Will Richardson on Why the Status Quo in Education Fails Today’s Learners

PODCAST Season 5 EPISODE 2

Will Richardson

Founder

Future Serious School 

Quote of the Podcast: 

"The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world, full stop." ~Dougald Hine

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Will is a lifelong educator who, after 22 years in the classroom, has worked with educators in over 25 countries to push their thinking about the purpose and practice of schooling in a time of deepening challenges and emerging opportunities for change. He is a parent, an author of six books, and the founder of Future Serious Schools. His recent manifesto "Confronting Education in a Time of Complexity, Chaos, and Collapse" is a provocation for a new "why" of schooling and the foundation for a seven-week workshop of the same title which is now entering its third cohort.

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators.

• 30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• Tell us about Future Serious Schools
• Share the essence of your Manifesto
• Share what people will gain from participating in your next cohort
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?”

Podcast/ website/ book shoutouts 

Website: https://futureserious.school/

Manifesto: https://futureserious.school/manifestoedu/

Books: Hospicing Modernity, Education in a Time Between Worlds, At Work in the Ruins, Pedagogies of Collapse. 

Podcasts: The Great Turning, The Great Simplification, Future Learning Design.

Transcript

Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Education Perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education.

Liza Holland [00:00:28]:
Welcome back everyone to Education Perspectives. Today. We are so excited to have Will Richardson with us. Will is a lifelong educator who, after 22 years in the classroom, has worked with educators in over 25 countries to push their thinking about the purpose and practice of schooling in a time of deepening challenges and emerging opportunities for change. He is a parent and author of six books and the founder of Future Serious Schools. His recent manifesto, Confronting Education in a Time of Complexity, Chaos and Collapse, is a provocation for a new why of Schooling and the foundation for a seven week workshop of the same title, which is now entering its third cohort and play. Welcome Ro Richardson. We're so glad to have you here on Education Perspectives.

Will Richardson [00:01:26]:
Well, thanks very much for having me, Liza. I really appreciate it.

Liza Holland [00:01:29]:
Well, I want to kick us off with what I think is a very appropriate question for you from a 30,000 foot view. Why do you think that we as a society invest in education?

Will Richardson [00:01:40]:
Wow. Well, I think we probably do it for a variety of reasons. Obviously we want to prepare our kids for the lives they're going to lead in the future for as much as we can figure out what that looks like at any given moment. Right. I think that's getting harder and harder to do these days with the amount of change that's happening and with the speed of change. I think in this country we're trying to prepare our kids to be good citizens. And I think if we're going to be honest about it, that's a little bit in flux right now too. It's a little bit fraught, obviously, without getting into it too much.

Will Richardson [00:02:16]:
But education has become politicized and it's, it's tough to navigate that piece of it. Like what, what does it mean to be a good citizen right now? How do we, what do we teach? What are we allowed to teach? What aren't we allowed to teach? So I think that that has a big piece of it and I think if we're going to be honest about it, education still plays a pretty big childcare role in this country and in places around the world it allows parents, allows the adults to, to work, to do the things that they need to do. Increasingly in this country, both parents are, have jobs. And so if we weren't, if There wasn't some place to have our kids go during the day. It would drastically change the way we think about living life and the daily date on a day to day basis. So I think it's, it's a little of all those and probably others too, other reasons, but I think those are the three that come to mind pretty quickly.

Liza Holland [00:03:15]:
Good answer, Good answer.

Will Richardson [00:03:17]:
Is that the right answer?

Liza Holland [00:03:19]:
There's no right or wrong answer in that one. But it's always interesting to hear because the, the breadth and depth of what I've heard in answer to that question has just been fascinating. I love it. I love it. So you've been involved in education for a long time. What drew you to education?

Will Richardson [00:03:35]:
Well, I started teaching when I got my original career was a journalist right out of college, but I did that for only a couple of years and then decided to go back to school and get a master's in teaching. I had some, as most teachers usually tell the story. I had a couple people in my life who were really important to me as teachers. And the journalism thing, while it was interesting, it just didn't fit for me. So I thought, let me try to become a teacher. And my best friend had become a teacher too, and he loved it. So that's pretty much what got me into the classroom. And yeah, I ended up spending about 22 years in a public high school as a English teacher and then an administrator and then.

Will Richardson [00:04:20]:
Yeah, then left that job to do full time consulting, speaking, writing, working with schools around the world.

Liza Holland [00:04:27]:
Well, tell us a little bit about that. You're speaking, writing, consulting. What are you encouraging schools to do these days?

Will Richardson [00:04:33]:
Well, I think that the biggest. I just started a brand. I don't even know what to call it. It's not really a company, but it's, it's, it's a site called Future Serious School. Future Serious Schools. So what I'm trying to do right now is to help schools contextualize what's happening in the world and then use that as an audit for what they're doing in classrooms and then try to figure out what kids need in the future that we're not giving them right now. And I think, to be honest with you, I think it's a lot. I don't think we're preparing kids very well for what's coming.

Will Richardson [00:05:12]:
I don't think we're being honest with them. I don't think we're being honest with ourselves, to be honest. I think we're in denial in a lot of ways about the way the world is Spinning right now, I think we feel a bit powerless in education to really maybe approach those denials or to embrace those denials. But I'm also trying to help schools. And to be honest with you, I'm. I'm done trying to help schools because I've come to the conclusion that schools really can't change. So I'm, I'm really focused now on individuals who want to build their own personal capacity to understand a lot of these questions that are happening around education and what it means to be an educator right now. And yeah, and I guess hoping that trickles down into classroom practice.

Will Richardson [00:06:00]:
But I've become extremely frustrated after 20 years of trying to do change projects in schools. How little of them stick and how most of them fall back to the status quo and how the narrative around what education looks like, what school is supposed to be, the narrative of the school day, all of that is so deeply ingrained that it's very difficult for people in education or anywhere to conceive of something dramatically different that I think would be more relevant for the world today. So yeah, right now I'm, I'm just trying to find people who are ready to go and have those difficult conversations, who want a place where they can be supported in that and to really then figure out what the implications are for whether it's classroom practice or whether it's just their own daily lives in terms of how we operate in the world today.

Liza Holland [00:06:54]:
Let me ask you about your thoughts on the systems in general. You're talking about how incredibly hard it is for education to change. And I agree with you 100%. That's been my lived experience as well. And I have come to the conclusion personally that it has a lot to do with what we measure for. What are we held accountable for in a system. The system works as it was supposed to way back in the early 1900s, but we are not, we're still sticking with that same accountability model all around content. And that makes it extremely difficult to do any types of change.

Liza Holland [00:07:35]:
And I just love your thoughts on that.

Will Richardson [00:07:37]:
Well, I think it's a couple things, right? I think that we've situated schools as the place where kids get prepared to either go to college or go into the workplace. Either way, it's preparation for making money, for participating in the market based economy. And if you want to define what it means to be successful in that, at the end of the day, whether we say it explicitly or implicitly, it's that you've made enough money to have a house to do that, that thing that everybody uses as the measuring stick for whether or not you've achieved some type of economic status or whatever else. Right. So I think that there is a very, and I, I don't know how explicit it is, but it's there, it's always there. We're ready, we're getting you ready to go and get a job. Yeah, pretty much. Right.

Will Richardson [00:08:28]:
And, and to be a part of the system. But I, I think the other piece of it is, is that the success metrics have to change. Right. The success metrics that we've had in schools, those ones that I just mentioned, they're not really the measure of success anymore. And increasingly I think as the world gets even more complicated and chaotic, they're going to be less and less the measures of success. I think success is going to be. How nimble are you? How minimalist are you? Because I think we're on a consumption narrative that's unsustainable and I think the planet is screaming at us right now that we can't continue operating the way we've been up operating. It's becoming more and more obvious that we are, we are crossing all sorts of ecological boundaries that are crossed because of this idea of capitalism and market based economies and keep extracting from the planet and all of that.

Will Richardson [00:09:25]:
So I think that success narrative is in many ways failing us, ironically. And so that's a big, hairy, huge conversation though, right? Because how do you assess for minimalism or nimbleness or whatever your, those characteristics are? It's, it's much, much vague or less concrete, all of that. Right. And we don't, we don't really like that in schools. We like to be able to measure the measurable. Right.

Liza Holland [00:09:53]:
Sit on a multiple choice test.

Will Richardson [00:09:54]:
Yeah, the immeasurable stuff, although it might be more important, it's just harder. So we're not going to do that. We're just going to stick to what we can put into numbers pretty much. But yeah. So I think that again, we're at an inflection point with a lot of institutions right now. I think again in this country you can see institutional narratives breaking and changing on a daily basis. Right now the things that we oriented our lives on are like all of a sudden, where did that go? And I think that, and obviously not to be political, it's just a fact. Right.

Will Richardson [00:10:30]:
Doesn't matter side of the political spectrum you're on your, your life, the way you operate in this country at least, and lots of places in the world right now is, is just very, very different on a Changing. So I think that's a big part of it. And I don't know how schools catch up to that. I don't know how schools respond to that. I don't think they can in many ways. So anyway, the assessment piece to me is sure, it's a huge driver. I don't know how it fundamentally changes. We can do, we can do takeaway grades and do mastery types of assessments, performance based assessments, that type of thing.

Will Richardson [00:11:08]:
At the end of the day though, they're still going to assess pretty much the same things. Can you participate? Are you ready to enter the narrative and be successful in it? Rather than are you a good human? Are you healthy? Can you, do you understand what's happening in the world? Right. Can you take care of yourself? Are you connected to your community? Do you have really great relationships? Do you have a relationship to the earth? I think those are a lot more important, right. Than can you apply the Pythagorean theorem or can you identify a passive voice in a sentence? Yeah. And, and then we haven't even talked about AI, but certainly that's another challenge that is definitely changing the whole landscape and we're not responding to that in any really meaningful way other than to try to figure out how to make kids AI literate, which no one knows, even though what that means.

Liza Holland [00:12:06]:
Or to ban it altogether.

Will Richardson [00:12:07]:
Or to ban it because it's easier.

Liza Holland [00:12:09]:
It's easier. Yep, yep.

Will Richardson [00:12:12]:
Let's ban cell phones. Let's ban all the things that. Look, it's not to say there aren't arguments that those technologies have problems and are causing problems. Absolutely. Right. But banning never solves the problem. Right. It's like it's a can, it just can.

Will Richardson [00:12:32]:
And the, the, the problems are still there. They just don't manifest themselves in the same way. So anyway, here.

Liza Holland [00:12:41]:
Well, so that kind of takes us back around to future serious schools. What is your hope and what does it look like? What does success look like for you with these cohorts that you're taking on now?

Will Richardson [00:12:52]:
Well, I think what success looks like is that there, that there's a space for people to come together, as I said before, where they can talk about these really hard things and contextualize them in education and collectively figure out what to do next. And that's not what to do next on a huge scale, it's what to do next for yourself. I think a lot of the people who have, have participated just finishing up. In fact, tomorrow is the end of the second cohort and then we're starting a new cohort in September. But I think most of the people who have participated in the first two cohorts are walking away from it knowing that they have so, like I said, a trusted, safe space. And some. Some other people in the world who share their feeling and concern about this moment and who are trying to reimagine what it means for the way we educate kids. It's a really hard conversation because I think a lot of people, even if they acknowledge the things that they're denying about schools and about the world and they talk about them and whatever else, they still go back to their classrooms and they go, I have no idea what to do right in here.

Will Richardson [00:14:04]:
I have no idea how to create a different space for my kids. I have no idea how to bring these topics to them in ways that don't necessarily scare them or in ways that are. Are relevant for them. And you know what I'm saying, It's. It's fraught. And so I think, again, it's not that it's a low bar, because I think it's a really important place to be. If you are in education and you're acknowledging the existential challenges not just to that institution, but to ways of life that are coming to an end, it's a good thing to be able to acknowledge it, but it's still a frustration to not really know how to deal with that in your practice. So, yeah, I think the conversations have been amazing.

Will Richardson [00:14:52]:
I feel very deeply connected to a whole bunch of people who I had never known from around the world, which is great. And I think they feel connected to one another as well, and that's important right now. So that's. To me, that's success.

Liza Holland [00:15:08]:
Oh, that's marvelous. So one of the things that I enjoyed very much from, from your information and from the emails that you send out regularly and whatnot, was you actually wrote a manifesto. Tell us a little about an essence of what made you write a manifesto and what that's about. I'm going to link it in our show notes so other people can read it.

Will Richardson [00:15:31]:
Yeah, thanks. So I think it's really important right now for everyone, but first, especially for educators, to articulate very clearly what they believe and what they first of all believe about the world, what they believe about the purpose of education, what they believe about how children learn best, and what they believe about the future. Right. There's certainly other things, but I think those four from an education context are really important. And so that's what I've tried to do. In this manifesto, I have seven Belief statements that I make, basically, and they run the gamut from this is these are the denials that we have in education. For instance, school is not a place for learning. It's a place for schooling.

Will Richardson [00:16:19]:
And let's be honest about that, right? We can create. We create conditions in schools that have absolutely nothing to do with how people learn best. In fact, they are antithetical to how people learn best. And so let's just be honest that what we're doing here is schooling. It's not learning. And let's think of and discuss the implications of that, right? Let's be honest about the situation in the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I just really felt the need to. To state my beliefs and to articulate them, try to find some coherence in that.

Will Richardson [00:16:52]:
It was a. Just a really great exercise, personally, to go through that and to then put those out into the world and share them and encourage other people to do the same and then to engage in some conversations around it. And there've been some really great conversations around the ideas, and some people will push back on some stuff, other people will amplify it. So I just, again, and I feel like there's a lot of incoherence in schools right now because we don't state what we believe. We don't transparently and clearly define what learning is in schools. We just don't do it. We don't really share our vision of the future. And I just think it's.

Will Richardson [00:17:37]:
It breeds incoherence, and that's not great when the world is fairly incoherent. Right now, I think we need to try to find some anchors for the work that we do. And I know we have mission statements and vision statements and values and all the things, right? Portrait of a graduate and all the things. But at the end of the day, those things just end up being posters on the wall in most schools. A lot of the schools that I was working with, I'd go in and I say, well, what's the mission statement here? And they'd be like, I don't really know. Let me look it up. So I think going through an exercise or an activity where you bring the school community together and you ask those four questions and you try to come up with answers, collaborative answers to those questions, and then you share those. It says, this is who we are.

Will Richardson [00:18:26]:
This is really who we are. This is what we believe. And at the end of that, there is some answer to the why school? Statement or why school Question that you asked me at the outset that I think is. Is a really important answer to know for any school community. And just to say this is what we believe school is for right now, and then audit whether or not you're actually doing that. So that was the point of the manifesto, obviously, to provoke people. I think there was a line in there that I was deliberate where I said something like, basically, the reality right now is that most schools around the world are not preparing kids for the future that they're going to live in full stop. Just not doing it at all.

Will Richardson [00:19:07]:
At all. I think a lot of the ways that we define literacy are obsolete. I think a lot of the ways that the knowledge that we're trying to teach kids is irrelevant for the moment. And yeah, I'm a pretty harsh critic of education right now, not of educators, although some.

Liza Holland [00:19:25]:
That's an important distinction, though. Yes. Because there are points of brilliance out there.

Will Richardson [00:19:28]:
Absolutely. And I think that the. I think most teachers and people who go into education do so because they want very much to do what's right for children. And I think that they continue. I think most. That is what drives them. Some that's not true, but some are there just for a paycheck and whatever else. But most, I think, really care for kids, but I also think they're hamstrung by the institutions and the systems that they're in.

Will Richardson [00:19:56]:
I think if you're not. If you're an educator right now and you are not frustrated, then you're not paying attention to the increasing dissonance between what happens in classrooms and what's happening in the world. And you're not working, you're not learning to build your capacities to understand what you, as an educator, your new value, your different value in classrooms right now from what used to be content delivery, that's not value anymore. There's hardly any value in your ability to deliver content any longer.

Liza Holland [00:20:28]:
All that content's in your pocket, in your phone. Yep.

Will Richardson [00:20:31]:
Yeah. And. But it's been that way for 25 years, and things haven't changed very much. Right. But now I think the. The change in value is becoming more and more obvious where it's about. Again, your value is to help kids navigate an increasingly complex world that is changing at a faster and faster rate, where there are fewer and fewer answers. And so what are the skills, literacies, and dispositions that kids need in order to do the best they can to thrive in that kind of environment and that you don't find that in a textbook.

Will Richardson [00:21:09]:
You know, you're not going to. You're not going to find that like you said on a multiple choice quiz. So that's the value. The value of the educator now is to help students really again, engage with complexity to sense what is emerging and sense making in terms of as much as we can make sense of what's happening. Right. But all that kind of stuff is more and more important every day than again, all the stuff that ends up in a textbook.

Liza Holland [00:21:42]:
Absolutely. I think we need to be building lifelong learners because the pace of change is so rapid right now. I saw a statistic recently that in the 70s, if you went through and got a bachelor's degree, those skill sets should last you around 30 years. The new statistic is 18 months. So school is not the be all end all anymore. And we need to be driving these competencies that you're talking about as far as how to think, how to critically think in a, assess your, the information that is brought to you and apply that somehow. And, and yeah, our system right now is not set up to do that very well.

Will Richardson [00:22:24]:
But I also think though that it's about again the ability to maintain your mental, emotional, spiritual health.

Liza Holland [00:22:34]:
Yeah.

Will Richardson [00:22:35]:
Because we have kids who are really under duress. Right. We have so many mental health issues right now that are happening and I think in many ways schools probably contribute to that by again making it all about grades, making it all about college, making it all about competition, making it.

Liza Holland [00:22:50]:
All gotta get an A, gotta get an A.

Will Richardson [00:22:52]:
It's not okay, all those things. Right. And so again, there's a different value proposition here for what we need to make sure kids are leaving us with. And again, it's, it's a lot about how do you take care of yourself. Certainly there are lots of other things. There are literacies right now that are again changing very quickly and we need to, I don't disagree with you that kids need to be learners, but I do think that it's more about, not even more, but it's as much about are you okay? Are you, can you take care of yourself? Can you make good decisions about where you put your attention? And can you make really, can you understand and figure out where, what is, what is that thing that you're putting your attention on? I'm not being really articulate myself right now, but I think you get the idea absolutely. What is true, what is not true? This I, I, I've been saying to people, A no one is literate right now. Like no one is literate right now and B, especially in this country, the next 18 months or whatever it is till the midterm elections here are going to be insane when it comes to trying to figure out what's true, what's not true, what's real, what's not real.

Will Richardson [00:24:13]:
And I don't think any of us are prepared for it, to be honest with you. It's like, buckle up.

Liza Holland [00:24:20]:
I tell you what, buckle up, buttercup. So what about solutions? What about. Obviously, this is painting a pretty drastic picture. Do you see any bright points of light as far as what people can do to better prepare themselves? What's coming out of your cohorts? Do you have any consensus as far as some good solutions?

Will Richardson [00:24:42]:
Yeah. So the way that the. I couch it, and then I'm not alone. There are a lot of other people who are writing about this, obviously, and thinking about it. But I see the biggest crisis we have right now is that we're not in right relationship with one another as human beings, but in right relationship with all other living things on the planet. Right. So I think all solutions have to. And it's not even fixing those problems as much as it is, first of all, identifying them, owning them, and then starting to look at your own life and asking, well, how can I create better relationships in my own community? How can I really feel my connection to all other living things? The entanglement that I have in ways that I haven't in the past, we're very separate.

Will Richardson [00:25:30]:
The separability piece of it. And schools contribute to that too, by the way. Nature is something that's out there. It's not something that we see we're a part of. So anyway, I'm not sure there's solutions as much as recognition of those things. And then on a daily basis, just bringing those lenses to what you do on a daily basis. Right. So it sounds.

Will Richardson [00:25:53]:
I don't know if it. Well, I don't know what it sounds like. I was gonna say it sounds silly. So we started a garden in our backyard this year for the first time. And it's been amazing. I feel weirdly more connected to just the world, the Earth, the planet. And I think it's a good thing because now I. I see the planet.

Will Richardson [00:26:10]:
I do. I absolutely see the world differently because of that. I see much more life around me. I feel much more connected to that life around me. Understand how I impact it, how it impacts me. And not to say that that's going to solve all our problems, it's not, but it is going to, for me at least, help me, I think, navigate this time more effectively. It's going to help me Thrive through, no matter what happens next here in ways that I wouldn't have before that. You know what I'm saying? Right.

Liza Holland [00:26:47]:
So I do know. I do know. And I think that there's something also just to being present in an activity like gardening, to just experience the now as opposed to spending all your time worrying about what in the world's going on.

Will Richardson [00:27:00]:
Absolutely, yeah. And just seeing it, seeing its evolution and every day going out and going, oh, look at that, oh, look at that, look at that. And just being observant about it, it's a pretty remarkable thing that we just have blinders on. And so anyway, yeah, so that's really. It's about personal growth. I think we're not going to fix these problems until we fix ourselves. And so I think that's where the work is. How can I become a more connected, more relational human or life on this earth in ways that help me then understand what move I need to make next and to benefit that.

Liza Holland [00:27:40]:
To your point earlier, that's especially in this age of AI, I think that's exactly what we need to be doing is finding, you know, getting in touch with that humanness about ourselves and how that's going to impact the world moving forward.

Will Richardson [00:27:54]:
No doubt.

Liza Holland [00:27:55]:
Okay, so my final question. Ask everybody what would you like decision makers to know? And you can define decision makers however you'd like to define them.

Will Richardson [00:28:06]:
Yeah, that's another really interesting question because there's obviously a lot I don't know if it's what I want them to know as much as what I want them to be. I think right now the problem is that in a lot of cases, the people who are making the decisions on a national level, local level, educational level are not in right relationship. They're not. They're also separate and disconnected from, again, the ways in which life on this planet will thrive. So I wish they were well and. Okay, so going back to your question about what would I want them to know, I'd want them to know that they're. That we're in a very important moment for life on the planet and God, this is a really hard question, but that we, the decisions we make in the next 10 years are going to pretty much seal the fate going forward of what happens on this planet. And I'm not saying that it's.

Will Richardson [00:29:12]:
That it's necessarily going to end up badly, but if we don't figure this out fairly quickly, if we don't see the world differently fairly quickly, I think it, it's going to be tough, to be honest with you. So, yeah, I don't know what I want them to know, but it feels like that question is more. I want them to be more connected to what really matters for life on the planet. Yeah, I don't know. Not a great answer.

Liza Holland [00:29:40]:
No, no, that is great. That is great. So for our listeners who have been intrigued by this safe space to really look at, take hard looks at education and whatnot, where can they go to sign up to become a part of your next cohort?

Will Richardson [00:29:56]:
Well, they can go to Futureserious School and that's the website. I also have a substack newsletter. It's futureserious.substack.com and I'm pretty active on LinkedIn as well. Pretty easy to find. So those are the three places where I'm showing up pretty regularly. And yeah, like I said, our next cohort starts in September. And if you're again looking for a place where you can engage with other educators and we had students in the first cohort as well, which was amazing. Able to get any for the summer? Summer.

Will Richardson [00:30:29]:
Summer's hard.

Liza Holland [00:30:30]:
Yeah.

Will Richardson [00:30:31]:
But yeah, if you're looking for a place to engage with other, other educators from around the world and just talk about kind of your sense of what's happening right now and find some collaborative opportunities to just expand your view of the world and what we might all collectively do next, I'd love for you to join us.

Liza Holland [00:30:52]:
Fantastic. And I will put the link to future series schools and also the manifesto into our show Notes for for today.

Will Richardson [00:30:59]:
Thanks so much.

Liza Holland [00:31:00]:
Thank you so much, Will, for taking the time to be with us here.

Liza Holland [00:31:03]:
Likewise, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which education perspectives you would like to hear or share. Please subscribe and share with your friends.