Forgetting education for a moment, I want to recommend the book Outlive by Dr Peter Attia to you.
It’s been a pivotal knowledge source for me on a 2.5-year journey to better health. I’m not at that journey’s destination yet, but I know I’m on the right track, thanks to Dr Attia.
Attia opines that we’ve successfully moved from Medicine 1.0, (which was the dark ages where guesswork led to courses of leeches to fix heart disease and other such madness), to Medicine 2.0 (which is a scientific response to helping people when they’re sick).
And you have to admit, the strides we’ve made as a society in treating all manner of ailments is pretty impressive.
Yet, those ailments are piling up and the Medicine 2.0 bill is expanding to the point of unsustainability. Continuing our commitment to Medicine 2.0 is going to take a lot of pills.
Attia’s Medicine 3.0 is a frontier where our health industry is scientifically proactive about preserving what he calls the ‘lifespan’ of people’s mental and physical health through scientifically better nutrition, movement and thinking.
Attia might as well have been talking about our education system too.
I’d contend we’re smack bang in the throes of Education 2.0 where we dive on every deficit in kids, teachers, parents and school leaders. We crave quick, easy fixes and value only data that can be improved quickly.
After all, it’s gotta satisfy either a short election term or an even shorter news cycle, eh?
I suggest we collectively start building Education 3.0, switching priority and resources to proactively building young people whose learning health, mental health and physical health are proactively optimised.
Let’s stop waiting until we’re sick and then dispensing individual plans, aide hours, clinical referrals and ‘further testing’ like pills.
Let’s design for sustainable educative wellness instead.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. I’m so proud of the impact our partner schools are achieving, and the culture they’re building for kids, staff and families, and I love talking to them about it.
I had a chat with the team at Berrima Public School about how moving to restorative practices helped them to:
- Get kids to reflect on the impact of their behaviour
- Build staff trust
- Lift professional growth (100% of staff said they’re learning and getting better)
- Win over parents through clear and fair processes.
Take a look here and see what changed, why it worked, and how restorative practices helped make the difference.
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