Philip Patston creates a vision of an educational future that brims with creativity, in a follow-up to his previous post on The Creative Collide.

(If you commented last time, thank you. Look out for your ideas below.)

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It's the year 2150. Two generations have passed since a time in New Zealand history where politicians and bureaucrats tried to control the education of children and young adults by making them go to school, imposing fines if they don't, and insisting they learn certain things.

Several decades ago, artists, performers and other creatives banded together, creating a hard hitting campaign that proved, without doubt, that everyone is continually learning, if only through experience, so there was nothing to worry about and everything to celebrate.

They helped society, and especially parents, to value a very broad band of taught, practiced, studied and experienced learning, and to encourage its demonstration in a very broad form of expression, including performance, music, dance and movement, art, spoken word and writing, multimedia and more.

Only then would we foster our children's uniqueness, creativity and diversity. 

The artists, performers and other creatives (or APOC as they became known) totally rethought learning from the bottom up. They realised that the best, simplest, most honest answers always came from the "shop floor". They realised that children needed inspiration and creativity in order to learn, not desks and tests, and that any learning system needed to have this as its foundation.

They knew it was time to tip the system up-side down and inside out. Time to broaden the senses, open up to inclusion, mix up the subjects and make learning more like the real world; time to explore, acknowledge and encourage all the 'invisible' learning and accomplishments that children are capable of - not just the narrow, manifested assignments and written tests.

Schools were abolished, because they weren't set up to engage all styles of learning in a way that empowered young people. A new network of Creative Learning Centres, part of an innovative Creative Learning Movement led by the APOC, was formed.

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Now, in 2150, Learning Facilitators, rather than teachers (although some of them are former teachers), skillfully help students to identify their own learning style and they are grouped based on learning styles rather than age. In fact anyone, child or adult, pursuing new learning, now learn together.

People are helped with the design of their own learning path, so that they are intrinsically motivated. Learning Facilitators know that the most important part of learning is the identification of creative strengths and interests. That is their primary focus for every Learning Participant.

"Diversity in Learning" is the motto of this new Creative Learning Movement. Individual outcomes are no longer important – it's group outcomes that matter now. As a result, the concept of "special education" has long since evaporated. Everyone, regardless of their capacity to function, is involved and valued for their unique contribution to the learning experience.

Bullying, harassment and truancy are vaguely remembered as symptoms of an education system that tried to control a process that couldn't be. And videos, like the one below, no longer need to be made.

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"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." – Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks to Andrew, Richard, Rose and Ursula, whose comments helped inspire this dream.

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