Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was the first non-television exec to deliver the McTaggart Lecture at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival last night. A core part of his talk was on the state of "UK education", and how "over the past century, the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths. You need to bring art and science back together." Britain should look to the "glory days" of the Victorian era for reminders of how the two disciplines can work together, he said.
"It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges. Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time. He was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton – but was also a published poet."
"I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in UK schools. Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made."
It's a shame, though, that he didn't Google a little more on the education system of the country in which he was speaking. Scotland.
There is no such thing as "UK education", only English and Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish. The latter is significantly different from the others, and programming is a core part of our curriculum for excellence Technologies strand, from age 3 through to 18.
It's why my daughter learns input-process-output at nursery school (kindergarten) through computer programmes and robots. It's why the literary structure and coding expertise needed to create a computer game is taught in more and more primary (elementary) schools. It's the reason that the very "learn how to use, not how to make it" approach to software has been questioned for the last eight years or more in Scottish computer science circles, and moves are made to reinstate the importance of programming at secondary (high school) level.
It's why our definition of 'text' in the Literacy (arts) guidance moves well beyond "the three Rs" and includes the likes of text messaging, computer games and the web at large.
In England, the education minister has gone from not mentioning technology at all in his curriculum and policy plans, to making piecemeal and out-dated contributions about how technology provides a great carrot and stick for learning. The differences between this and the forward-looking ambition of his Scottish counterpart are stark.
Yes, the McTaggart lecture is designed to "boil down to anger and arch-villains, impossible proposals and insults". But, Mr Schmidt, before going in for a great, potentially constructive insult for our neighbours, please accept an invitation to discover more about the country - and its own education system - that you have been kind enough to visit.
Read the McTaggart lecture in full.
Photo from TechCrunch
I'm thrilled to have been given the platform at TEDxLondon this September 17th to share my big idea for education, building on my plea to change learning from a pseudo-problem-filled irrelevance to a universe that inspires young people to become expert problem finders.
A very limited number of tickets are available on application from the site to hear an amazing bunch of speakers give their vision and call to action for learning, including a virtual beamover from Sir Ken Robinson in LA.
This week is, ahem, a busy one at Building Learning Communities (#BLC11) in Boston, MA. I'm getting a chance to hear plenty of other talks, seminars and keynotes and will do that now seemingly old-fashioned thing of live blogging each session as it happens, as is my wont.
I'm also offering up a fair few sessions in this packed week:
Most of these, including the keynote, are real hands on, brains on workshops, and I want to be aiming, in fact, to be talking as little as possible, providing some great frameworks for people to play and learn something new for themselves, with prompts and support to take them further beyond the often brief sessions we have together.
I can't wait to catch up with so many people, including the chaps and chapesses at AlasMedia, with whom I first sailed up the Charles River four years ago as they toyed with the idea of setting up a film, media and education company. They're a roaring success and steal the show every time they come to BLC. Their FlickSchool is a delightful place to learn how to make some great films and shoot super photos. Above all, their friendship over all those miles means a lot to me, and the connection I feel always makes me stop off in LA when I'm off to New Zealand or Oz to say hi, eat some (too much!) great food and trade stories. They also caught on camera the first time Catriona was ever really scared of something (it was a microphone windshield).
And that's what BLC is about - connections. I'm grateful to Alan November for his invite which, after a three year break, I'm finally able to take again. He's the only person I jump onto American Airlines for, in the hope that I might catch even just one fish off the shore at Marblehead. And I'm grateful beyond words to Jennfier Beine who took over the task of organising the event, sorting me out for tickets, hotels, round tables for my pre-conference in a room that shouldn't really have them, and introducing me to the world of Kinko's.
Enough of the politesse, and on with the show! Fasten your seatbelts, fire up the aggregator and get ready for some good, old fashioned reflection and reportage on the blog.