“such is the pressure and expectation for activity - both from the individual and the system - that we rarely spend enough time exploring our assumptions before we leap into action”

I couldn’t agree more. Neither do we revisit our assumptions when it is apparent that a policy is / is not working. This is a critical step, but one that is often missing.

It is often assumed that all parties implicitly understand the basis for a particular course of action when it is decided upon. However, these assumptions are rarely made explicit and often get lost in the fog later down the line. In many cases this means that we persevere with ideas, or sometimes give up on ideas, on the basis of flawed assumptions.

While having nothing whatsoever to do with education I’ll make no apologies for using the Afghan poppy harvest as a case in point. Since the invasion of Afghanistan the UN and NATO have suffered abject failure in stemming the tide of poppy cultivation for heroin production. Their policy was to extend security and encourage Afghan farmers to grow wheat. However, despite no change in policy the poppy harvest has now started to decrease. Why? The price of wheat has quadrupled, something that seemed not to figure in the assumptions of the international community.

(See The Guardian, May 13th 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/afghanistan)

Have the UN and NATO now changed their assumptions? We will only know when the price of wheat falls again.

I’ll not speculate on whether they would have avoided years of folly by using a logic model!