John L. Dennis
At the EAIE 2019 in Helsinki, Simon Anholt, founder of www.goodcountry.com gave a compelling Plenary talk on what he called the “Good Generation.” The idea behind the Good Generation is to develop a global pact around a set of about 10 virtues/values that educators and policy-makers would agree on that would allow today's youth to be change agents.
In the year since that the conference, I have thought deeply about this exciting and challenging idea and in the meantime have had many conversations about this with colleagues and friends.
Then in June, Anholt and I began discussing the ideas behind the Good Generation and recently we talked again about these issues during a call.
DENNIS: What I've realized, which you have pointed out is that what I've been thinking about regarding the Good Generation is more about how can we educate children to be better, whole, and happier human beings, while your question is more narrow, i.e., how can we equip and encourage children to run towards the global challenges rather than run away from them.
DENNIS: How can we educate children to be better, whole, and happier human beings?
ANHOLT: The only shot at getting broad international agreement on such a sensitive topic is to anchor the whole thing safely in the realm of concrete, external, universal and universally accepted challenges. The UN has already done the hard work in getting the SDGs on almost all governments’ agendas, and indeed getting them to commit to working towards those specific goals, and the Good Generation project should take advantage of that.
ANHOLT: How can we equip and encourage children to run towards the global challenges rather than run away from them?
DENNIS: As a psychologist who studies education, I need to look to the theories, and I always start with Maria Montessori’s method and others like it – i.e., Froebel, Reggio Emilia, and Waldorf-Steiner. These methods are revolutionary and can yield outstanding results when applied correctly. What is so brilliant is that these theories were devised by just observing children, and I think that what they were able to come up with principles that map on well to what you are looking for the Good Generation Project.
ANHOLT: I’m still resisting the temptation to speculate about what those virtues/values might be: this is a sort of ritual self-denial thing as I can hardly imagine a more exciting task, but at the same time it’s obvious that the credibility of the thing would be close to zero if it had my – or anyone else’s – personal prejudices all over it.
DENNIS: OK, but still let's see if this virtue/value proposal I have can have some traction.
At the simplest level, I have Think, Seek, and Live as the core virtues/values.
By THINK I mean valuing figuring things out.
By SEEK I mean valuing achieving goals.
By LIVE I mean valuing your mind.
Think - Children are conceptualizing and problem-solving. Children creatively discover how to categorize, notice similarities and differences, and form principles.
Seek - Children are self-directed and encouraged to set their own goals as their fundamental mode of functioning in the classroom.
Live - Children achieve self-efficacy as they achieve pride in their accomplishments.
ANHOLT: A number of similar schemes seem to have failed to make much impact in the past, and as far as I can see it has a lot to do with how effective they’ve been at enthusing young people with the topics. Too preachy/negative/doom-laden? Too much moralising and not enough real learning? Too much principle and not enough practice?
DENNIS: What about these practices for the realization of three core values/virtues?
Mind/body integration - movement and cognition are intertwined.
Autonomy - freedom within limits where learners feel better, learn more, behave better when they are in control of their lives.
Individualized learning - learners need to follow their interests.
Collaboration and caring - learners need to collaborate and in collaborating you learn the art of caring for others.
Intrinsic rewards - extrinsic rewards do not work as well as intrinsic rewards.
Direct experience matters - hands-on experience is learning in context - which is better than learning in abstraction.
Student-centered - learners need to be guided.
Order - an orderly learning environment assists with mental order.
So you have 3 core values/virtues and then 8 practices that help realize them all to train the child’s psycho-conceptual approach to the world – it forms their what they do, think and feel – as it determines what they will do to seek pleasure. Training the right psycho-conceptual approach, you are teaching children how to value figuring things out, value achieving goals, and value their mind.
ANHOLT: The two of us do of course overlap significantly, and I agree with your point that “psycho-epistemology … determines everything else”, and that attempting to teach better ways of being in the world without considering the whole child would be a mistake. On the other hand, I foresee a difficulty in persuading the majority of national governments to adopt a programme that – at first glance – might look more like an attempt to impose “Western”, “liberal”, “secular” cultural and social values on their children, rather than trying to fix the Grand Challenges or meet the SDGs.
I’m in favour of arguing for a broader, psycho-epistemological approach once everybody is on board, the compact is agreed and drawn up, and it’s time to discuss implementation.
The other thing that I’d personally like to see front & centre is the international, cross-cultural dimension – one of the things that’s painfully absent from the curriculum in so many countries – a specific antidote to malignant nationalism. Creating happier, healthier, wiser and more responsible adults is essential, but if they still frame themselves first and foremost as citizens of a specific nation, then the impact of the project is likely to be diminished.
DENNIS: Thanks so much for having this discussion and really looking forward to following the Good Generation project as it moves forward.
Watch Simon Anholt's EAIE plenary talk on the Good Generation, and learn more about his recently published book, The Good Country Equation.