Book Review: Intergenerational Learning and Transformative Leadership for Sustainable Futures

Abstract

‘The story and the story teller both serve to connect the past with the future, one generation with the other, the land with the people and the people with the story’. (Smith, 1999:145) ‘A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that when you are arrogant, superficial and uninformed’. (Nelson Mandela) A brave book in turbulent times Emerging from a revolutionary two weeks (19–30 October 2015) that rattled the very foundations of tertiary institutions in South Africa has awakened my engagement with this book. The call for #feesmustfall revolt was an intergenerational lesson in action forced upon the elders of institutes of higher learning and the government of South Africa, mainly the Department of Higher Education and Training. My commentary in this review is coloured by this context and experience. Intergenerational learning is usually conceived of as a top-down learning process, and an education that is loaded with experience tested over time that is shared to the young by elders (see Spannring, 2008). Lessons derived from the young by elders, most particularly in the community context have not been documented extensively except in the fields of computer science and electronics and hence the relevance of this book. The two quotations of Smith (2004) and Mandela (undated) above, embody my conceptions of intergenerational learning and transformative leadership and some of the ultimate destinations we have to arrive at if we are determined to weave the story of the land with people while connecting the past with the future. I am of the view that we do have to be frank in our reflections and analysis of that past if we are to emerge stronger and reach sustainable futures. The authors of the book under review edited by Peter Blaze Corcoran and Brandon P. Hollingshead carefully negotiate the past, storied lands and the people. They pose difficult, engaging questions to be debated on if we are to emerge stronger. Most of the chapters have left me with a constant niggling feeling and deliberation on whether the context I am working in has the attributes necessary to achieve positive results or how possible it is to assemble all the necessary components to yield sustainable results for the youth where others have been less successful. The Million Belay Ali project in Ethiopia reported on in the book resonated closely with the work I do and gives me hope.