THE RIGHT TO CONNECT
Reimagining Education, Human Connection and the Development of Young People
Diane Elliott | 2019
What Happens When Young People Lose Their Connection?
What happens when education becomes primarily concerned with what young people know, rather than who they are becoming?
Across contemporary education, academic attainment is frequently prioritised over the development of relationships, emotional maturity, creativity and independent thinking.
Yet adolescence is a formative period in which young people are developing their identities, negotiating relationships, discovering their abilities and beginning to imagine their futures.
The Right to Connect explores what happens when these developmental needs are overlooked — and what becomes possible when education places human connection at its centre.
Drawing upon the author's experience establishing and directing schools in the United States and Scotland, the book brings together educational practice, developmental psychology, neuroscience and the lived experiences of young people.
At its heart is a question:
What if education was designed not simply to prepare young people for examinations, but to prepare them for life?
The Core Idea
Connection Is Fundamental to Human Development
The Right to Connect proposes that young people need opportunities to develop three essential relationships:
Connection to Others
The capacity to understand, communicate and form meaningful relationships with other people.
Connection to Themselves
The development of self-awareness, emotional understanding, identity, agency and confidence in their own abilities.
Connection to Their Future
The imagination, creativity, adaptability and judgement needed to navigate an uncertain and changing world.
These three dimensions provide the organising structure of the book.
Rather than treating academic, emotional and social development as separate concerns, the book explores how they continually influence one another.
Beyond the Traditional Classroom
Conventional education often relies upon the transmission of information from teacher to student, followed by assessment of what has been retained.
The Right to Connect asks whether this approach provides sufficient opportunities for young people to develop the wider capacities they will need throughout their lives.
The book explores educational environments in which students become active participants in their learning, engaging with complex questions, working collaboratively, developing ideas and encountering situations that require independent judgement.
It draws upon practical experience in primary and secondary education to examine how different approaches can support academic engagement alongside personal and social development.
The Portal Projects
Learning to Understand the World Through the Eyes of Others
One of the book's distinctive contributions is the development of The Portal Projects, an immersive educational approach adapted from the Reacting to the Past model pioneered by Professor Mark Carnes.
Portal Projects invite students to step into historical situations, investigate the lives and motivations of different characters, and participate in unfolding events.
Unlike conventional drama, students are not provided with scripts or predetermined dialogue.
Instead, they research their characters, form alliances, negotiate, debate, make decisions and respond to unexpected developments.
Working through individual, team and opposition phases, students encounter competing interests and perspectives while developing their capacity to communicate, collaborate and exercise judgement.
The projects incorporate challenge, strategy and competition, but their deeper educational purpose extends beyond winning an argument or achieving an objective.
Through the experience of understanding another person's circumstances, students are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions, recognise emotional responses and develop greater empathy.
The book describes how these experiences helped students become more engaged with learning, more willing to express themselves and more attentive to the perspectives of others.
The Portal Projects are not simply about learning history. They are about learning to understand human beings.
The Developing Mind
Neuroscience, Emotion and Human Behaviour
Adolescence is a period of considerable psychological, social and neurological development.
The Right to Connect examines the relationships between emotional experience, behaviour, learning and the developing brain.
Drawing upon developmental research and educational experience, the book considers how trust, stress, relationships and opportunities for meaningful engagement may influence the ways young people respond to their environments.
It also explores the importance of perspective-taking, emotional awareness and the capacity to reflect before acting.
The central educational question is not simply how young people acquire knowledge, but how learning environments can support the development of judgement, emotional maturity and self-understanding.
The Importance of Belonging
Relationships, Trust and Emotional Development
A young person's experience of school is shaped not only by the curriculum, but by their relationships with teachers, peers and the wider school community.
The Right to Connect explores the consequences of social isolation, exclusion, mistrust and disconnection, alongside the developmental importance of belonging.
It considers how educational environments can create opportunities for cooperation, shared responsibility, communication and meaningful relationships.
The book argues that emotional and social development should not be regarded as incidental benefits of education.
They deserve deliberate attention within the design of the educational experience itself.
Imagination, Creativity and the Future
Preparing Young People for a World That Is Still Emerging
The world young people will inherit cannot be predicted with certainty.
Technological change, evolving employment patterns and increasingly complex social challenges raise important questions about the purpose of education.
The Right to Connect explores why imagination, creativity, adaptability and independent thinking deserve a more prominent place within the curriculum.
Rather than preparing students only to reproduce established knowledge, the book considers how education can encourage them to question, explore, create and develop their own ideas.
It asks how young people can become active participants in shaping their futures, rather than simply adapting to circumstances determined by others.
From Educational Theory to Educational Practice
Lessons From Two Schools
A distinctive feature of The Right to Connect is its foundation in practical educational experience.
The book draws upon the development of a primary school in Los Angeles and a secondary school in Scotland, examining the educational approaches introduced, the challenges encountered and the responses of students.
These experiences provide the context for exploring project-based learning, the Portal Projects, creative education, student relationships and alternative approaches to assessment.
Alongside educational theory and research, the book includes accounts of individual students and the ways their experiences informed the development of the schools.
It is both an examination of the limitations of conventional education and an account of approaches developed and tested in practice.
Education as Human Development
At its heart, The Right to Connect argues for a broader understanding of educational success.
Academic knowledge matters. So do intellectual discipline, critical thinking and the capacity to work towards demanding goals.
But education also has a responsibility to help young people understand themselves, encounter different perspectives, form relationships and develop the confidence to participate in the world.
The book invites educators, parents and policymakers to reconsider what we value, what we assess and what we may be overlooking.
Education should not simply measure what young people have learned. It should create opportunities for them to discover what they are capable of becoming.
From The Right to Connect to the School of Human Sciences
The educational principles explored in The Right to Connect continue to inform the development of the British Transpersonal Association's School of Human Sciences.
The School brings together academic inquiry, developmental understanding and experiential learning through three interconnected frameworks:
The Three Foundations: Resilience, Preparedness and Connectedness.
The Five Reflections: Brain, Behaviour, Past, Future and Living World.
The Six Areas of Study: Neuroscience, Neurobiology, Consciousness, Spirituality, Thanatology and Modalities.
The Portal Projects remain an important part of this educational vision, providing opportunities for young people to investigate human behaviour and relationships through direct participation.
The School of Human Sciences extends the original educational inquiry into new territory, inviting young people to explore what it means to be human in a changing world.
About the Author
Diane Elliott is the Founding Director of the British Transpersonal Association and founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Consciousness Education.
Her work spans education, developmental psychology, transpersonal psychology and the exploration of human consciousness.
She established schools in the United States and Scotland, developing educational approaches that sought to integrate academic learning with emotional, social and personal development.
The Right to Connect, published in 2019, brings together those educational experiences and the questions they raised about the purpose and future of education.
Her subsequent work, including Digital Socrates and the development of the School of Human Sciences, continues this exploration of human development, intelligence, connection and the capacities needed to navigate an uncertain future.
The Right to Connect - Diane Elliott (2019)
An exploration of what education might become when human connection is recognised as central to learning, development and the future of young people.