REBEL IDEAS IN EDUCATION

Recently I have been reading Matthew Syed’s ‘Rebel Ideas’ and his books are always rather thought provoking from an educational perspective. Previously he has written ‘Bounce’ that looked at Carol Dweck’s ‘growth mindset’ theory and ‘Black Box Thinking’ that leaned very hard on ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande, which inspired the book for schools ‘Ticked Off’ by Harry Fletcher-Wood. He has also written a rather inspirational book which is full of good advice for youngsters called ‘You Are Awesome’.

In ‘Rebel Ideas’ he looks at the important of ‘diverse thinking’ and it follows a similar path to the books by David Epstein (Range), Tim Harford (Messy) and Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From/Farsighted). So what can educationalists learn from this book?

Firstly it would be prudent to think about the cognitive diversity in your teams that are making the big decisions in your school. If not, how can you go around getting that diversity? At my school, we have a secondment onto the SLT and if you don’t do this, it might give senior management an opportunity to bring some fresh ideas into the team. I’ve been part of that secondment and I witnessed on a number of occasions about groupthink within the senior management team. Matthew Syed talks about the hierarchical issues you have within teams and how, over time, they conform to the thinking of the leader or just assume that they no best. For me there was no challenge to the Head’s authority and this was problematic. I think the Head rather liked me on the team (he once told a colleague it was better having me pissing out rather than pissing in) and was appreciative of the ideas I was bringing to the table. I thought it showed good leadership that he was prepared to have me on the team despite the hassle it may have caused him.

In the book, Matthew Syed discusses ‘Shadow Boards’ and this could potentially work in schools. Most of the time, senior management teams are made up of those that have been in teaching for years and may not have taught a full-time timetable or been a form teacher for a long time. Therefore if decisions are being made, they could maybe set up a ‘shadow board’ of younger teachers who could give them a different perspective to their decision making.

Obviously decisions made by SLT impact students and all schools have a Student Council that they could hear from that would create greater diversity in the decision making process, however, it is worth thinking about the diversity within the School Council. I’ve been in charge of a School Council and whether you like it or not, they are filled with the really keen students who might not be the school norm. How can you reach out to the wider school community and attract a greater variety of students to sit on the School Council? Maybe a better way to choose a School Council would be through a lucky dip, a bit like jury service, where you are then pretty much guaranteed diversity.

From a wider perspective, it’s also worth thinking about how we can get diverse thinking in educational policy making. In the book, Matthew Syed talks about the difference between information bubbles and echo chambers. Information bubbles are when you close off thinking outside of your own viewpoint whilst echo chambers are accepting of outside thinking but then demonise that thinking in order to solidify the original viewpoint. In the educational world you could argue that this is what happens between the trads and the progressives (if you wish to make it a binary world) and in the Twitter world, those echo chambers exist. At this moment in time, you’d argue that from the government’s perspective, they are on the trad side. You can see this within the educational debate and you wonder whether the new DfE Behavioural Taskforce (led by Tom Bennett) is significantly diverse enough to bring about solutions that could work for all.

Related to behaviour, Matthew Syed also has a chapter related to averages and how the world is designed around the ‘average’ person and again, this can easily be related to schools. Obviously behavioural systems are a ‘one-size fits all’ policy and rightly so in many respects as you need consistency. However, clearly students are all different, there is no average and within the behavioural debate that is going on in school, it is worth remembering that. As I was reading the chapter and thinking about school, it made me remember a bit in Mike Brearley’s book ‘The Art of Captaincy’ when he talks about the difference in motivating Bob Willis and Ian Botham. He said that Bob needed an arm around him, to remind him how good he was, whilst Ian needed to be told he was rubbish and get him fired up. This is always worth remembering in the classroom. I’m going to say something controversial now. I will sometimes treat naughty students a bit different to the norm. Why? Because sometimes (as long as they are not disturbing the class too much), I’d rather keep them in the classroom and in the long term, keep them in school. If you (sometimes) go too hard on students and follow policy too strictly, you could find themselves excluded from school, out with a gang and before you know it, they are a major headline in a newspaper. This is not being an apologist for bad behaviour, it’s just understanding that all students are different and behavioural systems have to have some flexibility built into them. Sometimes (in the words of Matthew Syed) we have to go ‘beyond the average’.

If you read the book, I have no doubt you will come up with even more ideas about how schools can embrace collective intelligence. You could even perceive a world where there should be much more cross-curricular work between departments in order for students to join the dots a bit more, which should make them stronger generally.

If you don’t fancy doing it for that reason, teachers should just read it so they can understand how they can choose the best team for the Parent Association School Quiz!!! Remember the power of diverse thinking!