Sandeep and Kiran share their stories and their passion for changing how we support youth around their heart, love, making a better world, and relationships. And then Chris asks: For someone listening to this, what can THEY do? Sandeep Dutt is the author of The Good School, founder of Learning Forward India and the Learning Forward podcast, Ambassador of hundred.org, Chairman of the Bhadrajun Artisans Trust, entrepreneur mountaineer doing what he can to create "happy schools" for a better world. Kiran Sethi is the founder of the Riverside School in India, which has, over the last 20 years, become a beacon of possibilities when you focus on students and empower them to make a difference in the world, which has subsequently created a global movement called Design for Change.
As much as our world changes – socially, economically, politically and technologically – for the most part, our schools remain the same. Yes, there are some minor improvements. And good ones too. However, most of these are still employed within an antiquated system and practices that do very little to impact our youth's greater well-being and future truly. To judge schools (as we have done) solely on students’ performance on standardized ELA and math assessments has unwittingly pressed most schools and their systems made accountable to these results to “double-down” on this focus at the expense of the greater well-being of our youth.
But what do we mean by the greater well-being of our youth? Rather than answer that by myself, you can hear this from the voices of the dozen-plus outstanding educators who contributed to this podcast. And not only do they speak to the need for a transformation/revolution of our schools and school system for the greater good of our youth, but in the end, the greater good of our communities and our humanity.
Touched upon throughout is the need to allow ALL of our youth to pursue the lives they wish to live. Touched upon is the need to imagine the possibilities of learning and learning communities that can contribute to the well-being of our youth, our communities, and the world and the NEED to pursue these possibilities and learn as we go. Finally, the contributors speak eloquently about the power of relationships within and across communities to transform education toward a greater purpose and engage everyone in that transformation. We need to co-create so that we can co-learn, which can then lead us all to a shared transformation of outcomes rather than the transactional factory system we seem to be stuck in that resembles the "I Love Lucy" chocolate conveyor belt (if you are old enough to have seen this clip).
We need gardens that both value and support the natural growth of our youth. And we need gardens plentiful with the resources that allow each individual and the garden to thrive and be abundant and generative.
These educators give us some insight as to what it takes to grow such gardens – the result of a revolution through transformation.
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