ would occur after the movie. I hoped that this would be another way on expanding on the discussion here in Calgary around Inspiring Education and Inspiring Action and talking about things that we could do in our schools and homes to better understand the role of formal schooling in today’s society. A description of the film on its web-site was “The film tackles the tragic side of our often achievement-obsessed culture, with interviews that explore the hidden world of over-burdened schedules, student suicide, academic cheating, young people who have checked out. Race to Nowhere is a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.
It was the latter piece that really piqued my interest: “a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare (youth) to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.” It was also this bit that I think was the most misunderstood and mostly missed part of the conversations after the movie.
The film exposed us to the dysfunctional side of our modern education system, but its focus was on formal and conventional learning. It did not delve into (and perhaps could not within the parameters of the movie) the other side of learning, experiential and non-conventional learning. The conversations on twitter and facebook after the screening of the documentary were around anti-homework and anti-assessment (both of which are important) but no conversations were following-up on the moderated discussion (led by Ken Low and Elizabeth Dozois) after the movie about HOW to best prepare our youth to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens?
I have learned that I tend to look externally for answers, looking to movies like, A Race to Nowhere, to ‘mobilize’ us. Mobilizing people will only make a difference if we clearly understand the bigger framework and the deeper reasons for wanting change. I need to look at not only what is wrong with formal education but what is right and where it belongs in our society. I left ‘conventional school’ when I was 15 and never did finish it the way that most did. My education was certainly ‘real’; I was living on my own and learned very quickly what needed to be done to survive and to strive. However, I wanted better. I recognized what I needed to accomplish that. So, I did go back to school and achieved a University degree and continue pursuing my formal education to this day. I recognize that the skills and the wisdom that I do have are a ‘blending’ of living my life and my formal education; my current level of learning/wisdom (or obversely, my current level of ignorance) is as a direct result of people encouraging me ‘to do’ rather than sit on the sidelines (or to the same extent, sit in classroom rows).
What I try to understand now is the connection...between formal education and then the envelopment of that learning as we move towards deeper meaning and an understanding of how best to apply that learning to the human venture. Conventional learning is necessary to learn how to do many of the things we need to function in this world. Real learning, however, is not something that we can hope to ‘teach’ in school. We can only hope to prepare our children by allowing them the failures, trials and experiences they need to prepare them to face the challenges ahead.
Eryn Kelly
