My own portrait of Keir
It’s not often I’ll write such an unashamedly praising entry as this, but I feel motivated to do so today. I was able to attend the 1st day of the Tapestry conference and was treated to two talks by the iconic Howard Gardner, one by the evergreen Brian Boyd and one by the now peerless Keir Bloomer. I shouldn’t omit to mention the african/celtic music written by Nigel Osborne and performed by Scottish School students. (1300 plus would you believe)? All in all a good day but…..
In the morning, Howard Gardner spoke about the “synthesising mind” from his recent and excellent book, “5 minds for the future”. In truth he was pretty interesting and had a relaxed, easy delivery. I enjoyed his talk, but in truth didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed reading his book. Over coffee with a few of my school based colleagues however, we agreed that it had been thought provoking. and got to the heart of our new Curriculum for Excellence. We further agreed that his “basics of pedagogy and learning” content would be really great for teachers to revisit as they get to grips with the new challenges. That’s the end of my praise however. In the afternoon, Gardner gave a 2nd talk that had my eyes drooping and those of my colleagues and as far as I could see, pretty much everyone in the hall. His talk was self indulgent, rambling, light on content and so dissapointing.
Let me contrast this with Keir Bloomer’s talk. Keir spoke for anything up to 320 hours but it felt like 15 minutes. His style of presentation was relaxed, beautifully structured and utterly convincing. His slides and illustrations were well selected and flowed perfectly along with the talk. A great touch was the slides that said additional things, revealed line-by-line without Keir reading them out while he maintained an eloquent flow. He was hugely well read, and chose all the right references to set the challenge facing education, as well as the necessary insights about how we might “learn to change”. The audience was spellbound, and I was left wondering why Keir isn’t running the whole national programme more directly. In my view there are only a handful of people in Scotland who could, and Keir is at the head of that small list.
In my own authority of Argyll and Bute, Keir has worked with us extensively to help us to develop our own programme of implementation for the curriculum. As a part of this consultancy, my colleagues and I have heard Keir deliver his analysis and challenges for the new curriculum easily a dozen times, and I have never tired of it. He is in short, a national treasure and I think the government should make more of his talents.