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We have been running Open Days all this week for parents considering our Primary School. It was a fascinating experience for me in many ways and I had some really quite eye-opening conversations with parents.
The conversations made me realise again that education, as a concept, is slippery. Pretty much everyone you meet has a different thing to say about its purpose. I was cornered by one woman earlier today who took me to task on the absence of any posters extolling the importance of open-mindedness. Unfortunately for this poor lady, she managed to hit a nerve of mine with that point. Two nerves in fact. The first being that putting the word up on a wall does not mean a school is embedding a quality particularly well in its programme. It can have the opposite effect in fact; my house had lots of holy pictures and statues in it when I was growing up; it didn't mean that we were particularly religious but it meant we could relax: the statues could be religious for us.
The second nerve is that I have long thought that schools overcook the importance of open mindedness to the complete exclusion of its cousin, obstinacy, which lives at the other end of that continuum. Open-mindedness is an essential quality of course–a crucial one. If we want our children to use their minds critically and think for themselves, then a mind which is open to listening and to learning from others' opinions is a prerequisite. I get it, I value it, I promote it. But I sometimes wonder where does it stop? At some point, surely, we expect children and adults to form an opinion from all the available ones and show a healthy obstinacy in defence of it. I imagine Nelson Mandela had obstinacy; I imagine Gandhi had it, and Emmeline Pankhurst and Rosa Parks.
In fact, I imagine, that on certain issues, nothing short of brain surgery could have changed the minds of these people about some of their core values and chosen directions. Quite right too. And yet we never see, on the walls of classrooms, "We Value Obstinacy". I think it's a missed opportunity personally because it wouldn't weaken the open mindedness point, it would strengthen it. Open-mindedness, as a kind of general willingness or attitude is admirable. But as a permanent state of mind? Inexcusable. Eventually, open-mindedness should lead to making an informed stand or else what's the use of it?
I will leave the last word to Gandhi, who summed it up neatly:
"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."
Have a restful weekend.
Brian
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