Rewilding Education - A Conversation with Prof. Hilary Cremin

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

At this moment in my career, but more importantly at this moment in history, now is the time to speak up. We can't remain silent. Business as usual is not working and it's putting us in great existential threat as a species. And education is complicit in that.

Hi, thanks for joining me again. My name's Tim Logan and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. The idea of rewilding is now a common topic of conversation in response to the depletion of biodiversity and natural habitats for local wildlife and widespread industrialization and globalization of food production. But what about if we ask the same question in relation to the industrialized and standardized education system? What would it take to rewild education, as my guest this week asks? Professor Hillary Crement has a vision for rewilding healthy education communities and societies that nurture both human and ecological thriving. Hillary has recently published her new book, Rewilding Education: Rethinking the Place of Schools Now and in the Future. She joined me this week on the podcast to talk about it. Hilary is the Head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University and researches, writes, and teaches about peace education, conflict transformation in schools and communities, and the future of education. She's the co-founder and senior advisor to the Cambridge Peace Education Research Group. Formerly, she was Director of the Social Inclusion and Education for Citizenship Academic Research Group at the School of Education, University of Leicester. Hilary continues to be involved in the promotion and delivery of conflict transformation, mediation, and peacebuilding work and has a particular interest in restorative approaches. You can find links to Hillary's book and her other work in the show notes. Fabulous. Well, thank you, Hillary. It's a great pleasure to meet and thank you for taking the time to join me. And I'm very excited to see this very bold title of your new book and all the amazing work that you're doing. So no, very, very happy to have you here and thank you. Yeah, thank you for taking the time.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Great. So, I mean, perhaps one of the things we could do to start with is we could very rapidly disappear into the huge questions of system collapse and collective madness, and we'll get there in a moment, but I thought it might be nice to just start in a more personal space because, you know, more and more of this work I think is relational and, you know, thinking about how do we personally connect with it. And I heard you talking about your love of trees. So perhaps if we— maybe we could start there. You just speak to just what is it about this work and your relationship with learning and, and relationship perhaps with nature that you, you're kind of bringing into some of this work?

Yeah, thank you. So trees, forests have always been important to me right from my childhood, and it's hard to put in words what I've learned from trees. Really, but I know that I'm fundamentally different because of my connection with trees. If I were to try to put it into words, I suppose there's the fact that trees are so interconnected, both at the level of their roots— and we're only just beginning to understand how the mycorrhizal fungi work together beneath the soil to connect tree roots to each other— but also above the surface as well, where they will grow in ways that enable each other to have access to light. And so their way of connecting and being is really important to me. Also the way that trees cycle, so they go through the seasons, and so there is constant change, but there's something very permanent in the cycling as well. And I think that that applies to humanity, that actually there are seasons that we go through in life, whether, whether it's across a lifespan or whether it's shorter cycles that we go through. And recognizing whether we're in a phase of growth and renewal, or in a phase of quietness, or a phase of letting go, or in a phase of jubilance and celebration, is really important. And I think by just spending time with trees and reflecting on some of those things we can actually improve our own mental health and wellbeing.

Lovely. I think we definitely forget that seasonal piece that, you know, in the kind of an on-demand culture where everything should be available all the time. And absolutely. And I mean, metaphorically, I hear all of the resonances there. Is there also a kind of visceral physical, you know, relationship as like growing up and being around trees and in the forest when you were a child?

Yeah, we, um, so much of this is gone now, sadly, but there were woods behind our house growing up and we just used to disappear into the woods and we learned so much from being outside of adult supervision, being in nature, eating blackberries and chestnuts, sweet chestnuts, and just having that deep visceral connection with nature has been so important to me. And, you know, I went back to those woods recently, and there aren't any children playing in the woods now. They're all adults walking dogs, people my age. And I just wonder why it is that we've decided that woods aren't safe spaces for young people to be in, and why we think it is safe for people in their 50s and 60s, and what it is we're protecting young people from. I don't want to go off on too much of a segue, but some of my reading recently about young people and social media is, is suggesting that one of the reasons why young people hang out on social media so much is because it is the only space where they can be outside of adult supervision. It's the only space where they can hang out with each other because we've deemed it undesirable for them to be in other public spaces together as young people, as peers. And I deeply regret that because I think young people are growing up in artificially lit or cooled or heated rooms and not knowing where food comes from or what season we're in or having that deep visceral connection with nature.

Absolutely. I've actually got a podcast coming out soon with a philosopher of movement called Thomas Nagel who I think you might be quite interested in. He talks to that piece exactly as well from a, but from a, you know, an empirical research background has just a radically different understanding as to why that is important. I mean, obviously there's the psychological and wellbeing benefits, but there's something deeply physical and dynamic, moving about young people being and learning in nature. And yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. You know, I mean, one of the things that struck me when I was reading your book and listening to you speak, and you actually say it in the book in the introduction, and I think it's really bold that given the position that you are holding. So you say, as the, as the Head of Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, I could hardly be more mainstream. And so that's, you're, you're standing in that position and bringing in these ideas. And I think that is so powerful. And I'm just, yeah, really grateful that you're doing it.

Thank you. It's, as you said, I've, I've had a long career latterly at Cambridge since 2008, and I've been very careful about some of the things that I've said, and I have got into trouble in the past, for example, with Michael Gove. But I'm of the opinion that at this moment in my career, but more importantly at this moment in history, now is the time to speak up. We can't remain silent. And I— there are many things that are outside of my control, even as head of faculty in the University of Cambridge. Nevertheless, the things that are in my control, the platform that I have, I want to use to shout from the rooftops that things really do need to change. Business as usual is not working and it's putting us in great existential threat as a species, and education is complicit in that.

Again, couldn't agree more. And you talk about it as a collective madness in the book, so maybe we could go there just to open that up a bit. What is it you are talking about when you talk about this collective madness that when we think about global education?

I mean, where do I start?

Exactly.

When you sort of really zoom out and you look at how we're doing globally, so the richest 10% of the population earn 52% of all income and the poorest half gets 8.5%. I give the references for that in my book. We know that the 1%, the billionaires, are romping away. It's deeply concerning that our labor will increasingly not be required. And when you look back over history about what happens when states, kings, sovereigns, jurisdictions don't need labor, what then happens to human rights? We desperately need to work out what the new social contract is and how we can live together. And it's not looking good with so much of the world's resources in the hands of the super-rich. We're not making huge gains around gender. So between 2015 and 2020, women earned 34.4% of global income, and it was 30.6% in 1990. So we've made tiny percentage increases since then. And in the UK, 30% of our children are living in poverty. A third of our children are living in poverty in the UK. That was in 2022 to '23. And 40% of children living in Black and minority ethnic families are living in poverty. Nearly half of all children in BME families. And so we've had a discourse for decades about meritocracy and about social mobility. And it's Michael Apple from the States talks about this as a fig leaf. It's a fig leaf of decency to hide the ways in which our economies are not achieving social mobility. Who gets what jobs isn't based on meritocracy, but if you can blame education and schools and teachers, and if you can convince the population that if you don't do well in school, it's because you didn't do your homework. Because you weren't born with brains, then somehow you can get away with continuing an economy, a globalized economy, which really does favor a very small minority of the global population. And so the collective madness is that we don't seem to have noticed this. You know, the, the gaps in learning, the attainment gap between the richest and poorest children grows wider at every stage. It more than doubles to 10.3 months by the end of primary school and then doubles again to 18.8 months by the end of secondary school. So we are exacerbating inequality through our education system. And you talk to a 4-year-old, a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old, they will want to sing a song for you, they'll draw for you, they will be confident, curious. You talk to the average 16, 17, 18-year-old, they'll say they're rubbish at maths, Don't ask them to sing. They can't draw. What is our education system doing to our children?

One of the things I find also really interesting about that is that the social mobility argument is often used to double down on the more traditionalist, let's say, approach, right? So very much business as usual, even more just doubling down on the knowledge-rich curricula, the didactic teaching. And often with very good intention, it's used as an argument to say, no, we need to close the attainment gaps, to enhance social mobility, to, you know, to fulfill the promises of meritocracy, all of these, you could say myths, but there's, it's a, it's just an interesting counterpoint to some of the things that we then talk about in the more perhaps progressive spaces. But it's unfortunately, as you're pointing out with those statistics, It's actually for all sorts of reasons, it's just not working. It's not happening. Those gaps are not closing. So something's wrong.

Yeah. And I'm in my fourth decade of my career. And yes, I perhaps in the early days, I did believe in social mobility and I was working to close those gaps. And 40 years later, we're in a worse situation, I think, than we were then. The gaps are increasing. And so I don't know why people don't notice that. Why do parents believe that if they can just get a good education for their child, that somehow their child is going to be guaranteed a really positive future? I mean, we've, we've seen high levels of student debt, graduate unemployment. We know that those top jobs are stubbornly resistant to incomers who are not from families who traditionally occupy positions. We, we know that, but somehow everybody's dream is that education is going to give them a better tomorrow or a better tomorrow for their children. And this isn't just in industrialized developed nations. This is all over the world. In fact, sometimes even more so if you go into low and middle income countries. Education is the hope. And yet our globalized economy can't and won't support the level of growth that is necessary to get greater equality in the world. And actually, it's not through educating people better that we will see more equity, as we've seen over the last half a century. It's through a global elite choosing to do business differently. And, you know, there's a very different game that's happening amongst multibillionaires, which is around holding onto income.

Yeah.

And competing with each other to have many, many more billions than they can ever spend in their lifetime.

It's obscene, I think, but I mean, it was even more obscene. I was reading last night about their bunkers that they're all building, right? In terms, you know, they're preparing for systemic collapse and apparently Buying a house in New Zealand is a kind of a wink wink of, you know, I'm preparing for whatever it is, the threat, a lethal virus or an AGI going rogue or so. Absolutely. But I also would say we cannot afford to wait for those people to have a moment of awakening and realize that they maybe actually should start giving away some of their wealth. It's not gonna happen, right? So, and that's why I think part of significant aspect of what you are bringing in here is so important. Because it's not about technical fixes to current systems. It's about, as you say, a rewilding, a different kind of approach that is quite radically different. And again, as I say, you know, the fact that you are bringing this in from your position, I think is just wonderful. So yeah, maybe I could just, before we move on to the rewilding concept, just ask you about this lovely phrase, metaphysics of mastery, cuz I think that speaks to me about, I mean, I've had Vanessa Angiotti on the podcast and others who, who talk about similar kinds of things, but just what did you mean by that phrase, we're teaching this metaphysics of mastery?

Yeah, it's a phrase from Richard Bonnet's work. And what he means by that is that we're somehow teaching children through our very Eurocentric curriculum that some kind of boffin, some really clever person at some point is going to come up with a solution, whether it's sucking carbon out of the air or ways that we're going to be able to live together in the future based on humanism and the sort of triumph of science and how we always resolve our problems, that this is enabling business as usual and it's creating the impression of the hero innovator that is likely Eurocentric, likely white, likely male, who is going to continue to dominate and who will ultimately bring about a better world on behalf of us all, and we just need to trust that person. It also implies that we have dominance over nature and over other species. Goes back, I guess, to a certain extent to religious ideas where we have dominion over the, the animals and, and so on. But when you sort of lift the veil and actually look at what we're doing in the world, We are really screwing up. We're making the planet unlivable for so many other species, and ultimately we're making the planet unlivable for ourselves. So despite our great intelligence, we really aren't able to sort any of this out. And yet our curriculum suggests the opposite, that there's a narrative throughout history of continuous development. In my book, I talk a lot about modernity and the harm that Enlightenment thinking has done this idea that science and reason are going to get us, bring us a better world. And there's a complete neglect of the body, of emotions, of our different identities, whether they're racialized or gendered. And without an awareness of our emotional life, our spiritual life, how are we going to be able to solve the problems of the world?

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I noticed in there is often this idea of the novice and expert differentiation that is again, just so pervasive and powerful in educational contexts. And again, it's really hard to argue against, you know, of course we want our young people to be expert in these different domains and expert even in collaboration and all these so-called 21st century skills. We want expertise. We don't want a bunch of novices that don't know what they're doing. So there's the anchoring of so much of the educational conversation is around that continuum towards mastery, which just perpetuates exactly what you're talking about.

Absolutely. And it's also, there's a sprinkling in there as well of the military uniforms lining up, doing as you're told, not questioning authority. There's a sprinkling of the prison gates and fences and punitive regimes. And there's a sprinkling in there also of the factory, so learning for mass production around certain skills that we believe, you know, children as products need to have by the time they end their education. And obviously the person that's written most about this is Ken Robinson in his wonderful podcasts, but it's as true now as when he was writing that a couple of decades ago.

No, absolutely. And so then rewilding is a, has quite a different feel to it. So rewilding education, I mean, obviously it's, you're using it as a metaphorical device, but maybe not entirely. So let's, yeah, if we can open that up now. So you talk about returning education to its natural wild state. That's quite a bold thing to say, I think.

Yeah. So the metaphor draws on what's happening in permaculture and organic farming. Where we create food through being in harmony with nature rather than trying to dominate nature, and moving away from monocultures over to different plants being in symbiosis with each other and with, with the environment, with weather systems and so on. And so in education, rather than feeling that we need to dominate the educational landscape, and decide already what young people need by the end of their education as some sort of uniform outcome of education. Rewilding suggests that we need to support young people to be able to fit within an ecosystem of learning opportunities. So what that means is we are genuinely placing the child at the center of their learning. And providing opportunities for them to learn holistically, for them to learn in authentic spaces, and for them to learn across the life course. Because I think that's the future that we need to educate our young people for, not a future in which they get their A*s, they get their elite degrees. And as our young people are increasingly telling us, and as employers are increasingly telling us, knowing nothing about what it actually is to be in the world and to make their living. And so how could we use primary education in order to support young people to become confident, curious, critical, so that from age 12 onwards, I would say, they can create their unique pathway through a multitude of different educational opportunities. So in rewilded education, I would see a unique and continuing role for teachers as mentors, as initiators of learning, as credentialisers of learning, with young people creating their own e-portfolios to show what they can do, but a whole range of other adults involved in the education of young people. Whether that's museum curators or scientists working in laboratories on cutting-edge experiments, or libraries, or care homes, or startup businesses, that our young people can, supported by teachers, can learn in and through those environments so that this transition between education and then being out in the world the boundary gets blurred and our young people are very much prepared for their future by the time they leave perhaps a period of more intense education.

Amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I'm wondering whether you're kind of in this phrase 'natural wild state,' whether you're gesturing towards— obviously we can't ever go back— but towards a kind of a pre-modern idea of what education used to be prior to the invent of industrial schooling.

Yeah, indeed. I mean, I think, I think the first chapter in my book is about, I call them the, the fractious twins of modernity, post-modernity, humanism, post-humanism, and truth, post-truth. And modernity has brought certain benefits like increased lifespans and so on, but it's brought about a, a way of thinking and being in the world that is caused huge amounts of harm. And when you go back, learning would have happened within towns and villages through apprenticeships and so on. The church would have had a significant role, so there would have been reflections on meaning of life. What, what matters? What are the big questions? That's how, that's how Cambridge came into being. Some divinity students rocked up and wanted to set up a new university. And we have retained some of that in Cambridge, you know, that there is the, the one-to-one supervision, there is the, the sport and the art and the debates and learning across all kinds of difference and the passion for whatever it is that people are learning or, or investigating. And for me, that comes from our long tradition of what education actually is. But when you think about people's normal or usual experiences of education, it's around massification. It's all about the money. It's all about the money. Packing them in, piling them high, and giving out degrees as some sort of commercial reward for time spent.

Yeah, absolutely. But I guess the counterpoint to the Cambridge point is that it's also a highly elitist space. It is. And so what you're describing This opening up of that is a radical transformation of the whole educational landscape because it can't just be the preserve of a few elite people who can manage to get there for, through whatever competitive and hierarchical means they need to. But actually this kind of ecosystemic apprenticeship-based learning communities are available to anyone and everywhere in all sorts of ways. And that's a phenomenal logistical and, you know, operational challenge, as well as a philosophical one to some people.

Yeah, absolutely. That is the challenge. And in order to do that, as I was saying earlier, it's not so much that we would want people facing poverty or disadvantage to change what they're doing. What we need is to deconstruct what's happening in elite universities. So that these methods are available to everyone. I mean, I think there is a lot of potential with AI. I was invited to an event at King's College recently where Will.i.am was talking, and he has a vision of making the very best of education from elite universities available to everyone through AI. And in Cambridge we were engaging with him and thinking about how we might do that. A lot of universities in the States have started to develop MOOCs. I think there's something that Cambridge and other universities could do more of so that the content is universally available. It wouldn't be possible to give everyone one-to-one supervision, but we can begin to open up, and our academics can, and in my view should, be able to engage more in real-world settings with their research, which might bring in other financial benefits, which could again begin to open things up. The issue with all of this is that stakeholders who benefit from business as usual are often the decision makers, and given everything we've been talking about, about the way that big business is deeply complicit in systems of inequality globally, where do you find those moments to begin to bring about the kind of radical change that we're talking about? My own view is that the radical change won't happen quickly. I think that there will be some kind of event within the next 10, 20 years that will mean that business as usual will not be possible. And I feel that my work is about joining up radical thinkers and existing practice and alternative settings so that if and when that time comes, we have people who are ready with alternative models for how things can be done.

I love it. Again, boring to say it again, but I completely agree. I'm hoping to have a really interesting group on the podcast soon from Ukraine who have been working on this kind of new kind of emergent institution in Ukraine right now, educationally around transformative research. And just that as an example of the readying that you're talking to, that is happening now about joining some of the dots to build some of those, as you say, networks and relationships and also expertise actually around what works and what has been tried, but does, you know, struggles or what have we learned from other things in order to then absolutely be ready to respond when we might need to. Absolutely. I think that's critical. But also I'd love to bring in, I mean, some of the things that are radical are actually quite deflationary and simple, right? You know, I mean, let's go back to you playing in the forest with your friends as a young person, you know? Some of the things are actually not, they're not highly technical and expensive and difficult to build. There's some really simple interventions that are happening already on the ground. And I mean, perhaps we could just then go in, because you, in the book, you then talk about the kind of different practical shifts that also, because again, sometimes the conversations are very high level and about big transformative systems change, et cetera. But some of the things, as we know, need to really take root in ecological ways, actually in the ground with real people doing real work. And that is definitely happening. But I liked the way that you elaborated on 3 particular different shifts about self-efficacy and practical wisdom and situated learning, and then imagination and narrative and an arts-based mindset. So is there— I don't know whether you want to go through all 3 or just pick bits from those, but perhaps you could just describe some of those shifts you talk about in the book.

Okay, so when it comes to self-efficacy and empowerment and so on, a lot of my work over the years has been in conflict transformation in schools and peace education. And so there are schools who are using circles, circle pedagogy, and restorative approaches, relational approaches, and things like peer mediation. In order to prepare young people to be more in control of their relationships and how they want to be in the world. So there are schools in Leeds and Birmingham that feature in my book where they start several times a week in a circle, and the circles are multi-age, so from sort of 11, 12-year-olds through to 16-year-olds, and they check in They check up as the week goes on and then they check out at the end of the week. And what is most notable about those schools is that the teachers do that as well, and the senior leadership team do that. And so it's putting relationships and community at the heart of education, not as a sort of, oh yeah, we also do a bit in PSHE when we have time.

Right.

That is fundamental. And when you go into those schools, the difference is palpable. The children feel like they're part of a family. Everybody feels known. Everybody feels able to speak up. Everybody has a voice. So, you know, the new curriculum review is talking about oracy. They've been doing oracy in these schools for years, and they know how to Support young people to take their turn to speak, to be authentic, how to listen to other people, how to remember what's been said, how to value what's being said, how to disagree agreeably. What sort of words do you use when you want to disagree with somebody? How do we deal with our feelings and emotions? This isn't just social and emotional aspects of learning. This is a whole school culture involving adults and parents as well. In thinking differently about what it is to be part of a school community. So on the empowerment side, young people resolving their own disputes is really powerful. I think giving young people more choice, having more project-based learning, connecting across subjects, across different disciplines, moving towards e-portfolios where young people can capture what they've been learning, metacognition, reflecting on how we're learning and including in that, how do I work as part of a team? Whether it's working with a partner, as part of a small group, as part of a wider community. How often do I dominate? When am I a passenger? How do I tackle people who are trying to sabotage what it is that we're trying to do? All of these reflections on what it is to be human, what it is to be part of a group. Need to be part of that learning process. And unfortunately, a lot of that has gone because people are so focused in on high-stakes testing. So it's sort of, yeah, that would all be very, very nice, but let's make sure that you get over your grade boundary to get what you need from education. It's a kind of a commodification of education, turning it into a product, which again, going back to the bigger philosophical points, fits a particular mindset and a particular view of the economy. This constant, "We're not there yet." "You're level 3, great, but you need to be level 4." "You're on track for an A, but you need to be working to be an A*. We build in dissatisfaction with where we are into the way that we relate with our young people. And so they go out as dissatisfied consumers who are always chasing the next product. The next thing. We're not teaching satisfaction with where you are, self-acceptance. And these things can be taught if you create a school community where we reflect on happiness, well-being. My currently developing curriculum for peace, positive peace in schools globally, starts with inner peace, because the first step outwards is a step inwards. Then interpersonal peace, through into social and community peace, through into global peace, through into peace with our planet and with other species. And I think if schools can use that as a framework in order to think about not only their curriculum but also the hidden curriculum— what are we teaching around the way that we organize our schools and how might we organize ourselves differently so that the content of what we want to teach becomes the way in which we're teaching. Young people learn from what we do more than what we say. They pick up on how we relate to them.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's always the elephant in the room, isn't it? I've always felt that as a kind of an early sociologist of education talking about the hidden curriculum. I mean, it's just, there is so much of what young people are learning is the water that they're swimming in. 100%. And just also, I just wanted to acknowledge and make the link for regular listeners. They will recognize some of that language from Luke Roberts. And you and Luke, I know, have worked together. I think you were his PhD supervisor, in fact.

Yeah, we had some great conversations, as you can imagine.

Yeah, fantastic.

He started wanting to develop a whole school approach for restorative practice, and it was through realizing how whole school approach is a misnomer and there is no such thing. You know, it's, it's a, it's a very mechanistic way of thinking about school change.

Exactly. Yeah. And he talks so powerfully in that about complexity Systemic work, which is, no, it's brilliant. He's doing such amazing work. So yeah, I just wanted to make that connection. But then just, yeah, just briefly, if we could just touch on the situated learning piece and the arts-based mindset, particularly that last piece, I feel it's coming up a lot again for me and a recent, another recent conversation, just how important not instrumentalizing and thinking about creativity. And I was actually listening to Brian Eno on Ezra Klein last night. I don't know if you've heard that, really worth listening to, and he's got a new book out about the role of art and how important it is in, in human development and just life. Super interesting. But yeah, if you wanted to speak to those two pieces.

Yeah, so I'll start with an arts-based mindset. I think when you think as an artist, you're wanting to express something or put, put something out there. But your relationship with your audience is very different. And so once you've created something, once you've let it go, what people take from it is very much up to them. So you have quite a horizontal relationship with your audience. When you think as a scientist or a social scientist, you're wanting to do all the work for the audience, the readers, the end users, so that in some way you can distill it down into the bullet points that they need to take away. And so it's not a horizontal relationship, it's more of a vertical relationship, a hierarchical relationship. And so I've increasingly encouraged my students through their doctoral studies to think of themselves as artists, to engage with autoethnography, with poetry, with arts-based methods, because it enables people to enter into dialogue. There are no right and wrong answers, and I think that given the need to deconstruct the metaphysics of mastery, art enables multiple voices to be heard and to be in dialogue with each other. And it's that dialogue that is so important, and art is a wonderful way for people to begin to get a sense of people who are different from them and how they see the world, and I think that that's really important. Also, if you want to change hearts and minds, you don't do it through a reasoned debate. I mean, maybe for some people for some of the time, but mostly when people radically shift position, it's because they've been deeply moved by somebody's story or because they've engaged in some way with heart. Not just with the mind. And so supporting young people through theatre, through music, through creating their own pieces of artefacts, that's engaging with them as a whole person and is, is helping them to feel unsettled and to engage with the world in really visceral ways to bring about the change that they want to see. And for every young person, it's going to be different. So, I would like people to approach many more of the world's problems with an arts-based mindset.

No, absolutely. It made me think, I was, I don't know if you know Jacob Collier, the musician, but I heard him say, "No one's ever been moved to tears by competence," which is, I mean, it's exactly on the money, right? Because, you know, it plays into that novice to expert thing. We just want to be a little bit better and then But actually the thing you are talking to about the arts and the creativity is something wholly different, as you say, like a whole person and its emotion and its feeling and its connection. And the, the other thing I find interesting about that is that it's because it can sound like a kind of hand-wavy woo-woo kind of, let's just all connect with our feelings. And you know, there is some of that in there, which is good actually to rebalance some of, but at the same time, there is also, I'm learning more and more deep science about sensing differently and knowing. So different epistemologies, different ways of sensing and knowing, and then sense-making of the world, which I think is what education is ultimately about. And we've actually just been, through modernity, locked into a very propositional epistemology. So we've like, if you can't say it explicitly in words, it doesn't exist, or in a mathematical formula or whatever, right? It doesn't exist. And actually, as Ian McGilchrist says, there's— I mean, so much of the world is implicit and our sensing in the world is implicit and can't be put into words. And so how do we invite that into an educational conversation? It's quite difficult when we've been so locked into the propositional.

It is. And for me, that's the definition of wisdom. Wisdom for me is the combination of the cognitive and the affective. So you bring emotional into the rational. And the cognitive processes, and you do it in embodied ways. You think with the entire body, with the gut, taking account of hormones and all the different things that go on in the body all the time. And thinking in that more embodied and more affective way will lead to better decision-making. And for me, that's— it's so important that we take that into account. I love Iain McGilchrist. Because he sort of explains for me, based on his work as a psychiatrist, what it is that I see in the world.

Yeah. I would also say it's better science. I think like it's increasingly, and I would even slightly push back on the word cognitive, like this little pet thing that I have now is because actually the idea of what cognition is has been again radically trapped in a particular mechanistic model. And actually, I mean, people like Andrea Hyatt and amazing, amazing people I've had on the podcast, ecological psychologists talk— cognition is being in the world. It's moving through the world and sensing in all sorts of ways that isn't just about prefrontal cortex planning and, you know, memorizing. And it's, it's something really interestingly emerging, I think, in really rigorous science. So I, I just wanted to bring that in because I think sometimes this is like, this is the latest version of a progressive pipe dream. You know, rewilding education is just a rebrand of Rousseau. Yeah. And, and that will be the pushback. I think you've probably had some of it already.

And, yeah.

And, but I, I think that I, I feel there is a convergence with like 4E cognitive science that is, is really useful in this conversation.

I absolutely agree. And that's an area that I'm really looking forward to exploring more. It's also interesting, I was talking earlier about my conversation with Will.i.am, or his presentation at King's College, and he was talking about AI, and he was saying that there's enough out there now on the internet that any one of his fans could create the perfect breakup song for them. So he said, you know, he's produced a breakup song that's gone viral, but that was his self-expression. And there are bits of it that would relate to people and other bits that might not. And so he's saying actually that AI is enabling people who are listening to music to actually become active producers so that increasingly we can be the creators within our own universe using AI to enable us to do that. And actually, despite all the things, all the concerns that people have about AI, actually that's quite a radical shift because in times of modernity, we were passive consumers of knowledge. We were told that we simply needed to receive and learn and reproduce what's the powerful knowledge that exists out there. And we're moving into a time where all of that knowledge is available with obviously need to clean up what AI is being trained on and so on. But we're moving towards the sum of human knowledge being available in the cloud for everyone, and how we navigate what we take from that is a very productive process if education can support people to get that right. So there is of course a danger that big business and self-interest means that we become consumed by the system, that we are actually puppets in somebody else's dream. But if we can use AI in order to engage as active producers, that could be the way that we integrate everything that you're saying from McGilchrist and from brain science and so on, everything that we've been saying about embodiment and affect, that young people could be that nexus point in which they can create meaning that they then want to put out into the world.

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's definitely a lot of possibilities opened up by it, but I am nervous personally about the stickiness of it and how young people are kept there. And I like the idea that a technology might encourage— I had this conversation with Vanessa Andriotti about her work with AI, but also Zach Stein says a similar thing. Good educational technology should encourage people away from the tech and into relationship and let's say into nature. And I think if we can find a way to do that as well, I think then, because all of the things you're talking about in this fabulous book are available when you are in the forest playing with the trees with other people actually. And so, you know, it's hard cuz the AI is this amazing phenomenal new competence, but it's also, I don't know, it has a lot of big questions I think that it's raising for young people and for mental health as well. So, and you talk about that in the book, but it's just a, it's a phenomenally challenging question, and I think there is sometimes a danger in education that we see the latest technology as a silver bullet, but—

Yeah, it's a tool, and it has any tool, it can be used for good or bad, and it needs to be used well.

Yeah. And we are changed by the tool as well. So are we just acknowledging that?

Absolutely. Yeah.

No, well, thank you, Heloïse. I mean, it's, there's just so much in the book. I would really encourage people to go and buy the book. It's out already and it's just such a rich array of kind of provocations, I guess, for this question of what would it really take to rewild education. And that's going to be something that has to come up from the ground, I think. And hopefully policymakers will read it too and listen and think about what they can do in relation to it. But it's very inspiring, and thank you for taking the time to chat about it.

Thank you so much. I wrote it for my grandchildren, and I really hope— they're babies at the moment, they're twins— and I just so hope that theirs will be a rewilded Thank you.

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