Many years ago, I wrote my doctoral thesis on the question of how we come to know the truth. Was truth something that came to us from outside, or was Socrates correct when he suggested that all learning is remembering what the soul already knows from its previous existence in the world of ideas?
The purpose of this blog is not to attempt to answer this question, nor articulate its importance for contemporary models of Christian Religious Education (you can find that in the book that I eventually published on the topic here). Yet, I have found myself pondering a similar question recently that I'm finding equally intriguing.
Is experience something that happens to us or happens inside us?
Of course, the simple answer is both. Take, for example, watching a sunset. The experience is both an external event - the descent of the sun towards the horizon and a vibrant display of colours - and a consequent internal emotional reaction that likely leads to feelings of awe, wonder, calm, etc.
Yet there is also a more complicated answer. To take another example, imagine two people walking into a luxury hotel reception at the same time on the same day. For all extent and purposes, the exact same external event takes place, but it is entirely possible that the resulting experience (i.e. how this moment is remembered) is very different; because what each individual brings to the external event is context.
In other words, the person who is used to checking into a luxury hotel on a regular basis will not experience the same as the person doing it for the first time. Likewise, the person who is on a work trip is unlikely to have the same experience as someone checking in for a relaxing holiday.
But why is this important? Well, when it comes to intentionally designing the experience of school, despite the (often false) rhetoric of personalisation, the reality is that many of the experiences that we deliver are relatively fixed and - if we have gone to the trouble of designing them at all - they have been designed to be as positive as possible for as many people as possible. And, after that, we just hope for the best.
So how do we design the experience of school in ways that acknowledge the context that each student, family or employee is bringing through the school gate?
Three starting ideas might help to get us onto the right track.
1. Design experiences with modes in mind. For more on this, check out the work of Dave Norton, who has written a lot on this topic already. To summarise, however, it's possible to imagine the same person walking into an admissions office on three different occasions, in three different “modes”. They might be in “efficiency” mode, wanting you to cut to the chase and answer a couple of key questions before making a decisions; they might be in “executive” mode, focused solely on the ROI that this decision is going to have for their family; equally, they might be “nostalgia” mode, remembering their own experiences at school and comparing them to this new context. Each mode is likely to interpret the same experience very differently, so we need a way of identifying these modes and understanding the job that needs to be done.
2. Remember that people and processes don't always mix well. Even the most progressive schools are systems, often with a ton of rules, regulations, and policies. Experiences are also built on systems, processes, and standard behaviours. But we cannot think that just by following the rules the experience is going to be a positive one. Systems are there to remind us of what to do and to ensure overall quality, but it is often by stepping away from the system and providing a personalised response or acting in a unique way that we demonstrate what Will Guidara calls “unreasonable hospitality” - a deeply human act of kindness that recognises the person standing in front of you.
3. Don't take all of the credit when the experience is worth remembering. I've always felt awkward when schools take credit for the eventual happiness and success of their alumni later on in life. The reality is, however good the experience of school may have been, their path to future success and happiness was formed by a complex mix of factors that includes, but is certainly not limited to, where they went to school. We know that sometimes the experience of school - as a student, parent, or employee - is not always as positive as it could be, and that sometimes that is the result of factors that are well outside what any school can control. Equally, however, we would do well to remember that sometimes an experience is positive entirely without or even despite our help.
In the end, does it matter whether experience is defined as something that happens to us, inside us, or somewhere in between? Perhaps not. But it is at least a reminder that we cannot build an experience strategy without keeping the chaotic, unpredictable, complex reality of human experiencing firmly in mind.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash.
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