Unsolicited advice on learning, teaching and leadership

The author argues that we need to view teachers and children as dramatically more competent, creative and capable than the accepted conventional wisdom suggests. He outlines first principles for the future of schools, drawing on students’, teachers’ and parents’ capacity for learning through experience. He explores the role of teacher as researcher, and of technology as bestowing agency rather than modernity. He concludes that we have the knowledge and materials to amplify the potential of each learner, but what is required is a sense of urgency, recognition that things need not be as they seem, and a willingness to teach better than we were taught.