Pay attention at the back of the class, Mr Balls

When I first met John Abbott 20 years ago he told me a story: as a young teacher at the prestigious Manchester Grammar School he had led several expeditions of boys to study agriculture in rural pre-revolutionary Iran.

After a week the village headman felt he knew John well enough to ask him a difficult question: ‘These young men,’ he said, ‘they are so tall, so strong, so beautiful. But what use are they? They cannot reap, they cannot ride a donkey, they cannot make a fire, they cannot even sew or sweep or cook like our girls.’

This stopped young Abbott in his tracks. The Iranian headman had a point! Teenagers must be stretched, they need diverse experiences to jolt them out of apathy and into learning mode. And so for the last 40 years Abbott has been trying, with terrific vigour, to change the way we teach.

He has drawn on anthropology, neuroscience and his own decades of experience to prove his point: that we have misunderstood the nature of adolescence.

Abbott’s methods have been extraordinarily successful. Politicians really should take note. Poor beleaguered Ed Balls, in desperate need of a workable education policy, should really buy a copy of Abbott’s book, co-authored with Heather MacTaggart. Overschooled and Undereducated, the title says it all. It’s just the lesson Balls needs (though not perhaps one he wants) as he launches the first of his Schools for the Future, the 180 new or refurbished schools the government has promised to deliver.

Abbott argues that both common sense and science — specifically, new insights into how the brain develops — should force us to overhaul our attitude to those scary teenage aliens slamming doors and grunting.

It used to be thought that the brain was fully developed by the age of 12.