Culture of learning

I read a nice post here which neatly summarises the current thinking of many educationalists about learning.  The interesting thing is that it is written by a Grade A student who is himself questioning the meaning and purpose behind his own education - an education which netted him outstanding grades and led to a whole host of scholarships and awards, but which felt to him as if he had lost his inner voice and his creativity.   I have written about such ideas before but as the article states, this approach to schooling teaches the students that schooling is simply a tenure where you sacrifice creative learning for  educational results.  That is on a good day, with good students.  On a bad day it is simply a turn off for students who are labelled incompetent and not up to the job of organizing themselves to revise and regurgitating facts for an exam board.
I have worked in a variety of schools, some outstanding with amazing results and students.  Some courses I have taught achieved 100% A*-C, and many 95% or more.  But I did not enable this to happen simply by spitting facts at the students to swallow.  Six years ago my students were utilizing learning walls, where they come and pick their own challenging sub-task of their choice once they have finished their main lessons task.  The sub-tasks are graded from 1 star (easy) to 3 stars (difficult), and all of the classes were mixed ability. And the incredible thing?  I found that even the weaker students - who might otherwise be switched off in a standard lesson - were desperate to tackle sub-tasks that were harder than 1 star level.  They really wanted to achieve, and with a little guidance many of them did.
Six years ago we were not using wonderfully collaborative technology such as google docs or iPads.  Six years ago my classes were the only ones using challenge walls in the class.  Now I am part of a school where creativity and resilience and independence of enquiry are celebrated and formally recognised, and as a member of SLT we are starting to see the reaping of the benefits.