Cleverness will never be enough - our world needs creativity, and the ability to think holistically and ethically. The test of a successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from a school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea of how to acquire and use it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The pendulum has been swinging rapidly from side to side.
Political positions continue to be staked out.
But neither polarity is good enough. The challenge is to better understand metacognition - how we can make thinking visible and consciously direct our multiple learning strategies. This will give us the key to transform education. We really can learn how to learn, with a clarity that was not possible even five years ago. The nature of home and community.