Rationale

Even after having been in education and a teacher since 1972 I am passionate about the way that youth learn and especially learning outdoors. In my 40 years of being an outdoorsman I have taught many thousands of young - and not so young - people, not just outdoors, but the value of being outdoors working to understand the natural world, working to understand one-another, and allowing the 'real' world to use its power to change lives. This can't be done in a 50 minute lesson on a school timetable. And it takes leaders with personality, with experience, with passion, and with such presence and drive that young people become very much aware, sooner or later, that they are in the company of leaders who can make a difference; because that's what I'm in this business to do : capture youth and change lives.

“The aim of education is to impel people into value forming experiences…to ensure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, and undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self-denial; and above all, compassion.”                                                                                                                               

Kurt Hahn 

There is an urgent need for a re-balancing of educational priorities requiring boldness on behalf of the educationalists. Teachers deliver; educationalists hypothesise and plan, but we are doing a dis-service to our youth if we use them as pawns in a game by changing pedagogic rules, or instituting new ideas due to contemporary fads and fashion. We have a responsibility to, as Hahn has written, impel youth into experiences; not mind-numbing training. We also need to realise that whole sectors of youth in society miss out on real education due to no fault of their own - or schools.

One of my contracts is to work with nine and ten year-olds in schools in an extremely challenging urban environment. How challenging? A dad - with daughter in tow - at the end of the school day gets shot in the head at the school gates in full view of scores of people; two armed robberies outside the same school, a crack cocaine den on a junior school premises, and a murder, unbeknown to me,  not ten metres away from where I'm instructing. All this in less than 18 months. Schools that go into lock-down mode at 09.00 hrs to be safe from the outside world, and kids who do not want school holidays because it means they have to return home. Nine-year olds who regularly are the mainstay of the household (I use that word loosley) buying the groceries and looking after toddlers, whilst mum and boyfriend or dad and girlfriend hit town, and are not seen all week, except out-of-their-mind about 2am staring into space.

This is the culture and environment I am up against.