[Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/D9rw_J7d68k]
It’s interesting that no one I know ever says “I went to IKEA” or “I popped to IKEA”. It’s always “I had to go …”. I could put it more strongly and say that I was forced there, against my will and better judgment. To be fair, and in the interests of full disclosure, I am actually a bit of a fan of the IKEA concept, which you must admit is a monument to joined-up thinking. It’s just that I would rather be a distant fan most evenings.
I met a fellow sufferer the night I was there actually – a Dad from this school, who must remain nameless and who was even more miserable than I. We chatted glumly in the queue:
–“My wife”, he said heavily, “is away for seven days and she gave me a list of jobs to do. I thought I should probably make a start”.
–“When does she get back?”
–“Tomorrow morning.”
Metaphors for education are easy – one can pick them from anywhere. My queue in IKEA provided ample fodder and time for this kind of idle rumination. I won’t get into one very obvious parallel between us – the fact that, like us, they have a venue now at Tampines, known locally I imagine as “IKEA East”.
No, there are more conceptual comparisons. The arrows on the ground for a start, encouraging us to follow a predetermined direction – someone else’s roadmap to the successful experience. I’m not fond of that. Schools everywhere have become quite accustomed to being told “do things in this order; walk this way” and quite accustomed too, thankfully, to adjusting the advice when it doesn’t fit their contexts. I wrote here recently that the typical International School is impossible to define, so although we often study the practices and good ideas of other schools (as we should), the lessons we learn are not always transferable, at least not directly. There is no all-purpose “kit for any school”, much as some organisations would have us believe that there is.
We are provided a flat-packed curricular framework, complete with open-to-interpretation guidelines, though with not quite so many diagrams. Pity – they might be helpful actually. We do all the assembly and all the work ourselves though. And we have thrown at us, in education just as in IKEA, far too many good ideas to permit us to implement them all.
Another point of comparison is of course that there are many work days when I set off, just as when I visit IKEA, naively happy and armed with good intentions and a list, only to find myself back at the start having achieved very little and fast losing the will to live. Nothing that a plate of meatballs or salmon fillets couldn’t cure - I will have a word with the caterers.
What we can all learn from IKEA is a consistent, joined-up approach to things – where every separate bit knits coherently with every other bit: an underpinning, fundamental concept, root to branch. Easier to achieve with shelving than it is with teaching of course but many schools (and we are one of them) have been developing a more K-12 approach to how we do things in international education. It’s exciting work and very difficult. But complex as it might be, we are getting there; you don’t have to be rich to be clever.
Hej då,
Brian
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