Managing a conductive education enterprise is not always a straightforward matter. Literally, it seems.
Over the years, I've often been accused (if that isn't too strong a word) of 'losing the plot',of 'having my head in the clouds', of "not focusing" on what matters.
Our concern with developing the whole Campus, for instance, is seen as "a diversion", a "waste of resources", or a "drain on my time" as Paces CEO. Only the other day, I was told very firmly that I "had to recognise" that Paces School was the "most important" of the charity's activities.
Of course, I know perfectly well that the charity's most important work is introducing families to conductive upbringing, helping them access it and finding ways for their children to continue to benefit, in some cases into adulthood. (Not for nothing does our Mission statement - see the top of this blog - begin "Supporting families ..."). Schools, and all the apparatus of institutions like schools is just a way of doing it.
And I know, perhaps instinctively, that Polonius's advice (in Hamlet), that finding direction by indirection is often the best way. There's a name for it apparently: "obliquity".
Obliquity is the idea that complex goals are often best pursued indirectly. In general, oblique approaches recognise that complex objectives tend to be imprecisely defined. These objectives contain many elements that aren't necessarily or obviously compatible with each other. Furthermore, we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means of achieving them during a process of experiment and discovery. (Think oblique: How our goals are best reached indirectly. The Independent 18 March 2010)
I especially liked the statement "we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means of achieving them during a process of experiment and discovery". Sometimes, when I might appear to have wandered off from the main highway down side-roads, surprising lessons can be learned about the objective, precisely a process of experiment and discovery. Sometimes, too, I have to acknowledge failure, that something just doesn't work, and the by-way has become a cul-de-sac.
This seems to me the very nature of innovation and creativity: no less in a conductive education enterprise than in any enterprise. The trick, of course, is that whilst others might doubt, to keep one's own eye firmly on the ultimate goal.
Which makes me wonder: if obliquity applies to an innovative and innovating enterprise, can it be applied to a whole movement? In other words, could it be that all the forms of conductive education that we see and hear of across the world are simply organic detours into the side-roads and by-ways and undergrowth off the main path - and that this is fine provided some of us (enough of us?) keep our eyes on the goal? Or perhaps I have just dived off the highway again?