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Last week I talked about listening moving to the centre of our understanding about what matters to people for them to develop fully and effectively. The two most superficial levels at which we listen (downloading and attentive listening) limit our ability to learn very severely. In downloading we simply hear what confirms our own views or beliefs and in attentive listening we identify what is different in what the other person might be saying but we then use it to try and convince them that we are right. I recall with some bemusement – and to be honest, some irritation with myself – that when I was at university I spent so much time (often into the early hours of the morning) arguing with my peers about all sorts of current issues – I was trying to convince them that I was right and they were trying to convince me that they were.
From my current perspective this was such an enormous waste of time and could have been easily avoided with a better way of listening.
Of course, I learnt this way of listening from my teachers (and in my case, also from my parents). Our education systems were, and still largely are, organised to continue modelling this form of listening to our children, limiting their ability to learn from whatever life throws at them.
My youngest son was six when I began to get some inkling that listening was so important and I began to listen to him in as open a way as possible. Over the last ten years I have seen a remarkable development in his ability to learn. His ability to process information in a calm and easy manner continues to astound me. Not surprisingly he has little interest in school and a lot of his learning takes place out of school, yet when he is obliged to take tests he performs at the highest levels. I just imagine how he would do if he had teachers who engaged his interest.
Having all children with this ability to continuously learn is what is open to us now. We know enough to be able to organise education differently and allow our children to fully develop. Or, more accurately, remove the artificial constraints that our systems place on their development.
But systems are systems and the process of change is a subtle one hence the effort we have put into our programs. Systems do not change until behaviours change and behaviours do not easily change in a system that encourages certain behaviours. Both have to change little by little in tandem.
Leaders who understand this can make progress quickly. Those who do not can get bogged down and see little progress, even movement backwards.
Teachers who model the right forms of listening to children now have very high status with parents and children but they are so few (only about 5%) that their salaries and earnings are driven by the majority. Once a critical mass of teachers behave like outstanding teachers and help children to fully develop then a rise in earnings will follow. Society needs it and they will pay when they get it.
Our society needs its young people to grow into adults who can face up to uncertain futures with their ability to learn, with their ability to be optimistic, collaborative and creative, fully intact.
