An Education (System Redesign) for Shared Leadership

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“We have been slow to understand that a system cannot do anything else than what it was designed for… Our current educational system was designed for the industrial machine age of the nineteenth century. It was designed as an assembly-line factory model, well suited to train workers for the assembly lines of the Industrial Age.” (Bela H. Banathy)

“Designing educational systems for a new millennium begins with reconsidering who we are and what we want humanity to be…” (Patrick M. Jenlink)

“…a humble host to humanity – a servant of the Earth and an ever-vigilant conscience of the people. Such a ‘servant’ leader is as mindful of the process and purpose of life as she or he is aware of the goals… In the work of such a leader there is complete harmony between what is to be done and how it is to be done… We are all potential leaders, because we can all lead our own lives in the right direction.” (Satish Kumar)

“Leadership can be a shared phenomenon. Indeed, for many ancient societies leadership and decision-making is a shared process, with all members contributing a voice, from the oldest and wisest to the youngest and most curious.” (Sharon Turnbull)

“In the current educational reform movement, people still practice the kind of social planning that aims to reduce the problem to `manageable parts’, seeking a solution to each. They believe that an incremental, piece-by-piece addressing of what is wrong in the system will correct the larger issue they aim to remedy. But systems designers know well that `getting rid of what is not wanted does not give us what is desired’.” (Bela H. Banathy)

“We have to create opportunities and programs for design learning, for the development of design competence. People empowered by such learning will become competent individually to design their own lives and, collectively, to design the systems in which they live and work, design their communities and design their systems of learning and human development.” (Bela H. Banathy)

Education-as-usual no longer serve the best interest of the planet and the people, if it ever had. Life and the flourishing of it, calls upon a new kind of education that brings forth profoundly sacred qualities within us that is often ignored or stiffened in education-as-usual.

What are those qualities? How do we bring them about through, and not despite of, education? What are some examples of inspiring and impactful education-as-unusual? How do we redesign the education system as a whole everywhere so that they serve planet and people?

Below will be a growing list of explorations toward the answering of such questions.

We Are All Leaders by Satish Kumar

“…a humble host to humanity – a servant of the Earth and an ever-vigilant conscience of the people. Such a ‘servant’ leader is as mindful of the process and purpose of life as she or he is aware of the goals; there is no conflict between the means and the ends here. In the work of such a leader there is complete harmony between what is to be done and how it is to be done… We are all potential leaders, because we can all lead our own lives in the right direction.”

Gentle Stewardship by Sharon Turnbull

“Leadership can be a shared phenomenon. Indeed, for many ancient societies leadership and decision-making is a shared process, with all members contributing a voice, from the oldest and wisest to the youngest and most curious… In many such societies, the remit of the chief or elder is to seek ideas and consensus and safeguard the reflective process towards the best possible outcome – a stark contrast with the heroic leadership model that we have internalised in the West.”

Leaders as Dreamers by Elizabeth Wainwright

“A leader should be a dreamer… Leadership is about being part of a movement and a struggle. Leaders can be individuals or whole groups.”

A Lifetime of Activism by James Arnold-Baker

“We may have plundered and polluted our planet, but our children’s education should be a vital tool to help repair the damage – to the great benefit of their and future generations.”

We Enter the Twenty-First Century with Schooling Designed in the Nineteenth by Bela H. Banathy

“We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to fix, improve, and reform the existing system. We have tried to prop up an outdated system that should not exist anymore. We have been slow to understand that a system cannot do anything else than what it was designed for. Our current educational system was designed for the industrial machine age of the nineteenth century. It was designed as an assembly-line factory model, well suited to train workers for the assembly lines of the Industrial Age. And the horrifying fact is that today, at many places, half of our students fell off the assembly lines to the waste-pile of their generation.”

“…most of our organizations and institutions, and most notably our schools, fail to realize that only a radical and fundamental change of perspectives and purposes, only the redesign of our social systems and institutions, only the design of new systems of learning and human development, will satisfy the new requirements of our new era.”

“The design of social systems, such as education, is a future-creating human activity. People in these systems engage in design in order to create and implement systems, based on their vision of what those systems should be. Or, they may redesign their existing system in order to realize their changing expectations and aspirations and the expectations of their environment. Competence in design enables us to create systems that enrich the quality of our lives and add value to the systems in which we live and work.”

“When it comes to designing educational systems, the right and responsibility to design are shared by those who serve the system, who are served by it, and who are affected by it. It is such collective involvement in design that makes a system authentic and sustainable… We have arrived at the age of `user-designers’, people designing their own systems. That is what true empowerment is about.”

“…we have to create opportunities and programs for design learning, for the development of design competence. People empowered by such learning will become competent individually to design their own lives and, collectively, to design the systems in which they live and work, design their communities and design their systems of learning and human development.

“In the current educational reform movement, people still practice the kind of social planning that aims to reduce the problem to `manageable parts’, seeking a solution to each. They believe that an incremental, piece-by-piece addressing of what is wrong in the system will correct the larger issue they aim to remedy. But systems designers know well that `getting rid of what is not wanted does not give us what is desired’.”

“…design will become the shared and collective responsibility of those who serve our educational systems, those who are served by it, and those who are affected by it.”

Changing Education Paradigms (video) by Sir Ken Robinson (animation by RSAnimate)

See the video to understand how our education system is designed as assembly-line factory model… the consequences of that design… and what needs to change.

Designing Educational Systems for the Twenty-First Century by Patrick M. Jenlink

“Transcending existing patterns and processes that characterize past attempts at social and educational change requires that individuals, communities, and societies abandon old paradigms of change to accommodate the acquisition of new ways of thinking and taking action.”

“…we must approach current social problems at new and higher levels of consciousness and thought by elevating the individuals to a sense of collective mindful consciousness in and through their work as a design community. The betterment of humanity and the enactment of a higher quality of life comes from the sharing of responsibilities for humankind’s future, and seeing that social change must be embraced as a social responsibility by all citizens.”

“…Designing educational systems for a new millennium begins with reconsidering who we are and what we want humanity to be, within the larger question of what will happen if we do not take responsibility for attending to the challenges confronting our educational systems, and design new systems of learning for our children.”

“…preconditions necessary to design social systems [are], in particular educational systems, acknowledging the importance of `user-designers’, `design competence’, and `design learning’ in the creation of new educational systems.”

Appreciative Design by Karen E. Norum

“Instead of searching for the problem to solve, when designing `appreciatively’ we begin with a search for the best of what is. It is a search to discover the life-giving forces of the system and to identify what the system wants `more’ of. Design then takes place around these life-giving forces.”

“[Appreciative Design] begins with appreciating `what is’, then moves to envisioning what could be’, co-constructing `what should be’ and sustaining what `will be’. This cycle is also referred to as the `4-D Process’: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.”

Systems Inquiry and Its Application in Education by Bela H. Banathy and Patrick M. Jenlink

“As an intellectual technology, systems design enables us to align our societal systems, most specifically our educational systems, with the “new realities” of the postmodern information/knowledge age. Individuals who see a need to transcend existing systems, in our case educational systems, and design new systems that enable the realization of a vision of the future society use systems design.”

“…there are times when we have evidence that changes within the system would not suffice. We might realize that our purposes are not viable anymore and we need to change them. We realize that we now need to change the whole system. We need a different system; we need to redesign our system; or we need to design a new system.”

“The changes described above are guided by self-regulation, accomplished, as noted earlier, by positive feedback that sig- nals the need for changing the whole system. We are to formulate new purposes, introduce new functions, new components, and new arrangements of the components. It is by such self-organization that the system responds to positive feedback and learns to coevolve with its environment by transforming itself into a new state at higher levels of existence and complexity. The process by which this self-organization, coevolution, and transformation come about is systems design.”

“There is no more important, no more challenging task, no more noble calling, than participating in the design of just and viable systems of learning and human development for future generations.”

“Change that focuses on design of an entire system, rather than change or improvement in parts of the system, moves to the forefront systems inquiry as a future-creating approach to educational renewal.”