Author: Greg Culos

July 1987

Once upon a time long before Jack….

This time it was big. His plan was an ambitious one. And he was glad. He had been idle for a long time and found his recent preoccupation to be refreshing. And it was just so big! If he were able to experience fear, he would probably be terrified by the prospect of what he was about to attempt to create. But that was not the case. He was simply stunned by its size and complexity and the amount of work it would require. But the extra effort would not hurt him. In fact, he mused, it might actually allow him to become more involved than he had ever been before. His past creations had been simple. Too simple. Especially the past few. He had become tired with each of them very quickly; so to amuse himself he had terminated them all with sometimes absurd yet always comical acts of immeasurable force and destruction. He laughed again at the memories.

His humor quickly faded when he thought once again about how long he had allowed himself to remain inactive. He was left determined to tackle his new plan much more seriously.

It would be self-generating. He felt that was necessary. All that he had ever done in the past had required so much maintenance as to become infuriatingly tedious. This time he wanted to be entertained. This time he wanted to observe something without having to interfere. He wanted it to change, and even grow, on its own. He wanted it to remain a pleasant distraction for much longer than the others had.

He caught himself becoming more and more pensive. That was good. Lately it had become hard for him to focus his energies, and it was crucially important that he was able to concentrate. Clear thought was vital. Without it he might go mad. But he supposed that it really would not matter much either way. After all, what was madness in the absence of sanity? Was it possible? He wondered. Perhaps he was already insane. There was really no telling.

This kind of futile thought had been becoming increasingly bothersome during all the time he had been doing absolutely nothing. The inactivity had made it hard to avoid. For this reason he was excited by his big new idea. Thinking about it made his nebulous form shiver.

The plan had taken great pains to formulate. But he did not mind at all. It had been time well spent and the effort had invigorated him. Bit before initiating his plan, he decided to run through it once in his mind. He thought of how it might unfold. There were so many variables included that the possibilities were endless. He contented himself by thinking about only one of the possible paths the plan might take. He started with one premise, and that split in two. And of those alternatives, he chose one. And so he let his mind wander, and followed the plan unfold like the multiplication of a cell. 

He thought, and thought, and time passed, and he was glad.

His thoughts continued, like cells dividing…

And then there was Jack…

Jack wrenched the last lug nut tightly into place and wiped his brow. An ugly black smear appeared across his forehead. Cursing under his breath, he put the flat in the trunk and stowed the tools. He was an hour and a half late and Roger was probably fuming. Let him, Jack thought. Jack was not about to let anyone try intimidating him. Especially not that small excuse for a man.

He got into his car and drove on.

Jack Laumer was not a handsome man. Behind his back he was often referred to as the carp. He knew this, but never let it bother him. He was short and he accepted that. His face was thin, gaunt, and, in all, ugly, and he accepted that too. He was comfortable with his shortcomings for the simple reason that the world needed him. Though ridiculed behind his back, in company he was treated with the utmost respect.

What he did not accept was his inability to attract women. Jack was thirty-eight. Jack was still a virgin. He might not have been, but the thought of paying for services of that sort repulsed him. There was no dignity in that. 

He was a man of monumental genius and pride. He held the accolades of Harvard, Yale, and Oxford, and was the recipient of three Nobel prizes. His accomplishments cast a formidable shadow. Jack was a molecular biologist par excellence. His Nobel prizes were the results of years of work in cancer research. Unlike others in the past who had gained recognition for simply outlining the characteristics of the disease, Jack was on the verge of discovering a cure.

That was why Roger Caulfield rudely interrupted him at four forty-five in the morning. Roger, Jack’s associate, was dedicated. But according to Jack, he was a simple ass.

Roger had been characteristically excited on the phone with jack. He said he had found a gene cluster. And this, though it should have excited Jack too, did not. Jack knew all too well that Roger was famous for false alarms. Roger had needlessly cut his sleep short many times before.

The flat tire was the last straw. Jack’s patience snapped like a frayed climber’s rope. His knuckles whitened as he made a futile attempt at strangling the steering wheel. Caulfield, you’ve cried wolf for the last time! The words ran through the car’s chassis like a death knoll.

Moments after Jack had taken care of the flat tire it had started to rain. Now, as he approached the security booth in front of the research center, he was steering his way through monsoon conditions more typical of Bangkok than Vancouver. Jack grew even more dismal. He had an excitable bladder, and the rain was not helping that out too much either. Jack made a quick mental sketch of Roger’s notification of release.

Then his sunroof began to leak.

Jack pulled up to the waiting guard. He wrenched the window down and thrust his identification card out at (he shot a quick glance at the name-tag) Billy Smit. What a moronic name, thought Jack.

“Thank you mister Laumer,” Billy said cheerfully as he handed back Jack’s card.

Jack grunted something incomprehensible and rolled up the window. His car disappeared into the confused mass of buildings that constituted the North Bend Research Center.

“What did you find?” Janice Delmar asked Roger.

Janice was Jack’s new understudy and was a graduate student working towards her doctorate in genetics. She had been putting a lot of effort into the Laumer project in the past few weeks and this was the third time in a row that she had worked through the night helping Roger. Recently she had been noticing the black stains under her eyes slowly growing, but despite her exhausting schedule, she really appreciated the experience.

Jack had recently decided to take Janice on as a full-time researcher. Unfortunately, she misinterpreted the act thinking that Jack really appreciated her abilities and efforts. She was wrong. Taking her on to the project was Jack’s idea of a sexual advance. He could really care less if she was a benefit to his research. The only thing Jack admired about her was her body. And though Janice was still blinded by respect for Jack, she would soon grow to detest the man. He would not mind. He would soon become humanity’s savior.

In the lab, Janice was starting to become concerned about Roger. His breathing was growing increasingly shallow, as if he were hyperventilating. His chest began heaving faster than what Janice thought was safe. Then he began to spout gibberish and appeared to try implanting his fingers into his skull as if trying to perform some strange form of self-mutilation inspired by a Vulcan.

“Are you alright professor?” Janice asked as her concern grew.

Roger stared fixedly into the neutrinoscope’s viewing monitor.

“Professor, please say something!”

“This is it!” he muttered and in one fluid motion slapped the recording mechanism into action and spun violently to embrace his bewildered assistant. ” I found it! I found it!” he screamed as he led Janice through a series of bizarre dance steps around the lab. “Jack was right! God-damn him, he was right…I didn’t believe him…I did, but…he was right…and I found it! I’ve got to phone him. Let go of me!”

He flung Janice into a wall closet, exhausted. Inside the closet something clanked. Something smashed. Roger ran out of the room whooping.

“I’m glad for you professor Caulfield, but what did you find?” She did not expect him to hear her. She straightened out her lab-coat and waited for the pain in her hip to subside. Janice thought of following him, but resisted. She would wait….

Jack drove up to West Wing Two and took the liberty of parking his car in the brightly marked no parking zone at the entrance. He climbed out of the car, got soaked, and as he began to damn Roger’s soul, he was cut short.

Roger burst through the glass doors still screaming his chorus of “I found it.” The hour and a half wait for Jack appeared not to have bothered him at all. His excitement had not subsided a micron. Jack was robbed the chance to speak until he had been dragged all the way to the lab. He had never seen Roger this wired before. His anger cooled a bit and he waited for Roger to explain.

He did not. Roger instead led Jack to the neutrinoscope and played back the recording he had made. He sat back and said, “It’s incredible Jack. Look.”

Jack watched. He saw the screen center on a cluster of six very small black strips. `So what,’ he thought. His anger reinstated itself and he was about to begin peeling Roger’s skin off when the magnification began to increase.

Roger spoke. “Jack, those six chromosomes are the ones that contain the gross physical properties codes. Watch them.”

Jack watched. The thin black strips grew until the left extreme of the third chromosome occupied the entire screen. Besides that, nothing happened. “Roger, just what the hell is this?”

“Wait…a couple more seconds…Jack, the gene clusters, they exist!” said Roger. “That’s gene B2106, the one whose function we haven’t been able to determine yet.”

Jack felt a chill travel down his spine. The gene clusters exist? Oh God, how he hoped Roger was right. He watched the screen in anticipation. 

Then it happened. Jack’s jaw fell with an audible click. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed. The magnified gene split as if crisscrossed by a perfect grid. It appeared that the minute section of chromosome had been perfectly diced. And it happened so gracefully. It was not a violent fracturing, but rather a slow flowing separation. What had only a moment ago appeared to fill the screen like a solid black rectangle, now looked like two rows of five blocks each lying atop one another. A wave of dizziness passed over Jack and he reached to balance himself on the countertop in front of him.

Though Roger had played the tape back twice already for himself, he was again mesmerized by the sight. He did manage to say “wow.”

What happened next was, to Jack, completely incomprehensible. His theory of gene clusters was suddenly rendered so incomplete. So useless. He gazed at the viewscreen in abandon. The individual blocks, the fragments of the once solid gene, began to quiver. And it quickly became apparent that they were not simply quivering. They were…Moving! Rotating! “What in God’s name is happening?” gasped Jack.

In an instant, the blocks shifted once to the left. Then, as if nothing at all had changed, the divisions between the blocks disappeared. The gene was again a solid smear across the screen. Jack fainted.

When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying atop a cot in a room adjacent to the laboratory. The door was wide open and he heard voices drifting in from the other side. Jack carefully got to his feet, rubbed his temples, and walked into the lab. “Roger, I just had the most amazing dream….

Roger cut him off sharply. “It was no dream Jack. The clusters are real.” He hesitated and continued, “You were right.”

Janice smiled at him. “Congratulations professor, doctor Caulfield just finished explaining. For a   while I thought you had both gone nuts. In the excitement, I, well, didn’t really understand what I was seeing.”

Jack had not yet had the chance to become excited, so he did. He whooped with joy. Then he did something that would have not been possible if not through force. Jack grabbed Janice, cupped her left breast with his right hand, and kissed her long and hard.

The lab assistant was too shocked to resist her assailant. When Jack released Janice her face was flushed and her eyes blazed with anger. She stammered something that Jack and Roger could not quite understand and stormed out of the lab, the complex, and Jack Laumer’s fan club forever.

  A few months later Jack would hear a rumor that she had changed her field of study to astronomy. She had also gained prominent standing on   powerful women’s rights organization. Jack would feel disappointed, but not for the right reasons.

As soon as Janice left the room, Roger turned to Jack.

“You ass,” he said, though not really meaning it. He knew Jack well enough to realize how the action had been evoked. He allowed a conspiratorial grin to creep across his face.

Jack looked at Roger. He was still breathing heavily. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. My theory was right, to an extent, but how can we begin to explain what we’ve just witnessed?”

After he removed the cassette from the neutrinoscope’s recorder, he cradled it under his arm and turned again to Roger. Let’s get some sleep. We’re going to need all we can get.”

He turned to leave, but stopped. He turned to look once again at Roger. One more thing…” he held the tape out and pointed it at his associate. About God…”

Roger looked at him quizzically. Yes?” he said.

“Well, now he’s got some competition.”

Jack turned and left the room.

Ten years later Jack found himself sitting once again in front of his neutrinoscope. He looked terrible. 

After their discovery, Jack and Roger had worked hard together. Interestingly, they grew to be very good friends. But when Roger married four years later Jack resented him for it. Granted, he was jealous of Roger, but his disappointment had deeper roots. He fell deep into the throes of self-pity and became blind to all but his own inadequacies. The only outlet Jack had was to continue his work, but even that failed to help him forget his despair.

He was further devastated two years later when Roger and his young family were killed. An Amtrack express rammed their stalled car and dragged it two hundred feet down from a crossing. Jack was left completely inactive for about six months.

During that period, geneticists all over the country started to criticize Jack’s gene cluster theory. Jack had not yet revealed his discovery. He wanted a solid explanation first. And his inactivity after his friend’s death allowed geneticists all over the country to conclude that he had arrived at a dead end. They all considered his idea of a gene cluster to be purely ridiculous. It was this that prompted Jack to ram the truth down all of their throats. He resumed his work.

Now, ten years later, he completely understood what he had witnessed with Roger that night in the lab. He switched off the neutrinoscope and smiled. Cancer, he thought contentedly (but for the wrong reasons), will soon be no more debilitating than the common cold.

He had easily proven his gene cluster theory. Individual genes, which were once thought to be single units, were not. But his original theory had also fallen short of the truth.

Jack had originally proposed that each gene was composed of two to four “blocks,” each of which dictated a different property of a single physical trait. For instance, the gene that controlled for hair color would have three sub-units. One for the actual color, one for that color’s hue, and one for its purity. In proposing his original theory, Jack based his suppositions on the idea that each individual physical trait was far too complex to be controlled by one single gene (or, as he termed it, unit).

His first theory correctly predicted the existence of sub-units, and postulated that there were only two to four per gene. But the truth was that a gene was actually composed of ten sub-units. Ten! But the need for ten sub-units took longer to understand. Jack labored for a long time over the problem and what he eventually revealed was exciting. Much the same as his theory, each of the ten sub-units controlled one different characteristic of the trait for which the entire gene was responsible. However, contrary to all past theory, each gene had the potential to create all possible cross-species variations of the single trait it controlled. A person with blue eyes also possessed the genetic material for brown, green, and hazel eyes. Jack also found signs of dominance and recessiveness among the sub-units themselves. Specifically, a child born of blue-eyed parents would have a blue sub-unit much more likely to affect his eye color than the also present sub-units of all other possible eye colors.

However, the real riddle Jack had tackled concerned the sub-unit rotation he and Roger had witnessed. That had baffled him the longest.

It had become apparent that sub-unit rotation was a property unique to the B2106 gene. B2106 was the one in which Jack and Roger had first witnessed the rotation, and not only was it unique to B2106, but it was the only function that B2106 seemed to possess. That particular gene appeared to be otherwise useless. Though it also had ten sub-units, they appeared to serve no purpose at all.

His initial attempts to solve the problem of B2106 were futile. The mystery it presented did not become less. It became more mysterious the more Jack studied it.

The sub-unit rotation he and Roger had watched on that first occasion was that of a human gene. And Jack had soon discovered that all living things possessed B2106-like genes. Most of the ground he initially gained on the B2106 gene was from work with fruit flies. The sub-unit rotations occurred much more frequently in these insects.

Unfortunately, years of frustration had gotten him no further than this.

Then, one night, Jack had a dream. He dreamed of patterns.

It suddenly seemed so obvious to him. B2106 was the key to evolutionary change. It had to be.

In his work with the fruit flies he had discovered that sub-unit rotation occurred once every four hundred fifty generations. Any changes that befell the flies between those rotations became permanent characteristics after the rotations occurred. After each rotation, old forms became obsolete. And Jack soon realized that B2106 was the gene that allowed for minor genetic changes to become permanent. It was a locking device. It was incredible.

Since this discovery came from his work with fruit flies, Jack was forced to draw a parallel from them to humans. If rotation occurred roughly once every four hundred fifty generations, then sub-unit rotation in a line of humans occurred about once every twenty thousand years. And the archaeological record supplied the evidence that Jack felt acted as the confirmation he needed. The characteristics of Cro-Magnon Man disappeared completely from the human lineage approximately twenty thousand years previously. And the sub-unit rotations prevented those characteristics from cropping up once again.

But what was it that allowed the sub-units to rotate? This was the last problem that Jack needed to solve. But he remained baffled until he managed to isolate and identify the substance he later coined Mutation Locking Sub-Unit Bonder. MLSUB was a chemical substance unique to the B2106 genes. Jack found that it was this chemical that allowed for rotation. It bonded the sub-units from, as he discovered, rotating freely and uncontrollably. MLSUB broke down precisely every four hundred fifty generations, and for only about three seconds each time. It would again bond the sub-units after they had been allowed to rotate once, but only once. It locked all changes until the next rotation occurred.

This final discovery allowed Jack to find the Holy Grail of medicine. The cure for cancer. After he had explained the function of MLSUB, he tested to see if it might play a role in the development of the disease. He was immediately rewarded. He found that cancer victims experienced uncontrolled sub-unit rotations. Their MLSUB had, for some reason, become defective, and any changes in the genetic makeups of cancer patients were being made permanent the moment they occurred. Cancer was not simply different sorts of useless growths. Instead, it was the result of useless physical changes being made lethally permanent. 

Jack went on. He found that an increase in the chemical that MLSUB was composed of reinstated sub-unit bonding and terminated the spread of cancerous growths.

Jack was still smiling as he sat staring at the mass of metal and plastic in front of him. “You’re beautiful,” he said aloud.

He rose from his seat and kissed the neutrinoscope. He felt so infinitely powerful (but again for the wrong reasons) and two weeks later he revealed his discovery to the world.

We’re here today in honor of Doctor Jack Laumer. The human race truly owes its future to him.”

The president of the Nobel Foundation stopped speaking to wipe a tear from his chin. He looked over at Jack’s glowing face, and initiated a standing ovation. After a few moments, Jack began clapping himself. He had never felt such a surge of emotion. These assholes finally realize who they’re dealing with, he thought.

Slowly, the crowd hushed again.

The president continued, and this time spoke directly to Jack. “Humankind can never justly repay you. For what you’ve done and what you’ve given us we’re eternally grateful. I cannot think of more to say that would possibly be appropriate for this occasion…except thanks…from all of us. Will you accept this token?”

The crowd gave another standing ovation as Jack approached the podium. He was suddenly the most attractive man that had ever existed (or so he thought). He reached for the award in the out-stretched hand of the president…and disappeared…

as did the podium,

the crowd,

and the building,

Europe,

and the Earth.

It all simply vanished.

The cells stopped dividing and the Universe blinked out of existence.

He need not think about it any longer. It seemed as if it would work well. He was glad. Double-checking was always good, though not really necessary.

He hoped his plan would take the same course, but that was doubtful. There were too many variables and Jack was only one. That was all right though. He knew that any of the endless number of possibilities would prove equally entertaining.

He set to work.

He concentrated.

It was coming easily now. He spoke, Let there be light!

And there was….

Greg Culos,
1987, Vancouver

…no fiter.

There are times in life when you know you are in the middle of something difficult, important, and defining, even before it is finished. The past three years at OWIS Osaka have been that for me.

When I look back now, what stands out is not only the growth of the school, though that is obvious enough in numbers, buildings, programs, people, and possibility. What stands out more is the intensity of it. The compression of effort. The constant requirement to move from vision to detail, from principle to action, from hope to problem-solving, often several times in the same day. Building a school is not an abstract exercise. It is physical, emotional, strategic, relational, and deeply personal. In many ways, it asks everything of you.

And it has asked a great deal of me.

When OWIS Osaka began, it was not a polished thing. It was not a settled institution with traditions, systems, confidence, and rhythm already in place. It was raw. It was potential. It was a bet on possibility. A school beginning almost from nothing is both exhilarating and dangerous. There is freedom in it, but also exposure. Everything matters. Every hire matters. Every parent conversation matters. Every student matters. Every timetable, every corridor, every email, every missed detail, every small success. In an established school, many things are already carried by history. In a new school, history has not yet been written. You are writing it as you go, and usually while carrying boxes.

That is one of the truths I have lived with over these years. There is no clean separation between the strategic and the practical. You can be discussing long-term educational philosophy in one moment and worrying about traffic flow, staffing shortfalls, procurement, safety procedures, parent confidence, and classroom readiness in the next. You can be trying to define what kind of learner you want to help shape while also wondering whether the right tables have arrived, whether the support structures are sufficient, whether the team is holding together, whether growth is coming too fast or not fast enough. It is all one thing in the end. Culture is not built from slogans. It is built from decisions under pressure.

There were highs, of course. Real highs. The kind that stay with you.

Opening the school at all was one. Seeing students walk into a place that had previously only existed in planning documents, conversations, site visits, staffing charts, and conviction was one. Watching families choose us, especially in those early days when so much still had to be proved, meant something very deep to me. Growth meant something too, not because numbers alone matter, but because each increase in enrolment represented trust. Trust from families. Trust from staff. Trust from children walking into an unfinished story and believing it could become their school.

There were moments when I could feel the thing becoming real in a deeper sense. Not just operationally real, but emotionally and culturally real. When students began to speak with confidence about their school. When staff began to take ownership instead of simply following direction. When community events stopped feeling like staged obligations and started to feel like genuine gatherings. When the Blue Royals identity took hold. When the mascot, the field, the programs, the performances, the language of agency and purpose, and the day-to-day life of the school began to connect. Those moments mattered because they suggested that this was no longer only a project. It was becoming a place.

And then there were the lows.

It would be dishonest to speak of this period in purely triumphant terms. That would flatten the experience into something false. The truth is that building a school at speed, within constraints, through layers of bureaucracy, with the usual imperfections of people and systems, is often exhausting. There were many days when the burden felt too broad and too constant. Too many moving parts. Too many things resting on too few people. Too many decisions that had to be made before there was enough information. Too many situations where one weakness in the system became three new problems by the end of the week.

I have felt frustration. A lot of it. Frustration with delay, with misalignment, with poor judgment, with avoidable inefficiency, with structures that do not understand the lived reality on the ground. Frustration too with the fact that not everyone sees what a school is, or what it requires, or how delicate its ecology really is. A school is not a product. It is not a branch office. It is not a collection of departments. It is a human organism. It depends on trust, timing, credibility, standards, relationships, instinct, and care. Once that is misunderstood, many bad decisions become possible.

I have also felt disappointment, sometimes in others, sometimes in circumstances, and sometimes in myself. There are things I would do differently. There are conversations I would handle better. There are places where I was probably too patient and places where I was not patient enough. There were moments when I carried too much instead of redistributing responsibility more decisively. There were also moments when I was so fixed on what needed to be built that I did not always leave enough room to acknowledge what had already been achieved.

That is one of the harder lessons. When you are building, it is easy to live perpetually in deficit. To see only what is missing. To remain fixed on the next problem, the next phase, the next correction, the next risk. There is value in that vigilance, because institutions can drift or weaken if leaders become sentimental too soon. But there is also a cost. You can miss the life that is actually happening. You can fail to notice that what was once fragile is now standing. That what was once imagined is now inhabited by children with real attachments, routines, memories, and ambitions.

Over these three years, I have learned again that leadership is not glamour. It is load-bearing. It is often lonely in specific ways. Not because one is isolated from people, but because responsibility has a way of concentrating experience. Much of leadership is absorbing complexity without passing all of its force on to others. It is holding the line when clarity is incomplete. It is making judgments under pressure and then living with the consequences. It is protecting the possibility of a place while sometimes being misunderstood by those who only encounter one part of the reality. It is trying to stay principled without becoming rigid, and trying to stay humane without becoming vague.

I have had to rely on a number of tools, though “tools” may not be the right word for all of them. Some were strengths I have developed over many years. Some were simply habits of survival.

Vision has mattered. Without it, I do not think any of this could have been sustained. You need a reason that is larger than administration. Larger than meetings and targets and reports. You need to believe that education still matters in a deep sense. That a school can be more than a service provider. That children deserve places where they are known, challenged, developed, and invited into real growth. That character matters. That language matters. That standards matter. That purpose matters. I have carried those beliefs strongly. They have steadied me.

Experience has mattered too. I have not come to this work fresh from theory. I have lived in schools and around education for a long time. I have seen enough to recognize certain patterns early. I know that morale matters. That parent trust matters. That the quality of the staff room matters. That small concessions in standards eventually become cultural habits if they are not addressed. That students read adults more quickly than adults realize. That schools rise or fall not only by their ideals, but by the alignment between their ideals and their daily conduct.

Stubbornness has also mattered, for better and worse. There are things I do not give up on easily. That has helped me. It has also cost me. Sometimes persistence is a virtue. Sometimes it becomes overextension. I know I have crossed that line at times. I have pushed hard. I have expected a lot. I have held the bar high. I do not regret that in principle, because schools require seriousness if they are to become places of substance. But I also know that intensity needs calibration. Not everyone can carry weight in the same way. Not everyone reads urgency the same way. That has been part of the learning too.

Creativity has been important. Imagination. Design. The ability to see not only what is, but what could be. I have always believed that schools should have soul. They should have identity. They should have texture, tone, symbolism, and life. Not artificial branding pasted on top, but a real spirit that emerges from what the place values and makes possible. Some of the work I have cared about most has not been merely operational. It has been cultural. The shaping of narrative. The symbols. The language. The sense that this school should stand for something and feel like something. Agency and purpose were never meant to be a slogan. They were meant to describe a way of becoming.

But I have also had less helpful tools on me.

Impatience. Fatigue. Distrust when I have seen too many things mishandled. The tendency to take too much on myself when I believe the stakes are high. A willingness to absorb pressure that sometimes slips into over-identification with the work. There have been times when the school was too much in me, and I was too much in it. That is understandable in a founding context, but it is not entirely healthy. When you help build something from near-zero, it enters you. Its condition affects your own condition. Its failures do not feel abstract. Its successes do not feel detached. The line between professional task and personal stake becomes thin.

That is one reason this three-year point feels so significant to me.

Three years is enough time to reveal the truth of things. Not the finished truth, but the real one. Enough time to strip away novelty. Enough time to show who people are under sustained demand. Enough time to see which ideas hold. Enough time to test whether vision can survive contact with reality. Enough time to establish whether the institution is beginning to carry itself or whether it still depends too heavily on force of will.

At this juncture, I do not feel simplistic pride, and I do not feel defeat. I feel something more complex and, I think, more grounded.

I feel respect for what has been built.

I feel gratitude for the people who have genuinely carried it with integrity.

I feel clearer about what matters and what does not.

I feel less interested in performance and more interested in substance.

I feel more convinced than ever that education must resist shallowness.

I feel more aware of the cost of building well.

I feel older in some ways, harder in some places, but also more certain.

There have been successes here that should not be minimized. The school exists. It has grown. It has developed a real presence. It has served children and families meaningfully. It has attracted committed people. It has created programs, events, opportunities, and moments of pride that did not exist before. It has established momentum. It has begun to develop a character of its own. Those are not small things. In a world full of temporary language and inflated claims, it matters to say plainly that something real has been done.

There have also been failures and shortcomings that should not be hidden. Some systems were not ready soon enough. Some decisions should have been better. Some strains were foreseeable and not sufficiently mitigated. Some people were not the right fit. Some communication could have been clearer. Some burdens were carried inefficiently. Some ideals were harder to translate consistently into practice than hoped. These things are part of the record too. They belong in any honest account.

But failure is not always the opposite of success. Sometimes it is part of the cost of making anything substantial in imperfect conditions. What matters is whether one learns honestly, adjusts intelligently, and remains anchored to something more durable than ego.

That may be the deepest question I carry now. Not whether the journey has been successful in the simple sense, but whether it has kept faith with what I believe education is for. Whether the school is becoming a place where young people are not merely managed, but formed. Whether it is becoming a place with standards, warmth, seriousness, aspiration, and room for growth. Whether it is becoming a place where adults are also called upward. Whether, in the middle of all the bureaucracy and pressure and logistics and expansion, something human and worthwhile is still being protected.

I think it is. Not perfectly. Not completely. But genuinely.

As for me, I come to the end of this three-year stretch with fewer illusions and, oddly enough, more conviction. I have seen enough over these years to know that meaningful work is never clean. It is compromised by reality from the beginning. It asks for resilience, restraint, judgment, endurance, and faith. It exposes your weaknesses. It sharpens your strengths. It shows you where you are vain, where you are strong, where you are brittle, and where you still have room to grow.

It has done all of that to me.

And still, I would not call these years a burden alone. They have been among the most consequential years of my professional life. Not because they were comfortable, but because they were real. Because they required the full use of mind, instinct, experience, and character. Because they forced decisions. Because they asked what I actually believe. Because they reminded me that institutions are built person by person, decision by decision, standard by standard, day by day.

There is something sobering in that, but also something hopeful.

At the end of this critical three-year juncture, I do not feel finished. I feel tested. I feel clarified. I feel aware that whatever comes next must be built on firmer wisdom, not just energy. On culture, not just ambition. On people, not just plans. On coherence, not just movement.

Most of all, I feel that this journey has mattered.

It has mattered to the students.

It has mattered to the families.

It has mattered to the staff.

And it has mattered to me.

Not because it has been easy.

Not because it has been tidy.

But because it has been worth doing.

And perhaps that is the clearest thing I can say now.

We built something.

We are still building it.

And so, in some important sense, am I.

Greg Culos,
Osaka, 3/2026

Formation, Authorship, and Responsibility in the Age of Generative AI

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence marks a structural shift in human cognition. Earlier technologies amplified physical strength, precision, and reach; AI amplifies — and can plausibly simulate — intellectual production. The central ethical issue is therefore not automation itself, but substitution: the decoupling of artifact production from internal formation. This essay argues that competence must precede amplification if authorship, responsibility, and truth are to retain meaning. Drawing on the epistemic lessons of probabilistic thought (developed in my 2019 essay on quantum impacts in education), and grounded in lived experience of building, failing, correcting, and carrying institutional responsibility, the paper examines AI through seven connected lenses: technological thresholds, the difference between amplification and substitution, the formative role of fundamentals, the problem of collapse without comprehension, the practical redesign required for schools, the moral weight of claim, and the long view of human agency. The conclusion is neither alarmist nor celebratory: AI may accelerate mastery. It must not fabricate it. Education’s burden is not diminished by AI. It is intensified.

Preface: Continuity, Not Reaction

In 2019 I published Waves, Particles, Cats, and Captain Kirk: The Quantum Impact on Social Thought in Education. That essay began with a simple observation: when science changes, it changes more than science. It changes the scaffolding of thought. The transition from classical determinism to probabilistic models did not merely revise physics; it revised certainty. The world became less like a clock and more like a field — not chaotic, but conditional. Not unknowable, but no longer obedient to simplistic certainty.

This essay is not a detour from that inquiry. It is its continuation.

Generative AI has arrived as a cognitive technology — a tool that does not simply extend the hand but extends, and can convincingly imitate, the products of the mind. It collapses probabilistic patterns into coherent outputs: essays, explanations, strategies, designs, even tones of voice. It does so with speed that shortens the distance between intention and artifact to something close to a single gesture.

Thrilling. But ethically complicated.

In the spirit of the argument developed here, I am using AI in the drafting of this essay intentionally and transparently. Not to replace my thinking. Not to generate ideas I do not possess. Not to pretend at a competence I have not earned. Rather, I am using it as an amplifier — a real-time instrument that accelerates articulation so that thoughts shaped by lived experience can move and connect at a speed I could not achieve alone.

That confidence does not come from the tool. It comes from formation. It comes from having built things that could fail. From carrying responsibility when they did. From knowing — not abstractly, but in the body — the difference between fluency and understanding.

And that distinction is the point.

It is also, quietly, the burden of education. Because our students are walking into a world where simulation will be easy. The question will not be whether they can produce output. The question will be whether they can stand behind it.

I. Thresholds of Agency: From Stone to Spark to Symbol

There was a moment — and it was likely unremarkable to everyone except the person who lived it — when someone first cracked open a coconut with a rock.

It was not a revolution in the modern sense. No press release. No keynote. But it was a threshold. It implied something new: matter yields to intention. The world can be acted upon, not merely endured. Resistance can be leveraged. A boundary in the relationship between mind and environment shifted.

Then came fire. Not as spectacle but as control: spark preserved, heat sustained, night reduced. It extended time. It extended community. It extended planning. Then came abstraction: the button, the lever, the switch. A small movement initiating a larger chain of events. Intention encoded into a mechanism.

These moments matter because they reveal a pattern. Tools do not merely make us faster or stronger. They rearrange the map of possibility. They expand agency.

But they also share a constraint: they do not erase reality. The rock still requires force. The spark still burns. The crane still obeys physics. The bridge still collapses if the engineer miscalculates load.

In other words, competence precedes amplification.

Tools extend capability, but they do not substitute for understanding. They do not negotiate gravity. They do not grant immunity from consequence. AI enters as a tool that appears to break the pattern — not because it breaks reality, but because it can break the visible link between formation and artifact. It produces outputs that look like the products of competence, even when competence is absent. This is why AI is not merely “another tool.” It is a tool of a different category. It operates in symbolic cognition. It manipulates language, structure, plausibility. It generates the appearance of understanding.

That is not evil. It is simply new. And novelty always invites confusion.

II. Amplification and Substitution: The Ethical Hinge

If we want to talk seriously about AI, we need a clean distinction. Otherwise the conversation becomes a shouting match between two predictable camps: “This changes everything!” versus “This changes nothing!” Both are wrong. And both are usually loud.

The distinction is between amplification and substitution.

Amplification is what tools have always done at their best. A trained architect uses CAD to accelerate drafting, but structural understanding remains internal. A skilled teacher uses digital tools to communicate clearly, but pedagogy remains human judgment. A craftsman uses a table saw to cut with precision, but the design remains intentional.

Substitution is different. Substitution occurs when the tool produces outputs that exceed the user’s internal capacity — when the artifact can be delivered without the architecture of understanding that would normally be required to produce it.

AI makes substitution not only possible but tempting, because its outputs are fluent. They are plausible. They often sound correct even when they are wrong, and even when they are correct they may still be unowned.

And here is the deeper problem: substitution can be invisible to the user. If I do not have the conceptual structure to evaluate the output, I may be impressed by its coherence and assume comprehension has occurred.

This is the dangerous comfort of plausibility.

The risk is not merely that AI produces errors. Errors are manageable. The risk is that AI produces convincing artifacts without necessarily producing formed individuals. AI is ethically disruptive not because it automates tasks, but because it can simulate competence convincingly — and because simulation can be mistaken for mastery.

III. Fundamentals and the Quiet Work of Formation

In an earlier professional setting, I sat in a conversation where the argument was made that handwriting and penmanship no longer needed to be taught. The iPad had arrived. Digital tools had replaced notebooks. Autocorrect removed spelling errors. Efficiency improved. Why devote precious time to something “obsolete”?

It was a reasonable argument — if the purpose of education is output alone.

But handwriting is not merely about legibility. It is about sequencing thought. It is about attention. It is about fine motor coordination linked to memory formation. It is about the body participating in cognition. It is about slowing down enough for meaning to settle.

More broadly, fundamentals are not primarily functional. They are formative.

Spelling matters not because the world ends when you misspell “definitely” (though it does reveal something when you misspell it three times in the same paragraph). It matters because spelling trains pattern recognition and disciplined attention. Mental arithmetic matters not because calculators are scarce, but because numerical intuition supports reasoning. Memorization matters not because retrieval is hard, but because internal knowledge changes the way you perceive and connect ideas.

Foundational skills build cognitive architecture. And architecture matters most when conditions change.

Modern life has been moving steadily toward removing friction. Shortcuts multiply. Tools smooth the surface. In the wrong hands, efficiency becomes a philosophy — and eventually an ethic. We begin to treat struggle as unnecessary rather than formative.

AI is the natural culmination of that trend. It does not merely help you write. It can write. It does not merely help you plan. It can plan. It does not merely help you explain. It can explain.

So the question reappears with new urgency: if AI can do these things, do the foundational struggles still matter?

My answer is no — AI does not eliminate the need.

It intensifies it. When friction disappears externally, structure must be cultivated internally. Otherwise the mind becomes a curator of generated outputs rather than a builder of understanding.

And builders survive what curators cannot: pressure.

IV. Collapse Without Cost: Why Fluency Isn’t Understanding

This is where the probabilistic lens matters.

In quantum mechanics, the wave function represents possibility — not a casual maybe, but a structured distribution. Measurement collapses possibility into a particle — one realized state.

Collapse produces an outcome, but it does not grant certainty as a lifestyle. The underlying conditions still matter. Probability still governs. Reality remains deeper than our immediate observation.

AI performs a similar operation in language. It evaluates probabilities across vast patterns and collapses them into coherent output. The output feels resolved. It feels finished. It feels like comprehension.

But collapse is not comprehension.

Comprehension has criteria. It transfers. It adapts. It defends itself under interrogation. It survives new contexts. It can be reconstructed and explained in one’s own words. It can be corrected because it is owned.

A generated paragraph may be correct. Yet the person reading it may not be changed by it.

The presence of an answer does not mean understanding has been built. It means an answer exists.

This creates an epistemic temptation: premature certainty. The smoothness of the output quiets inquiry. Fluency becomes evidence. The mind stops asking whether it could have built the argument itself.

In my earlier writing, I pushed back against the cultural drift toward shortcut thinking — not because speed is evil, but because speed can prevent formation. Ideas need friction. They need resistance. They need time in the mind. Without that, we consume coherence instead of constructing it.

AI accelerates collapse. It shortens the distance between question and plausible answer to nearly zero. That can be useful — but it can also train the mind away from the very work that makes it capable. One can read about a crevasse rescue. One can watch a perfectly edited video. One can produce, with AI, a flawless written explanation. But when the rope goes tight, when hands are cold, when light is fading, explanation is not enough.

Formation is what remains when fluency fails.

V. What This Means for Schools: From Product to Capacity

If AI can generate essays, then grading essays alone is no longer a reliable measure of learning. If AI can generate code, then evaluating code alone is insufficient. If AI can summarize texts, then asking for summaries tells us little about comprehension.

This forces a shift.

Education must move from product validation to capacity validation.

The question becomes: what can the student do without the scaffold? Not forever without tools — that would be silly — but enough to demonstrate that the tool is amplifying competence rather than substituting for it. This is not about banning AI. It is about designing learning environments where formation is visible.

A student should be able to explain their argument aloud. They should be able to answer questions about why they chose one structure over another. They should be able to adapt the reasoning when a condition changes. They should be able to critique an AI-generated paragraph — not because critique is fashionable, but because critique is evidence of internal structure.

Schools will have to redesign assessment accordingly. Not through lists of rules, but through a deeper return to what assessment was always supposed to do: reveal thought, not polish. This has practical implications, yes. But it is not merely procedural. It is philosophical. It is a return to seriousness.

It also requires AI literacy. Students must understand that generative systems are probabilistic predictors, not knowing minds. They must learn where these systems are strong and where they hallucinate. They must learn that plausible does not mean true, and that truth requires verification.

In short: AI forces education to become more honest.

And honesty is uncomfortable. It always has been.

VI. The Essential Core: Agency, Purpose, and the ATOMIC Individual

There is a deeper question behind curriculum, assessment, and technology policies: what kind of person are we trying to form?

I have often returned to the idea that education should cultivate individuals capable of agency and purpose — not agency as mere freedom, and not purpose as a slogan, but agency disciplined by understanding and purpose grounded in responsibility.

This aligns with a simple truth: power without formation is volatility.

AI increases power.

If formation does not increase accordingly, volatility rises. That volatility shows up as dependency, overconfidence, shallow certainty, and moral drift. It shows up as the inability to navigate ambiguity without outsourcing thinking. The framework I have used elsewhere — the development of ATOMIC individuals (adjusted, tempered, optimized, mature, independent, capable) — maps cleanly onto the AI problem.

Adjusted: able to recalibrate when conditions shift, not cling to generated certainty. Tempered: restrained, not intoxicated by speed and polish. Optimized: able to use tools efficiently without being governed by them. Mature: capable of owning mistakes and revising truthfully. Independent: able to think, not merely select. Capable: able to act responsibly under pressure, not merely perform in stable conditions.

These are not skills that can be generated.

They are traits that are formed.

This is why the argument about handwriting, memorization, or spelling is not really about handwriting. It is about formation. It is about building the internal structures that allow a person to carry responsibility. If AI becomes a shortcut around those structures, we will produce articulate fragility. And articulate fragility is one of the most dangerous things a society can normalize.

VII. Authorship, Integrity, and the Moral Weight of Claim

At the center of this essay is a simple ethical line. If I cannot explain it, reproduce it, or defend it independently of the tool, it is not yet mine. That line is not about pride. It is about responsibility.

To claim authorship is to accept consequences. In engineering, consequence is physical. In leadership, consequence is human. In education, consequence is developmental. In scholarship, consequence is intellectual.

AI blurs the boundary between what is produced and what is owned. The artifact feels complete. It is tempting to identify with it. The social reward for polish is immediate. The cost of unearned claim is delayed.

Delayed costs are the ones we ignore most easily. But they do not disappear. They accumulate as fragility. As dependence. As the inability to reason without scaffolding. As diminished trust. As the quiet erosion of credibility.

Integrity is not the absence of tool use. Integrity is honest ownership.

This is why my personal policy matters. If I cannot do something myself — or at least understand it deeply enough to defend it — then attaching my name to it “through and through” would be a breach. The breach is not using AI. The breach is pretending that formation has occurred when it has not. AI forces each of us to become more honest about what we know. Or more willing to perform dishonesty fluently.

Those are the two paths.

Conclusion: The Order Cannot Be Reversed

Human progress has always involved tools. From stone to spark to symbol, we have expanded agency by amplifying capability. But the ethical order has remained stable: formation precedes amplification. When we reverse that order — when we amplify before we form — we produce confidence without competence, fluency without comprehension, and performance without depth.

That may look successful for a time. It will not hold under pressure. AI is here. It will grow. It will become more convincing. It will become more embedded. It will make simulation easier and detection harder. The answer is not panic. It is formation.

Schools must protect formation. Teachers must model integrity. Students must learn the difference between amplification and substitution, and they must be taught that truth cannot be generated into existence. It must be tested, defended, and owned.

The future will not belong to those who generate the most polished artifacts. It will belong to those who can stand behind what they produce. And that means, in the end, that the most important technology in education remains unchanged: the formed human being.

(And yes, we can keep Captain Kirk on standby, but he is not getting us out of this one.)

Reference

Culos, Greg. (2019). Waves, Particles, Cats, and Captain Kirk: The Quantum Impact on Social Thought in Education. Values and Meanings, Scientific Foreign Countries (НАУЧНОЕ ЗАРУБЕЖЬЕ, Ценности и смыслы), No. 3 (61), 138–155.

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Innovation Is Not What We Think It Is

We speak endlessly about innovation in education.

We attach the word to technology, new programs, redesigned spaces, shifting methodologies, and the constant pressure to remain “future ready.” Schools advertise it. Leaders invoke it. Conferences revolve around it. It has become one of the most overused and least examined ideas in our field.

And yet, the more I work within schools, building them, shaping them, living inside them, the more convinced I become that our common understanding of innovation is not only shallow, but often backwards.

Innovation is not novelty.
It is not speed.
It is not the constant introduction of the new.

In fact, the deepest forms of innovation in education may appear, at first glance, almost traditional.

Innovation as Restoration

True innovation in education is, in many ways, restorative.

Not a sentimental restoration of past practices, nor a retreat into nostalgia, but a restoration of seriousness, craft, and purpose. A restoration of the idea that schools exist primarily to form capable human beings — not merely to deliver content, manage schedules, or prepare students for standardized pathways.

When that central purpose is clear, everything else begins to align.

Curriculum becomes more than coverage.
Assessment becomes more than measurement.
Culture becomes more than branding.
Leadership becomes more than management.

A school becomes a place where human beings are deliberately shaped, intellectually, socially, and morally, into individuals who can meet the world as it is.

That, to me, is innovation.

The Misunderstanding of “Ease”

Much of modern educational thinking has quietly adopted a single, unspoken assumption: that learning should become progressively easier.

More accessible.
More streamlined.
More frictionless.

Technology is often deployed in service of this assumption. Systems are designed to reduce difficulty. Processes are optimized for efficiency and comfort. We remove obstacles in the name of engagement and accessibility.

But real growth has never come from the absence of friction.

It comes from encountering challenge and developing the capacity to meet it. It comes from effort, uncertainty, responsibility, and the gradual accumulation of competence. A school that eliminates difficulty in the name of innovation may, in fact, be eliminating the very conditions that make growth possible.

Innovation, therefore, is not the removal of difficulty. It is the intelligent structuring of it.

A truly innovative school creates environments where students and adults alike encounter meaningful challenges in a context that is safe, purposeful, and well-guided. It does not shield them from reality; it prepares them to engage with it.

Coherence Over Performance

Another misunderstanding of innovation lies in our tendency toward performative change.

New initiatives are introduced.
New language is adopted.
New frameworks are announced.

But beneath the surface, fundamental systems often remain misaligned. Hiring practices, compensation structures, evaluation systems, cultural expectations, and academic standards may operate independently of one another. The result is an institution that appears progressive but lacks structural coherence.

Real innovation does not begin with visible change. It begins with alignment.

When a school’s hiring practices reflect its values, when compensation and recognition align with contribution, when evaluation systems support growth rather than compliance, when culture reinforces purpose rather than diluting it. Only then does innovation become real and sustainable.

Without that coherence, even the most creative initiatives eventually become decorative.

Education as a Cultural Act

Education is often treated today as a service industry: a pathway to credentials, employment, or individual advancement. While those outcomes matter, they are not the core purpose.

Education is, at its heart, a cultural act.

Every school transmits values, expectations, and habits of mind. Every decision, from curriculum design to campus layout, from rituals to symbols, communicates what a community believes about responsibility, excellence, and human potential.

Environment matters.
Narrative matters.
Symbolism matters.

A mascot, a story, a shared event, a well-designed space, these are not superficial elements. They help create a coherent sense of belonging and purpose. They shape how individuals understand themselves in relation to the community and to the work they are undertaking together.

Innovation in education includes the deliberate shaping of these elements so that a school feels alive and meaningful rather than transactional.

Preparing for an Unknown Future

We often speak about preparing students for “the future,” as though that future can be clearly predicted. It cannot.

What we can do is prepare students to become the kind of people who can meet any future with competence and confidence. Individuals who can think clearly, act responsibly, collaborate effectively, and adapt without losing their sense of purpose.

This requires more than technical skill. It requires character.

It requires resilience.
It requires independence of thought.

An innovative education does not chase trends. It builds these capacities. It creates conditions under which they can develop consistently and authentically.

A Different Definition

If I were to define innovation in education in the simplest possible terms, it would be this:

Innovation is not the pursuit of the new. It is the disciplined pursuit of what forms capable human beings.

Any practice, technology, or structure that advances this is worth adopting. Anything that weakens it, no matter how fashionable or widely celebrated, is not innovation at all.

Schools should be places where people become more capable than they believed themselves to be. Places where seriousness and joy coexist. Places where effort leads to mastery, and mastery leads to confidence. Places where community reinforces purpose and purpose gives meaning to the work being done each day.

Build such environments carefully.
Protect them relentlessly.
Refine them continuously.

Everything else tends to follow.

International education exists, by necessity, in a space of partial context. Students, families, and educators come together from different national systems, cultural traditions, and educational expectations, often without the shared assumptions that give coherence to domestic schooling models. In this environment, schools must do more than offer curriculum. They must establish credibility, clarity, and trust, while still holding fast to the deeper purpose of education itself.

This tension is not a flaw to be resolved, but a condition to be navigated deliberately and honestly.

Our mission begins with a clear and grounded understanding of what education is for: to enable young people to use what they know to live well, contribute meaningfully, and continue learning beyond the structures of school. School is not life itself; it is a preparation space—a place where knowledge, judgment, and capability are intentionally developed so that participation in life becomes possible.

The measure of our success, therefore, is not limited to academic performance within school. It is reflected in the growing capacity of learners to act with understanding, purpose, and responsibility in the world beyond it.

The Role of IB: Anchor, Not Origin

Education should be grounded in this.

The IB provides a globally recognized Western philosophical framework for learning—one that emphasizes conceptual understanding, inquiry, reflection, international-mindedness, and purposeful action. In the contextual ambiguity that often surrounds international education, this framework performs an essential function: it establishes legitimacy. It communicates to families, regulators, and partners that the school operates within a serious, coherent, and accountable educational tradition.

The IB is not an ideological endpoint, nor the source of our educational convictions. It is the anchor that allows those convictions to operate with credibility and shared understanding. It offers a common language and a recognized standard through which our work can be interpreted and trusted.

This distinction is critical. the IB should not be championed as a replacement for professional judgment, or to outsource educational purpose. Rather, the IB should fill the role that I believe was intended all along: to provide a stable reference point within which thoughtful, principled educational design can occur.

The core principles of IB are strong and well aligned with our mission. Where intentionality is required is not in philosophy, but in how learning is designed, sequenced, and enacted.

Learning as Concurrent Modes, Not Stages

Contemporary discussions of pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy—hereafter referred to as PEH—are often misunderstood as age-bound or programmatic stages, implicitly mapped onto Primary, Junior Secondary, and Senior Secondary divisions. I reject this interpretation.

What has become apparent in my practise and experience is this: PEH does not describe school sections, developmental brackets, or linear progression through age-based phases. Instead, it describes modes of learning that operate concurrently across all levels, subjects, and learning moments.

At any age, and in any classroom, meaningful learning may require:

• Pedagogical moments, in which new knowledge, concepts, language, or skills are explicitly introduced, modelled, and practiced;

• Andragogical moments, in which learners apply understanding, make guided choices, and refine judgment with structured support;

• Heutagogical moments, in which learners use what they know to pursue purpose, solve authentic problems, or act meaningfully beyond the immediate instructional frame.

These modes are not sequential in time, but responsive to context, readiness, and purpose. A Primary student may demonstrate genuine independence in a domain of established competence, while a Senior Secondary student may require explicit instruction when encountering unfamiliar disciplinary tools or concepts. What matters is not age, but preparedness and intent.

This concurrent understanding avoids two common errors: assuming independence before capability exists, and withholding agency once capability has been demonstrated. Structure and autonomy are not opposites; they operate together dynamically in service of the same goal.

Knowledge as Foundation, Not Obstacle

With regards to Education, I hold a central conviction: meaningful agency cannot exist in the absence of knowledge. Inquiry cannot flourish without conceptual understanding. Choice without substance is not empowerment. It is confusion.

For this reason, the provision of knowledge, concepts, and skills is not seen as a constraint on inquiry, but as its enabling condition. Pedagogical moments are not relics of a traditional past; they are essential to intellectual freedom. Without shared language and disciplinary understanding, inquiry collapses into opinion, and reflection loses precision.

As understanding grows, responsibility can be meaningfully transferred. Learners begin to apply, test, and connect ideas, gradually assuming greater ownership of their learning. Over time, and when appropriate, this leads to genuine self-direction, learning that continues because life demands it, not because school requires it.

In this way, agency is not assumed; it is earned.

Agency as Responsibility, Not Performance

Educators should take agency seriously, not to reduce it to choice alone. Agency exists only when decisions matter, when learners experience real consequence, navigate uncertainty, and accept responsibility for outcomes.

If the result is the same regardless of what a learner chooses, then agency is being rehearsed, not developed.

This places a corresponding responsibility on educators. Our role is not to entertain learners or to remove all difficulty in the name of support. Nor is it to withdraw guidance prematurely. Our responsibility is to design learning that is coherent, challenging, and honest, learning that respects students enough to ask something real of them.

Structure, in this view, is not the enemy. Dependency is. The purpose of structure is always to reduce reliance on it over time.

Schools as Practice Spaces

Essentially, school is a practice space: an environment where learners can encounter challenge, make mistakes, revise their thinking, and develop judgment before the stakes become irrevocably real. Not all meaningful learning will look neat. Not all valuable growth will be immediately legible to rubrics or data points.

Assessment, reflection, and evidence matter. They provide feedback, coherence, and accountability. But they remain means, not ends. Across all levels of the school, a guiding question remains central:

What can this student now do that they could not do before?

When that question can be answered clearly and honestly, learning is occurring.

Stewardship in an International Context

As teachers, I believe our mission ahead is not to eliminate the inherent tensions between philosophy and institution. Such tensions are unavoidable. Our responsibility is to hold them consciously and responsibly.

The IB funcitons to anchor our work in a respected and globally legible framework. Its principles can be upheld with integrity. At the same time, the pursuit of pathways in education should remain clear about the purpose of schooling itself: to develop knowledgeable, capable, and increasingly independent human beings.

We should commit to knowledge as the foundation of inquiry, to agency as responsibility rather than performance, and to learning designs that gradually make the school less central as learners become more capable.

This is not a rejection of structure, nor a retreat into abstraction. It is a form of educational stewardship—of learners, of teachers, of trust, and of the future lives our students will lead.

Education must be anchored.

Effective Educators will be deliberate about where that anchor holds, and where learners are expected, in time, to sail beyond.