If we want to equip youngsters to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must turn our schools upside down and inside out. So argues TCD graduate John Abott, director of the 21st Century Learning Initiative which is based in Washington. In the West, he argues, schools are organised on a number of outdated premises and the implications of technology and new research on human intelligence and the way the brain works are largely ignored. Abott's aim is "to get people to re-conceptualise the whole learning process".

The 21st Century Learning Initiative includes among its members researchers, policy-makers and educational innovators. It is a trans-national think-tank working to synthesise recent high calibre research on the nature of human learning and to examine its implications for education, work and the development of communities worldwide.

"We have large classes at junior school," Abott notes. "As they progress through second level, children are put into increasingly smaller classes. It's a 19th century assumption that young children require less teaching than older children." Recent research, he says, shows that the human brain is predisposed to learning more easily when it is young - providing there is plenty of stimulation. There is increasing evidence, too, which shows that a human's natural predisposition to collaborate is strongest below the age of six.

"If the collaborative skills are not valued, they are replaced with other skills such as the behaviour of the isolate and the dependent - they may even regress towards violence," he warns. Such individuals, he says, will be unable to work in the new economy which requires people to collaborate.

"The initiative argues that, if you support children before the age of 10 and encourage them to become independent learners, they won't want so much interference in their learning when they get to adolescence." As it is, says Abott, we spoon-feed children, make them dependent and then wonder why they are unable to think for themselves when they leave school, he says.

Children, he stresses, need to understand how they learn and develop skills that are genuinely transferable rather than tied to a single body of knowledge. The ability to think about your own thinking is known as reflective intelligence. In a world of continuous change this ability is essential - every learner must become a reflective learner.

THE notion of teenagers being a separate group in society is relatively new. Before World War 11, Abott says, adolescents were an integrated part of society. Most youngsters left school at an early age and were expected to assume adult roles. Nowadays they live in an extended childhood limbo and grow bored. Sadly, many of them lack any sense of personal responsibility and become frustrated.

Talk to educators, he observes, and it's immediately apparent that the problems facing schools are universal and include the breakdown of classroom discipline, disinterested students and a need for smaller classes and more equipment. But Abott argues that, instead of seeing children as a problem, we should capitalise on their inate energy.

"Without spending more money we should be devising ways of learning which put children under greater pressure to learn and monitor their own learning," he says. "We have indeed lost something if we see adolescence as a problem and if they see this as a time of boredom, isolation and disillusionment.

"By contrast there is nothing more inspiring than an adolescent with a vision, ideally one who is both mentally and physically demanding. They are unstoppable."

Back in 1978 as a second-level principal in England, Abott established Britain's first fully computerised classroom with a terminal for every child. The computers were used for the study of all subjects - not just computer studies. Abott found that children were enthused and wanted the class to continue long after the bell had gone.

They were reluctant to move to other classrooms for other subjects. They started to ask teachers to comment on their rough drafts of essays. Teachers worried about which draft they should mark - the uncorrected or the revised one. If you write an essay using a computer not only do you write faster, he says, you also think differently and move your ideas around on the screen as your argument develops.

"The new technology immediately challenged existing habits," recalls Abott. "A set of curriculum practices based on pen and paper technology was being exposed."

Two decades later and our education systems are still based on outdated methods. As a young geography teacher at Manchester Grammar School, Abott spent six weeks teaching his students about how the earth was formed. Today the CD-ROM Encarta encyclopaedia covers the same information in "four and a half minutes of carefully contrived video material, yet we still allocate six weeks to this topic - and often we create activities to fill a space. No wonder young people get bored. No wonder they deride the validity of the study."

Abott argues in favour of a middle way between progressive experiential learning and content specific study. Expertise, he says, is difficult to achieve without being a specialist. However, it's vital that students are able to think about knowledge in both specific and abstract ways.

"This deep reflective capability helps people of all ages break out of set ways of doing things, unseating old assumptions and setting out new ways of doing things."

It's not just schools which need to change their attitudes to young people, says John Abott. Parents and the wider community both have roles to play. After all, he points out, children spend no more than 20 per cent of their time in school.

"New definitions of learning could be the clue to revitalising the home and restoring a practical role to the parents, especially the father," he suggests. Children can imbibe intuitive understandings, cultural mores and emotional maturity only through parental, extended family and community care over a long period of time. "To assume that this kind of learning can ever be replaced by formal institutional learning is to completely misunderstand what is means to be human," he says.