Stop the world, has been the age-long plea, I want to get off.

Sometimes amid all the confusion what seems to be very little thing suddenly stands out.  Such things, or ideas, chase around our minds, looking for a suitable link to make with other thoughts.  There is no time to deal with them now, but you feel they are too important to be ignored, they excite you, and they could be the missing link in your own thinking.

Two evenings back, reading through one of my favourite quarterly journals – Human Givens – I came across a quote from Plato made some two and a half thousand years ago.  I give it to you to ponder over the course of the holidays:

“Those who think they are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

The second was a cutting I had taken from an article in the BA High Flyer magazine ten years ago, entitled The Mystery of Creative Families.     I don’t know who wrote it.  Something in that article, however, stands out very powerfully now, a decade later.  It reads:

“A stream seems to run through creative families.  Such children are not necessarily smothered with love by their parents.  They feel loved and wanted, and are secure in their home, but are often more surrounded by an atmosphere of work and where following a calling appears to be important.”

Think on that one as well for, as the Initiative has said so many times, “however good schools may become they can’t do it all on their own” and “a balanced education involves home, community and school as equal partners.”

* Desiderata, taken from mid 17^th century Latin as meaning something desired, something worth working to achieve.

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“The more you trust people the thinner the rulebook, while the less you trust them, the thicker the book becomes,” declaimed the late, redoubtable Al Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers some years ago at a conference in London.

It is such an obvious truth you would think it unnecessary to say it.

But it is not trust that dominates the good ordering of today’s schools.  It is compliance which, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means the act of conforming to, or with, the wishes or commands of a superior.  It is the way in which the state, now with enhanced opportunities offered through information technology, ensures conformity at every level.

English politicians, like the public at large, long ago persuaded themselves that they would not be able to recruit sufficient teachers worthy to be trusted on their own and so, as was explained to me in the Downing Street Policy Unit 13 years ago, “Instead we’re going for a teacher-proof system of organising schools – that way we can get a uniform standard.”  For more than a decade teachers have been denied the opportunity of exercising their own judgements in favour of meeting what Tony Blair once called “standards of performability.”  To every possible eventuality, there has to be a pre-prepared statement of procedures.  The rulebook grows remorselessly.

Ofsted was set up in 1993 to ensure compliance to a government-defined curriculum through the extensive monitoring of teaching, and the analysis of exam results.  It replaced the more gentle role of HMI whose traditional confidential advice it turned around into highly public criticisms.  “Name and shame” is the sting in Ofsted’s tail.  In 2007 Ofsted was expanded to include social services, so making it the biggest regulator in the country.

“The question needs to be asked as to whether Ofsted has the appropriate skills and experience to carry [such a broad responsibility],” asked one of its own former Chief Inspectors, “[for] systems that rely too heavily on data and tick boxes is not what we need.”  A primary head comments; “Many millions of pounds of public money and unethical quantities of time and emotional energy are being thrown at surviving the latest incarnation of inspection.”  There is a climate of fear driving a panic response that is ignoring the needs of the moment in order to meet an increasingly massive and seemingly bizarre range of preparatory measures, that are politically motivated, decorative nonsense with little or no basis in really caring for children.”  As if to bear that out Christine Gilbert, the Chief Inspector, is reputed to have said, “Fear is an excellent motivator in school improvement.”

Can that really be true?  Fear leads to stress, and stress is an intrinsic part of the human condition.  Stress causes the brain to inject the hormone cortisol into the bloodstream.  When faced with challenging, personal or social opportunities it is this higher level of cortisol that gives you the edge necessary to “rise to the occasion.”  However if the stress is excessive (distress) then still higher levels of cortisol in the blood cause exactly the reverse reaction, leading to the brain “downshifting” – in simple survival terms this is a good thing for it focuses all your energy exactly where it is needed.  All else is ignored, especially any form of higher-order thinking or sophisticated routines.  It is rather like watching Sergeant Majors barking instructions as they drill terrified new recruits and very quickly getting the desired result.  The recruits quickly learn to ignore everything other than following the orders.

PhDs, and quality ‘A’ levels are not written on noisy parade grounds, but in silent, or near silent, libraries.  Downshifted brains do routine operations remarkably well, but are useless in dealing with complex, original thinking.  It is this disproportionate emphasis on compliance that is trivialising England’s classrooms, and undermining the professionalism of teachers.  It is killing adult creativity, and destroying pupil’s imagination.  No wonder English 15-19 year-olds want even less to do with further education than do adolescents in almost any other country.  Compliance, it seems, destroys what it seeks to achieve.

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“Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena,” wrote Vaclav Havel the President of the Czech Republic, a man once derided and imprisoned for his political beliefs, a courageous man, and one of the deepest thinkers of our time.

You have to think very carefully about that statement.  It is not so immediately obvious as the classical description based on the Latin word “educare” meaning “to lead out,” but it is not far from Milton’s definition of “a generous and complete education… fitting a man to perform.”  But hidden connections, especially in a society where children see their education as measured by achievements in separate, and largely disconnected, subjects, poses a profound question about the nature of our education system.  Do we really measure what actually matters?

I wonder how many people saw the connection between three items in The Guardian of December 2^nd?  The first was an opinion piece written by Sue Gerhardt whose book Why Love Matters; how affection shapes a baby’s brain shows that chasing parents back to work just when their young children need them most will cost the country dear in the long run. Gerhardt explained that the first two or three years of life are the crucial windows of opportunity when various systems that manage emotions are put in place such as self-control, empathy, emotion and motivation.  To develop these emotional connections children need to develop strong bonds with those people they regard as safe and familiar and who, above all else, love them.

It is simple-minded of governments, Gerhardt concluded, to force parents into work as being the most effective way to end child poverty.  She notes that many chronic welfare dependants have themselves experienced economic deprivation, social exclusion and emotional trauma as children and, as a result, have become the teenage parents, the substance abusers, the aggressive, unreliable, under qualified, psychosomatically ill, emotionally unskilled, unemployable people who are such a financial burden to society.  All children need to develop strong bonds in the earliest years of life with people they regard as safe and familiar, and who, above all else, love them.  Front-loading the system in fact.

The second article, Primaries failing to teach basic skills, now seems to be the routine annual rehearsal of league tables and SATS results.  Something which delights the media.  They should not be so cavalier.  A majority of children in one-third of London’s primary schools fail to achieve the recommended standards of achievement for literacy and numeracy.  This problem has been going on for a long time, so long in fact that it led to the third news item; UK plummets in education table for teenagers.  According to the most recent OECD findings British children have fallen from 19^th place out of 30 ten years ago for the proportion of youngsters between 15 and 19 in full time education, to 26^th place out of a possible 28.  All that despite massive increases in funding.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating then surely the proof of a successful education is how many youngsters want still more of it?

By such a yardstick England stands condemned… and the reason very obviously goes right back to the limited support so many youngsters get in their homes, which deprives them of the emotional energy to make the most of primary education.  Having failed by the age of eleven they quickly come to despair in their secondary years so the last thing they want is more schooling.  It is incredibly sad for it makes England the dunce in the OECD corner.

See Chapter Three, and Reference 35 of Overschooled but Undereducated, and the whole of the Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. Making the Connections, and Closing the Gaps – Is it really that hard?
2. Component 5 : Making Connections: The use and misuse of information communication technologies in young people’s learning
3. Suggested Reading List 4: Making Connections: The use and misuse of information and communication technologies in young people’s learning

Humans have evolved over millions of years to become the planet’s preeminent learning species.  It is our brains that give us our superiority, not our muscles.  We do best those things which we have worked out for ourselves.  We are suspicious of those who tell us what to do for fear that this might suit their interest more than our own.

Much of the country’s present social and economic distress results from an overdose of prescription.  Too much telling us how to think, as if we can’t think for ourselves, destroys our humanity and eventually weakens our confidence.

There is a subtle difference between managing organic and inorganic processes.  The efficiency of an inorganic process, such as a production line in a factory, is similar to measuring an athlete’s effectiveness in putting the shot.  The athlete bends down, picks up the shot, weighs it and carefully calculates the angle and velocity needed to land it in the previously defined spot.  The more skilful the shot-putter the greater the accuracy.

Managing an organic process like a school, hospital or even parliament itself, is like picking up a pigeon rather than a lead shot.  The skilful shot-putter does all the right calculations but, half way into its trajectory, the pigeon decides to flap its wings and go somewhere else.  The shot-putter is given one more chance.  Fearing relegation if he misses a second time, he decides to tie the pigeon’s wings and legs together.  His pitch is as good as the first time, and the pigeon lands exactly where he was told to put it.  He gets full marks for accuracy.  But the pigeon was killed on impact as it had no way of de-accelerating.  Just doing what someone else tells you to do – “because it will get you good marks” – may well destroy your ability to do the sensible thing.

We humans have infinitely bigger and more complex brains than pigeons.  Constrained to follow an over-prescriptive curriculum kills a pupil’s creativity while telling a newly qualified teacher that there is only one way to teach causes the most creative of young teachers to flee the profession… and it’s all because we are thinking beings.

See “No smoke without fire” in Executive Summary of Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible
2. Review: Master and Apprentice: Reuniting Thinking with Doing by John Abbott