Yesterday I very unusually took my grandchildren to and from school. Without going into the detail we had an extended evening with them. After the obligatory pizza tea –you know granny you make the best cheese pizza- we had three quarters of an hour in the early spring evening in the garden. David wanted to show me his cool football skills. Then we opened the gate and off they splashed down the stream, inevitably getting water in the wellies. It took me back to my own less fettered and free childhood. Simple pleasures and the awe and wonder of new discoveries. A stickleback. A shiny stone. A piece of wood that could be a boat.

I am on the way to New York today. Just a short three day visit. It’s been a long day with a 5 hour delay and rebooked flights to get me there. It may be April 1^st but this was no joke. As usual I am passing the time reading, listening to my playlists and watching a film. This time it was the Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller in the lead role. It just got me thinking about values in life and priorities to pass on to the next generations.

I run the risk in life of being over sentimental – people I know and care about, working with young people and in education generally, and reaching out to those as yet unsuccessful or just unlucky. But you know we too often become cynical about life and we talk too little about values, sentiment and the variety of our lives and the world. We unwittingly relegate spirituality. It is just something we have little time for.

As I fly across the Atlantic this evening it’s cloud all the way and as the light dims, the tinge of pink then red grows. I suppose the Mittey film was similar. Not only the phenomenal environments of Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan, over which he treks but also the moment when he catches up with his missing photographer on a Himalayan mountain side. There at last he sees the elusive snow leopard. He fails to take the photo. He simply says that this is a moment to share with the leopard without the intrusion of a camera. A special moment to remember and feel.

I think we provide many opportunities for awe and wonder in our schools but often don’t recognise them as such. They are the moments that make the hairs stand upon the back of my neck. The things that young people remember all their lives. I grew up as a geographer in what was academically called the quantitative resolution. We measured streams, slopes, pebbles …everything we could to prove or test hypotheses. It was an important step forward to bring academic rigour to the discipline. But I remember one field trip of sixth formers visiting North Wales where we went native. I got them to climb to the top of the Nant Ffrancon valley and be amazed at the awesome landscape. After a moment of silence the   questions and answers started about how it looked like that, and how we could be sure that geomorphic process took place. How thick must the ice have had to be. Where did it get its erosive power from? But what we did first was be amazed. To soak up the soul of the place.

I recently had another such experience. At the opening of Ipswich Academy, the team had commissioned a song that summarised our values. Young people from all four academies came together to sing together and dance and bring our ‘Dare to be Great’ motto to life.

Next week I am going with my wife and granddaughter to South Africa. I am looking forward to the awe and wonder moments whilst we are on safari. The two of us have had so many memorable moments in Africa – lions in Etosha, balloon rides over Sossunvlei and the red dunes of Namibia, breaching whales off the East coast of Africa, camping on the Serengeti and walking with the Masai herdsmen.

But we are really going over to sponsor a small school in the Mamelodi township – Bajubulele, the happy place if translated. We’ll experience that feeling there too as we enjoy the vitality of the students who despite real poverty are hope and compassion for one another.

I think you find that in so many primary schools but the increased materialism of many homes and how television, film and the press constantly erode mystery and wonder substituting it with suspicion and cynicism are powerful competitors for forming cultural perspectives

Awe and wonder by their very nature are often unplanned and unexpected. I am just flying in to the Strait above Labrador and Newfoundland. The clouds have cleared to reveal miles and miles of ice sheets and wasteland. Amazing. Too high up to spot a polar bear I suppose, but I’m looking! But we also have to plan for it. Or we have to take young people to places, and have experiences first hand that provide those opportunities. We have to find the space for them to enjoy it and then share what they see and experience. We haven’t got to fill every moment.

I am tempted to suggest “Can we have a box on the ideal lesson plan that asks for the awe and the wonder?” ,  but that would almost be to demean it. It is more than just the spiritual moral curriculum it’s about feeling and experience. Creating and respecting those moments is more likely to make young people feel their place in this big world and think about the big questions of life. It is more likely to motivate and give purpose. It can be in any subject and at any age.

I think in the good old days we had more space around our learning. Can we have pace and space please. This is critical.In fact even in OFSTED terms they challenge us about too pacey a lesson that is full of activity and little time for thought and dialogue.  I am reading Daniel Pink’s book about how the world now needs right brained creative people who can solve problems on ways no one has contemplated.

Spirituality and creativity go hand in hand. Is this  an over-sentimental view of life and education or might it be  about what will equip us all for a better world?