The End of Schooling

How much the prosperity of both individuals and nations would burgeon if only more funding could be provided for education is a popular contemporary view. Class sizes made smaller, curricula more expertly designed, teachers more wide-ranging in their interests and competence. This mechanistic outlook is challenged. Education, like pure art, seeks to fathom the world's depths without ever totally reaching its bedrock. Participants need to be ready for surprise. To be left feeling mystified, wondering, overwhelmed. In a Nature never still, each generation has to face environments in novel ways. Education's incomparable brief, then, is to deal with the real demands made on humanity. Definite answers are unavailable. Invitations are to share interminable journeying. To find delight in evanescent experiences. Not to seek arrival at supposedly perfect destinations.

Born of missionary parents, David Wright is a graduate of the universities of Natal, Oxford (Oriel College on Rhodes Scholarship), Rhodesia and Sydney. The issue of what distinguishes genuine education is one with which he has wrestled for over 40 years 21 as a headmaster in schools in Zimbabwe, Australia and Botswana.