Primary School

25 Jun 2015

Deprived Children – The Politics of Sympathy

Teachwell Behaviour, Progressive Education, Social Class, Teaching and Learning, Traditional Education Child-Centred, Children, Discipline, Early Years, KS1, KS2, Parents, Primary School, Teachers, Teaching Assistants 5

Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Sympathy – feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’ misfortune.

(Source Oxford Dictionaries online: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/)

It is easy to mistake the sympathy for empathy but as the above definitions highlight, the difference is huge. Sympathy is driven by one’s feelings whereas empathy would encompass both feelings and thoughts of another. Understanding events in a person’s life and feelings from a different perspective and not simply those confined to your own world view.

Empathy enables the other to understand but to understand, one needs in the first place to accept that those who you are attempting to empathise with may feel very differently to what you do or what you think they should or ought to feel. This is rarely the case with the ubersympathisers within primary schools. This is even more the case when the child is from a deprived socio-economic background, is considered vulnerable or has behavioural problems.

So the story would go something like this:

Child comes to school. teacher realises (via school register, area being taught in, etc) that the child is from a deprived background and this instantly invokes sympathetic feelings. If the child has behaviour problems, then the sympathy goes up in proportion to the extent of the poor behaviour. The worse the behaviour is the more sympathy is felt by the teacher, as they imagine the misfortune suffered by the child is proportionate to their anger/violence/aggression. The other children who are not badly behaved (but may still be going through some difficult situations, equal to and possibly more than badly behaved child) do not elicit the same sympathy as them because, after all, there is nothing to be sympathetic about. They are not showing any outward signs of what they are feeling about their home life that can be latched onto by the said teacher, so they believe it is fair to presume the child is not subject to or suffering any ill effects from their home life. The child seems fine – they have no need for your sympathy.

This is the same tale told in many a primary school and it is stifling for those of us who have learned the power of empathy and find offering sympathy a poor second. This lack of empathy is also due to the inherent ‘romanticised’ view of childhood which is deeply ingrained in the primary schools. This colours the explanations for children’s behaviour – the parameters for what their feelings are and why they are exhibiting particular behaviours – is placed in a pre-designed framework of all children are innocent, blameless and not responsible for their behaviour. Therefore any behaviour must be the responsibility of the adults – parents or teachers – as the child is ‘being made’ to act that way or can’t help it. This leads pleasantly to the myth of the miracle teacher who can come in connect with the child, nurture them and make it all better.

To understand the feelings of someone who lives in a family which is less than perfect does not mean basing it what you already know, it means finding out from those who have actually experienced it. I once taught a child who had been subjected to sexual abuse from the age of 0 to 3 before she was taken into care. She chose to discuss her father with me on one occasion. Her feelings were that of a far more mature person than maybe even I was at the time. She told me that her father simply could not look after her (her mother had abandoned her just after birth) and that it was better for her to be with her foster family, who were in the process of adopting her. She would have two older siblings and she seemed positive and happy about the situation.

Now I accept that her feelings may change as she grows older but is it really so shocking that a child who has been given appropriate counselling and support for many years is not bitter or angry. She was sad that it did not work out with her birth parents but was open and willing to trust those offering her an alternative, given that living with her parents was simply not a possibility. Her situation was a happy one so she went with it. Who is to judge her feelings or thoughts are wrong – they may not be what I or indeed others would imagine them to be but if she was trying to forgive and move on then good for her. I would have believed that she would be angry at the world for letting her down and giving her such a bad hand.

Her perspective is as valid as any other person who has suffered such abuse, to empathise with her involved me really examining my own thoughts and feelings in terms of holding onto the negative from the past and what that achieved. She was willing to let it go – a big thing to let go – but she seemed to want to. I accepted it and put myself in her shoes and really why would she or any other child wish to endlessly replay and be affected by early trauma for the rest of their lives. If they can move on, rebuild their lives, be happy then why not choose that option?

I suspect that part of the issue is that those who are offering their sympathy are needy and would struggle if there were no one to need them. Therefore outcomes such as the above, which it is within their remit to support, would not enable them to play the role they desire. This is an issue, particularly in primary school, both among teachers and TA’s. Like any other job, people do come into it for a variety of reasons.

In addition, I think that it would require a good long look at the current ideas within education on this issue. They do not really seem as though they are based on the experiences of children with difficult backgrounds. It is such a complex area and in comparison the ideas that are taught are highly simplistic – child is from a broken family = needs your love and care. If they reject it, it means they need it even more.

Attachment disorder is an interesting one, even more interesting as it only seems to affect the children of the poor. How many nurture groups are there in middle class schools? Yet there are children in those schools who grow up in abusive or difficult environments also. They do not suffer from poverty on top of that but the emotional pain of watching one parent abuse another for example is not based on the amount of money in the bank account or how nice a house you live in.

Furthermore, I think many would find it hard to accept that often the children who are not acting up despite problems at home do so due to their overriding need for stability. They leave their problems at the school gates, I know I did. I wanted to be in a different environment to the one I experienced everyday. How can anyone go from that to believing that people like myself would want teachers trying to act like substitute parents or indeed compensate for what is going on at home? The answer is of course simple, they are not empathising or understanding what is actually happening.

School can be the one place where people like myself could feel a calm, normalised atmosphere and could learn an alternative way of being, which is vital for those who want to break away from their home environment in the long run. And it is a long-term issue for those children who grow up in such families. Quick fix pity is unlikely to do much good.

When I look back, what I really wanted was for my parents to be happy and to get along, failing that for them to separate and to be happy apart if that was the only way. Not a parent substitute, not pity, not sympathy, just for the situation at home to get better. Therefore the notion that the school or teachers could have intervened in some way is so off the mark. However, the research in this area is focused on those children who come from such backgrounds and are a problem in society. People like myself are of no real interest because I am not being abused or abusing anyone. So am I an outlier? the norm? in the minority or in the majority of people who come from such families? Until there is more comprehensive research I can not say but suffice to say there is more than one way to react to even the most challenging of circumstances.

Ultimately, those of us who have difficult family backgrounds have to come to terms with it, not be allowed to misbehave at school and have such behaviour reinforced (which can surely only lead to recreating the same circumstances of their own family). If we wish to move on, then we need to understand those circumstances, not have well-meaning adults trying to substitute parents. More to the point, no adult is ever going to substitute your parents. They are real people and in some way or another the individual has to reach an understanding or learn to be at peace with the situation. There are ways , including counselling, however it is not a process that others have the right to interfere with unnecessarily. If a child is at risk then you know what to do in terms of safeguarding. Let’s put to bed the ideas and notions though that these children are not moral and spiritual in the same way as others. Maslow’s hierarchy has a lot to answer for in this respect, as it seems to give some adults all the reasons they need to decide that the child can not be responsible for their actions as they are lacking in an area of need. The truth is that evidence does not bear this out, either individually, across societies or cultures.

Those who perpetuate the myth that teachers unwilling to spend their time making such children happy are uncaring or detached need to take a good long look at themselves. Caring teachers, who act professionally and do the right thing by the children in their class by enabling them all to learn, have done far more good than all the bleeding heart liberals throwing pity parties. It is they who give the children the real means to transcend their situations.

It is just unwise that untrained and unsupervised adults at school put in place policies (such as nurture groups) or act on a set of principles which are based on ignorance. It has in my mind gone further and become unethical given that not one of these strategies has been scrutinised properly, not one longitudinal study has taken place that shows this type of pastoral care is either warranted or effective, and lastly there is no feedback from the children later on in life to assess the extent to which such interventions were or were not helpful.

It is time that those, especially in primary schools, took a step back, read a bit more, asked more questions and thought more carefully before attempting to support children emotionally and psychologically. To base it on a set of assumptions which are never questioned is wrong and this situation has lasted far too long already.

We all want to help children who are struggling or who have difficult lives. Ask yourself though if being a teacher is that role or whether there is a different role which involves care more than education as the focus which you are suited to. If you genuinely believe that the school environment is for you then at least attempt to be educated, be empathetic and be ethical before intervening.

6 May 2015

The Hijacking of the Left in Education

Teachwell Education Policy, Progressive Education, Teaching and Learning, Traditional Education Child-Centred, Children, Education Policy, Methods, Philosophy, Primary School, Secondary School, Teachers

I was speaking to a very dear friend of mine yesterday who (admittedly had had a few!) and stated that he felt that some of the views I was expressing were positively right-wing! It did make me wonder and examine where that comment came from and I can only feel that it would have been from the more traditional stance I have taken on education matters.

So is it correct (or even fair) to state that progressive education is what the left-wing in education now stands for and that traditional education is what the right-wing stands for? Of course it is not that simple – most teachers are somewhere on the spectrum of letting the children run wild and wishing the cane were back. However, it does seem to me bizarre that I am accused of being right-wing as I feel that tried and trusted methods should not simply be walked away from without good reasons or without well-thought out alternatives, based on research validated with evidence from both teachers and pupils.

So how have we got here that those who dominate progressive education seem to see themselves as belonging to the left while anyone who thinks that all should have a basic academic education regardless of where they end up is right-wing? It’s a very interesting question.

I can only purport to speak from personal experience here while I undertake study and research into this area so these are preliminary ideas and not a thorough review – a starting point not the end outcome. In terms of my views, they stem both from my schooling and my teaching practice which has consisted of teaching in inner city schools, with the exception of one while on supply a few years back.

After an amazing NQT year which mirrored so much of what I thought teaching was about, I then ended up in one denizen after another where progressive attitudes and ideals were embedded. Having been a really well-behaved child at school, I found that my teacher self was a bit of rebel!! Who would have thought. Why was I rebelling? I didn’t see that the attitudes and beliefs that were being impressed on me had anything to do with equality or equity. It’s not SATs and accountability that was producing these issues – it was the fundamental principles of progressive education and its impact on the most deprived children that caused me to buck against the system.

Why don’t I think the current progressive ideas of teaching are left-wing? Well here’s a few reasons why:

a) Individualism is promoted above the collective – examples include: personalised learning (which is impossible for classes of 30 if you wish to say eat or sleep on a daily basis) and the active promotion of the needs of the challenging pupil over those of the class. The latter strikes at me particularly having listened to more than my fair share of leaders, consultants and behaviour advisors who treat the rest of the class as some sort of anonymous blob who can take care of themselves while your true vocation as a teacher ought to be providing one to one for the child who swears at you the most. The focus on personal emotions and self-esteem above the development of empathy, moral and spiritual wellbeing (neither of these belong to the right or the left – they are essentially human) is the height of individualism. I don’t think educating children to exist in a ‘me first’ universe and indulging selfish notions of justice and fairness are exactly Marxist. Thatcherite maybe but not thinking of the left.

b) Class Prejudice – I keep asking about social mobility and not one member of the progressive crew wants to discuss it or make a comment as to why their methods have failed utterly on this front. Ah but that is the beauty of the progressive approach. By deciding that academic learning is secondary to meeting the emotional needs of a child, giving them a childhood and building their self-esteem, children from deprived backgrounds have been slyly robbed of one of their fundamental rights in the Children’s Act. Now I am not one to hand down excessive rights to children who can not exercise them wisely, but I think it is fair that they are free in their formative years of prejudice based on their socio-economic background, gender, etc. How close are we to this when the pseudo-scientific, poorly thought out views of the progressives have become so ingrained in primary schools in the greatest areas of need. The assumption that poor parents don’t care, that ‘these’ children don’t need or want an academic education, or indeed could ever be interested in anything other than their immediate wants or environment is based on prejudice. The whole concept of ‘relevance’ is another idiocy dreamt up by those who do indeed wear rose-tinted glasses. You can’t know what you do or do not like without at least some range of experience. Therefore a 5 year old telling you that they love Spongebob Squarepants does not mean you should be teaching about it, it just means that at that particular point in time that is what they know and spend time watching. It will change and most certainly it will change based on the education you give them. My understanding of Gramsci was that cultural capital was real and needed to be taken into account when teaching – not reinforced by providing different learning experiences to middle and working class children which would only serve to reinforce existing divisions. Bridging the gap would lead to more equality not widening it.

c ) Anti-academic, anti- intellectual beliefs and demonisation of intelligence – I am not talking about IQ – I don’t believe in fixed intelligence. Learning takes place all the time and your ability to learn and even unlearn is unbound. However, while multiple intelligences may be a nonsense, intelligence itself is not. It is complex and wonderful. Sometimes it develops into intellectual and academic learning at university and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not for me to decide the path that an individual takes. However for me progressive education is so caught up with denouncing academic ability that it doesn’t seem to know what it is for. It seems like quite expensive childcare to me where learning just sort of happens and isn’t the be all and end all anyway as long as children are having fun and enjoying their childhood. I appreciate from the child’s perspective thinking about the future and ones adult self is difficult and problematic but we as adults don’t have this problem at all. What we have ended up with here is not an improvement in vocational education just a denigration of an academic one, and this has affected those in deprived schools the most. If people want to improve the life chances of the poorest children then open up all the possibilities and whatever path they take it should lead to a good outcome for them as adults. It does not mean rubbish academic education and stand on the sides moaning about the lack of vocational education while letting children pass through the education system without the ability to read, write, do basic numeracy and have an understanding of the world based on what we know at this point in time. Also the fact that the progressives seem to have such a strangehold on inner city schools troubles me as it is self-perpetuating. Nothing short of a radical overhaul of teachers and leaders in these schools will enable us to get the most deprived children back onto anything like an more equal chance of being educated as well as the richest. There is nothing inherent about being poor that makes you less intelligent, less academic or less willing to learn challenging aspects of any subject.

Ultimately the poorest have less money not less intellectual capacity. I can not for the life of me understand how children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds can be grouped in the manner they are and treated the way they are. The vast majority of children are well-behaved, smart and want to know about the world. The vast majority of parents from whatever background want the best for their children regardless of the choices they have made.

My parents were no different and they trusted teachers and the school. They did not send me to ‘inquiry learn’ my way back to the stone age. I was sent to learn and develop. They wanted me to do as well as possible, not be ‘nurtured’ instead of educated. They wanted me to get good results so that I didn’t have to work in a factory like them and have greater chances in life.

The progressives attitude smacks of good old right-wing middle class prejudice. The hint of hippy libertarianism shouldn’t fool anyone. Left-wing it isn’t. Lets not let the wolves masquerading as sheep continue their assault on the life chances of the poorest. Keep the academic, actually work on making the vocational better and teach the broadest and balanced curriculum possible for all.

30 Apr 2015

The Fallacy of Middle Class Values in Education

Teachwell Social Class, Traditional Education Child-Centred, Children, Methods, Philosophy, Primary School, Secondary School, Teachers, University 1

I just read an excellent post by the Traditional Teacher entitled ‘Why We Don’t Need Grammar Schools’ which challenges the notion that I have encountered many times – namely that a rigorous academic education is based on middle class values foisted onto poor unsuspecting members of the working/underclass.

It is a peculiarly ‘Western’ concept based on the way that education has gone from the province of the elite to the masses. However, in most countries in the world this notion of class and education is not tied together in quite the same way.

Both my parents came from good agrarian stock – small villages in India – and the idea of education being a good in itself and to be valued came way before schools did to these areas.

Their own views on education were formed by their experiences both at the time and later on. As children who had left school voluntarily (mum at 14), and never been made to go and then truanted as no-one checked or informed parents (dad), they regretted their choices as adults. My parents were encouraged to go to school but for their own reasons chose not to at the time. This is the problem with allowing children to make decisions they do not fully comprehend the consequences of. So yes dad did spend his time playing and messing around with no formal education. Mum left because she couldn’t be bothered to work hard.

Interesting then that it is precisely those two people who as soon as they had my brothers and I not only did everything to make us school ready, but pushed and insisted on school, did not let us take a day off unless we were really sick, took us to the library weekly and insisted we do homework that they could not understand themselves. In short they displayed the ‘middle class values’ that are often talked about but in reality it was not their practical experience of education that was transmitted. The economic reasons (to get a good job) were but there was something else that was going on that I find lacking in the progressive agenda in itself.

It is precisely that phrase ‘education is a good in itself’ and that it is better to know than not know. This is not a socio-economic argument but a spiritual one and one that has diminished rapidly over time in this country. It is the argument that would have been posited to me if I thought something was irrelevant or boring at that time. Interesting that this argument was the strongest for me in terms of working hard at school.

Ideas of ‘spirituality’ from the East are often connected to ghastly elements of the ‘new age’ in western countries (a patronising pick and mix individualistic vapid attitude to spiritualism from other cultures in the world). However spirituality development is important to our growth as human beings.

Education links you to other human beings in the past and present. Oh and for the record, there is a strain both in Europe, Asia and elsewhere that has valued education in its own right without recourse to the money you may earn as an adult or social position. This strain of thought just seems to have disappeared entirely. A shame as it is a powerful argument in favour of education and its positive effects on our growth and development.