Climbing Leave
This letter to the Times, dated 9th September 2013, seemed like a lovely analogy for many children’s experience of school. Sir, In January 1943 the Italian mountaineeer Felice Bernuzzi and two companies escaped from the Allied PoW camp at Nanyski, Kenya, and made a valiant attempt to reach the summit of Mount Kenya, which was...
Intelligence has nothing to do with speed
Love this, from Laurent Schwartz‘s ‘A Mathematician Grappling with his Century’ [via Jo Boaler] “I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity; I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully....
Notes from Martin Robinson’s 21st C Trivium
Some dog-ears from Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21stC Spoon-feeding “No longer were the students expected to enter the kitchen; rather they chose from a menu and expected it to be served up ready-cooked. This is the problem with spoon-feeding: the whole process devalues the making and concentrates on the service.” Art vs...
Toffler, The Trivium & The Holy Trinity
I’ve been having an interesting conversation on Twitter with Martin Robinson and Carl Gombrich (a big thank you to both). Two things had been bouncing around recently: Toffler’s ubiquitous “Learn, unlearn, relearn” and the Trivium, in no small part thanks to Martin’s excellent Trivium 21C. I wondered,...
The Structure of Schools
Should we be paying more attention the structure of schools? A lot of facets of education are coming under scrutiny at the moment, both in the UK and abroad. The merits of various teaching styles, types of school, assessment formats and curricula among others are all being discussed. This debate is healthy and long may […]
Steve Jobs on Teamwork and Rocks
Lovely metaphor for teamwork and difference from Steve Jobs (thanks to Sonja for spotting this) “When I was a young kid there was a widowed man who lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He’s a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have […]
Dogears from Semler’s 7 Day Weekend
Notes and quotes from Ricardo Semler’s wonderful Seven-Day Weekend “Rather than constantly talking about passion – serving customers passionately, filling in blue forms passionately – organizations should make it possible for employees to feel exhilaration every once in a while. Let them get involved to the point...
Democracy and docility
“Why do we demand and go to war for democracy as nations, yet accept with docility that no one has the right to choose their own boss?” – Ricardo Semler
Exhilaration, Not Passion
Am enjoying Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend at the moment. He makes the point that a number of companies position themselves as warm, nurturing “families” and look for passionate employees while restricting much of what makes them thrive with overly stringent routines and top-heavy directives. The same insight...
Two points about self-esteem
From Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism: Point 1: Self-esteem is a symptom, not a prerequisite or cause. “I believe that self-esteem is just a meter that reads out the state of the system. It is not an end in itself. When you are doing well in school or work, when you are doing well with the […]