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Food for thought and time to digest Jason Morrow found the conference season surprisingly stimulating The end of the school year is always such a good opportunity for reflection and planning for the areas of development on which to focus in the coming year. In the US it is also a traditional time for some of the main school leadership conferences and I have been fortunate this year to attend two separate conferences which have given me plenty of food for thought over the summer. It doesn’t hurt that the conferences were both in stunning locations, the shores of Lake Tahoe for one and the historic centre of Philadelphia for the other – always an interesting place for those with a British connection in the 4th July season. There I discovered in the first session that I had perhaps underestimated the spike in patriotism around this time of year when I volunteered a mischievous response to a question from the facilitator, who is a proud resident of Yorktown, Virginia and wanted to know why his home town is
so famous. My answer ‘A terrible travesty in history?’ received a withering look and it took about half a day to rebuild relations. Philadelphia remains one of my favourite cities in the US, as the influence of Enlightenment ideas and belief in education, the sciences and self-improvement have left such a rich cultural legacy. The newly opened Museum of the American Revolution draws on that civic tradition and presents a much more balanced and thoughtful treatment of the subject than is the case in many national museums. Spending time in Independence Hall and reading about the months of close scrutiny and extended debate and discussion also served as a good reminder of how representative democracy is supposed to operate. I share below some reflections on the Philadelphia conference which I hope may be of some interest and offer an insight into some of the main strands in the US schools at present.
Autumn 2017
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