Stephen Heppel is the man behind the initiative BE VERY AFRAID. Essentially he is practicing and cultivating reverse coaching – a remedy for a situation we are heading into at full speed: the generation gap between the digital natives and the digital immigrants.
Heppel also gives an answer to what Sir Ken Robinson calls the flattening out and industrialisation of our education. Like Robinson, he gives us a wake-up call to get out of the conformity and incrementalism of our current education systems.
He worked with children who have so-called ‘learning-disabilities’ and in ‘tough schools’. He does so by propelling themselves into their passion instead of erradicating their weaknesses. “Listen to the learner” is his advice, knowing that attention is the scarced resource.
Engagement and ‘belonging to’ is essential to learning. “It’s stage, not age” as he says. The thoughts of Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education” are very nigh as we are witnessing the collapse of education. Fortunately this is aided by the ever accellerating technological revolution. Have a look at the classroom around minute 15 of the above movie in order to imagine the classroom of the future.
