It seems that the press can never fully celebrate A-level success!  You get the sense that, whatever the results, they would be problematic. If the number of A grades  falls then standards are dropping, teaching is not good enough. If the number rises we have grade inflation and the grade is devalued. This is underpinned by the belief that it can only really be possible for a particular percentage to be ‘top’ and that grades should be distributed according to a pre-ordained statistical pattern.  When I did A-level exam marking many years ago there was always adjustment every year as to where the grade boundary would lie. So one year a student might need to get 70% for a grade A another year that might drop to 68% or rise to 72%. Of course this year has been exceptional as it is teachers who have awarded grades. My understanding is that many students have sat endless tests within class or at home in order to provide evidence for the awarded grade. My heart goes out to them and I am genuinely happy for those who feel all their hard work has finally been recognised and rewarded.

But it all does raise much bigger issues about learning, the measurement of what might have been learned and what it means to be educated. Education encompasses so much more than what can be demonstrated in an exam or a test paper. I really do despair at the shallowness of understanding about this amongst politicians and feel that the shallowness of that understanding is a direct reflection of the education they in turn have received!  If you are anything like me what you see in many of our leaders, and indeed across much of our society,  is a lack of wisdom.  We see the desire to gain and hold onto political power. We see policies which are created to curry popular opinion and appease criticism. We see cronyism, confusion and coverups. To admit that you might have been wrong is unthinkable. It is said that we get the politicians we deserve. So what does it say about our society?!

Last week I left spaces in the hope of creating some kind of silence in the writing.  I have experienced quite a lot of silence recently, and I begin to wonder what the impact might be on so many of our institutions if people at least occasionally sat together in silence.  I am now half way through my Transpersonal Coaching course and it is the most fascinating learning experience. At the moment, as students of the course, we are all coaching each other. The process involves sharing something called ‘open awareness’ (OA). In OA you direct your awareness deep into the body but also out into the space around and beyond. It creates an inner stillness which coach and client share and it is from this stillness that the exploration follows.  What is so curious is what emerges from the stillness: images, feelings, emotions, new ideas, insights.  These are not coming from conventional ‘thinking’ but from a deeper ‘knowing’. The outcome can be a shift in understanding, viewing the issue you presented in a slightly different way, a sense that you have a different understanding even if you cannot voice what that is.  Although there is plenty we can read about and there are various psychological models to consider, the learning is effectively experiential. Your deeper understanding comes from engaging with direct experience and not from reading about what somebody else has said.

What saddens me about so much of our education is that it lacks any kind of spaciousness and reflection on experience. It is test and information driven. There really is very little time to really begin to understand more deeply the meaning or implications of what is being taught. How often have students heard  or said the phrase “there is so much to get through”. It can feel like a fight against time - so much to cover in so few weeks. The experience can be one of cramming information in. I remember with A-level Psychology the endless pieces of research students would be expected to be able to remember. They were expected to ‘evaluate’ it and the ‘better’ students became adept at commenting on reliability and validity, ethics, replicability etc etc. They had learned how to do it. They knew what the exam wanted.  Those who found it more difficult or whose memories were less good, could easily experience a sense of overwhelm and a feeling of not being good enough.

We see this replicated in so many walks of life: more, faster, quicker, with the  assumption that on some level those who earn the most money must be the most valuable to our society. Yet we know how wrong that is.

I am not arguing against the need for rigorous assessment. If a surgeon was going to cut me open I would want to be confident that they knew their stuff!   If I employed a lawyer to represent me I would want to be confident that they thoroughly understood the law and I hope the person who services my car understands what to me is a complete mystery!  But I would also hope that each of those people had enough self awareness and intuition to be able to make a good decision if my case turned out not to be ‘textbook’. I would hope that my surgeon, lawyer or mechanic would be able to listen to me and not make assumptions about what they thought I wanted or needed. I would hope that they were not going to make errors because they were over-tired or personally stressed.

I wonder to what extent you feel your own education or that of your children included any of these features?

Subjects and topics were interconnected.

There was a value on the immeasurable as well as the measurable.

You were encouraged to engage with the mystery of your own existence and your place within the cosmos.

Loving -kindness was practiced.

Caring, compassion and service were valued.

Physical movement, music and artistic expression were as important as academic achievement.

There was the sense of enough time.

You were encouraged to reflect on your own thinking process and how you arrived at a decision.

You understood that someone could hold a very different opinion and you were encouraged to understand that difference not reject it.

You had the experience of being deeply listened to.

You were taught how to listen to others.

You came to understand that your own needs and those of others were intertwined.

I do think that many teachers are aware of all this and things are changing. But as we are faced with the challenges of mental health, climate change, extremism and all the other problems facing our society we do need to begin to think and behave differently. We need to shift the focus of our education system. We need to realise that whilst we might feel we are running out of time the answers lie outside time. We need spaciousness in ourselves and in our institutions, we need to become wiser.