Neil Hawkes' interview left me with an even greater sense of an education system that is needed to deal with the changing world. Arming our young people with the tools to live with stronger emotional health and therefore a life that has more emotional resilience and more rounded individuals.
It was one of the most profound interviews I have ever done, it left me with a sense that I needed the world to hear his words, to grow this knowledge. However, I didn’t shy away from the tough questions, my first asking if the education system currently in place was fit for purpose. He answered everything with grace, knowledge and a story to support his reasons.
"You're now in a very complex area. Secondary schools are exam factories. They're about how you equip children to pass exams, so that they can have the qualifications to be routed into either university or some other aspect of society. And that's the way secondary schools have been set up, as you rightly say that they are quite a different organisation. I have great admiration for secondary schools. I think my criticism comes only to the system and the generation of a system that really in my view, is outmoded, old fashioned, and isn't fit for purpose.
One of my great honours has been to be a member of the V 20. group over the last two years. The V 20 group is a group of so called world experts in this area. Last year, I teamed up with a professor in California, Marco, and we wrote a paper, which I think could help secondary schools. It's about making sure that your whole school is what I call ethics-centric. It's that underpinning of an ethics-centric way of being in the school, which in primary schools you'd say is values-based. What we need is a system which really, really does think ethically.
There were so many points of interest throughout the interview, and I can't do it justice in a short blog so I encourage you to listen to the full interview for yourself.