Charles Handy

'Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.'

'Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training'
Charles Handy

Recently I have been seeing Charles Handy's name pop up in various parts of my life. Who is this guy? Why am I all of a sudden seeing his name? So over the weekend with the final occurrence, I decided to investigate this man. I discovered some interesting things about him. He coined a phrase "portfolio worker" that may be a precursor to the academic portfolio that became the webfolio. The importance is that he as a business man was interested in the collection of work by each worker. In his work he dealt and wrote about business management. Many of Handy's quotes are about education and are from a business management perspective.

The above quotes struck me because of how they applied to CyberEnglish. CyberEnglish is a personal curriculum for each child. The second one also struck me because it reflects on a major problem we are having in education, since the home has become so chaotic, so school must be more orderly. This is where CyberEnglish is a way to accomplish an orderly home for the scholar to succeed. The new home is the scholar's Home Page and it is an individual curriculum. This is how Charles Handy has been affecting me these past couple of months. I have been able to refocus my efforts in CyberEnglish this year, so maybe that is why these quotes came at me recently.

These two quotes remind me of where and how the educational question should be discussed and supported. We need to provide resources for the Home to succeed as a nurturing place for all citizens and places to prepare them for school. We need to provide resources to all schools so they can provide proper individual instruction for all of the students. It isn't difficult, it is merely a matter of resolve. We know what this country can do when it puts its mind, resources, and energy towards a project. Children are our greatest resource for the future, so I hope our new government is more proactive towards education and not reactive as it is in so many of our other aspects of life.