Secondary Schooling

"And so it has come to this...", as the excellent webcomic xkcd notes, is a rather useful line. It happened to insert itself into my stream of consciousness as I contemplated Monday's changes at the Citadel of Wyverns on the imaginary White Cliffs.

I saw change coming about nine years ago, and the documentary evidence for that is (amazingly) still stored in places as diverse as the Cathedral of the Book. However, reactionary forces of the decadent establishment pushed back strongly. Many felt that change for the sake of change was being proposed. They were unable to see necessary change, even as it forced them to move along.

And here we stand. Will people still keep building sandcastles as the tide comes in? Some people are too young to be acting so old; some are too old to be acting so young. The staff room in the old days reminded me of a Fox TV series I like a lot: NCIS. You could get your team together and start moving quickly when there was work to do.

Now, it's all drama and intrigue and something more like Borgias and bourgeoisie than sense and sensibility. But there is light coming down from the shiny and upright dome that looms above the benighted hill. And so, we Wyverns keep the faith and wait.

I shall go look for Sir Wolff and the blade that Oldham gave his forefathers.

Resurgam

My favoured team was founded in 1886. It has seen hard times of late, relatively speaking. While always ranked near the top of its league, it has struggled to really impress. Even its trophies have looked tarnished.

This year has brought in new personnel. There is still much deadwood to be cleaned up, but the new growth doesn't look half bad, and the seasoned imports don't look bad at all. There is hope for the rest of this season, which seemed to have kicked off with a massive defeat.

Catastrophic Change

Despite all the financial rumblings and the more geological rumblings of earthquakes and such, this time is a relatively peaceful moment in the short history of mankind. When I step back and look at what might have been and what might yet be, the little bumps and excursions of human history seem a lot less demanding on the road travelled, whether more or less.

Take for example the Zanclean flood. In a period of months, the entire Mediterranean basin was filled by the Atlantic Ocean. The water rise was something like 10 metres per day.

Or consider the Yellowstone supervolcano (graphic here). If it blows, at some unknown future time, the Americas will consist of Laurentia, South America, and a lot of tiny bits.

Catastrophes like that go beyond the normal human scale of activities. Our thin veneer of global civilisation would be struck a hammerblow which, even if not fatal, would be crippling.

As it is, we already have lost our sense of proportion. I read the daily and weekly newsdumps, and they are often about 'the Rise of China'. Well, China has long been the world's #1 economy; only in the tiny period of time from the 19th century till today has it been weakened in relation to the rest of the world. It is more accurate to say that the resurgence might be under way, and that certain western powers might seek to stave it off for as long as possible.

Change is the quick eyeblink of history. We look at the very large and the very small, the stuff of physics, and are happy that we seem to be heading towards the limits of knowledge. But everything in the middle is up for grabs. Predicting the behaviour of dark matter does not tell us anything of the role of India in the 21st century, let alone the 22nd.

In that perspective, nothing is catastrophe, merely apostrophe. And what becomes important on the human level is trying to make humans work as best as humans can, with all the accumulated advantages of whatever sort that are useful to humans.

Perhaps what might be most important, then, is not the very large or the very small. What would be most important is helping humans come to terms with each other, to stop frittering the moments away on accumulation of artificial wealth (stuff gained by computed point-scoring mechanisms) and to work towards accumulation of real things.

Assuming, of course, that we can tell the difference anymore.

Thunder

It came even down into the little island and its little hills. The rain fell like spears. The wings of angels beat like shields. The fire was out this cold morning. But Christ is risen indeed, and the world is not the same.

Phase Change

When next month begins, I will have entered a new phase of life. Like some sort of strange austenitic allotrope, I will suddenly develop the ability to absorb huge amounts of random carbide and then become tempered in many different ways to produce all kinds of useful versions of the base metal.

Or maybe not; that might just be pushing an interesting metaphor too far. But what is true is that I will suddenly find myself heading out of an intermediate phase of life, with a few months to make the complete transition. And I don't know, for the first time in my life, what I will end up doing.

It is magnificently, hair-raisingly, exhilarating.

Family Realignment

Over the last three years, the Family has begun regrouping. For more than a decade, corrupt and greedy officials have undermined the Family by all kinds of curious means. In one case, a perfectly good clock tower was demolished to make way for a less perfectly good (but larger and more lucrative) replacement. The old one was iconic; the new one was big and empty.

I say this as one who has read the transcripts of the big Family meeting that was held in Parliament House. I was reminded of this only yesterday when I met up with Adobe and Rocky. The meeting that ensued restored some of my faith in the direction of the Family. When 'our dark ages' was mentioned, I could sense that the healing might begin.

The thing is that we've always had cuckoos in our nests. Some turned out to be very fine birds indeed, men of integrity and creativity. Some, not so fine. It's painful to see that a good hard look at history can turn up some of the latter with very real influence.

And yet, that's what is to be expected. In every large Family, tests, trials and tribulations must be part of the process which has made them Family in the first place and continues to shape them. A Family that overcomes these and somehow retains its values is one that is stronger and collectively wiser.

I smell change in the air. Paradoxically, acts which are designed to stop this kind of change are those which eventually, with hindsight (or in retrospect, if you prefer), lead to a speeding-up of change itself. And then those who have been obstructionist to preserve their own little fiefdoms will be swept aside in the tide of history.

The Global Achievement Gap

Just last year, Tony Wagner published a book with this title. In the book, he pointed out that the high school graduation rate in the US is about 70%. In most other developed countries, that's closer to 90%. 40% of those who do enter college need remedial courses, and 50% of those who enter college never graduate at all.

Wagner thinks that the US school system is not merely failing, but obsolete. If you've followed the figures, it means that only 35% of those who complete high school education make it out with a basic degree. The United States makes up for it by importing talent in huge quantities to fill up the great universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, Stanford and so on.

But the point of all this is that talent is blossoming all over the world. And that talent can travel as fast as an aircraft, or alternatively, as fast as data can be moved for the people with the right talent to process it. In such a milieu, the country with the nimblest minds will make it big; the country with the artificial and unthinking conservatism will decay from the inside out.

The knowledge economy is of course not the only economy in the game. Raw materials and the performing arts, sports, games, and sociocultural structures are hard to shift around as quickly. But these too have economic rules bent out of shape by the warping of time and space called globalisation.

Take Skype and all the other forms of electronic communication for example. They have allowed for distributed family networks across the world. The debility of age is now less of a barrier for the wisdom of the ancients. Modernity has something to contribute to tradition and the idea of family. My parents can now afford to disappear to another country for three months while I handle their stuff by remote control.

Yet the plants still need watering. Even though my brother the plant genius has hooked up an automatic sprinkler system (and would probably add CCTV if he had the time and talent), plants need personal attention. In that respect, plants are like pople.

In this age of mass differentiation, the personal touch is required, and bespoke goods are the greatest of luxuries. Never mind that our ancestors all needed tailors and shoemakers in the narrow streets of the old city; now if you have a personal tailor, people think you must be of a higher social class. Cars are designed with the ability to remember your ideal posture (or lack of it), and perhaps do this for every driver in your family.

All this seems to be part of a world where opposing trends come into conflict, and the centre cannot hold. But that's nothing. What is the problem is that everyone wants to keep the past static and stagnant. What people are not doing is thinking about the past and what should be kept — and what should be discarded.

The global achievement gap is not a thing by itself. It is the manifestation of difference between people forced to discard some of the old stuff so that they can travel fast and light, and those who want to hold on to everything until they collapse under the weight of history. And the sad thing is that neither bunch knows what is going on.

Seasonal Change

My father is getting old. And he is no longer skinny the way we used to take for granted. Mother hasn't aged at all very much, except that if you look carefully, my maternal grandfather's hair genes have tolled/told the final story there. And I, I have about ten times the amount of white hair I had last year. I put it down to December stress.

I think the safest course of action for anyone in December is to cut and run. Pretend you have minimal family, no in-laws or outlaws or relations of dubious genetic provenance. I am all for spending family time with the two, three, four, five, six or (stretching things a bit, are we, much?) seven people who really mean something to you in the warm and intimate family sense; the rest ought to be silence and contemplation of the old year's passing and the new year's uncertain squalls.

Then again, it is impossible to separate your availability to those you love from your availability to those who you don't feel so charitably inclined towards. Especially when you may be seeing both in the same place and at the same time.

The biggest change in me, I suppose, is oddly bipolar. On one hand, I have a much larger tolerance for things I used to hate; on the other, I have a greater ability for doing without the things I like. It all makes for a less unnerving season, a less dramatic one.

Unchanging

The theme of that book is that nothing really changes, that randomness and chance are dominant in the world of real things. The book says that the only place in which this is different is the place of the mind, where one can think about why this is so, and why the world is nothing but the vanity of illusion.

That book is the book of Qoheleth, which a younger civilisation now calls Ecclesiastes. As we look towards a change in paradigm come November 4 this year, a change which seems profound in the world of men, it is instructive to read this old book.

Here is Ecclesiastes 8:8-9:

There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.

Perhaps this is one of those times, in which those who have power over others, or who gain that power, will find that it is bitter indeed in the end. But as the Preacher said, there is nothing new under the sun. The change that we can believe in is fleeting unless it is a change in the hearts and minds of men; our historical awareness tells us that overall there will never be such a thing.

In the end, it boils down to the audacity of hope; a generation must desire to believe that things can be made better even though the institutions of the world have failed, are failing, will fail or are themselves 'epic fail'. Yet even this belief may not save us from the near-certainty that somehow, some people will screw things up, and that will balance the books of life.

Six Secrets of Change

Michael Fullan has been at it again. In his 2008 work, The Six Secrets of Change, he writes about six key factors which have brought success to all kinds of institutions in his almost 30 years of research on change, reform and leadership.

Here are the six secrets, as listed in the contents page of that book (which proper CEOs of proper learning institutions would do well to read):

1. Love your employees
2. Connect peers with purpose
3. Capacity building prevails
4. Learning is the work
5. Transparency rules
6. Systems learn

It is a sobering and wonderful list, especially as explicated in the usual clear Fullan style.

It is also one of the many reasons why I was laughing so hard today. I think Fullan is wrong in one sense; if context is everything, and drama (and other sleights-of-hand and trompe l'oeil tricks) can prevail over reality, then sufficient unplanned and chaotic action with hyped-up positive outcomes will lead to true success. Then there is no need for any of these factors, and a theory can be put forward which uses this key finding as a fulcrum.

I mean, aren't you afraid that what I've said is true? What if an organisation which displays none of these six secrets evinces all kinds of successful change? Then there are only four main possible conclusions: 1) the secrets are there, but well-concealed; 2) the successful changes are an illusion; 3) the secrets are not necessary for successful change; 4) the kind of success Fullan is talking about is not real success.

See? Nothing to be afraid of: just another opportunity for educational research.

Change Forces

Things have changed: the College of the Wyverns is larger within its crammed confines, and the School that feeds it feeds it much less than before.

Things have not changed: the young people are the same, idealistic without knowing why and cynical for much the same reasons.

Things have changed: the people who worked for the God first, and the youth of the island next, then Family and society, and lastly themselves – these people have a different order of priorities.

Things have not changed: the same people are behaving the same way, as always; it is only that there are more of some kinds of people and fewer of some other kinds.

Things have changed: the education we provide is a new, post-colonial, globalist, rationalist, multicultural, holistic... (et cetera) kind of education.

Things have not changed: the students treat their education as cavalierly as ever.

Things have changed: the vision and mission are not the same.

Things have not changed: the real vision and mission are the same; it is only that they are not up there in big letters of wood and stone.

The equilibrium has shifted, but not as far as some people think. The game has still got much to play for, and it is only just after the opening stage.

Change We Should Believe In

It's of course one of those things that gets to me, that although I support Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America, I will not be able to vote for him in November. That's because I'm (according to various authorities) a citizen of the European Union, for one.

But I'm also a citizen of the world, and a teacher. And as a teacher, I find myself reflecting a lot on what the big nations get up to when they publicly take up positions on education. Senator Obama's position on education, as on November 2007, is something that I can believe in: a well-rounded education, proper support for teachers and schools, accountability of teachers, accountability to the future of all our children, specifics which he occasionally elaborates on in other speeches. He has obviously thought about what educational outcomes ought to be, not just the first-stage and second-stage arguments about what education is and how it should be carried out.

Even if, as some cynics charge, this is all a pipe-dream, it is a good thing to dream about. And it is certainly a better thing to work towards in the long term. I wish the Senator all the best, especially in the face of cynicism masquerading as experiential wisdom. I can just imagine what some of my previous superiors in many different institutions might have said; I am fairly certain most of them are McCain types, and at least one is very much a William Jefferson Clinton person in both good and not-so-good ways.

But as my grandfather used to say, "Everybody has something good about them; it's just that for some people you have to look harder."

Changeling

Here we are, doing our work, going about our business, making ends meet. And still our lives are guided firmly and patronisingly by the people in the smoke-filled back room. I know this, having seen many such rooms.

Transparency is anathema to those who are addicted to power and control. It is perfectly all right for a leader to take the reins which have been bestowed upon him and to use them well and openly. It is not so when you cannot see who else is guiding the reins, or when their uses are kept secret and undocumented.

There are a few tests in any corporate environment. Is work appraisal based on pre-agreed terms? Is every part of it transparent and open to critique and resolution thereof? Are salaries and compensations, bonuses and perquisites all part of an open plan, bestowed based on documented criteria? Is information open to the use of anyone who needs it? Is fair comment allowed? Is there, conversely, a preference that commentary be kept in smoke-filled rooms and not released for general discussion?

We see change to the north of us and to the south of us, change to the east and west. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. But even the tenets of the moldering and corrupt past agree that, in principle, people should be empowered by information and by the wherewithal to work out its best use – and the tools to implement such.

We stand on the cusp of worldwide change. Whether we elect to remain shadowy figures in the wasteland, or come into the light, will determine whether we become changelings or change-agents. While it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it is also true that when one has been kept in the dark for a long time, the light makes a welcome change.

Feel the wind. Is it freedom that you smell? Or is it the blast of armageddon?

Old Soldiers

Today I had a lovely breakfast with an old friend and companion. We worked well together for almost ten years before he decided to leave our corporation and find his own dream. He told me that I should have left years ago, that the existing situation was not big enough for the breadth of my restless vision, that there were still virtually unbounded opportunities in other areas.

I have always admired this friend of mine. I was once his reporting officer, but I long-ago realised that he would always be a greater success than I in the murky world in which we live. I remember with wry humour the day I wondered if I should hive off some of my own salary to grant him a better bonus. Some people were pretty unhappy that I should suggest such a thing. But I said, "He did the work, not I; it is not right that a useful man should go unrewarded just because he reports to me."

Months later, he and all those in similar situations got a raise. But the whole episode, and many other episodes since, have convinced me about one particular thing. It came to mind over breakfast.

There are at least three kinds of old soldiers in the area of conflict in which we serve. The first kind continues to be of use, is loyal in all things, may be eventually discarded as fading powers are eclipsed by rising stars. The second type has been of use, continues to fight with the tactics and strategies of the last war, extols conservatism so that the last war may continue. The third type is a fully competent soldier who realises that his forte is to be a general, and changes theatres in order to use his gift. (In some countries there is a fourth type who knows he will be a general no matter what and is in a hurry to become one, becomes one, and then is made CEO of a different kind of endeavour altogether.)

I don't know if I clearly fit into any of these categories. Categories, in the end, are only as good as the context in which they arise – and sometimes not even then. But old soldiers never really die; their memories live on for good or ill after them.

Changeling

Generally, I'm happy to be doing what I do. I must confess I feel perturbed that so many people are asking about my plans for next year as if I haven't any. It has in fact triggered an unusual response in me. I am seriously considering change now.

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Edit: Well, at least someone thinks I have a choice of careers. Check out the beautiful art of Justin Michael Jenkins. Especially you, dancer(s). You know who you are.

Changing The World

If positive change to the world is at all to be desired, one source of such desire is here. Here is the secular core, the framework of the world in which our spiritual reality is given its temporal and temporary bearings. And it isn't as bad as 'secular' seems to connote where spiritual things are concerned.

Yet I suppose we should remember that good management ideas aren't necessarily good spiritual ideas. I have cringed many times when preachers persist in treating the story of Jethro (Moses' father-in-law) as a paean to the benefits of the delegation of authority. Delegation is a great secular solution, but in this particular case, Jethro was high priest of Midian - and thus the spiritual leader of a tribe of pagan animists.

If you should decide to read Exodus 18, the extent of Jethro's perfidy (deliberate or not) becomes clear. Jethro is clearly impressed with Moses' God. He goes so far as to offer sacrifices and say that this God is greater than all other gods. But he adroitly switches the topic of conversation the next day to how onerous Moses' work must be for God, and how much less strenuous it would be if he farmed it out (Exodus 18:13-23). Moses agrees, in verse 24. And it is this decision which creates a community capable of defying Moses' God later on (see Exodus 32).

God's work is never delegated except through obvious and outstanding representatives. His task to you is His word to you alone. It hardly ever comes through an intermediary, and even if well-meaning (or seemingly well-meaning) people offer you a great-looking secular solution (one which makes life easier for you; or gains you plaudits, gold or glory), it may not be what God had in mind. The cost of Moses following his pagan father-in-law's advice was a disaster for his people. It was a disaster that almost changed the world - in a bad way.

The Greater Trumps: (21) Temperance

This time, there are two chalices. In the background, a lady bears the first chalice, pouring its surplus into the empty second chalice. The chalice is held by a man, nude and muscular, kneeling with his left side facing us. It seems oddly domestic, until we notice the tiny details.

The surplus of the first chalice is fiery gold; the pooling liquid in the second seems to be mercury; more unusually, the flow appears to be from the second vessel to the first! The lady has wings, and seems to be of unearthly beauty; the man's skin is stony, and he is unusually plain. The four elements, it would seem, are all present.

In earlier images of Temperance, water is turned to wine, a magician balances two chalices, a centaur juggles balls of fire and air. At first glance, the image is named 'Temperance' because it seems to be trying to produce a happy medium. But the ancients sometimes called this card 'Alchemy', or 'Transformation'. It symbolises the harnessing of change between two opposites to produce Synthesis. It reminds us that we have two types of choice - synergy or compromise - when asked to choose a middle way between two powerful opposites.

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This is one of my favourite images in terms of ambiguity. What on earth is being accomplished here? Will anything ever change? Is any question ever answered?

It is in Yeats's poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus, that we see a synthesis of all four elements and an answer of sorts. It's a rather gloomy poem, I'm afraid. But these closing lines will haunt me for a long time:

And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Piers Anthony calls the image 'Transfer'. It raises a further question: after something is transferred from one place to another, is it still the same thing?

The Greater Trumps: (19) Death

Death rides, armoured in black steel, against the white fire of the rising sun. Somehow resplendent in his fuliginous robes, the gaunt figure on a pale horse strikes fear into every watching soul. In long and skilful hands, Death wields a scythe; he sometimes bears a flag unfurling to reveal a single silver rose. It is almost too obvious a symbol. Yet, near the hooves of his charger, a small child plays, fearless and unmoved by the grim sight above.

The image here is one of Transformation, from one state to another of almost-equal potential. Death is the facilitator here, a catalyst which shifts the nature of the landscape, from the familiar to the unknown, from one perspective to another; and of course, Death walks the thin line, the boundary or terminus between Life and what lies beyond it. Yet, Death is also Change, the progression from one state to another quite different - from night to day as the sun rises, from darkness to light, from childhood to maturity. Death is the harbinger of the new.

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It's odd how often one returns to T S Eliot. And yet, he was one of the great prophets of the Age of Decay - so perhaps we should not be surprised. In his Dans le Restaurant, and again in his magnum opus, The Waste Land, Eliot returns to the theme of Death as transformation.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

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Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain:
Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin,
Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.
Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible,
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.

Death transforms us all; the death of self and the resultant transformation, while still in this flesh, may be one for the better.