[Summary: a critique of ‘Impossible and Necessary’ by Sir Michael Barber and some remarks on leadership]

Preamble
I try, as much as possible, to engage in debates in a constructive way, and to avoid anything that might be construed as a rant. I find arguing for and working for things I believe to be right to be preferable, in most circumstances, to spending time arguing against those with whom I may share general goals, but may differ on methods and approaches. Demonstrating the positive alternative is oftentimes more powerful than trying to undermine the status-quo.

However, criticism and critiques have their place, and last week I found myself distinctly at odds with the presentation the ‘Impossible and Necessary’ pamphlet on the future of education. So – herewith follows a series of arguments against, in the hope still or making a constructive contribution to discussions.

Impossibly narrow
Sir Michael Barber’s speech ‘Impossible and Necessary’ was launched as a NESTA Pamphlet on Tuesday morning (though the only online copy I can find is a transcript of Michael’s original speech on which the Pamphlet is based here). For all the NESTA introduction of the pamphlet as a key statement of important challenges for the future, both the pamphlet itself, and the presentation of it’s key messages offered by Michael on Tuesday, turned out to be woefully narrow and lacking in progressive thought.

Whilst it contains one or two good recommendations: encouraging more team-teaching and ending the dominance of the single teacher as master of their domain in a single classroom; and calling for a greater focus on teaching quality rather than on teacher numbers; ‘Impossible and Necessary’ is otherwise unimaginative, adultist, and for a paper which highlights the importance of ethics, lacking in an appreciation that schools are, right now, far from egalitarian environments.

Michael’s essay uses an imagined ‘intergalactic audit commission’ to highlight progress and change on earth over the last 250 years, and to highlight challenges for the future.

Adultism is not a good place to start
The concept of adultism is captured well by this 1996 quote from Jenny Sazama “Young people are systemically mistreated and disrespected by society, with adults as the agents of the oppression. The basis of young people’s oppression is disrespect.”

It’s not good then to find that, in the few times young people are explicitly referenced in Impossible and Necessary it is in phrases loaded with stereotype and prejudice.

“…last year, I read that computers will soon have the learning capacity of a toddler. That’s a lot of learning capacity, as any parent knows. It’s also a lot of tantrums. I fully expect, a few years from how, to read that computers with have the learning capacity of a teenager and no doubt stay in bed until lunchtime.”

I would hope a vision for the future of education would be centred on understanding and respect for children. I would expect at least that it wouldn’t be reinforcing and playing on prejudice. But not so in Impossible and Necessary. How can we support and enable young people to learn if we don’t respect them?

Focus on education as an abdication of responsibility
It is also worth pointing out that the majority of the looming crisis and problems Sir Michael gets his intergalactic audit team to identify in the first part of the Pamphlet are ones created or increased by his generation. Thus, the claim, with words in the mouth of the intergalactic auditors that to resolve them there is just on thing “you can do – just one – really, really well. Educate every children and young person on the planet better, much better, than you’ve ever done before because they are your sustainable future” reads somewhat as an abdication of responsibility for taking tough decisions about big issues now.

Yes, younger generations do need to learn in order to be part of creating a sustainable future. But:

1. It’s about our future. A shared future. Which includes adults and young people.
2. Sir Michael’s generation shouldn’t be thinking that improving education, and leaving the problem solving to future generations alone is the ethical thing to do. There are things that those in positions of power should be doing to challenge crisis of climate and conflict right now. Educating for the future is part of it. But there are many other parts – and parts which might demand of adults right now that we make sacrifices to safeguard our sustainable future.

We have had ethical innovation – but schools are lagging behind
In talking about Impossible and Necessary on Tuesday, Sir Michael focussed on his ‘equation’ contained in the paper: E(K+T+L) where: K = Knowledge, T= Thought, and L = Leadership, all bracketed by ‘Ethics’. The argument being that good education involves each of K, T and L, but also requires ethical education. Sir Michael suggested that whilst the last centuries have seen massive technical innovation, ethical innovation has lagged behind. In part, this claim is defensible: we do need to rethink our models of ethics for a networked society in which authority is far more distributed.

However, we have had ethical developments over the last 50 years, not least the establishment of a global framework of Human Rights, and of Children’s Rights. Yet few schools are environments in which an culture of respect and rights is pervasive. Sir Michael’s intergalactic auditors do highlight and praise the “changing place of women in society”, but fail utterly to highlight the continued failure of schools to respect young people’s right to be listened to in decisions that affect them. This is about far more than the developments in yearly student satisfaction surveys and occasional school councils that the panel at Tuesday’s event cited as evidence that school were becoming more democratic. It is about a shift in the culture of schools.

You cannot prepare ‘innovators of tomorrow’
The culture that fails to give young people ownership of their own learning, and to see them as equal partners (or indeed, the key partner) in the learning process with teachers, is further expressed in the idea that we need to equip young people as ‘innovators of tomorrow’.

In the same way that citizen education can not be effective when we do not allow young people to be citizens now, innovation education is unlikely to thrive unless we see young people as innovators right now, not just innovators in training for the future.

It starts and ends beyond the classroom
Perhaps at the heart of the narrow vision in ‘Impossible and Necessary’ is that is never sets foot beyond the classroom. It ignores that young people live the majority of their lives outside schools, and that education is not a task that takes place 9am – 3pm weekdays. The panellists suggestion on Tuesday that the solution is to increase the amount of time spent in school (and indeed, extended schools policy is encouraging this) demonstrates a woefully limited understanding of many young people’s lives. Schools will remain important settings and catalysts of future learning – but if we’re thinking about education for the future, we need to start in communities, in workplaces, in supporting parents and in many other places – not just the classroom.

Accountability and intangibles
On the first page of Impossible and Necessary we find the sentences:

“You are aware, of course, that in England we inspect almost everyone. And in case that’s not enough we audit it too. We’re the regulatory specialists”.

But Impossible and Necessary isn’t opposed to that regulation and inspection. It want more. In talking about it Michael Barber argued that a false dichotomy underlies the implicit claim that “because you can’t measure everything, you should measure nothing”. But, whilst that is true, what you measure nearly always distorts where energies are directed – and if some of the things we value can’t be measured, we need to be careful that our measurement of other things does not take our eye off important intangibles.

Accountability can be achieved without reducing all education to numbers, and shifting ownership of educational attainment from the learner to schools and state.

More leadership 1.0
L for Leadership is a key part of Sir Michael’s equation for education E(K+T+L). Leadership is a popular topic right now, with the launch this week of the National Body for Youth Leadership (branded ‘The Youth Of Today‘). But both The Youth of Today and Sir Michael’s focus on ‘Leadership’ appear, in spite of a passing recognition that there are different models of leadership, to remain as reductive, individualistic concepts.

In fact, I think the problem is predominantly in the equation of ‘the ability to get things done’ with ‘leadership’ – and the attempt then to subsume within the concept of leadership all those things which relate to getting things done. Convening, co-ordinating and catalysing are all ways of getting things to happen. In the networked world it is ever clearer that things are achieved not only through top-down leadership, but by participation in self-organising networks and co-operative structures. Often-times getting things done in these contexts is not about gaining power, but is about giving up control and power and trusting people.

A sense, and capacity for, efficacy – and being part of creating change – is key. But if we reduce our desire for all people to have this to talk of leadership – we greatly impoverish the debate.

In closing
I realise now that one of the reasons I rarely write in critical mode, is I’m not sure how to resolve a critique. Should I offer a positive vision? That will take not just a little more writing. And this is too long already.

“How should professionals or volunteers working with young people use Facebook?”

There is no answer to that question. Or at least, no answer that doesn’t start with a fairly long list of ‘It depends’.

I often show this slide when talking about the need for clear policies in organisations that support staff to make effective use of social media:

The slide was prepared (and I always introduce it in this context) based on work exploring how Social Network Sites can be used by Youth Workers.

Almost always I get an interjection at this point in the presentation from a teacher or other youth-sector professional criticising the way this guidance suggests that workers may be interacting directly with young people online, when surely that can never be appropriate.

To which I have to re-emphasise that this guidance is specific to a youth work setting. It’s based on youth work values and, fundamentally, on an attempt to understand how different youth work relationships between young people and adults transfer into the online environment.

It is perhaps because of the centrality of ‘relationship’ in youth work theory that drives me towards stating this, but it seems far more useful to switch from the question ‘How should [teachers/youth workers/probation workers/sports coaches] use Facebook?’ to the question ‘Given the existing professional relationships between young people and their [teachers/youth workers/probation workers/etc.] offline, what would be appropriate for their interaction through [Facebook/Bebo/MySpace/any other social network]?’

Ewan McIntosh has been exploring again recently his belief that direct interaction by teachers with children and young people through Facebook or other social networks is not appropriate, and my intuitive sense of the teacher-pupil relationship suggests that Ewan is right. When it comes to a youth participation worker exploring social networks for engagement, then using Facebook might be appropriate, but a direct friend-relationship with young people may not be. Use of Facebook pages and groups may provide a means of engagement more analogous to offline participation relationships.

With a number of authorities and organisations development organisation-wide social media policies, emphasising the specificity of different workforces is more important than ever.

We need to always start from the specifics. From what a particular form of work involves, from the professional values involved, and from the relationships with young people (or others) before developing guidance, policy and practice. Rather than imposing top-down technology policy and strategy.

I spent a fantastic day yesterday in Birmingham Fazely Studios at #localgovcamp – an unConference exploring local government use of the internet. I offered to lead a session based around the ‘50 Obstacles to Open Government‘ which I jotted down a while back  – and to host a discussion sharing tips and ideas for overcoming these obstacles. The notes that I took during the session are on the 50 Obstacles wik (and if you took part – please do add your own notes…), and below are a few quick reflections on the session and where the 50 Obstacles list goes now…

Top down,  bottom up, sideways?

I wrote down the 50 Obstacles based on my experience of working with front-line youth service practitioners through action research and a recent action learning set on youth participation and social network sites. They are challenges as seen from perspective of staff wanting to engage with social media, but without neccessarily having responsibility for driving forward the use of social media across an organisation.

However, the #localgovcamp session drew a wider range of participants – including service managers, web teams and more. Quickly discussions turned to the need for vision from senior management and significant cultural change as key to driving social media adoption. Vision and leadership are important. The importance of styles of leadership in organisational change is something I’ve written about before. But when it comes to social media adoption – there is a strong case for recognising the many different possible approaches. And for recognising that local authorities are collections of diverse and different teams and services with ever more blurred boundaries – not monolithic entities with a single form, function or direction .

Not only is social media adoption something that can be driven by bottom up ‘nibbling’ away at problems (as David Wilcox put it), or by top down strategic programmes, but it is also enabled by social media moving sideways – from services that find ways to adopt and use social technology sharing their stories and experiences with the rest of an organisation.

Practical Problem Solving

You can find many of the tips people shared for overcoming hurdles over here – but I was particularly struck by the dialogue around experimentation with social media – and sharing examples of social media use and success to help managers and teams make sense of what they might be able to do.

So – I took 15 minutes out later in the day at #localgovcamp to develop the wiki page for obstacle 48: “Managers do not support staff exploration and experimentation with Web 2.0″ and to add a collection of links to sources of information about what other authorities have been doing with social media. And I quickly discovered  there are a lot of great examples out there. Take a look at the wiki page here and see if you can add to it…

We only had 15 minutes in our #localgovcamp session to share tips for overcoming the obstacles, and there are still at least 4o obstacle pages which right now only list the problems and no solutions. However, they are all wiki pages, which anyone is welcome to dive in and edit to share their learning, links and insights.

Where next?

I learnt a lot throughout #localgovcamp about organisational change and social media adoption – and I’ll be reflecting more on the insights gained over the coming weeks. However – hopefully there are also some strong next steps coming up to help turn 50 Obstacles, into ‘50 things that use to give us trouble… but we’ve sorted them all out now’ – including a possible session at Reboot Britain. But more on that later…

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Update: Just as I was about to post this, David Wilcox upload this clip he took just after the session…

Last year I wrote a blog post on ‘7 Reasons Why Youth Workers Should Blog’. Since then a few blogs from statutory sector youth workers have made it onto the web, but not all that many.

One of the strongest argument I can see for encouraging more youth blog blogging is the central role that ‘reflective practice’ should play in youth and community development work. In my own work I’ve found blogging to a key tool for my own reflective learning – with the added benefit of making it into shared learning – where I can benefit from the insights of others who read and comment on posts, either via blog comments, or face-to-face.

However, a recent e-mail from a youth worker about the ‘7 reasons why youth workers should blog’ post raised questions about what to do when online reflective practice runs up against issues of confidentiality:

[Blogging] is something we have thought about, for the reasons you listed, but have always come up against the concern over confidentiality. I don’t mean the obvious concern of revealing identities or specific case details, but the general concern of talking about real life young people without being able to check the content is OK with them, or even just simply running the risk that they may recognise themselves in what is being said and feel violated or unhappy about being talked about.

…one of the young people who sits on our advisory board made the point that someone thinking of coming to us, who went onto our website and saw us talking about the work done with other young people could be put off as they would think ‘they could talk about me or my case if i use this service’.

As most of the work I do is with groups, and not relating to very sensitive issues, this isn’t an issue I’ve often run up against directly in work with young people – but challenges of reflective learning and confidentiality are certainly something I’ve come up against as an independent consultant. Here are some of the principles I’ve tried to use:

Share general points of learning, not specifics
Whilst I often try and use a particular story to give context to a blog post, part of my reflective blogging is about drawing out general point from the experience. If I start writing a narrative blog post, and it strays into content which could be confidential, or which I’m not sure should be immediately public, then I’ll often change the headline to one more general, and rewrite the post to draw out the point of learning – rather than the origin of that learning.

No allusions
With a few exceptions (and only for organisations) I’m either writing explicitly about someone or something, confident that I either have consent or that I am happy for the subject to know about and read the blog post in question.

Allusions to people or situations so that people could work out what something is about with enough background information are out.

Wait a while
Sometimes even a general learning point can be problematic if people involved will be able to work out the situation it is drawn from – and if this reveals information that people involved may wish is not shared widely.

In these cases, sometimes a blog post may end up in the draft folder for a while, either for the point of learning to be combined in with another post, or to be posted in the future – when sharing it isn’t such a sensitive issue.

Some things stay in the drafts
There are some posts which it is useful to write for purposes of reflective learning. But which it is not right to share (in most cases on this blog because they’re just not interesting enough…!)

Respect & constructive comment
I try not to blog anything which I wouldn’t be happy discussing with the people involved in the blog post – and to blog on the spirit of constructive comment rather than ranting or criticism.

In the particular case of setting up a blog for a youth service – it may be worth asking whether an organisational public blog is the right platform for all the reflective learning of practitioners. There are of course, 6 other reasons at least for youth work blogging…

How do you deal with the tensions between blogging on sensitive topics – and benefit from the shared learning potential of reflective blogging?

(Here endeth my blog post about blogging for 2009)

[Summary: Notes and reflections from the launch conference of EU Kids Online research]

“Can we just get on with it”. Less talking and more action on child internet safety was the pretty clear message from Tanya Byron responding to the research recommendations at the launch of the EU Kids Online research today. But Tanya also made clear that the action should not be reactive, moral panic driven responses to internet use by young people - making the bold (but essential) statement that “We cannot and must-not build an environment for children to develop within which is built around what we see through the eyes of the most vulnerable child”.

There has been a lot of talk in sessions and coffee breaks today about the need for a more naunced approach to the often moral-panic driven debates about risk - not least with a great input from Janis Wolak reflecting on the different discourses that researchers are intentionally, or unintentionally constructing around the internet and young people. Crucially Janis highlighted the difference between the claim that

And I thought it may be helpful to add links to few resources and other blog posts I’ve been working on which overlap with some of the focus in the EU Kids Online project:

• Online Citizenship for Young People - E-safety project ideas (a series of project plans for equipping young people with critical literacies for interacting online - based around a model of critical questions).

• Getting social and keeping safe: principles for safe and effective social network site applications (an analysis, policy and practice paper on designing safer Social Network Site applications - based on Children’s Rights and an understanding of childhood. Including an outline risk assessment template)

• The Youth Work and Social Networking project - building a case for the informal educator in promoting positive online behaviours; (Interim & final research report, + presentations and action research log)
• Draft guidance on Safe and Effective Engagement with Social Network Sites for Youth Professionals (5 Page document for practitioners)
• UK Council on Child Internet Safety - The Right Approaches are About Informal Education - notes on the launch of UKCCIS (Blog post)

And also - the Youth Work Online Network, Connected Generation unConference on the 11th July 2009, and the Network Particatipation space are all spaces of ongoing dialogue about positive work with young people online - which builds on safe-and-sound foundations.