Discipline

25 Feb 2016

A Hidden Exchange

Teachwell Progressive Education Child-Centred, Children, Discipline, Primary School 5

Yesterday I read this post and got into an exchange with the author. I thought that the comments were approved, and she was replying because she disagreed, except nothing of the sort was happening.

Now I understand if one doesn’t want to approve a comment, I’ve done it myself if it was just a personal attack or bore no relation to the post I had written. However, why on earth reply then? Not just once but repeatedly. By making all this private, I just think it hides the truth that certain practitioners don’t want others to see.

I can’t access all my previous comments from my WordPress account, and as they have not been published, I have no other record. However, I will, if the author of the post sends them on, reproduce them in their original form. As it stands, I can only give an overview of what was said from memory.

Me:

The problem isn’t EYFS or expectations. The poem represents a short-sighted view. Sounds like you want to be a childminder rather than a teacher. In which case, fine, but you should not be paid a teacher’s wage if you don’t want to teach.

Response:

That’s a very naive and shortsighted opinion of your own (which of course you are entitled to have) but on the basis of all research into the way young children learn since the beginning of time and with all evidence directing us to the pedagogy of young children needing to engage in their learning independently and from a relevant perspective (and also not undermining my own 20 years of teaching within the early years) then I and thousands of other professionals across the UK and Europe would challenge your opinion. Assessment is, of course, necessary and relevant but not an assessment that is driven only by a very mediocre benchmark of what is considered acceptably ‘average’; not an assessment that forces you only to catalogue a child’s progress in a way that is relevant for the teacher and not an assessment that is in conflict to the way a child learns. It should not be an assessment of teachers teaching but assessment of a child’s learning. The two are not the same.

If you want to be an assessment facilitator then please feel free….

I will stick to TEACHING.

Me:

“Research since the beginning of time.”

I rest my case.

Response:

And current trends in education comes from which research about children’s cognitive development exactly?
Which research about a child’s ability to absorb obscure and irrelevant processes is forcing us to measure children’s achievement by ticking boxes?
If any?
Or is it pooled from a political agenda perhaps?

Me:

You are the one making the case for your approach. I gave an opinion to the opinion expressed in the post. (I don’t remember any more of this reply but from the response below, it indicated my problem with the criticisms of teaching phonics and early writing flagged as problematic in the original post). Informal teaching is not the same. Teachers are paid to teach formally; that is their role. If that is not what EYFS want to do, fair enough but that does not mean they should be paid the same. Of course, I am sure most would be happy to earn a teacher’s wage for doing a childminder’s job.

Response:

At what point did I EVER say that I don’t advocate teaching?
As the title of the poem clearly says, data driven teaching is what I find immeasurably wrong. Within early years there is a fundamental requirement that we are led by children, that there is child-initiation, that the learning opportunities are child-centred. This advocacy is rooted in established and proven theory about cognition, child development and pedagogy. Then there is another drive, pushed from the government that requires teachers to categorise and chart children’s progress in a way that contravenes this. This has created an enormous disparity. There are ways in which to teach phonics (as an example you have flagged up as something I am not advocating – which actually I never said) that doesn’t involve repetitive and rote driven learning. There are ways to assess that are meaningful. The fact is, balancing pedagogy with teaching and learning is a proven and fundamental factor with dealing with young children. All I can hear from your response is how very difficult dismissive you are about childminders, that you don’t value play, that what the child says isn’t relevant to you and that you only value formal teaching.
Your poor class!

Me:

EYFS Profile is not statutory, but the baseline is. If the school asks you to collect information in a particular way that is arduous, then the problem lies with the school, not the system.
Criticism of rote learning and repetition is just criticising practicing. which is necessary to learn. Many different tasks/activities available for teaching phonics so variety possible. What kind of phonics is she teaching?
Which research and evidence is being referred to? As Bennett in Teacher Proof and Christoloudou in 7 Myths highlight, there is much pseudoscience in education, so what are these ‘proven theories’, etc is she referring to?
As the child of an illiterate father, I have little time for those who believe that children will simply pick it up in their own time when they are ready. I know that is not true for him and all those other adults who are illiterate or innumerate. May wish to understand the problems that these adults face and the responsibility that is laid on the doorstep of their children, who, if they are literate. It’s about balancing this in the end – no good giving one child their ‘childhood’ while robbing another of theirs.
No need to drag my classes into it. My last class were perfectly happy, and the only sad thing is that I am no longer working at the school and able to teach them again as both they and I had wished. I will be going in to show them the pictures of Ancient Greek artefacts and temple.

Response:

Deary me you are properly out of your comfort zone with your bit between your teeth.
I am not going to even going to attempt to rise to your bait.
Thankfully my own ‘accountability’ speaks for itself; I have a professional reputation and credibility that I am proud of and this is reflected all over my cpd and this includes outstanding achievements from the children I teach.
Being paid to teach ‘formally’ does not equate to formal teaching too young being the right way to teach them, or the best way they learn. This is not just my opinion but an uprising all over the country from thousands of professionals campaigning for a less data driven; less assessment driven educational system. Read the papers, look online, it’s everywhere. This is not s new debate, it is cemented in the research of educationalists, psychologists, neurologists and sociologists renowned the world over. I am more inclined to rely on their findings than yours quite frankly. Didactic teaching might achieve quick results but it has been proven not to cement concrete learning in a meaningful way for children who have not reached that cognitive stage in their development. Therefore whatever you teach them formally will remain abstract to them until they relearn it when they are ready much later. It won’t be useful to them.
Do your research and enjoy teaching them about temples next week.

Me:

Responses to me have been patronising and still not a single name of a person who supports the ideas expressed. Also if she had the guts to express these opinions, she may wish to do so publicly instead of privately.

Here’s the crux of the issue:

I simply don’t respect the two-faced nature of this interaction. I have encountered it in teaching far too many times. Whatever you think of my opinions, I am expressing them to you directly. I am not giving a “aren’t I a lovely teacher who everyone should approve of” face to the public while demonstrating a very different one away from the view of the same people.
The way children are dragged into it. I may not agree with the thinking behind and outcomes of child-initiated and play based learning but I am not suggesting that the teachers in question are cruel, vindictive people who should not be in charge of children. That accusation comes out of the mouths of people who should know better than to throw around accusations. I get why they do it, it’s a distraction from their inability to argue their point. Even if I think that their methods are the absolute incorrect way to teach, it does not stand that they do not care about the children they teach or love them.
Another thing that I find unacceptable is people who are happy to criticise me on the basis of my experience or qualifications in EYFS. I have qualifications in political science, does that mean she is not entitled to an opinion on government policy or how it is formed? There were two people who chose this line of arguement yesterday. So if either believes in this line of argument then they can lead by example. Don’t make comments unless you have significant experience and/or qualifications. Or maybe just grow up and accept that there are people who can see through your “do as I say, don’t do as I do” hypocritical stance.

I don’t care if people disagree with me, I don’t even care if they point out I am wrong (or indeed I am wrong).

I do have a problem with people being two-faced, sneaky in their criticisms or underhand in the way they go about it.

I do have a problem with people who think that one rule applies to them and another to me and I should accept this because of some claim to superiority.

Teachers who are vindictive and deliberately hurt children are not allowed to be teachers. I think it’s time manipulative, emotionally immature and anti-intellectual were added to that list.

22 Feb 2016

Moving on from Maslow

Teachwell Behaviour, Education Policy, Progressive Education, Teaching and Learning Child-Centred, Children, Discipline, Early Years, Methods, Parents, Philosophy, Primary School, Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Theory 1

The first and second parts of this series of blogs explored the pyramid diagram and critiqued the use of his theory to devise behaviour management strategies.

I have written and rewritten the opening of this post three times now. I went for the let’s go point by point through the criticisms. Then I went full-on progressives know shit about child abuse angle. Then I thought of just sticking some diagrams in to tell the story. None of those felt right, though. I don’t want to have a go at anyone because even those progressives who tout ideas I disagree with are not doing so because they are bad people or because they are trying to cause harm in this situation.

Changing is hard for a lot of people; it can be hard on occasions even for people who cope with it well on the whole. Each new experience can be met with varying levels of courage, resistance or hopelessness.

So here are the things that I think are problematic about the adoption of Maslowesque beliefs.

All the needs that Maslow mentions are real, the idea that we are cut off from some as a result of deficiencies is something that has come less from Maslow as from others. But given how much of the received wisdom in education is a game of Chinese Whispers, one can see how it has morphed into any deficiency at a lower level means higher levels needs are absent.

Thus, we have the school of thought that says if a child’s home circumstances involve neglect or abuse we need to meet their lower order needs first – such as food and self-esteem before we can expect them to cope with schools rules based on values and ideas of right/wrong. It’s not their fault they can’t meet the expectations and that we need to accommodate their behaviour as a result.This so often turns into constantly shifting boundaries to avoid ‘punishing’ the child by enforcing consequences for rule breaking. Even though this is at odds with the fact that all children need boundaries to feel secure, it is seen humane and caring to act in this manner.

There is no evidence of this. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite. We are products of our experiences and some of those raise our consciousness and awareness. If anything, children who live in a family where domestic violence is the norm, are being confronted with moral issues and dilemmas repeatedly. They are shielded from explanations of what they are seeing and understanding their experiences, their feelings which are related to these and the ability to come to terms with it. Children who have experienced intense physical abuse are confronted with the real possibility of death during that experience. Who doesn’t experience confronting one’s own morality at a spiritual level? What evidence is there that young children don’t? The only explanation I have been presented with repeatedly is the blessed pyramid.

I find it bizarre that the very people who talk about dealing with children in a ‘holistic’ manner ignore these needs in a child so willingly.

If I am honest, I think they do so because they don’t know how to help. It’s easier to feed a child when they are hungry, cuddle them if they seem upset, placate them if they are angry, make excuses for poor behaviour and deliver discrete but meaningless self-esteem lessons. Having pushed for children to see counsellors, I have been disappointed how little impact they have on the children referred. It seems teachers are not the only one to take Maslow’s hierarchy as the ‘TRUTH’ and act accordingly.

Let’s get this straight:

Being an adult who cares does not mean that you know automatically what is needed by a child.
Growing up in a positive home environment is not immunity against entering abusive relationships. I will come to this in further posts examining the cycle of abuse, something we are not trained to know or understand.
Comparing a loving home and one that is chaotic, and trying to make up for the gap between them is not the answer. If it were, it would work, there would be no need for excuses.
Compensating children for their negative experiences with positives ones is a trivial exercise unless the negative experiences are explained and the effects acknowledged and dealt with. The problems that are causing the confusion, aggression, sadness and loss are all there. As teachers, you can’t change this by changing your behaviour because it isn’t your behaviour causing the major problems in the first place.

There is one incident from my childhood which stands as an indicator of how wrong assumptions made by well-meaning adults can be:

One of the things that happened when the tension between my parents got very intense is that family members and friends of my parents would try to intervene and mediate to help them. This would involve them meeting in what we called the ‘front room’ – the nicely furnished room for guests while we, my brothers and I, would be in the living room (that we used daily). We could hear the muffled agonising of our parents, the angry shouts, attempts to calm, etc.

On one occasion, my father stormed out of the ‘meeting’ that was being held, shouted he was off to pack his bags and leave as he had had enough. The three of us looked at each other with utter relief. Finally, there was to be an end to constant cycle of tension, aggression and uneasy compromises. I was 7/8 and my brothers were a year and two years older respectively. We were so pleased and discussed what it would mean but in the end, it was clear that it would mean some level of peace at home, which we desperately craved.

Only half an hour later this hope was snuffed out completely. One of my parents friends came in and told us not to worry because they had sorted it and dad would be staying after all. I still remember the look on my brothers faces which would have mirrored my own. We had come so close to an end to the daily misery only to be plunged back in with no end in sight. It was one of the most dispiriting events of my childhood.

But, you see, the friends and family were convinced they knew what we wanted and needed and misunderstood our unhappy faces. They thought it was because he had said he was leaving and we were still unsure. So they ‘reassured’ us some more that he would be staying. When that didn’t produce any happy response, they brought my dad in to say it, as a final reassuring measure. Then they left.

Their assumptions were understandable, based on cultural norms and what they believed was best for the child. But they didn’t understand what it was like to live in that environment day after day. The toll took on us and how it made us feel. As we were to tell mum many times, we would have supported her if she had wanted to get divorced but what held her there wasn’t us but cultural expectations, co-dependency and immaturity. Those who were supporting her were subject to the same and had normalised unhelpful attitudes and beliefs.

Those who advocate excuses need to remind themselves that they are not neutral. Being able to care for and love a child does not mean that you are not subject to:

cultural and societal norms
received wisdoms
unquestioned assumptions
narratives told from particular perspectives
prejudiced ideas and beliefs

They also need to stop pretending that they are not affected by:

unhealthy beliefs about relationships
their emotional needs
incomplete understanding of the home lives of the children they are trying to help
emotional immaturity
lack of knowledge and understanding of the emotional, moral and spiritual effects of living in an abusive environment
an underlying perfectionism which sees children growing up in these environments as perpetual victims because of the ‘damage’ done by childhood
an inability to accept that one is wrong or has made mistakes
an inability to effectively evaluate the impact of interventions
caring more about virtue signalling
wanting to appear superior to others
wanting social approval by acting and behaving in a particular way

In the next few weeks, I am hoping to collate more information from the research out there to see what we really know about the lives of children from abusive homes and why so many of the interventions in place fail to improve the behaviour of children in our classes. In addition, I will examine the conformity of the ‘excuses’ model.

18 Feb 2016

Maslow’s Hierarchy – Critique Part Two

Teachwell Behaviour, Progressive Education, Social Class, Teaching and Learning Child-Centred, Children, Discipline, Early Years, Methods, Parents, Philosophy, Primary School, Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Theory 2

In the first part of this post, I reviewed the link between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and behaviour management systems in schools, in the context of excuses made for poor behaviour. I critiqued the commonly used diagram when presenting Maslow’s ideas and it impacts on how we perceive Maslow’s theory.

I don’t dispute that Maslow identified important needs that humans have.

However, the way his theory has been and continues to be used as the basis for managing the behaviour of disruptive pupils, without critique, review or evaluation, is unethical. (The same goes for Bowlby’s attachment theory, but that is another post altogether).

Maslow’s sample was deliberately chosen from two particular groups. He studied people who he thought were ‘exemplary’ (such as Albert Einstein) and then chose a sample from ” the healthiest 1% of the student population”.

So not children then, much less children suffering from neglect, abuse or mental health problems.

He deliberately did not want to study those who had mental health problems as”the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.”

I don’t think that Maslow could have been further removed from the study of the children his ideas are most applied to.

In their book ‘Urban Myths about Learning and Education’, `De Bruyckere, Kirschner and Hulshof highlight:

Maslow added two more layers to his hierarchy (knowing and understanding, aesthetics). Anyone who knows why we only encounter the earlier not the later version of his hierarchy in education, please feel free to leave a comment below.
In 1962, Maslow expressed surprise why his theory had not been repeated, tested, analysed or criticised. In his words, he felt that people had “just used it, swallowed it whole, with only the most minor modifications”. That is a pretty damning criticism of anyone who promotes a simplistic diagnostic use of his theory. It would seem the education establishment in the UK and elsewhere is oblivious to this. How uncritically is Maslow being presented and taught if this criticism is unknown to teachers in comparison to the diagram? I have yet to encounter such a self-critique of a model in political science (my initial area of study) which I was not made aware of. Theories and ideas are not meant to be accepted uncritically, and it is yet another contradiction in the education system, that those banging on about critical thinking in education, seem to be doing the least. Especially when it comes to Maslow!!
What detailed investigations there have been, did not provide empirical evidence for Maslow’s theory.

As Bruyckere, et al point out,

“Maslow thought that people would use his findings to conduct further experiments of their own, but that did not happen before his death in 1970. Why? Because sometimes we are too lazy to check whether something is right – or not. This kind of laziness can be dangerous.”

I couldn’t agree more, especially when well-intentioned educationalists preach it from the pulpits, teachers accept it as received wisdom and behaviour support teams/consultants/programmes, etc. peddle it out to support their ideas on behaviour management systems. To say Maslow has been influential is an understatement.

The following ideas are what I consider to be the greatest hindrance in supporting children, who like myself, come from families where they have witnessed or experienced abusive behaviour and relationships.

Needs are experienced in a hierarchical order.
Lower order needs must be met before higher order needs.
Morality is a higher order need and emotional needs must be met first.
Two levels of needs can not be experienced or met at the same time.
Deficiencies at lower levels prevent individuals from meeting higher order needs.
Personal growth and fulfilment is rare and is fixed at the top of the apex of needs regardless of one’s experiences in life.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but they form the basis of my critique of the ‘excuses’ approach to behaviour management in the third part of this series of blogs.

Bibliography:

De Bruyckere, Kirschner and Hulshof (2015). Urban Myths about Learning and Education.

Hofstede, G. (1984). “The cultural relativity of the quality of life concept.”

Maslow, A (1954). Motivation and personality.

Wahba, M. A.; Bridwell, L. G. (1976). “Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory”. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 15