David Gribble: My Portrait We all tend to define ourselves as what we are now, forgetting that we were just as much ourselves when we were children. People learn as they grow older, but they also forget. They acquire new skills, but such qualities as empathy, imagination and flexibility gradually fade. We all change, but not necessarily for the better. At seventy-five I am not the same person as I was when I was twenty, or ten, or two. Nevertheless, what I have been is just as important as what I am now. This is my portrait.

Life in Education:

My first wife, who died when she was only twenty-four years old, had been a pupil at Dartington. My second wife was a teacher there. All our four children were educated at the school. I learnt to understand the school from many different angles.

I emphasise this to distinguish myself from those people who write (or, worse, legislate) about education when they only know the conventional schooling they themselves received twenty, thirty or even forty years ago. They tend to believe that the way they were taught then is the appropriate way to teach in the twenty-first century.

I write from a different point of view. I write about real children in real schools, often quoting their own words. I have seen wiser ways of educating, and I write about their success.