What I am expected to write, what did not happen, the end of the tail of covid, lichen and the Flynn Effect
As you might tell from the title, it's going to be a short winding tale today. As the half semester comes to the end along with trip week, I guess what you would expect me to write about is risk taking and adventure. I would share some photos like this:
And I would take about the importance of taking risks, and how essential that is to learning. I might talk about collaborative skills, I might even quote Kurt Hahn the father of outdoor education, or if I was really going for it Rousseau or Thoreau's Walden.
I could do that... and all those things and that photo are real and true. But that is not what has struck me this week. Which takes me to my next section on 'what did not happen'.
What did not happen this week was almost any disciplinary issues. Virtually no children asking to call home because they were home sick. No nasty squabbles. No phone calls to tell me of serious incidents on other trips. Just deep peaceful calm. I thought last year was good and important, as it was clear many children were still in the long shadow of covid. This year, along with the weather, the clouds of covid related dysregulation and anxiety appear to have been banished. It's been transformational. Years of hard work on relationships, behaviour, kindness, care and the advisory system appears to be paying off in the most profound ways. Which brings me to lichen.
One of the stunning things at Dounan's is the lichen. Lichen takes a long time to grow and is extremely sensitive to a bad atmosphere. It simply will be even begin to grow in areas with poor air quality. At Dounan's it thrives. I have never seen rowan trees so covered in it - and the contrast in colours is extraordinarily beautiful.
Lichen is a bit like deep friendships and learning - it thrives in clean air. It thrives in a healthy atmosphere.
The kind of culture we are building around kindness and care is not just about what 'does not' happen, but also importantly what can only happen in a healthy atmosphere. I would say deep friendships and profound learning and curiosity are some of those things. It has been lovely to see the way children and groups have interacted this week and relationships have deepened.
Which brings me to the Flynn Effect. People often decry the 'children of today' and claim school was harder and there was less help in their day, and imply that degrees are not as hard as they were back then. 'Back in my day...'. Flynn is a researcher who looked at the raw scores for IQ tests over the last 100 years - which surprisingly no one else had done until he did. Because they are 'normed' on average 100 and standard deviation of 10, no one actually looked at the changing score required to be 'average'. It turns out it has gone up around a third of a standard deviation every ten years for the whole of the last 100 years. Basically getting a score that would make you 'average' in 2010, would have made you an outright genius in 1920.
What's the point? Well - there was no 'golden age'. The 'back in my day' arguments are simply false memory, nostalgia or pessimism dressed up as regret for a lost past.
But equally, if the glass is not really half empty today, neither is it half full for a future cornucopia (the overflowing horn of plenty). The truth sits with the posthumanists like Donna Haraway the author of 'Staying with the trouble', that our goal is to learn to live (and die) well with the beings around us - both human and nonhuman. Being at the centre of the energy transition, it is so clear that this is our present goal. Not a Utopian tech fix to all our problems, not a deep regret for past ecological damage, just a focus on slowly learning to live well with each other in the world we find ourselves in.
Which brings me all the way back to the beginning. Lots of good things happened this week. It was also good that lots of things 'did not' happen this week, which is a sign the tail of covid is over. It was not a golden age before, and this is not a golden age now; but we can learn to live together well, and there is clear evidence this week that this is happening. And when that happens beauty emerges: like friendship, learning or lichen. 'We are a kind and inclusive community of thriving global citizens'. Yes we are.
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