The Threshold Theory

Most people follow the well-trodded path of mainstream school. Their parents did and their grandparents did. There is an institutional inertia that means that the schools our grandparents attended are by-and-large the same as the ones we attended and the ones our children will attend.

It is difficult to swim against the mainstream.

Swimming against the mainstream

This is because as human beings we like to fit in. We’re learnt through centuries and millennia that you are more likely to survive if you are with a crowd than if you’re on your own.

But choosing the normal way of behaving doesn’t mean you’ve made the right choice.

The answers turns out to be about thresholds. 

Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly explains this in his podcast “The Big Man Can’t Shoot” (https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-big-man-cant-shoot)

In the sociology of riots, the threshold theory, developed by Mark Granovetter, explains how collective action like rioting emerges from individual decisions. It proposes that each person has a "threshold" for participation, which is the number or proportion of others they must see taking action before they will also participate. A key insight is that different thresholds can lead to dramatically different outcomes; a few individuals with low thresholds ("instigators") can trigger widespread unrest through a domino effect, even if most people have high thresholds for joining in. 

So to make a change to alter the course of the educational world, we just need to find some instigators, some people who have a low threshold to action, who care more about the wellbeing of their young people than they care what the crowd thinks about them.

If you know anyone like this, get them to message me at nick@selfmanagedlearningsheffield.co.uk