It was George Bernard Shaw who asserted in his
maxims for revolutionists that “the reasonable man adapts himself
to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man”.
It wasn’t so long ago that we would content
ourselves with winning a modest clutch of medals (of any colour) at
any Olympics. Given our sporting infrastructure that was
considered a reasonable outcome. With the London Olympics
(http://www.london2012.com) less
than a year away our sights are now set much higher. Over the
summer we have confirmed our dominance and prowess in Rowing (World
champions galore), Cycling (Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France a
highlight), Track athletics (Mo Farah, superstar) and
Swimming. We’ve even become the top test cricket nation
too! Much of this has been the result of “unreasonable
people”, Performance Directors, daring to expect more. It
means never being satisfied with any medal when the gold is within
reach, it means not settling for one medal when you could achieve
two, it means not being satisfied with a century, but digging in
for a double-century instead. It means never resting on your
laurels.
Shaw’s maxim is just as applicable to
education. When I first came to Bedford we had fewer than
5,000 students but having dealt with nearly 200 colleges across the
country in my previous job I knew we should have been doing
better. When I argued for a target of 10,000 within 3 years I
was told it had taken 100 years to get to 5,000, and told Bedford
wasn’t London! We now have 18,000 students a year, and more
than 1 in 10 of Bedfordians enrols each year. Similarly our
results were in the bottom 10% in the country, and this was blamed
on the quality of students, poor schooling and their deprived
backgrounds. We continue to offer courses to everyone in the
community yet now our results place us in the top 5%, and we send
more young people to University than any other local school or
college. Being unreasonable works so we now make it a point
to only recruit unreasonable staff!
One of the most refreshing things in recent
years is to hear more and more educators taking this line and not
accepting that your background and circumstances should prevent
high achievement. Too often in the past we have been quick to
excuse failure, something that would not be seen in Scandanavia or
Asia. Hopefully the era of unreasonable teachers, teaching
managers, politicians, and parents is now here to stay, and has
already helped drive up standards locally this year, with some
excellent results in many of our local schools.