Wikipedia, open source software, the stock exchange, the Benton hologram used on most credit cards - many of the things that improve our lives today have been created when people get together to solve difficult problems.
And yet when faced with complex challenges, too often the human response is to compete rather than collaborate.
So entrenched is this attitude that the contrary is frequently something to remark upon. So, for example, Helen Zille's recent show of support for Angie Motshekga's critique of the norms and standards campaign for school infrastructure, had commentators checking the weather conditions in hell. In fact, more attention was paid to the fact that they were backing each other up than to what the issue actually was.
Whether you agree with Zille and Motshekga or not, the idea that they might actually want the same thing - a functioning education system - is a spark that should be fanned.
As human civilisation becomes more complex, leaders, particularly those in business and science, are accepting that it is only by working together that the really wicked problems of our time can be tackled. Wicked problems, a concept originally used in social planning, are those problems that are difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are difficult to recognise or categorise - a little bit like the education sector, in fact.
By any measure the world is off track in terms of providing quality education to all. Currently there are 57 million children not in primary school, causing a lot of strain on education systems around the world. Alongside this there has been a rapid expansion of non-state education to plug the gap. The latest estimates are that 14% of all primary children worldwide are in non-state schools, a figure which includes both wealthy and poor children. Similar patterns are evident in South Africa.
Of course it is a good thing that the non-state sector has risen to the challenge and many are doing extremely innovative things, but according to Eugene Daniels, former director for Metro South Education District, there is a danger that it will, in the end, also not succeed in meeting education needs unless it works with existing state structures - no matter how fragile or compromised these might be.
Speaking at an event organised by the Centre for Education Innovations - South Africa last month, Daniels said that we need to embrace government not wave them off and blame and shame. "Government may be fragmented but so is the non-state sector. If we can get organised, if we can show where we fit in on the continuum of cradle to career we have good chance of working hand-in-hand with state," he said.
Mary Metcalfe, another prominent education commentator and academic, has similar things to say. Former DG of the Department of Higher Education and Training and founder of the National Partnership for Schools Improvement, Metcalfe cautions that without better organisation and collaboration, both within the non-state sector and between non-state and state, a great deal of effort and resources could be going to waste simply because people are doing overlapping work isolated from one another.
"We don't want interventions that run parallel to the education system so that when the intervention is withdrawn, it's not sustained," she has been quoted as saying.
In South Africa, few would disagree that the education sector is in dire need of improvement. In the past decade there have been numerous attempts to reform education - from within and without - and the country is home to some of the most innovative non-state education solutions. From IkamvaYouth, which offers secondary school pupils supplementary tutoring, mentoring, and career guidance, building the knowledge, skills, networks and resources they need to pass matric and access tertiary education or employment opportunities, to LEAP science and maths schools, a chain of no-fee independent high schools offering high quality education to young, underprivileged South Africans living in high-need communities, to FunDza which commissions and disseminates high interest teen and young adult reading matter via mobile phones to almost half a million readers, there is plenty that is going right in SA education. But it is not enough. The sector needs to pull together if we want to see these initiatives scaled up and the good that they do penetrating into some of the more dismal corners of the education sector.
In South Africa, the Bridge initiative, Metcalfe's National Partnership for Schools improvement and more recently the Extraordinary Schools Coalition and the National Education Collaboration Framework Trust (NECT), are all taking crucial steps towards greater collaboration in the education sector, and these need to be supported and augmented.
The problem is of course that collaboration is hard. It is much easier not to collaborate. Many non-state interventions, by definition think they can do things better than the state can. On the other side government feels criticised and can overreact to perceived threats or slights. The old ways have failed us, and we urgently need to find new structures that enable effective collaboration. Taking steps towards real collaboration involves building social capital and trust, understanding the obstacles to collaboration (fear, insecurity, lack of effective structures and so on) and lowering these barriers so that people are freed to work together unconditionally towards a common goal.
As Metcalfe says, participation and buy-in needs to be negotiated at every level. Collaboration also means where some are weak - others may be stronger and can lend support. If government leaders are not getting the training they need for example, perhaps NGOs and business can support and step in with coaching or mentoring.
And it is not about not holding people and organisations to account or turning a blind eye to problems, but about a shared commitment to the outcomes. If we all want the same outcomes - a country where every child has access to a good education, where they can learn in a way that suits them and go on to graduate with the skills and attitudes needed to become employable or to start their own businesses - why can't we find a way to get there together?
