How useful do you feel your education was? Every organization, family and country has a duty to train its young. If it doesn’t nurture and develop the next generation the family will die out. But have we taken our eye off the ball? Have we substituted ‘what is measurable’ for ‘what is important’?

My father-in-law said to me the other day that I must have had to have relied on my A-level physics and university engineering degree in my training as a pilot. It’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while. A colleague of mine had a degree in archaeology. I wonder how useful that was. What did I really take away from my time at school? Undoubtedly the most powerful experience was singing in the choir; my trumpet lessons and time in the concert band set me up nicely to be able to keep playing afterwards; the rugby I played taught me about rough and tumble; the athletics set me up to understand how the body reacts under stress; and the cadets and outdoor pursuits nudged me towards being a pilot and joining the military. But of my actual ‘schooling’ I can’t remember much. I was taught to read…late (probably because of the way I learn); the maths I did taught me to add up in my head (useful when working in a pub in the days before electronic cash registers); the trigonometry I’ve used since becoming an instructor as a way of understanding some interesting aerodynamic effects; the physics taught me about waves; and English got me to read some interesting books and to fall in love with expressive writing. Perhaps the French was useful as I lived in France for a year when I was fourteen and had to learn to communicate with the rest of my French rugby team. Interestingly the subject died again in the hands of my school teachers when I returned to the UK. I think, on the whole, the only times I’ve had to delve into my academic schooling has been when the children have asked me about problems they have with their…homework.

My father-in-law told me that he didn’t get many O-levels. He went to the secondary modern. It doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. His family adores him and he and FMIL (favourite mother-in-law) always seem to be living life to the full. If I ever need to know anything important or useful I ask him. He seems to have this insatiable thirst to understand the world around him – it’s not a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for understanding. We were having the conversation because my son is drifting towards GCSEs. The mocks didn’t go brilliantly but, as his headteacher said, he’ll be fine, whatever he does.

One of my son’s big passions is drama. He and one of his best friends were telling me about their respective experiences in the subject. Someone has clearly decided to weaponize the subject and create measurable theory so that it can take its place alongside other academic subjects. They have to describe in minute detail what face they would make to convey a particular expression. Terry Pratchett always used to use the pejorative line: “the [monster] had clearly created his image as if he had read in a book what it was supposed to look like”. I played opposite a girl in a play once who seemed to have learned all her acting from a book. It wasn’t a very convincing performance. My daughter, at 17, was able to see through some of the formulaic way she was being asked to interpret some of her English.

I’m a slow learner and only now am I starting to stumble around in opportunities to learn. I’ve read some great books but my most recent project was chewing my way through a series of academic papers. The cross referencing and scientific method was flawless but the subject and the result of the experiments were largely useless and pretty dull. A friend of mine is at the military’s staff college at the moment. He’s said a few times that the year long course is a bit inefficient. To justify the huge cost there has to be lots of ‘product’. They have to give lots of presentations and write several essays. But no-one is critiquing their presentation style or even relevance of content. It would be a perfect time to reflect on the world around them and the thinking of some of the previous luminaries. But like most university courses the ‘reflection’ is swallowed up in regurgitating other people’s thoughts. Did Newton or Einstein reference other people’s work ad nauseum, or even military ‘thinkers’ like Douhet.

Another friend was on the military staff at the college. He wrote ‘the pink’ (staff solution) for one of the new essay titles they had. He referenced several other pieces of work and then threw in a few ideas of his own. When the academic staff at the college queried his maverick approach he asked: “so I’m not allowed to generate any new ideas?”

On a macro level organizations might do better to listen to their own internal ‘gut’ or daydreaming brain. All those little ideas that pop into your head when your mind is on something else are the neurons making connections that might not at first be obvious. Steve jobs said that innovation was about making connections: James Dyson developed his vortex vacuum cleaner from watching a similar, albeit industrial sized, device in a joiner’s workshop. Toyota tries to keep humans in the production process because they know that’s where the best ideas come from. The Chief of the Air Staff, the RAF’s top man, has recently asked his minions for some innovative thinking. It’s a bit like ‘asking’ your brain to think up new ideas. You can’t. You just have to be listening and alive to ideas when they appear. Ideas have been floated but they’ve been royally ‘gaffed off’ as unworkable or too expensive. The approach seems to be to assume that the answer lies in other sources: out sourcing thinking. Maybe the ideas are unworkable, but maybe they’re not. Inventors the world over spend years trying ideas and then adjusting as required.

I didn’t take geography as a school subject as my dad didn’t think it was sufficiently academic. It was rather frowned upon in his day. Annoyingly I’ve probably used more geography in my job as a pilot than just about anything else. Geography features quite heavily when navigating and when weather ‘happens’ it can be really quite exhilarating. We even had a family trip to the Alta Plana and Atacama Desert in Chile a few years ago: it is the geography field trip you dream of. I even saw oxbow lakes on the way back in to the Falkland Islands.

I wonder if it’s time for a rethink in what education means…particularly as the root of the word is ‘educ’: ‘to draw out’. Sir Humphrey, in TV’s Yes Minister, said “We didn’t raise the school leaving age to 16 to improve education. We raised the school leaving age to keep people off the job market and improve the unemployment figures.” What is your understanding?

I’d love to hear your thoughts as ever and if you’d like me to help you listen to your internal thought generator drop me a line through the Inflow Performance Facebook page, the Breaking Free group page or the Inflow Performance website.

Part of being a coach is reflection. It is important to revisit ideas. I started writing this article on Monday. On Tuesday I had to use my school boy French to book accommodation for a works trip. I undoubtedly use a good deal more than I realize at times. Rummaging back in my memory has been a joy conjuring up memories of favourite teachers. I’m not in any way suggesting school is a waste of time: I’m just floating the idea that we might be blinded by ‘academic’ subjects because ‘knowledge’ is measurable.