education for tomorrow Winter 2019

education for tomorrow for the defence of state education New series Number 1 Winter 2019 £3 or solidarity price

The battle for pedagogy

Dead facts or really powerful knowledge? A struggle for the meaning of ‘knowledge’ Building critical consciousness through dialogic reading in the primary classroom Challenging neoliberal orthodoxy through creative pedagogy Michael Gove and ‘elitism’ in education No-one’s brain is pink An inescapable concern: The Scottish and English curriculum through the prism of Paulo Freire Pedagogy, power and control in Welsh education reform Mastery mathematics: but who is the slave?

Measured intelligence: moonshine and shadow What is happening to Early Years education?

We need roses too: student voices in revolutionary Cuba In search of a radical pedagogy Obituary: Tony Farsky

Owl Pablo Picasso

education for tomorrow Editor Gawain Little

Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR0 1BD Tel: 07967 392229 editor@educationfortomorrow.org.uk .

ISSN 2066-914S www.educationfortomorrow.org.uk

Editorial Board Martin Brown, James Douglas, Aretha Green, Gawain Little, Philip Yeeles Production editor Nick Wright

Advisory Board Ben Chacko Kevin Courtney Mary Davis Jess Edwards Bill Greenshields Philipa Harvey Daniel Kebede Alex Kenny Vicky Knight Trish Lavelle Amanda Martin Pete Middleman David Morgan Karen Parkin Hank Roberts Howard Stevenson Kiri Tunks Jonathan White David Wilson Terry Wrigley

manifesto

Published and printed

by Manifesto Press with the education for tomorrow collective

Set in Rockwell and Liberation serif

education for tomorrow is produced by a group of likeminded educationalists who share similar views on education and politics

It does not claim to represent the views of any one political party of the working class. Nonetheless its aim is at all times to speak in the interests of all working people.

Fully involved in the struggle for peace and socialism, it aims to publicise workers' achievements and to counter misinformation about past and existing struggles to build socialism.

It exists to promote the aims of the organised labour movement in Britain; including common schooling for ALL our children (i.e. a good local state school for every child - truly comprehensive and democratically accountable) together with everything necessary to make this possible, in terms of provision of building and equipment, and staff properly trained and properly paid.

We therefore support the campaign for one union for all education workers as a step towards achieving this goal.

Our columns are open to all who share these aims - even though they may at times disagree with particular articles and want to say so.. and why!

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contents Editorial The battle for pedagogy Dead facts or really powerful knowledge?

Terry Wrigley Building critical consciousness through dialogic reading in the primary classroom Phil Yeeles Challenging neoliberal orthodoxy through creative pedagogy Jess Edwards Michael Gove and the implications of ‘elitism’ in education Ken Jones An inescapable concern: The Scottish and English curriculum through the prism of Paolo Freire James Douglas Pedagogy, power and control in Welsh education reform Dave B Morgan Measured intelligence: moonshine and shadow Patrick Yarker No-one’s brain is pink Kiri Tunks We need roses too: student voices in revolutionary Cuba Aretha Green Mastery mathematics: but who is the slave?

Julian Williams What is happening to Early Years education?

Lucy Coleman In search of a radical pedagogy Gawain Little Tony Farsky Martin Brown

editorial The battle for pedagogy

EfT editorial board

A

S WE START at the beginning of a new year, so starts a new chapter in this journal. With numerous parts of Britain involved in major disputes over education funding and teacher pay, educators across all the nations are not only discussing the terms and conditions of their employment but also what it means to be an education worker and what education is.

The battle over the future of education has increasingly moved onto pedagogical ground, with government agencies and corporations seeking more and more to control what is taught and how it is taught, and fake ‘grassroots’ movements being funded to promote certain ideological agendas. It seems appropriate, therefore, that this first issue of the new EfT seeks to intervene in this debate.

Terry Wrigley opens with a challenge to those pushing a ‘knowledge curriculum’ with little understanding of what real knowledge is. This is further explored in contributions

by Ken Jones and Jess Edwards, who look at the consequences of Michael Gove’s ‘elitism’ and creative alternatives to curricula of disembodied knowledge respectively. This theme of alternative pedagogies is picked up in Phil Yeeles’ contribution on dialogic reading, which draws on the work of Paulo Freire. Freire also features, alongside Lev Vygotsky and Che Guevara, in Gawain Little’s search for a radical pedagogy and in James Douglas’ critique of the Scottish and English curriculum.

Patrick Yarker and Kiri Tunks deal with some longstanding myths about the human brain. Ideas of measurable intelligence and gendered brains have long been used to sustain racism and sexism, as well as placing limits on all children. The concept of measurable intelligence has played a particular role in the rationing of educational opportunity that sustains the oppression of the working class. The authors’ demolition of these myths are an important contribution to our understanding of pedagogy. No less important are the exploration of recent developments in mathematics Teaching and the Early Years

by Julian Williams and Lucy Coleman respectively.

Finally, David B. Morgan and Aretha Green explore pedagogy in two very different national contexts, the development of the Donaldson Report in Wales and the question of student voice in Cuba.

We are pleased to present this collection as an intervention into the pedagogical debate at this crucial time.

Other developments make this a significant time in education. The launch of the National Education Union represents a significant step forward in terms of professional unity in education and has changed the topology of education trades unionism in Britain for good.

As a collective, we have always argued that Professional Unity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for education workers to win the battle for Professional control over the education process. Unity is essential but it also matters what that unity looks like. Because only a single united education union, rooted in every workplace, with strong networks of solidarity amongst parents and in the local community, is capable of defeating the neoliberal seizure of education.

What is needed then is a deep discussion across all education unions about their long-term strategy – whether their response to neoliberalism assault on education over the past 40 years has been adequate and, if not, how to develop it beyond mere resistance and into something transformative that can organise educators to win. This will be the focus of our second issue, due out at the start of April, in which we are pleased to welcome, amongst others, Professor Howard Stevenson to share his thoughts on the subject.

Education for Tomorrow is, of course not only a new publication (in its current form) but also a publication with a long and proud history. As we move forward, we also pay tribute to those who established and maintained this tradition. In particular, we mark the passing of our comrade Tony Farsky, who contributed so much to Education for Tomorrow and who would, no doubt, be pleased to see it relaunched in this way. It is thanks to the work of Tony and all the Editorial Boards that went before us that we are able to bring this issue to publication today. We are proud to continue in their footsteps by entering into the battle of ideas.

The future of education is in valuing teachers, valuing education and valuing students, not in valuing human capital. It is in this spirit and in these pages that we examine the question of pedagogy, consider the role of educators in taking professional control of the learning process, and begin to set out a vision of education for tomorrow.

February 2019 education for tomorrow 1

pedagogy

Dead facts or really powerful knowledge?

A struggle for the meaning of ‘knowledge’

Terry Wrigley

The word knowledge is rich in meaning. In English we use the same word for knowing facts and knowing people and places.

One of the great European pioneers of progressive teaching Johann Pestalozzi called for ‘learning by head, hand and heart’, yet it is easy to revert to a narrower and drier sense of knowledge as a body of facts. Knowledge also stretches between bodies of accumulated content and the process of coming to know; we can store knowledge in libraries but also grow in knowledge through travel.

2 education for tomorrow

T

HE STRUGGLE between drier and more experiential versions of knowledge has been pursued for several centuries. Alongside the grammar schools with their emphasis on Latin and Greek, a parallel tradition of ‘dissenting academies’ was developed after the Civil War by religious non-conformists who were alive to scientific discovery and growing political revolt. The poet John Keats was educated at one of them, led by John Ryland, and we find these wonderful illustrations in a biography1of the poet: One autumn morning, John Ryland called up the whole school to see the departure of the swallows, which had clustered in surprising numbers on the roof of the building (p29)

Ryland believed in educating his pupils ‘by recreation’. He used to demonstrate the movements of the solar system by simulating it in the school yard. Each pupil was given a card with information about a particular planet or moon and together they played out the movement of the solar system (p36).

The struggle between two forms of learning – two types of knowledge – continues into our own time. Despite excessively large classes and a damaging inspection system which encouraged formal rote-learning methods in the late 19th Century, many teachers continued to experiment, using ‘object lessons’ to encourage pupils to observe and interpret a natural phenomenon or artefact. The resurgence of more experiential learning in England around the 1970s was regarded as dangerous by Margaret Thatcher’s government, and increasingly suppressed by succeeding versions of the National Curriculum, high-stakes testing and fear of Ofsted.

answers. The knowledge is all there… But if … you buy your computer a half-dozen roses, then the computer will sit there, awaiting some input. It knows nothing. (p135)

Human learning involves both experience and symbolic representation – a lesson which Michael Gove and his advisers refused. Abstract concepts and theories are immensely powerful, but are meaningless unless we can connect them to material reality and lived experience.

A parallel argument comes from philosopher Gilbert Ryle3, discussing the relationship between initiation into an activity and learning the rules. Here Ryle mocks the traditionalist view that abstract knowledge is primary: The chef must recite his recipes to himself before he can cook according to them; the hero must lend his inner ear to some appropriate moral imperative before swimming out to save the drowning man; the chess-player must run over in his head all the relevant rules and tactical maxims of the game before he can make correct and skilful moves. (p31)

Ryle concedes that thinking helps steer our actions, and that chess players pause to plan their strategy. However, activity, rather than rules, plays the primary role. ‘Efficient practice precedes the theory of it.’ (p32) Although England’s national curriculum was supposedly derived from the highest achieving education systems in the world, we find a greater experiential emphasis in many of the global high achievers. Finnish seven year olds spend time cutting cakes into halves and quarters before attempting the addition and subtraction of fractions – as our children used to do but now there’s too much hurry. Much of the mystique of Singapore Maths is actually only a recognition that pupils need the time to move backwards and forwards between Abstraction and experience Because of the high status it is afforded, knowledge which is experience and abstraction.

The government-mandated ‘synthetic phonics’ approach to codified and condensed into abstract language and formulae literacy suffers from the same deep error: a divorce between easily becomes detached from its roots in experience. It is rule-driven patterns of letter-sound correspondence on the one important, therefore, to hold onto the dialectic between abstraction and experience as a key to understanding learning. hand, and the activity of meaning-making on the other. As Michael Rosen4 joked: Etienne Wenger2 illustrates this through a Zen problem: ‘What does a flower know about being a flower?’ His answer We at Ruth Miskin Academy are pioneering Miskin Kick is: in one sense, everything – in another, nothing at all.

Score Incorporated where in the first year you play UnBeing a flower is to no one as transparent, immediately Football, by playing without the ball. obvious, fully internalized, and natural as it is to a flower: spreading those leaves, absorbing that specific spectrum of Rival theories Not surprisingly these conflicting views of knowledge and light from the sun, taking the energy in, building protein, learning are underpinned by different theoretical perspectives. sucking nutrients from its roots, growing, budding, Early 20th Century attempts to provide a ‘scientific’ blooming, being visited by a bee… But ask the flower to understanding of human knowledge were based on teach a botany class, and it will just stand there, knowing experiments with caged animals. An artificial stimulus (eg nothing about being a flower, not the first thing. (p134) ringing a bell) was repeatedly associated with food, and eventually the animal was conditioned into salivating at the He follows this with the opposite question, ‘What does a sound of a bell. Although this looked like ‘science’, it cut out computer know about being a flower?’ Again, his answer is key aspects of learning such as curiosity, and only worked for everything and nothing – but the opposite way round. The simple behaviours. computer can handle all kinds of data about flowers but This restricted paradigm became dominant in the early experientially it has no understanding at all about being a Soviet republic, partly because it was mistakenly believed to flower. accord with materialist Marxist philosophy. However Vygotsky5 quickly challenged this inadequate approach for Type ‘photosynthesis’, ‘petal’, ‘stem’, and so on: perfect

education for tomorrow 3

l failing to distinguish between human and animal behaviour; l inappropriately using physiology to explain psychology; l refusing to think about consciousness or language; l assuming that observable behaviours are sufficient for building a theory; l neglecting historical and social dimensions.

Far from aligning with Marxism, this reductionist version of materialism lacks its emancipatory potential. As Vygotsky points out, the reflexologists fail to grasp the most basic difference between human beings and animals:

school system. At the same time, US behaviourists such as Watkins and Skinner provided a limited pedagogical vision which, accompanied by Taylorist views of ‘administration’ (management), led to an equally debased view of knowledge and learning. This was eventually adopted by Conservative and New Labour modernisers in England.

Vygotsky insisted on the connectedness of the individual mind with culture, history and society, and the pivotal importance of active meaning-making through speech and other sign systems. This theoretical development underpins a wide array of pedagogies which are not limited to the acquisition of pre-established facts: dialogic, place-based, investigative, dramatic, problem-solving, and so on.

Sadly behaviourism became even more dominant in the Soviet Union under Stalin, creating an efficient but uncritical

l slavery (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica).

E D Hirsch: core knowledge for cultural literacy Hirsch’s emphasis on ‘core knowledge’ originated from a deep concern that children from the poorest communities were receiving a limited ‘basis skills’ education, but his Whereas animals passively adapt to the environment, man solution provides only a spurious answer. His argument is that actively adapts the environment to himself... The spider the lack of factual knowledge consigns lower class students to that weaves his web and the bee that builds his cell out of educational failure: they simply don't have the reference wax do this out of instinct, mechanically, always in the points to understand key texts. His answer has been to same way, and in doingso they never display any more compile comprehensive lists of essential knowledge, mostly activity than in any other adaptive reactions. But the presented as fragmented facts. situation is different with a weaver or an architect. As Marx His interminable lists of skeletal facts lend themselves to said, they first built their works in their heads; the result of memorisation and rote-learning. There is a real danger that their labours existed before this labour in ideal form. 2 if Ofsted adopts a Hirschian form of ‘knowledge-based curriculum’ and starts to police its transmission, young There is no room for imagination and creativity in the people in schools which feel most vulnerable to Ofsted (i.e. behaviourist vision of human learning. It is, as Marx suggests, those serving the poorest neighbourhoods) will receive not this doubling of physical activity in the imagination that ‘core knowledge’ but the crumbs falling from the rich enables human beings to shape their social as well as their man’s table. physical world. Reductionist psychology not only results in Consider this extract taken from Grade 4 (approximately very limited understanding, it debases our humanity. Andy Y5) of the US version (Core Knowledge Foundation 2013): Blunden6 concludes that this reductionist psychology is all about social control: The Inca: l ruled an empire stretching along the Pacific coast of South The aim of controlling human behavior answers to the America l built great cities (Machu Picchu, Cuzco) high in the Andes, needs of capitalist, prison guard, interrogator, marketer, politician and bureaucrat, but an emancipatory psychology connected by a system of roads aims to free people from manipulation so that they can Spanish Conquerors: have voluntary control over their own behaviour. (p127) Conquistadors: Cortés and Pizzaro Vygotsky went on to explore much richer and more l Advantage of Spanish weapons (guns, cannons) realistic forms of mediation than Pavlovian stimuli. Rather l Diseases devastate native peoples than simple sensory triggers, our perception and The obvious danger is memorisation with only superficial understanding of the world is mediated through many understanding. It is difficult to see how knowledge in this different kinds of ‘cultural tool’ and especially language. form can support long-term intellectual or social Knowledge is not an accumulation of discrete facts but development. functions actively like a lens or a lever in the formation of Hirsch has repeatedly been accused of an Anglo- or more knowledge, and in the formation of people in the Eurocentric selection. Here we see something worse: these process of becoming knowledgeable. ‘facts’ strip indigenous cultures to a few physical markers, ‘This endless drizzle of inert facts is merely the whilst obscuring the vicious cruelty of the European conquest. Imperial history is reduced to a list of neutral facts, shadow of knowledge, crumbs falling off the for example: table of high culture.’

4 education for tomorrow

The Reformation is summed up as ‘Martin Luther and the 20 Theses; John Calvin’. This endless drizzle of inert facts is merely the shadow of knowledge, crumbs falling off the table of high culture. While pupils in advantaged schools learn the cello and trombone, working class kids label pictures of musical instruments on worksheets.

Hirsch’s view of knowledge was a major influence on Gove in his National Curriculum reform. We are already too familiar with factual overload through the interminable lists of spellings and grammatical terms. Many readers will also remember Gove’s primary history curriculum before it hit the rocks. As Simon Schama7 pointed out, the amount of content would make it impossible to engage learners seriously: vroom, there was Disraeli, – vroom – there was Gladstone… the French Revolution, maybe if it’s lucky, gets a drive-by ten minutes at this rate.

Schama described cramming children with so many facts as Gradgrindian, and ridiculed the arbitrary selection of detail: There are no ‘key developments’ in the reign of Aethelstan, because it’s stupid really!

In a recent conference presentation, schools minister Nick Gibb8 quoted Hirsch with admiration: Those children who possess the intellectual capital when they first arrive at school have the mental scaffolding and Velcro to gain still more knowledge.

Whilst there is truth in the claim that subject-specific knowledge provides a scaffold for building understanding, the Cultural Literacy lists of ‘core knowledge’ place too much emphasis on factual detail, and not enough on concepts and explanations.

The Hirschian approach is also espoused by populist teacher-experts such as Daisy Christodoulou, closely associated with Ofsted’s chief inspector through the ARK academies trust. In her best-selling Seven Myths about Education9, she argues against imaginary enemies of ‘knowledge':

breakthrough in mathematical understanding than memorising the 12 times table.

Christodoulou is right to argue that there is no contradiction between facts and skills (unlike those Conservative politicians who barred officials at the DfE from using the word ‘skill’ in official documents). She is also correct in opposing the fashionable notion that facts are unnecessary in the Google age, and that a ‘21st Century Curriculum’ for a supposedly post-industrial world requires only skills of knowledge retrieval. Unfortunately the author of Seven Myths about Education exposes herself as a populist myth-maker with limited depth of understanding by repeatedly claiming that ‘Rousseau, Dewey and Freire’ regarded facts as ‘the enemy of understanding’. Her espousal of Hirsch’s ‘cultural literacy’ curriculum as the route to deeper knowledge and understanding is intellectually shallow.

A curriculum built on lists of facts which pays no heed to the pace of children’s development will quickly lead to overload. Here is a small sample of key knowledge from the Civitas10 attempt to adapt Hirsch for English schools: Rejkjavik, Brussels, Copenhagen, Amenhotep, Hatshepsus, Nefertiti, Eboracum, Mercia, Dal Riata, Aidan, Bede, Odo, Monet, Hockney, Hogarth, Edison, Jenner, Pasteur…

and this is only Year 2! Perhaps the Year 2 pupils won't find it too difficult, because in Year 1 they have already learnt all seven continents, Simon de Montfort, Robert Walpole, Breughel, Miro, Hepworth, Pugin and Jane Goodall.

These young Einsteins will understand that l ‘The Glorious Revolution of 1688 took place when James II was forced to flee after his failed attempt to overrule parliament.' l ‘Robert Walpole achieved influence with George II and with the House of Commons. He became the most important minister in the Cabinet: the first Prime Minister.'

Learning the dates of 150 historical events from 3000BC They will have been enriched by looking at the parts of the to the present day and learning a couple of key facts about Palace of Westminster designed by Charles Barry and August why each event was important will be of immense use, Pugin … among a few thousand other things. The details are because it will form the fundamental chronological schema endless, unappealing, and in many respects arbitrary. They that is the basis of all historical understanding. (p20) certainly confirm the suspicions of a culturally biased and exclusive curriculum. Whatever all this adds up to, it isn't This is doubly incorrect. Firstly, a clearer sense of knowledge, or rather it is knowledge only in a very restricted chronology might be gained from a deeper understanding of sense. just 15 or 20 key nodal points. Secondly, a sense of Michael Young and ‘powerful knowledge' chronology does not just involve a sequence but requires an Another influential appeal for more knowledge, with rather appreciation of what characterised successive eras in human better foundation, comes from Michael Young and his history, for example European feudalism or the Industrial followers who call themselves ‘social realists’. Young shares Revolution, combining strands such as work, power Hirsch’s view that working class pupils are entitled to structures, architecture and culture. Christodoulou’s knowledge – an important principle to uphold, given the superficiality shows through time after time: Blairite decision (2006 Schools and Inspection Act) to divert roughly half of 14 year olds into low-level vocational courses Just learning that 4 x 4 is16 will be of limited use. But learning all of the 12 times tables, and learning them all so with no entitlement to history, geography, languages, creative arts, or design and technology. Young’s emphasis is on securely that we can hardly not think of the answer when academic disciplines rather than fragmentary lists of factual the problem is presented, is the basis of mathematical understanding. If we want pupils to have good conceptual knowledge, and this has value in initiating young people into strong ways of knowing the world. However he makes understanding, they need more facts, not fewer. (p20) several key mistakes: i) he regards disciplinary knowledge as intrinsically Arguably, understanding 42 marks a far more significant

education for tomorrow 5

‘powerful’, neglecting the need for critical thinking, and with no thought about the distribution of economic and social power ii) he makes no distinction between the relatively strong consensus of natural sciences and the disputes which are fundamental to history or sociology iii) he regards the divorce of formal knowledge from personal experience as crucial, indeed ‘emancipatory’.

The last point is illustrated by his argument that ‘the curriculum should exclude the everyday knowledge of students’ and that ‘if education is to be emancipatory... it has to be based on a break with experience’. 11 In a lecture in New Zealand he argued that pupils must not confuse the Auckland that the geography teacher talks about with the Auckland in which they live... The Auckland where they live is ‘a place of experience’.

Auckland as an example of a city is ‘an object of thought’ or a ‘concept’... For example, the teacher might ask her class what the functions of the city of Auckland are. This requires that the pupils think of the city in its role in government and business and not just describe how they, their parents, and their friends, experience living in the city.12 (p25-6)

This is most revealing: instead of using concepts to shed light on the cities of our everyday experience, and to understand the forces which shape our lives, the ‘Social Realist’ call is for abstract concepts to replace rich experience. Instead of using abstract concepts as a means of comparing and understanding places, the diversity and specificity is hidden. There is also a social bias in favouring certain spheres of activity (government, business) over others.

Young is right to insist that experience alone does not grasp important points about urban geography and build a deep theoretical knowledge, but wrong to be dismissive. His only concession is that teachers might use real-life examples as a device, but that is not the same as a curriculum which enables students to build their knowledge by linking and moving between personal experience and established concepts and theories.

What does really powerful knowledge look like?

There are many valuable examples of curricula which build on students’ everyday lives and concerns, and which develop a considered and theory-informed understanding out of key personal and social issues. Nel Noddings’ book Critical lessons13 shows how an intellectually challenging and socially critical curriculum can be constructed on themes such as parenting, making a living, advertising and propaganda, and the psychology of war. Chicago teacher Eric ‘Rico’ Gutstein14 applies maths to young people’s concerns about housing and other urban issues. In such ‘citizenship mathematics’, the focus on housing is not just a pedagogical hook, a motivating illustration ancillary to the main purpose of teaching a corpus of mathematical skills and knowledge. Housing is important in its own right: the curriculum is both mathematics and citizenship, each strengthening and mediating the other. In England, we can think back to the work of Harold Rosen15 in 6 education for tomorrow

English, or Stenhouse and Rudduck in the Humanities Curriculum Project16.

We need a far richer understanding of knowledge than Hirsch’s or Young’s to underpin emancipatory learning. This will involve: l a breadth of human purpose, including personal development and healthy living, culture in its broadest sense, care for the environment and concern for our planetary future, democratic citizenship nationally and internationally l some space for young people to pursue their own enquiries l learning which is more than a drizzle of inert facts, with knowledge that is both situated and critical l a respect for community knowledge whilst at the same time giving access to science and culture which opens new perspectives and experiences.

We need really powerful knowledge. Knowledge is powerful, but not as Hirsch and Young conceive it. Education for liberation doesn't separate official learning from real-life concerns: it puts them into dialectical relationship, using theory to shed light on everyday situations and using the standpoint of students’ social experience to look at traditional knowledge from new perspectives. Our position in the world gives us new ways of ‘reading the word’ (Freire) whilst reading the word provides us with powerful tools for understanding and acting in the world. n

Notes

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Nicholas Roe (1997) John Keats and the culture of dissent (Oxford) Etienne Wenger (1998) Communities of practice (Cambridge) Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind (Penguin) Michael Rosen (2012) Dear Mr Gove (Marxism conference, London, July) Lev Vygotsky (1925) Consciousness as a problem of the psychology of behaviour. https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1925/consci ousness.htm Andy Blunden (2012) An interdisciplinary theory of activity (Brill) Simon Schama (2013) speech at Hay Book Festival www.hayfestival.com/p-6108-simon-schama-andteachers.aspx Nick Gibb (2015) How E D Hirsch came to shape UK Government policy. In Knowledge and the Curriculum (Policy Exchange) Daisy Christodoulou (2014) Seven myths about education (Routledge) http://www.coreknowledge.org.uk /sequencetable.php Michael Young et al (2014) Knowledge and the future school (Bloomsbury) Michael Young (2010) Why educators must differentiate knowledge from experience. Pacidic-Asian Education 22(1) Nel Noddings (2006) Critical lessons: what our schools should teach (Cambridge) Eric Gutstein (2006) Reading and writing the world with mathematics (Routledge) Harold Rosen (2017) Writings on life, language and learning 1958-2008 (UCL IoE) http://www.nufdieldfoundation.org /nufdield-humanities-curriculum-project http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/jcs/jcs_1988fall_rudd uck.pdf

manifesto

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www.manifestopress.org.uk education for tomorrow 7

reading

Building critical consciousness through dialogic reading in the primary classroom

Phil Yeeles

I

N HIS BOOK Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire defines conscientização, or critical consciousness, as “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality”.1 This concept is at the very heart of Freire’s transformative, liberatory vision of education. For Freire, education is a collaborative act of knowledge construction between what he terms “teacher-students” and “student-teachers”, in which both parties strive to become more fully human through “working, [to] transform the world”.2 Freire proposed dialogics as an emancipatory pedagogy which combines reflection and action in a “radical interaction”3 with each other and which empowers learners to play a fundamental rôle in the transformation of their own conditions of existence. “If it is speaking their word that people, by naming the world, tranform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.”4 Building on the idea of dialogic pedagogy, Ramón Flecha, founder of the CREA research community at the University of Barcelona, introduce the concept of dialogic reading.5 He identifies the ‘Matthew Effect’ – that the more of something (in this case, cultural capital and reading skill) one has, the easier it is to acquire more – as an unaddressed problem that excludes many learners from traditional literacy teaching, and proposes dialogic reading as a radical rethink of how reading is taught. Dialogic reading is based upon four key practices:– l Extending learning time l The ‘Parent Readers’ programme l The ‘Reading Buddies’ initiative l Dialogic literary gatherings Although the primary focus of this article is upon the dialogic literary gatherings, the remaining three practices will be brielfy outlined below.

Extending learning time is a technique by which learning, and reading in particular, is made more accessible both to learners and to members of the community. Increasing the number of reading activities available outside school hours, and involving a diverse group of extended family members and individuals from the local community, facilitates more opportunities for reading. It also deformalises reading, removing the 8 education for tomorrow

pressure felt by some learners, and also encourages families to form a habit of reading, even outside of the school environment.

Parent Readers is a volunteering programme in which the family members of the youngest pupils attend school with their children in the mornings to be able to read together within the school context. It not only motivates the pupil, but also serves to tear down the artifical barrier between home reading and school reading; the pupil is already used to reading in school with their family member, so reading naturally continues at home with the same person.

‘These discussions are not dry academix exercises, divorced from reality, but are based upon the children’s own life experiences, and support them to develop their reading comprehension, oracy and emotional literacy.’

Reading Buddies is an initiative whereby older pupils are paired with younger pupils, reading together at different times and in different spaces. The older child interacts closely with the younger child, modelling and supporting good reading practice. This not only supports the younger child in their reading learning, but also reinforces good practice for the older child. It builds confidence, removes some of the pressure of the presence of an authority figure such as a teacher, and develops solidarity between pupils of different age groups.

Finally, the dialogic literary gathering, or DLG, is a particular way of conducting a reading lesson in which learners are encouraged to engage with a classic of world literature (or an appropriate abridgment thereof), which “address important topics that have always been important to human beings”, as one young participant noted.6 The universality of issues addressed by classic texts is a cornerstone of the DLG, maximising accessibility to pupils from diverse backgrounds. Students are each given a copy of the chosen text to read either at home or as facilitated by the above practices. The DLG itself takes the form of a weekly session, either as part of the regular curriculum or as a family, community or extracurricular activity, in which the teacher facilitates a discussion between pupils.

Having chosen and written down an extract or extracts that they have found particularly meaningful, pupils share, discuss and debate parts of the text on the basis of egalitarian dialogue. The teacher does not prompt or lead discussion; their rôle is purely to establish expectations of behaviour, to facilitate speakers’ contributions, and to record brief notes on the discussion.

Through engaging with the universal experiences of characters in classic literature, pupils are able to analyse, debate and discuss situations that arise within the story.

These discussions are not dry academix exercises, divorced from reality, but are based upon the children’s own life experiences, and support them to develop their reading comprehension, oracy and emotional literacy.

They are able to tackle significant philosophical issues, and form and express opinions which must then be justified and defended. This level of engagement then motivates other pupils, encouraging them to read to be able to be involved in the discussion. The other three practices are especially valuable here, as they are able to provide support and opportunities for reading which may not be available to every child. ‘... dialogic reading provides an eminently viable means of developing both reading skills and critical consciousness’

In the author’s experience of conducting DLGs over an extended period, pupils find them to be an enriching experience. This is partly due to the challenge (perceived or otherwise) of reading a classic of world literature, especially if the original text is able to be used, but primarily due to the nature of the discussions in the DLG sessions themselves. Over the period in question, reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis led to discussions around mental health and the experience of carers; reading Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band led to discussions around stereotyping and prejudice; and reading Homer’s Iliad gave rise to a heated debate about sexism, war and the responsibilities of deities. All of these topics arose organically from the discussion of eight- and nine-yearolds who were connecting meaningfully with a text.

This is very different from the reading pedagogy which has become accepted in so many schools, where teachers

use questioning to check basic comprehension and to lead students to preprepared answers, based on an ‘authorised’ reading of the text. As such, it challenges the dominant ‘banking’ concept of education, in which teachers are expected simply to ‘deposit’ knowledge into learners as empty vessels.7 This is replaces with a transformative approach in which the teacher-student and student-teachers are engages in co-constructing meaning, working together, and, through that work, naming and changing their own lived experience.

The transformative aspect of dialogic reading was especially visible, as mentioned above, when reading the Iliad. In one scene, an irate Menelaüs declares that his fearful soldiers must be women, not men. This tiny quote ballooned into a huge discussion over whether or not it was right to use “women” as an insult, and what the implications of using it in that way might be. Several male pupils expressed views of women that could diplomatically be called ‘old-fashioned’, which propelled the discussion further, as more and more of their classmates joined in, bringing their own opinions and experiences to the discussion, and playing out hypothetical situations within the context of the story. The discussion segued naturally into discussing the rôle of women in ancient Greek society, and how attitudes toward women have changed since then. Pupils left the session still debating and discussing enthusiastically, and this was able to form the basis of several follow-up lessons in PSHE exploring women’s experiences in various fields, led by a diverse range of volunteer speakers from the community.

From one small section of a DLG text, pupils developed their oracy and debating skills, were able to use the text to illustrate a point, and also to confront and challenge reactionary ideas within their own classroom.

DLGs allow pupils to analyse and interpret the events of a story, supported by their own thoughts, opinions and life experiences. Through the DLG, pupils are able to explore philosophical issues by linking them back to their own changing understanding of the world.

In conclusion, dialogic reading provides an eminently viable means of developing both reading skills and critical consciousness. It is practical to implement without being resource-intensive – the primary resources are the teacher and the text, many of which are available free of charge online – and it gives teachers and students greater shared control over the education process. It empowers pupils, and effectively works towards critical consciousness, which is not only the overriding goal of education, but also the basis of liberation. n Notes

1

2 3 4 5 6 7

Freire, P. (1996); Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 10th ed.; Ramos, M., Translator (Penguin Books); p. 17. ibid. p. 27. ibid.; p. 68. ibid. p. 69.

Flecha, R. (2014); Successful Educational Actions for Inclusion and Social Cohesion in Europe (Springer International Publishing); pp. 39–44. ibid. p. 42.

Freire, P. (1996); op.cit. pp. 52–53

education for tomorrow 9

knowledge Challenging neoliberal orthodoxy through creative pedagogy

Jess Edwards

The terms “knowledge rich”, “powerful knowledge” or a “knowledge based pedagogy” are fast becoming a fashionable way of describing the values at the centre of a great education

A

T ITS HEART, those pushing this “knowledge agenda” draw on the ideas of E D Hirsch1 who expounds passionately on how a return to a more traditional curriculum built around ideas of shared knowledge can help children to become more powerful. Children, they argue, need access to “powerful knowledge” and this will help achieve a more socially just education system.

So Rachel De Souza, founder of Parents and Teachers for Excellence, says in her forward to A Question of Knowledge: “Knowing

10 education for tomorrow

those things – and not just recalling the bald facts but deeply understanding them – gives you an upper hand. It gives you the confidence to discuss a wide range of live topics with those around you and it gives you social status.

It makes you part of the club that runs the world, and the inside track to change it.”2

If, like me, you follow the endless Twitter “debates” between the “traditionalists” and the “progressives”, you will no doubt have seen that the idea that a core body of knowledge exists that children need to know in order to be educated. This comes alongside an associated pedagogy namely that of direct instruction or the transition model of education akin to what Freire termed the “banking model”3. The teacher acts as the holder of knowledge, imparting that knowledge to pupils in the form of facts to memorise.

There are some really deep problems with this model of pedagogy. The first for me is the very question of “knowledge”. Presented to us as value free, knowledge is anything but. In the writings of Hirsch, we will find all sorts of important things for children to learn about American history. None of them will be about Geronimo or Crazy Horse though.

None of them will be about Malcolm X or the Black Panthers either - why not?

It’s not so much what is deemed as important to the knowledge brigade, but what is omitted that is worrying. Also missing from this model of curriculum is the question of immediate relevance to the subjects of education - children.

It’s worth just noting a central tenet of Hirsch’s work - something that he called “intellectual capital”. This is the idea that middle class and ruling class children come to school already with a bank of vocabulary and experience and knowledge that gives them what Hirsh says is the “Velcro to gain still more knowledge”4 I can see why this might sound

appealing and correct to so many teachers. On the surface, it is true of course, that middle class children come to school with many advantages. But scratch below that surface for a moment and what are we saying? That working class children are culturally impoverished? That they come to school with a cultural deficit that we must overcome?

This is something that Dianne Reay gives some time to exploring in her book Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Class. She writes of the Head Teacher of a big academy in North London where the parents started to complain about what they called the draconian rules within the school. In her defence, the Head Teacher said: 1.“What underpins this philosophy is that if they come from unstructured backgrounds where anything goes and rules and boundaries are not clear in the home, we need to ensure that they’re clear here. So we run very tight systems here, you could call it a traditional approach or a formal approach”5.

I give that quote because I think it encapsulates the contempt with which the current architects of the education system really hold working class children and their families in.

To Nick Gibb, government minister of state at the Department for Education, and his friends, they’re all from chaotic, unstructured, “anything goes” homes and at school they need to learn to do what they’re told and learn what’s good for them. What is dressed up as social justice is what I would call old fashioned social control.

I believe that children learn best when they feel there is a relevance and purpose to the things that go on in class. Where they have some say and ownership over the process of learning and where they are helped to un-cover and explore the curriculum. The associated pedagogies of a curriculum that treats children as the subjects, rather than the objects of the education process is at direct odds with the current trend of so called “powerful knowledge” and direct instruction.

I am lucky enough to have been working alongside Luke Abbot and Tim Taylor on the National Education Union funded, Mantle of the Expert (MOE) course over the last year.

MOE is a truly transformative pedagogy that places children at the very centre of the learning process. This year, my Year 4 class have worked in role within story worlds of their own creation. We have learnt about world travel, about a range of cultures and beliefs, about Vikings and Anglo-Saxons and about migration and our local area. I have worked hard to avoid turning these subjects into a list of learning objectives to be ticked off one by one. Through using the MoE approach, the children have been part of co-constructing the stories and we have planned the next steps in our inquiries together.

Some might ask if the children have learnt anything. The answer can be seen in pages upon pages of the best writing I have ever achieved from children in my fifteen years of teaching practice. The children’s writing has benefitted from the sense of purpose they feel. I am not asking them to write for me or for a set of assessment criteria (although of course, I am assessing their writing all of the time). Instead, they are writing because they feel there is an immediate need for them to do so. For example, we read Kensuke’s Kingdom by

Michael Morpurgo and worked as a make believe mystery solving team for an entire term. They needed to write reports to file on missing people; they have needed to write scripts for TV advertisements for the mystery solving team. They have felt compelled to write letters, newspaper reports and heartfelt diary entries. Of course, spelling, grammar and punctuation have all been included in a way that is meaningful. This is crucial because without the writing feeling purposeful to the children, the teaching of SPaG will largely fall on deaf ears.

Centrally important to this creative approach to pedagogy is dialogue. Dialogue between children and between adults and children. Talking, thinking and talking again. Imagining solutions to problems, testing those solutions out and in the process, learning essential skills and knowledge. There is now a group of Twitteratti teachers who spend lots of their time attacking dialogue. They rail against group work. They say that discussion is a waste of time.

But dialogue is crucial. Dialogue is how we construct meaning in education. It’s how we make sense of the world. It must be placed centre stage in any pedagogy that seeks to be truly liberating.

I believe deeply that it is simply not true that those in government are honest about wanting education to provide social justice. Many of the teachers currently arguing in favour of the knowledge agenda are passionate teachers, wanting to empower the students in their classes.

They are being misled.

The language of social justice is being co-opted by those with no interest in achieving it. Arguing that the banking model is the way that children learn best has failed the test of history.

Even the CBI president, Paul Drechsler, has criticised heavily the current emphasis on test results and rote learning, and called for them to prioritise teaching that encourages thoughts, questions, creativity and teamworking6. Even for the needs of British industry, the current system is not delivering.

Creativity, now painted as something only an oldfashioned, woolly, liberal kind of teacher believes in, must be fought for in our schools. Without a creative approach to the teaching of all subjects, children will never gain the deep understanding and love of learning that they deserve to feel.

The creative process, from thought, through discussion, rethinking and making, lies at the very centre of what it is to be human. To turn a human being’s learning into an exercise in fact based test passing, is to embed the deepest alienation in our school system. Teachers everywhere must begin to fight for a vision of education where children can truly develop their personalities, where they are encouraged to think and question and most importantly, to challenge and make the world a better place. n Notes

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Hirsch, E. D. (2016) Why Knowledge Matters (Harvard) http://parentsandteachers.org.uk/application/files/ 3415/0816/0485/The_Question_of_Knowledge_FINAL.pdf Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) Quoted in Policy exchange, Knowledge and the Curriculum https://policyexchange.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2016/09/knowledge-and-the-curriculum.pdf Reay, D. (2017) Miseducation, Inequality and the Working Class (Polity) http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/education-is-more-than-knowledgealone/

education for tomorrow 11

culture Michael Gove and the implications of ‘elitism’ in education Ken Jones

T

HE BREAK-UP of the welfare state, deindustrialisation and the end of full employment have been essential elements of neoliberalism. They have created social and educational problems which have deepened since the crash of 2008, reducing Britain to a critical condition.

Yet crisis has not produced a radical political outcome. One of the most striking features of the years since 2008 has been the political success of the Conservative attempt to present the solution to the problems of neoliberalism as a stronger dose of the same: permanent austerity becomes the answer to recession. Likewise, in education, the mix of tradition and market which animated Conservatism in the 1980s – and led to the 1988 Education Reform Act - was taken to a new level of intensity in the programme launched by Michael Gove when he became Secretary of State in 2010. Nearly a decade later, the problems of that programme are evident – in teacher supply, in the stagnation of the academy project, in school cultures strongly shaped by the demands of tests and examinations. Faced with this situation, the thinking of those committed to the legacy of 1988 has mutated. This is especially clear around issues of curriculum and assessment.

The stifling effects of hyper-accountability are admitted, and schools are chided for their near-exclusive focus on good exam results. But the remedy for these miseries is found on another page of the conservative educational primer, where the advantages of a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum are set out. As Ofsted emerges as an authority on curriculum, schools are faced with a new agenda for change – but once again the

12 education for tomorrow

impetus will come from the right.

Why should this be the case? Why, in the context of appalling levels of austerity-induced child poverty and chronic problems of teacher burnout, should educational debate still be dominated by proposals of this sort? And on what resources and traditions could alternative approaches draw?

To sketch the beginnings of some answers, it is useful to return to the moment of Michael Gove, to the situation in which he intervened and the rhetoric he crafted.

‘The process of ‘seeking out’, which amounted to a willingness to recognize, positively evaluate and make sense of working-class youth cultures, was to influence greatly the generation of teachers entering urban secondary schools in the later 1960s.’

Empowered by the Conservative-Lib-Dem Coalition’s presentation of itself as an emergency regime, which needed to use forceful measures to exit from a once-in-a-century crisis, Gove seized the opportunity to pursue a strategy of restructuring that compressed the patterns of the 18 years of Conservative policy under Thatcher and Major into one fouryear ministerial span. He concluded that, more than twenty-five years after the Education Reform Act, which was supposed to have settled such matters, there was still much to be done to break the influence of progressive educational ideas and the organizations that harboured them. To do this, he aimed to extend the ‘achievements’ of the Thatcher period, so that schooling was reinvigorated by competitive mechanisms, private sector influence, tight control from the centre and what he saw as academic rigour.

The claim to rigour was central to the way in which Gove justified his agenda. He described himself as an ‘unashamed elitist’ who wanted to ‘proclaim the importance of education as a good in itself’ and to ‘argue that introducing the young minds of the future to the great minds of the past is our duty’1.

Policies based on these principles would ‘provide children with the opportunity to transcend the circumstances of their birth’, ‘spreading knowledge to every open mind’. He claimed to be for the poor, against the privileged; for a good education for everyone, against the growth of intellectually un-rewarding and functionally valueless vocational qualifications. In short, he attempted to make ‘social justice’ the property of

Conservatism, and to win the argument that established knowledge traditions were a means by which social justic in education could be realised.

It is this perspective which continues to dominate policymaking, while other kinds of thinking about knowledge traditions and students’ learning are eclipsed. The problems which such alternative traditions have sought to address are well summarised by Lew Zipin2:

granted as embodiments of excellence, was later marginalised.

When Harold Rosen, died in 2008, his son Michael Rosen reflected on the meaning of his work and the fate it had encountered. His father had spent a lifetime arguing that culture, language and education were inseparable: ‘whatever language the pupils possess, it is this which must be built on rather than driven underground.’ Yet these years of ‘thought, theory and practice’ had been forgotten – or, more precisely, ‘wiped out’ - by the governments of the 80s and 90s.7 ‘Winning school learners to the sense that their intelligence At this point, where we consider the ‘wiping out’ of a body is recognised and challenged, such that they engage with of work, it is useful to recall a point made by the American teaching-and-learning invitations, is a most difficult project writer, Corey Robin8: conservatism since Edmund Burke has when learners’ culturally inherited ways of knowing do not insisted on the impossibility of the idea that the politics and cultural life of a society should be shaped by the majority of match those privileged in school curriculum. A justicethe people who live in it. Everything that is good in a society orientated strategy, [entails designing] a curriculum that its sense of beauty, civility, order, truth - can only be makes meaningful connection with ways of knowing in learners’ lives beyond school. To do so, it is vital, observes contaminated by mass influence. Excellence is elitist. From Lewin, to ‘become ethnographers in the true sense’ that is, this perspective, traditions of thought and practice of the sort developed by Rosen and Dixon, can only be damaging. to become open to learning about and from the lives of This is the tendency of Ofsted’s thinking, as embodied in its others, with conviction that these lives embody both new curriculum framework. Its emphasis falls on that which intelligence and knowledge assets (rather than biological should be known, something which is external to the culture of and cultural ‘deficits’).’ learners. The resources which learners bring to school are of no interest. This is not an approach likely to encourage new Zipin is writing in a US context, but similar perspectives thinking about pedagogy, nor about how to support the have been a feature of educational thinking in Britain too. In learning of students whose ‘culturally inherited ways of Education in Britain3 I discussed the work of teachers and educational thinkers in the 1950s and 1960s, when schoolknowing’, to quote Zipin9, ‘do not match those privileged in based curriculum experiment was licensed, and the question of the school curriculum’. It may thus contribute to prolonging a crisis of education, by introducing new and unproductive the relationship between students’ cultures and the school norms to pedagogy and curricula. In this situation, the curriculum was there to be explored. They felt lucky, one experiences of an earlier period provide a rich alternative to teacher recalled: policies which repeat, rather than escape from, the terms of an ‘to be at that point in England’s history because no one was educational impasse. Attending to the relationship between saying you have to teach this or you have to teach that, formal curricula and student experiences and requires a although there were A level and GCE examinations. I think complex pedagogy, and a readiness to commit to a cultural we were free to invent a new curriculum and there were dialogue which passes Ofsted’s understanding. n people saying the comprehensive school needs a new Notes curriculum. It needs a new curriculum that fits it, it’s no 1 Gove, M. (2011) Speech at Cambridge University 25th good it taking another curriculum. So the invitation was November. (DfE). there to create.’4

‘We would expect English work to be rooted in the concerns, hopes and fears and daily lives of the pupils’ wrote Harold Rosen,5 one of those who brought a distinctive ‘London English’ into being. One of Rosen’s colleagues, John Dixon, suggested to an NUT conference that, ‘there exists not merely this sort of elite culture … but some different kind of culture which it is necessary to seek out by going into other people’s experience’6. The process of ‘seeking out’, which amounted to a willingness to recognize, positively evaluate and make sense of working-class youth cultures, was to influence greatly the generation of teachers entering urban secondary schools in the later 1960s. The idea that part of the teacher’s role was to understand and mediate through curriculum innovation the social and cultural changes that students were living through gave a new purpose to the work of teaching, a purpose which underlay approaches towards race, and class in later decades.

This sense of classrooms as places of cultural encounter, in which established knowledge traditions were not taken for

2 3 4

5

6

7 8

9

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/michael-gove-tocambridge-university Zipin, L. (2009) Dark Funds of Knowledge, deep funds of pedagogy: exploring boundaries between lifeworlds and schools. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 30 (3) 317-331 Jones, K. (2015) Education in Britain (Polity Press) Simon Clements, quoted in Gibbons, S. (2009) Lessons from the Past. English Teaching 8 (1) 64-75 p66 Harold Rosen (1969), quoted in Gibbons, S. (2009) Lessons from the Past. English Teaching 8 (1) 64-75 p69 Dixon, J. (1961) Contribution to NUT Conference: Popular Culture and Personal Responsibility (Verbatim account, unpublished) p31 M. Rosen (2009), quoted in Jones, K. (2011) ‘Democratic Creativity’ in J. Sefton-Green, P. Thomson, K. Jones, L. Bresler (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Creative Learning (Routledge) Robin, C. (2011) The Reactionary Mind: conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (Oxford University Press) Zipin, L. (2009) Dark Funds of Knowledge, deep funds of pedagogy: exploring boundaries between lifeworlds and schools. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 30 (3) 317-331

education for tomorrow 13

curriculum

An inescapable concern The Scottish and English curriculum through the prism of Paulo Freire

James Douglas

“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power; cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source”

achievements and follies of mankind gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’ understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed”

A

Department for Education: History Programmes of Study; Key Stages 1 and 23

S WE TAKE the first tentative steps in to 2019 and pupils return to schools across England and Scotland ready to carry on their learning, much is “Curriculum for Excellence is intended to help children in flux and much remains. As “the old world is dying, and and young people gain the knowledge, skills and the new world struggles to be born” to liberally paraphrase attributes needed for life in the 21st century, including Gramsci4 (and leaving previous education secretaries misguided views of his work out of it), whilst England and skills for learning, life and work Scotland find themselves in the middle of major teacher Its purpose is often summed up as helping children union disputes and whilst media and politicians on all and young people to become: l Successful learners sides scream about concepts of identity, where does that l Confident individuals leave our pupils? What do we mean when we talk of l Responsible citizens oppression and liberation and where is education? l Effective contributors.

For all the pretty words of politicians and “staked claims” of ministers, the liberation of the oppressed, the These are referred to as the four capacities” true generosity that Freire speaks of seems far from the Education Scotland: What Is Curriculum for Excellence?2 core of the curriculum across both nations.

The curriculum in Scottish schools varies vastly from “know and understand the history of these islands as that in English schools and whilst not introduced in a raft of sweeping changes that saw the national curriculum be a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest initially introduced as part of the education reforms of times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and 1988, it was introduced around the time of the McCrone agreement5, also known as “A Teaching Profession For been influenced by the wider world The 21st Century”, an agreement which made a raft of know and understand significant aspects of the changes in the working conditions of teachers in Scotland, history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; including a 35 hour working week with set class contact, characteristic features of past non-European societies; preparation and collaborative work hours.

Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of The Oppressed 1

14 education for tomorrow

In considering how curriculum for excellence can be a curriculum of the oppressed, we need to take a look at history and modern studies, subjects for which the national identity of Scotland, already contested in many ways, paints with a large brush. In examining this, we do not intend to consider the historic place of Scotland within the United Kingdom or the constitutional question, whether you are in West Lothian or otherwise.

Rather a look at what is set out in the history and modern studies curriculum is a basis for examining the class consciousness set out within or otherwise, for this is fundamentally the focus of Freire. This is also the fundamental question facing a nation where one in four children are in poverty. This is the question facing learners in Clydeside, Kelvinside and Morningside.

The Scottish history curriculum, in considering wars in which Scots have fought, takes it`s focus on just that.

Deeper questions of what those wars were fought for and who was sent to die are glossed over for a focus on the nationality of those who fought.

The lived history of what happened at home whilst working class boys and men were fighting is covered but with nowhere near as much detail.

For a nation that saw so much unrest around the first world war and social unrest which came to define not only “Red Clydeside” but the labour movement as a whole, this seems somewhat astounding.

The history of Scotland between 1914 and 1918 is as much the history of the rent strikes and Mary Barbour as it is General Haig.

‘The paternalistic attack on the history curriculum mirrors the Conservative Party`s paternalistic view of education.’

A curriculum which focused on that history would be a curriculum which showed that working class people can organise. It would be a curriculum which would show that working class people can stand up to and fight back against their oppressors. It would be a curriculum where George Square would be remembered more for being at the centre of a people’s movement rather than the statues of Victoria and Albert or Field Marshalls which can be found therein. It would be a curriculum for the oppressed.

It is another Scotsman who has been most vocal in recent years of the curriculum in English schools not being a curriculum of the oppressed. Edinburgh-born Michael Gove, in his time as education secretary led vociferous attacks on the teaching unions, not considering for a second their important role in shaping education in Britain and launched attacks on the history curriculum with articles for The Daily Mail with such screaming headlines as “Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?”6 In a grossly simplified view of the history curriculum and a view of teaching which bore no resemblance to reality (which could be said to exemplify not only his term as education secretary but also the Daily Mail) Gove took aim at a “Blackadder” view of history. The article sets out his antipathy for any who dare question the view of the

first world war as a “noble cause” led by Haig, the “patriotic leader grappling honestly with the new complexities of industrial warfare” before looking to defend Britain`s role in the world as “marked by nobility and courage” In Pedagogy of the Oppressed7, Freire states “Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.” The Conservative view of education exists merely to look at the past and be thankful for the actions of those who went before you The paternalistic attack on the history curriculum mirrors the Conservative Party`s paternalistic view of education. A history curriculum that tells you to be thankful of the generals that heroically led the charge. A citizenship curriculum that tells you that being a good citizen rests simply in voting and understanding how government works without thinking how things can be changed. An education system that tells you to be thankful for the carpet salesman or used car salesman who has stepped in to save your school.

That Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Conservatives8, now finding themselves the party of opposition in Scotland have been echoing the words and sentiments of Gove on education reform less than five years later should cause concern for all involved in education in the nation.

This paternalistic view stands in opposition to the vision set out in Pedagogy of The Oppressed, where Freire sets out a vision of the working classes taking the tools to change the future for themselves in an act of love, a paternalistic view of education is top down, telling those working classes to be thankful for their act of “generosity” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.

In the history, modern studies and citizenship curriculums of both nations, in the reforms pushed through in England and threatened in Scotland it is this paternalistic view that lingers. n Notes

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5 6

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Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum) Education Scotland: What Is Curriculum For Excellence? https://education.gov.scot/scottish-education-system/policyfor-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-thestatement-appendix-incl-btc15)/What%20is%20Curriculum%20for%20Excellence?

Department For Education: History Programmes of Study; Key Stages 1 and 2 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239035/PRIMARY_nat ional_curriculum_-_History.pdf Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence & Wishart) Scottish Government (2001) A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century: Agreement reached following recommendations made in the McCrone Report https://www2.gov.scot/Publications/2001/01/7959/File-1 Gove, M. (2014) Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article2532930/MICHAEL-GOVE-Why-does-Left-insist-belittling -true-British-heroes.html Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum) Davidson, R. (2016) Education (BBC Scotland) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaiXVbySz6o

education for tomorrow 15

Wales

Pedagogy, power and control in Welsh education reform

David B Morgan

As we approach the April 2019 launch of the new curriculum in Wales, clouds are gathering in the uplands. The naysayers are out and the bright lights and fanfare that heralded the publication of the Donaldson report back in 2015 seem obscured even from memory, as we peer into the winter grey.

A comparison of BBC News headlines will convey the changing tone. From; ‘Radical national curriculum overhaul proposed in Wales’ BBC News 25 February 2015 …we have been reduced to the hysterical; ‘Warning “Education will be left to chance”’ BBC News 10 January 2019

…and the rather more informative; ‘Draft Welsh curriculum ‘poorly defined’ education bosses say’ BBC News 10 January 2019

L

intervention in non-strategic matters. For many teachers and schools the key task has become to implement external expectations faithfully, with a consequent diminution of local creativity and responsiveness to the needs of children and young people.”1

In Wales some attempts were made to counter the deluge of national testing and bureaucracy that accompanied it. This has had some limited success in Primary Schools but it is fair to say that the framework within which schools in Wales have had to operate has been broadly in line with English experience.

By the time the Blairites had been consigned to the history books even the establishment had begun to rebel against the constrictive standardization. Unsurprisingly, the response of Conservative Ministers did nothing to restore power to teachers. Indeed, the Free Schools and Academy programmes demonstrate their utter contempt. In the worst of England’s ‘Free Schools’ today it is far from clear whether qualified teachers will play a part in your child’s education at all, let alone whether they would be in a position to meaningfully direct the curriculum, assessment and pedagogy.

In contrast Donaldson declares;

ANGUAGE CAN be alluring and from ‘radical’ beginnings to criticism from the ‘bosses’ makes an appealing narrative that, although oversimplified, is instructive in charting the reform plan’s changing fortunes.

Old maxims such as ‘Who? Whom?’ can also act as a useful starting point. However, to oversimplify this complex issue is to do disservice to some genuine concerns about ‘To be clear, the recommendations of this Review do not implementation coming from teachers themselves. It also imply an emphasis on any particular teaching approaches: underestimates the scale of ambition and the power of decisions about teaching and learning are very context and established and entrenched thinking the reforms seek to purpose specific, and are best taken by teachers overcome. themselves.’2 Like the rest of the UK, Wales’ journey from the professional self-confidence and experientialism of the latter half of the 20th century to the exam factory battery school’s vision of the early 21st began with the introduction of the national curriculum in 1988.

It is this recognition of the importance of both teachers and Throughout the Major Years and at an increasing rate in the Blair Years the emphasis was placed on league tables, teaching learners that made the Donaldson Review appear so radical to the exam and an evermore restrictive attitude to content and and why it remains vitally important that teachers are able to direct the implementation process. delivery. As Donaldson has noted: The idea of letting teachers off the leash represents a challenge to both the hierarchy of schools management and to “Expectations about what schools should be doing have grown inexorably while evidence about how to bring about the established working practices that have prevailed throughout most of our careers. The leading criticism of the improvement has remained elusive… The high degree of reform programme in Wales has come from ADEW, the body prescription and detail in the national curriculum, allied to representing directors of education across Welsh Local increasingly powerful accountability mechanisms, has Authorities. Or to put that another way the managerial tended to create a culture within which the creative role of professionals who have based their careers on the the school has become diminished and the professional establishment and maintenance of the systems built during the contribution of the workforce underdeveloped. The extent period of Conservative and New Labour dominance. of legislative control and associated accountability The reform programme has deliberately and selfmechanisms, seen as necessary at the time, have inhibited professionalism, agility and responsiveness in dealing with consciously adopted a framework of broad ‘what matters’ statements aimed at allowing the space in which teachers can emerging issues, and have forced too-frequent political 16 education for tomorrow

operate in a pupil-centred manner. Building on Vygotsky’s concept of Zone of Proximal Development and the ‘scaffolding’ techniques developed by generations of educators since; Donaldson’s pedagogical principles encourage teachers to ‘Build on previous knowledge and experience to engage interest’ to ‘promote problem solving and critical thinking’ and to ‘encourage collaboration’.

(Donaldson, 2015) ADEW demonstrate that they have no-confidence in teachers’ ability to develop and utilise pedagogy flexibly because this has no place in their visions of a rigid standardised and prescribed approach. They argue;

teachers, families and the wider community.

The task we face, in creating the new curriculum, and make no mistake this work will continue for many years whatever is announced in April, is enormous and challenging. It is for these reasons that the original timescales for implementation were unrealistic and why they have been revised.

The most concerning element of the Assembly’s recent review of progress is not the prospect of an increase in teacher autonomy. It is rather the signs that have emerged which indicate attempts by national and regional officers and some school leaders to restrict teacher involvement. The NASUWT have argued that:

Let’s think about that for a movement. Relying on teachers to make professional decisions about teaching and learning is equated to leaving things ‘to chance’. This response and the cynical projection of it in the sensationalist media is designed to undermine confidence in teachers and scare families and communities.

The development of the new curriculum is being taken forward in a number of aptly names ‘Pioneer Schools’ with the intention of these early trials informing the guidance that will be rolled out throughout the sector. This collegiate approach has is a monumental task and has presented a number of challenges. Time away from the current day to day tasks, to work on the new approaches has been a significant challenge.

Even coming out of the shadow of the past career environment presents its difficulties.

This is potentially disastrous and combined with attempts to frustrate channels of communication, amount to attempted sabotage of the reform project.

The NEU has called for “full engagement with, and from, the education profession when the new curriculum and assessment arrangements become available for feedback in April 2019” and argued that “crucial engagement should remain a priority as we work towards the final model and the implementation of the National Approach to Professional Learning in 2020.”6 However, this engagement alone is not enough. If the process begun by the Donaldson report in 2015 is to survive both internal sabotage and external opposition, and deliver real reform of the education process in Wales that puts teachers, students and communities in the driving seat, it needs active champions; it needs to be fought for by those who understand that giving teachers the power to make professional decisions about teaching and learning, and encouraging them to promote problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration, is at heart of developing an effective pedagogy. n

‘In the main, too many statements are generic, poorly defined and weak on knowledge and skills development.

As a result, it is likely that pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills development will be left-to chance, i.e. relying heavily on the knowledge and experience of individual teachers as opposed to an entitlement defined by the curriculum.’3

‘It has been a shock for teachers in the Pioneer schools, who for the past twenty years were trained to follow strict guidelines, to be asked to design curricula around broader areas and to think in a very different way about how people teach and learn and what skills and facts young people in the twenty-first century need now and will need over their working lives.”4

The prevailing managerial culture in education has certainly harmed the profession as well as the lives of generations of children, but what Price does not consider are the countervailing factors. In most cases teacher training continues to provide the critical skills and theories and models that equip teachers to challenge the exam-factory mentality and promote their own creative solutions. I accept that even here there is a dichotomy. Any one comparing the CPD offered by the exam board with the sessions from any other education professional can see this. The point is that, despite the challenges we have faced, teachers have continued to challenge governments, the regional consortia, exam boards and school leaders. This self-confidence has been most evident and most effective when it has been collective, organised through the trade unions and bringing together

“It is the experience of the NASUWT that in many Pioneer Schools the so called ‘co-construction’ is being undertaken by a small select group of staff, usually at a senior level, and education ‘experts’. In many cases, the majority of other staff in the school are not involved, are not engaged and have little information as to any of the work being undertaken.”5

Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6

Donaldson, G. (2015). Successful Futures- Looking at the Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales. (Welsh Government) Donaldson, G. (2015). Successful Futures- Looking at the Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales. (Welsh Government) Association of Directors of Education in Wales (ADEW).

(2019). CR33 Consultation Response - Welsh Government's progress in developing the new Curriculum for Wales. (National Assembly for Wales) Price, M. (2018). Education in Wales – can the system cope?

Retrieved from Institute of Welsh Affairs: https://www.iwa.wales/click/2018/10/education-in-wales-canthe-system-cope/ NASUWT (2019) CR07 Consultation Response - Welsh Government's progress in developing the new Curriculum for Wales. (National Assembly for Wales) National Education Union Cymru. (2019). CR32 Consultation Response - Welsh Government's progress in developing the new Curriculum for Wales. (National Assembly for Wales)

education for tomorrow 17

testing

Measured intelligence moonshine and shadow

Patrick Yarker

18 education for tomorrow

David Hawkins ‘The ... talents and abilities of any newborn human being are wrongly expressed by the image of a fixed innate potential in this or that dimension, and by the mathematical counterpart of that image, a measure.’

Century wore on, experimental psychologists believed that reaction-time to a physical stimulus, or the extent of hand-eye co-ordination, or the degree of responsiveness to being pinpricked on the skin at two points simultaneously, gave proof of mental prowess. Binet and Simon’s tests replaced this Alfred Binet ‘Intelligence? It’s what my tests measure.’ physiological perspective with a concern for activating what were regarded as higher mental functions. They set the trend followed ever since.

LITTLE OVER a hundred years ago, the French Binet held that ‘intelligence’ was a complex variable, not a government made schooling for all children single indivisible function. Attention, memory and judgement compulsory. It soon became clear the schooling formed part of its working. He believed that people could mandated wasn't suited to all. Other provision could be improve these capacities, albeit until they reached a pre-set offered those who did not succeed in mainstream education limit. Furthermore, for Binet, ‘intelligence’ was contextbecause, in the language of the day, they were ‘sub-normal’s specific. It revealed itself only in an engagement with But how could such children be distinguished? particular circumstances. He was wary of presenting levels of Alfred Binet, pioneer psychologist and director of the ‘intelligence’ in numerical terms. But Binet’s was not the prestigious Sorbonne Laboratory, had an answer. Together only view. with his collaborator, Theodore Simon, he worked with a Francis Galton, polymath, explorer, and enthusiast for all group of fifty children designated ‘normal’, and with a similar- things quantitative, was born in Birmingham in 1822 and died sized group of children diagnosed by doctors or teachers as in 1911, the same year as the much younger Binet. In mid-life ‘deficient’, to construct and standardise a series of tests which he became interested in genetic inheritance. Statistical would supposedly reveal the stratification-lines between levels information which he collected about family relationships of deficiency. The age at which the great majority of ‘normal’ among eminent people, and case-studies he examined of children passed each test provided the basis for a scale along adopted children and twins, convinced him that ‘genius’, or which to locate individuals. Those who did not interact ‘intelligence’, was largely or wholly inherited. Such an socially or linguistically were deemed least intelligent. Next outlook fuelled the rise of eugenics, a term Galton invented least were those who could not pass all the tests which a and a cause he fervently supported. ‘normal’ child of five succeeded at, such as pointing out Galton asserted that ‘intelligence’, like height, is distributed various named parts of the body, correctly identifying one in a population according to the artifice known as the normal drawn line as being longer than another, defining simply curve or bell curve. He wrote: words such as ‘house’ or ‘horse’, and repeating back an uncomplicated sentence. And so on.

This law of deviation from an average... if [it] be the case Intelligence testing in the modern sense is born here: out of for stature, will also be true as regards every other physical seemingly-good intentions, dubious experimental methods, feature--as circumference of head, size of brain, weight of and a set of highly contestable assumptions. Chief among grey matter.... and thence, by a step on which no these is that an entity called ‘intelligence’ exists which may be physiologist will hesitate, as regards mental capacity.1 tested and hence quantified in individuals, and that this For a man who had once consulted a phrenologist, and who quantification reveals worthwhile information about the continued to think there was some correspondence between person tested. mental capacity and physical traits such as the length of the Even as Binet and Simon revised their original tests, index finger, taking this step presented no difficulties and comparable versions appeared in the USA and the UK. Each begged no questions. iteration of the ‘intelligence test’ became the benchmark for Galton, ever inventive, came up with the idea of correlation, the next. If the distribution of scores on the new test matched and with a set of associated statistical techniques upon which the pattern of previous scores, the new test was regarded as a valid measure, even though the nature of ‘intelligence’ had not the proper interpretation of intelligence test data in relation to been determined, and its measurability merely asserted on the populations is said to depend. The Binet-Simon tests, the notion of an ‘intelligence level’ or ‘quotient’ (derived from the basis that ‘mental characteristics’ must be akin to physical ratio of test-score to chronological age), and the Galtonian box ones. of statistical processes, equipped psychometrics with the tools to measure mind. And hence to reify a human being.

Skulls and numbers The search for an index to the mind had long focused on the Improving the stock body. At the turn of the 19th Century phrenologists claimed Binet’s original intelligence tests date from 1905. The that precise measurement of the relative proportions of the Eugenics Education Society, of which Galton was Honorary skull’s configured surface offered an exact indication of President, was established in 1907. One of its members, mental powers. Before the phrenologists there came the Charles Spearman, pioneered the application of factor analysis physiognomists, for whom it was indeed possible to tell the to intelligence test-scores in order to ground a notion of mind’s construction in the face. These C18th theorists developed tabulated systems which classified pictures of faces ‘general intelligence’ or ‘mental power’ which he called ‘g’s Spearman believed ‘g’ to be an underlying quality that made and profiles supposedly to reveal correspondences between people intelligent. In any individual it was a fixed quantum. physical appearance and individual character. As the 19th

A

education for tomorrow 19

He suggested that people might be given the right to vote, or to have children, on the basis of their level of ‘g’, an idea taken up by Michael Young for his cautionary satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, first published in 1958.

Young’s book glances at the prospect of a geneticallyengineered elite. Michael Young’s son, Toby, co-founder of a Free School in London, looks forward to the day when embryos can be screened in vitro for ‘intelligence’s Such screening would enable ‘parents on low incomes with belowaverage IQs’ to select only the ‘smartest’ of their embryos to be taken to term. For Young, who endorses it, this is ‘progressive eugenics... g-galitarianism’.2 ‘These days the notion of ‘ability’ fulfils the same discursive function in the education system as ‘intelligence’ once did. ‘

As eugenic visions for ‘improving’ the human stock began to be outlined in the early C20th, a young psychologist, Cyril Burt, much inspired by Galton and Spearman, published a paper in the British Journal of Psychology purporting to show that ‘the superior proficiency at intelligence tests on the part of boys of superior parentage was inborn.’3 Burt would work for London County Council, the largest education authority in the country, as Britain’s first professional educational psychologist. His view that ‘intelligence’ was largely if not wholly inherited, fixed by the age of eleven, and readily measurable by testing, significantly influenced the Haddow Report on primary schooling (1931) and the Spens Report on secondary schooling (1938), both of which shaped the segregationist tripartite structure of maintained education in England after World War 2. Different types of school for different types of mind.

As Clyde Chitty observes, the notion of ‘intelligence’, especially when it is constructed as genetically determined, needs to be understood against the backdrop of opposition to mass education.4 An elite education is necessary for a ruling class, but training will suffice the proletariat, on whom anything better would be wasted because of their supposed innate inability or ‘lower intelligence’s Burtian views about the inborn superior capacities of a class elite are further inflected in the psychometric tradition by perspectives which lend themselves to racism. It is argued that intelligence tests scientifically reveal the stratification by ‘race’ of human intelligence, with some racial groups innately more intelligent and others less. Furthermore, educational intervention to boost capacity is a waste of resources given the immutable nature of individual intelligence. In Burt’s words, ‘[n]either knowledge nor practice, neither interest nor industry, will avail to increase it’.5 Such views were argued in the USA at the turn of the 1970s by Jensen, and again in the 1990s by Herrnstein and Murray in their book The Bell Curve. In the UK, Eysenck (a student of Burt's) and Brand took a similar line, and others maintain it today. They influence policy debate. For the notion of a quantifiable ‘general intelligence’, in great part genetically determined and hence inheritable, readily serves reactionary political agendas. It helps justify the maintenance of an unequal status quo, or bolsters calls to restore to its supposedly natural order a society perceived to have become degenerate and unstable.

20 education for tomorrow

New name, old story The dominance in education of psychometric perspectives began to wane in the 1950s. Evidence increasingly appeared which rendered untenable the claim that ‘intelligence’ was a fixed entity. School students improved their scores on intelligence-tests. Children who had failed the 11+ nevertheless passed O Level exams at 16. Other criticisms undermined the credibility of the tests and the construct of ‘intelligence’ they claimed to measure. Some tests were framed in ways which assumed cultural knowledge of the kind only middle-class children were likely to possess, thereby giving them an advantage. Gender also seemed to skew results. The belated exposure of Burt as a scientist who faked foundational evidence in his work, and who published under false names articles aggrandising his role in psychometrics and attacking his opponents, put paid to ‘IQ’ as a respectable idea.

But a dominant discourse is not so easily overturned.

These days the notion of ‘ability’ fulfils the same discursive function in the education system as ‘intelligence’ once did. It enables processes to be justified which categorise and sort young people into a hierarchical structure within which different groups are treated unequally, and in some ways discriminated against. This structure tends to reproduce existing social inequalities and injustices, which the discourse of ‘ability’ is deployed to rationalise and defend.

The common sense of the system now, its regime of truth, is based on determinist assumptions about ‘ability’s These may take their cue from the hereditarian belief that, in Burt’s words, ‘each child’s genetic constitution sets a limit to his mental development.'6 Or they may stem from an apparently more compassionate awareness of the role played by social background. As with ‘general intelligence’, any pupil’s ‘ability’ is reckoned a fixed scalable quantum, high or middling or low, which can be spot-lit by testing. ‘Ability’ labels are assigned to learners as soon as possible, and periodically re-confirmed. Children are grouped by label, and offered different educational experiences accordingly. The aim across a school career is for the pupil to reach or fulfil the potential inherent in their given level of ‘ability’s This is fixed ‘ability’ thinking. It exerts a sustained material effect on the lives of pupils and teachers through the policies and practices which it underpins, the structures of schooling it legitimises, and the very language it speaks. For example, a post is advertised requiring someone to teach ‘across the ability-range’s Or a school declares itself to be ‘all-ability’s Or a government policy targets the ‘less able’, or the ‘gifted’s Even mixed ‘ability’ grouping, the would-be alternative to ‘ability’ setting or streaming, is a manifestation of fixed ‘ability’ thinking. How else ensure a group contains the right mix of high, middle and low, save by determining the ‘ability'-that fixed quantum-of each prospective member and picking accordingly?

Rise Binet’s canny definition of ‘intelligence’ as being what his tests measure throws us back on ourselves.7 How we hear Binet depends on whether we regard ‘intelligence’ as a real entity amenable to measurement via testing, or as chimerical, and constructed by the apparatus which purports only to measure it.

contributors But behind the question of ‘intelligence’ is the much more profound question of how the learner is to be conceived of and regarded. Is she an object of knowledge, classified according to test-scores within a regime pessimistic about human educability because, for every learner, ‘ability’ and hence learning has a pre-determined limit? Or is she intrinsically unknowable, beyond typology, a portal for the unexpected and the new, for whom conditions must be furnished so that yet other ways of showing herself as a learner may come into play?

The great educational historian Brian Simon helped undermine the case for intelligence testing as a basis for school selection. He suggested that ‘the teacher who sets out to educate the children under his care meets them as human beings'.8 The discourse of ‘ability’ prevents this meeting and evades its implications, both ethical and political.

Meanwhile, as research time and again reveals, fixed ‘ability’ thinking, the heir to Galtonian ‘intelligence’, works its malign effects in the lives of learners, and in the lives of teachers who oppose what such thinking represents. Let us have done with it. Let us step out of its shadow, and rise above our inheritance. n

Notes

1 2

3 4

5

6 7

8.

Cited in Liungman, C. (1970/1975) What is IQ? Intelligence, Heredity and Environment. Trans. Patricia Crampton. London: Gordon Cremonesi Ltd Young, T. (2015) ‘The Fall of the Meritocracy’s 7 September. <https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/09/fall-meritocracy/> Cited in Simon, B. (1985) ‘The IQ Controversy: The Case of Cyril Burt’, in: Does Education Matter. London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd. pp. 106-125 Chitty, C. (2007) Eugenics, Race and Intelligence in Education.

London: Continuum Cited in Gould, S. J. (1996) The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W.Norton Burt, C. (No date) Good Education in an age of Measurement.

Association of Educational Psychologists Journal and Newsletter Cited in Muller, P. (1969) The Tasks of Childhood. Trans. Anita Mason. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, p. 48.

Simon, B. (1953) Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School. London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd.

Further reading Fancher, R. (1985) The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ Controversy. New York: W.W. Norton Gresson, A.; Kincheloe, J. and Steinberg, S. (Eds) (1997) Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hart, S., Dixon, A., Drummond, M. J., and McIntyre, D. (2004) Learning without Limits. Maidenhead: Open University Press Hawkins, D. (1977) The Science and Ethics of Equality.

New York: Basic Books, pp. 115-6 Kline, P. (1991) Intelligence: The Psychometric View.

London: Routledge Murray, C. and Herrnstein, R. (1996) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster Ltd. Young, M. (1961) The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Equality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Terry Wrigley is visiting professor at Northumbria University School of Health, Community and Education Studies. He co-ordinates the Reclaiming Schools Research Network.

Martin Brown is a member of the Education for Tomorrow Editorial Board. He taught in London and was previously Editor of EfT.

Phil Yeeles is a member of the Education for Tomorrow Editorial Board and a researcher at the LKMco education and youth ‘think and action-tank’. He was previously a primary school teacher in Cambridgeshire.

Jess Edwards is a member of the National Education Union Executive Committee and a primary school teacher in London.

Ken Jones is lead policy advisor at the National

Education Union. He is Emeritus Professor of Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of Education in Britain (2016).

James Douglas is a member of the Education for Tomorrow Editorial Board. He is a Scottish education activist and former teacher.

David B Morgan is a member of the Wales Committee of the Communist Party and of its executive committee. He has worked in education and local government.

Patrick Yarker teaches in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia. He co-edits the journal FORUM: for promoting 3 to 19 comprehensive education.

Kiri Tunks is joint president of the National Education Union. She is a secondary school teacher in London.

Aretha Green is a member of the Education for Tomorrow Editorial Board. She is a sixth form teacher in Hampshire.

Julian Williams is Professor of Maths Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester.

Gawain Little is a primary school maths teacher in Norfolk. He is a member of the National Education Union executive committee and editor of Education for Tomorrow

Lucy Coleman is an Early Years teacher in Oxfordshire and Young Teachers Officer for Oxfordshire NEU.

education for tomorrow 21

equality

No-one’s brain is pink Sexism still exists.

It exists and persists in spite of the battles that have been fought, and we thought won, for women’s equality.

Kiri Tunks

T

HE FACT is women and girls are still managing sexism at endemic levels at work, in school, in public, on social media. The evidence is depressing and overwhelming. The NEU’s own report ‘It’s just everywhere’ makes clear how routine sexual harassment and sexism is in schools but also that serious sexual assault is an issue too.

These findings are backed up by other research including the Girl Guiding Attitudes Survey which found 64% of girls experience sexual harassment in schools or End Violence Against Women’s ‘All day, every day’ report and briefing on schools’ legal obligations to prevent and respond to such incidents. But such experience is not a problem specific to schools: Plan UK found that 86% of women aged 18-24 suffered routine sexual harassment and abuse on the streets, and the TUC’s ‘Not just a bit of banter’ exposed the prevalence of it at work.

We live in a society where sexual assault is a fact of life for many women but only 6% of rape cases end in conviction.

More than two women a week are murdered in the UK by their partner or another male family member and yet both the media and the justice system treat such deaths as a series of tragic individual incidents; a good man who cracked, with the implication that it was the murdered woman who somehow provoked her own death.

Then there is the pay gap; the maternity and pregnancy discrimination (54k women lose their jobs in the UK every year because of it); the cuts to public services which affect women more than men; the attacks on trade unions which have made great gains for equality over decades; and the impact of austerity – research by the Women’s Budget Group show that it is women who are most affected by this government’s policies with Black women being the hardest hit. No-one’s brain is pink The UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Phillip Alston, on a recent visit to the UK said “If you got a group of misogynists together in a room and said ‘how can we make a system that works for men but not 22 education for tomorrow

women?’ they wouldn't have come up with too many other ideas than what’s in place.”

This state of affairs coincides with the the return of the ‘Pink Brain – Blue Brain’ premise across a range of academic research, media and even cultural institutions such as the Science Museum. In 2016 their ‘Who Am I? exhibition asked children to explore whether their brain was pink or blue. We have NGOs delivering training in education which asks participants to identify where they are on a Barbie to GI Joe ‘jelly baby continuum’.

Research purporting to prove sex difference has received a lot of coverage such as that by Simon Baron-Cohen which claims to prove that males are systemisers and females are empathisers from birth. This research involved showing newborn babies a mobile and a photo of a face. It’s research fraught with problems – not least the age of the subjects – and has been robustly challenged and yet it’s an idea that still gains traction. Perhaps it’s because it reinforces the way our society is organised and seems to make sense of it. At one level, it is easier to believe that the brains of women and men are fundamentally different than to challenge structural and social inequality. More than that, perhaps this scientific drive betrays a need to prove gender difference in order to justify a sexist ideology which can be used to sustain the oppression and exploitation of women.

It is astonishing how flimsy the research which claims to prove sex difference is and how easily it falls apart on rigorous inspection. We think of science as being neutral and objective but we forget that scientists are people and subject to cultural influence like any other. Darwin, when challenged about the sexist application of his theories pronounced: “I certainly think that women though generally superior to men in moral qualities are inferior intellectually”. A Victorian example of science being used to prove what people want to believe.

Many scientists have analysed these findings on sex and gender, and debunked much of it, but their work has not received anywhere near the same exposure as the original

claims. Cordelia Fine (Delusions of Gender, Testosterone Rex) and Angela Saini (Inferior) provide particularly powerful overviews of this debate.

Simply put, many of the claims made for sex difference are based on research which is either flawed in its sample base, or its execution or its interpretation. Sometimes, claims are based on a completely unrelated experiment, designed to look for something else. Given just how much research has been done in this field, the claims that are being made for it just don’t hold up. The evidence instead suggests that there is far more difference between the brains of individuals than between those of different sexes.

awareness of pedagogical or social theories. Anti-sexism and anti-racism pedagogy was part of my PGCE. This is not something that routinely happens now.

I would argue further that there has been a ‘machofication’ of our schools which is harmful for all of us. We have a school system which imposes strict dress codes and hair styles; has a zero-tolerance behaviour system; a military approach to management where staff are told to ‘man-up’ to handle the workload and stress created by a data-heavy top-down assessment and inspection system; where staff and students are routinely expected to ‘go the extra hundred miles’; where pastoral support is seen as ‘fluffy’ instead of a vital part of supporting our young people.

‘It is astonishing how flimsy the research which And yet, there are educators all over the UK finding ways claims to prove sex difference is and how easily to challenge sexism in our schools, ensuring that the it falls apart on rigorous inspection.’ curriculum makes women and their achievements visible; making space for young people to ask challenging questions Yet modern science still excludes and misrepresents about relationships and behaviour (and to cope with being women. Look at how poorly women are represented in challenged themselves); staff setting up feminist groups and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical (STEM) conferences for young people. But this work shouldn’t be left fields. All the evidence shows that girls are as adept in these to chance. It’s schooling that all our children need and should subjects as boys until GCSE but take-up drops off at A Level be universally implemented and funded so that it is part of a and beyond resulting in women making up only 24% of high-quality entitlement.

STEM graduates. The fact that so few women work in We need a complete revolution in how we organise our computing is particularly odd given the history of women in schools so that they work for young people in their lives now its development: Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Katherine and in their futures. We need a rich, broad, global curriculum Johnson to name a few. But this is a field in which sexual which actively involves young people in their education and harassment is rife. Addressing that might go some way in exposes them to the diverse nature of the world and different changing the career choices of women. people’s contributions to it – in the past and the present day.

But what other deeper, subtle processes are at work here?

We need an education which teaches our young people to The constant presentation of the male maths? The genius know their rights and to know how to ask questions and make trope? The logical ‘male’ brain? The male environment and real sense of the answers. We need to change our culture so culture? All messages which signal to girls ‘Pick something that sexism is challenged at every turn and not allow the huge else’. potential of our young women to be stifled or silenced through Given the scale of the problem, how can schools begin to harassment, violence or prejudice - or for any of our young challenge this? people to be hemmed in by stereotypes and prejudice. We all, Well, schools can and do make a difference. My own men and women, suffer when expected to conform to sexist schooling in the 80s was consciously anti-sexist. That’s not to stereotypes. say I was schooled in some kind of feminist Utopia but Here’s some science: no-one’s brain is pink; our brains are everyone did metalwork, woodwork, textiles and cooking. We grey and endowed with inestimable capability. We must not had Local Education Authority (LEA) advisors and input that get distracted by unsubstantiated, poorly constructed ideology, provided resources and raised expectations of schools. masquerading as science. As educators, we must not limit The educational landscape is very different now. Firstly, what is possible for young people. Our job is to expand there has been a huge atomisation of the education system horizons and knock down barriers. If we do that, maybe we with the growth of academies and free schools and the demise can build an education system, and a society, that works of LEAs. Schools no longer have access to reliably equally for everyone. n ‘kitemarked’ policies or advice and are likely to approach this Further Reading kind of work haphazardly, intermittently and according to what is cheap or available. Relationships and Sex education is Cordelia Fine (2010), Delusions of Gender (Icon Books) Cordelia Fine (2017) Testosterone Rex (Icon Books) a particular weak spot.

Angela Saini (2017), Inferior, (Fourth Estate) Schools rely on their results to survive in this cut-throat Sacha Baron Cohen (2003) They just can’t help it (Guardian) world where poor exam grades can result in academisation. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/apr/17/research.

This means subjects like PSHE, Citizenship or the Arts are highereducation disappearing from the curriculum. These are the very places Sacha Baron Cohen (2003) Essential Difference: Men, Women where complex issues of sexism, sex and relationships could be safely and productively explored. Now we have outsourced and the Extreme Male Brain, (Penguin) this learning to the internet where pornography is prolific and A new book by Gina Rippon (professor of cognitive neuroimaging at Aston University) is expected to create more few filters exist to help young people navigate what they see.

Changes to Initial Teacher Training mean that new teachers waves this year Gina Rippon (2019) The Gendered Brain (Penguin) are likely to be much more school based so there is less education for tomorrow 23

education

We need roses too Student voices in revolutionary Cuba

I

N OCTOBER 2018, I was privileged to take part in a six-day National Education Union delegation to Cuba. This short article is a reflection on some of what I experienced there and the lessons for our own education system.

Throughout our time in Cuba, my overwhelming impression was of the agency and meaningful involvement of students in their own education. This was consistently evident, and obviously at the heart of Cuban pedagogy. Since the revolution in 1959, Cubans have fought for not only bread, but also roses. Students in Cuba are a direct product of these roses; their ability to be an effective part of the conversations surrounding their learning is a demonstration of the empowerment the revolution has continued to bring the Cuban people.

Nowhere was this more evident than when visiting the final school of the trip, a secondary school in Pinar del RĂ­o, so much so that I could not help but feel a little heartbroken for my own students in the UK. A member of the delegation asked the students how many of them wanted to go to university.

Every student put up their hand, in a hall of around 200. In spite of the blockade, children in Cuba have grown up with 24 education for tomorrow

Bill Greenshields

Aretha Green

purpose and aspiration: bread and roses. The bread has nourished them physically; the economic rewards of the revolution have ensured that unemployment remains relatively low. Housing, careers and healthcare are all accessible.

However, it is the roses that have made the educational opportunities available to Cuban children so special. They have empowered them in a way that bread alone cannot, and are plentiful in Cuba: the quality of education, the communal attitude, the collective consciousness. Cuban students have active agency in education; they are empowered to contribute meaningfully to their learning, to be part of the conversation.

The student voice in Cuba is a credit to its roses and to the society that nurtured them.

As a result of the blockade, Cuba has, at times, struggled for bread. It has crippled their economy and limited access to basic provisions. In spite of this, roses are not seen as a lavish addition, an added extra; they are as fundamental as the bread. Collective consciousness is encouraged and enriched through a national structure of student representation across all Cuban schools. From the beginning of primary school, class elects its own student officers, including a president and vice-president. These officers make up the student Council

and elect a student president for the school. This elected student president is involved, alongside teachers, parents and representatives of the other school staff, in the direction and governance of the school. A diverse group of students are included within this student voice. They are empowered by other students and teachers. They see themselves as equals, amongst other students and in conversation with the teachers.

They contribute effectively to curriculum design and content as part of a two-way dialogue about their learning.

‘In Cuba, the student voice is at the heart of the hidden curriculum. It is a cornerstone in the education of values and skills to enrich children.’

they have the cultural capital to firstly apply and secondly to be effective in the role. Along with the typical middle-class volunteers, the teachers sometimes select some working-class children, with behaviour issues, in the hope that becoming a rôle model for others will help their own behaviour.

Regardless, it is a token position for the students involved, an Ofsted tick box to be checked.

In Cuba, the student voice is at the heart of the hidden curriculum. It is a cornerstone in the education of values and skills to enrich children. In the UK, emphasis tends to be placed on the formal curriculum; the pure delivery of ‘quality’ teaching and learning, measured through standardised testing.

From my time spent in Cuba, it was obvious to me that enriching the child and empowering them as a ‘whole person’ through the hidden curriculum was a central and consistent focus. Qualified teachers, in every classroom, carry out this process, rather than increasing numbers of unqualified teachers and staff who are not educators, as we have seen in England as a result of academisation. Cuban students are empowered, they have a voice, and they are architects of their own education. Their voice is also one voice across Cuba.

Children have the same uniform, a visual representation of unity amongst students rather than competition, and they belong to the same school students’ union. It is clear to the students what their rôle is in their own education, as it is the same for all Cuban children.

As a result of bourgeois hegemony, capitalism encourages educators to perceive working-class children as having inferior norms and values – less cultural capital – which then leads them to educational failure. Under capitalism, high culture is seen as more valuable. Students with high-cultural interests (theatre, classical music, elite sports and elaborate language codes, for example) are seen as more ‘intelligent’, hardworking or academic. When capitalism is removed, children are perceived as equals and nurtured equally. Cuban children understand that their voices are valued equally, in the absence of hierarchy.

Because of their low cultural capital, British working class children are alienated from their educational setting. We have allowed a system to continue in which working-class parents are alienated from their children’s education; they do not engage with the corporate aims of the school. The children speak in a language different to that of their teachers and their textbooks and are trained to seek immediate, rather than deferred, gratification, as middle-class children are. Workingclass children do not have access to the cultural capital of the middle classes, and are therefore alienated from student voice participation. This is something we as educators must fight to change because, until we do, the education of our young people is diminished.

“Fidel showed us that another world is possible” were the words of the union representative at the University of Pinar del Río to the delegation. Another world is possible for us too, but we must first cultivate our roses for the sake of our young people, and of their education. n

Children’s agency in education is largely dependent on the ethos surrounding the role of education. The function of education varies between capitalism and alternative systems.

Under capitalism, a key function of education is for social control, influencing the working classes to ‘know their place’, as part of the ideological apparatus at the disposal of the bourgeoisie. In education, working class children are prepared for low-skilled occupations through the socialisation of capitalist society’s norms and values: obeying authority; coping with boredom and alienation; meritocracy; and conformity. In addition, educational opportunities are rationed, in order to crystallise class stratification across society. A classic example of this is the role of selective education, once more popular under Theresa May’s government. In the words of one anonymous DfE official, speaking in the mid-1980s, “We are beginning to create aspirations society cannot match...

When young people drop off the education production line and cannot find work at all, or work which matches their abilities and aspirations, then we are creating frustration with perhaps disturbing consequences… we have to select, to ration educational opportunities.. people must be educated once more to know their place”1 Despite the best intentions of many teachers, student voice in the UK tends to be a reflection of this perception of the role of education. Students are not empowered through external school factors such as art, music and literature to have true agency in society, particularly in education. Even if encouraged to be involved in their learning, British students are largely not equipped or empowered to do this. They have been socialised to not question throughout their lives. They have no roses.

Usually, student voice in the UK is in the form of an annual survey. Students are required to answer the questions anonymously. It is not a dialogue, but a customer satisfaction survey. The students are often explicitly referred to as customers and they are treated as such, as passive consumers of education rather than active participants. The questions are corporate in nature, and the student responses are not regarded as meaningful.

Sometimes, in the UK, small groups of students are used as a voice, such as student councils. Although this arguably may act as better practice than the survey responses, students Note 1 Ranson, quoted in Simon B (1991) Education and the Social who are not equipped by society to feel valued will not be Order 1940-1990 (Lawrence & Wishart) able to effectively contribute. Middle-class students inevitably volunteer for these student council positions as

education for tomorrow 25

numbers Mastery mathematics but who is the slave?

Julian Williams

H

26 education for tomorrow

AVE YOU heard of “Mastery maths”? You might think it’s the latest fad, the latest government imposition, or the latest resource for learning mathematics. Maybe it’s all these things? You can go online and check out what is being sold: you might like some of the ideas yet also object to others. But this is where the money is; the government has decided the CPD budget for maths is to be spent this way, so this is ‘it’.

The NCETM hubs seem heavily involved in shaping it in practice on the ground, but they are constrained by the programme’s national commitments which have been shaped by Shanghai and Singaporean influences. I’ve heard that the programme gets its support because the ministers who supported it thought it involved children sitting in rows being taught together through ‘Direct Instruction’, being properly disciplined, and learning by rote. From what I see, however, there seem to be some good things in this system: in particular some texts and approaches are inspired by Skemp and Bruner and their aficionados in the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, adapting many of these ideas from the 1970s1. There are also Western influences such as the concept of ‘variation’ developed by Ference Marton and others that now boomerang back to us from Shanghai: well and good! The Singapore programmes emphasise what Skemp refers to as ‘relational understanding’ (real understanding of mathematical concepts and how they relate) to underpin the instrumental numeracy – even the recall of times tables - that Conservative education ministers value so highly.2 Not so long ago a teacher asked me if I thought ‘apparatus’ was still ‘in’ for good maths teaching: their school was very much ‘into’ their whiteboards and so on. I was shocked. Well, manipulating manipulatives are certainly ‘in’ again in Singaporean maths.

The notion of the whole class moving together through the essential curriculum also feels right by equitable criteria: a true ‘no child left behind’ policy approach.

Then, who would complain about there being text books to support the teaching? Surely materials that are well designed and crafted by informed praxis should be welcomed as resources even for the most independently minded and resourceful teachers.

Even more positive – the fact that the Pacific rim teachers tend to have a culture of research and lesson study

in their professional practice is not to be sneered at… if only this kind of professional development was significantly resourced here (clearly this is not going to happen under the present government).

So, in this case, I think there is good reason to support work on ‘fluency’ that is understood to be emergent from experiences that are relational. Skemp never meant, I think, to suggest that instrumental mathematics does not have a role, but I think he saw that it was limited if it did not engage with relational understanding, like ‘having procedures’ without ‘knowing why’ the procedures work and sometimes might go wrong. Consider the 17 times table, not one perhaps that we have learnt by heart/rote – but perhaps it would be good to experience trying to do so? So 8 x 17 = … er? On the other hand, I know that 17x10 = 170… and 17x2 = 34, so 17x8 has to be 34 less than 170, or 136. This is ‘obvious’ knowledge that flows from relational understanding to support instrumental working; surely pedagogy should encourage it. This is a ‘knowing by heart’ that is genuinely mathematical, in contrast to learning by rote that is quite otherwise because it has no basis in mathematical reasoning and so undermines mathematical ‘sense’; perhaps we should call it mastery but not mystery.

this has been true of the Blair governments as much as of its expansion in the years since), has been to treat the profession, the teachers and classroom practice, as the object of change, rather than its agent. Barrow3 wrote “Giving teaching back to the teachers”, in which he appealed to researchers not to steal teaching and judgment from the teachers. Everything said there applies even more emphatically now, with the ‘researchers’ being replaced by the what-works-technicians, managers, and policy.

We also need to give learning back to the students, because the control of teaching from outside robs learners of agency or mastery quite as much as it has done teachers.

Becoming the ever-more compliant ‘deliverers’ of a given best practice pedagogy and national curriculum, driven by tests, the freedom of the teacher disappears. So does the freedom of the student to learn; motivation becomes a technical job for the teacher, an instrument to harass the learner into learning what we claim they need to know. We are no longer allowed as teachers to conceive of the diverse ways we might teach, and the many ways our students might learn, because best practice tells us how it is normatively effective, and anyone who does not comply – well that’s fine but they have to have a convincing reason to press back against the weight of the world and its ‘evidence’.

‘The notion of the whole class moving And yet – the evidence is remarkably slim. Arguably, together through the essential curriculum the most important factor in effective learning-andalso feels right by equitable criteria: a true teaching is a powerful (and relatively ‘unalienated’ - if ‘no child left behind’ policy approach.’ that’s possible) relationship between the teacher and learner: some call this love. If the intrusion of Mastery into So what should we really worry about in “Mastery an effective teacher-learner relationship serves to mathematics”, given that many of the ideas it promotes undermine this, then I am sure it will prove ineffective – seem to be arguably well founded, and persuasive? For though I wonder if this will be detected by the kinds of myself, what I worry most about is that ‘mastery’ is not evaluation and measurement widely employed to evaluate only mastery of mathematics per se but mastery of the effects. teaching-learning partnership, or relationship. “Mastery” In conclusion: what I am arguing is not really ‘against’ sold as good practice seems to be yet another means of the current trends for Mastery Maths particularly, but FOR telling teachers and learners how they should do things, a renewal of a different kind of professional development, because this is believed or has been shown to be ‘effective’ where the agency of learners and teachers is more (in somebody’s hands). In other words, what is wrong with obviously respected as the vital agents of real learning. I “Mastery” for me is what is wrong with the whole policy urge the critical examination of the imposition of Mastery discourse about “what works” and “best practice”, which Maths and other such slogans and programmes insofar as is often propagated in a regime that actually has very slim they purport to have the ultimate answers to developing evidence or authority to make these claims. The policy practice, leaving the teachers with a purely technical task of ‘delivery’, and presumably reducing learning activity to becomes the master of us all, and we are obliged to ‘package opening’ functions worthy of a future menial suspend our critical faculties and comply. workforce and compliant citizenry. n I think what is wrong with “Mastery maths” is close to the concept of the dialectic of Master and Slave: both are Notes alienated from their labour as well as each other. In 1 See e.g. Skemp, R. (1976). Relational understanding and Mastery Mathematics who is Master and who is being instrumental understanding. Mathematics Teaching, 77, 20“mastered”, who is the ‘slave’? It worries me that the 26. people who are absolutely central to learning-teaching are 2 For further discussion, see Marton, F., & Booth, S. (1997). not given agency, not given the control, are not invited to Learning and awareness. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and Watson A. (2017) Pedagogy of Variations. In: Huang R., be critical of this whole new narrative of ‘best practice’ Li Y. (eds) Teaching and Learning Mathematics through which marginalises their judgment. The teachers and Variation. Mathematics Teaching and Learning. (Sense learners are not the masters here; are they then the slaves Publishers) to their masters, working for their institutions, as Ian 3 Barrow, R. (1984). Giving teaching back to teachers: A Stronach once put it “Doing their sums for their country” critical introduction to curriculum theory (Wheatsheaf Books) in PISA, TIMSS, and National tests?

The direction of policy, at least in recent decades (and

education for tomorrow 27

early years

What is happening to Early Years education?

Hannah Zander Wright dressed as aunicorn

Lucy Coleman

A

S AN Early Years Practitioner of fourteen years, having worked as a trained nursery nurse and qualified Early Years teacher I find myself increasingly asking the same question; what is happening to Early Years Education?

Like most Early Years professionals, I have a deep understanding of child development, Early Years pedagogy and many years of experience working with children under the age of 5. I know the importance of a play based curriculum and the far reaching benefits of this approach to early education.

Young children learn best through play; this is something every trained early years worker knows and understands.

Why then are we constantly having to defend our position?

The UK government appears to be intent on eroding play from the early years and replacing it with more formality.

Bold Beginnings, a renewed push for baseline testing, and a draft early years review have all been on the agenda in the last 18 months.

Why as a reception teacher should I have to make choices between what I know is best for the children in my class and what I know I need to do to get the ‘required’ percentage of children to reach a Good Level of Development?

‘Good Level of Development’ might lead you to believe that this statement is based on a child’s age or stage of development, but according to the UK government this is not the case.

Every child in my class will be judged using the same criteria come June. Their age will not be taken into consideration, they will all be assessed using the same ‘Early Learning Goals’.

28 education for tomorrow

I will have to have the same expectations for a child who is not even 5 against one who is almost 6.

I will be assessing children who began the year with very little or no English, children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, children who have never been in any form of education setting previously.

Regardless of these differences, with less than one year in school, according to the government all of these children should be reaching the same ‘expected’ level.

Many children will have made huge leaps in terms of development from their starting points and their progress is better than those who arrive at school already at their age related expectations, but this level of progress counts for very little in terms of accountability and in terms of what Ofsted seem to expect to see when they inspect schools, simply because these children haven’t been able to jump through the government ordained hoops.

Every year the Early Learning Goal (ELG) for writing has the lowest percentage attainment, and many of the children who don’t reach the ‘expected’ level are boys, summer born or have English as an additional language or, indeed, all three.

Each year at moderation we discuss how to raise the attainment for writing, but has anyone asked why the ELG for writing is so low?

Perhaps it is because we are expecting 4 year olds to run before they can walk, expecting children who don’t have the manual dexterity to hold a pencil to be able to write a sentence which can read by themselves and others.

Some will be capable of this, but does that mean that all of them must be able to?

The ELGs are currently under review with a draft Early

Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework being piloted in September 2019.

This review, however, was conducted by a panel which consisted of very few Early Years experts and is not based on any significant research.

There are members of the panel with a vested interest in the outcomes as providers of commercial educational programmes such as Jolly Phonics and Ruth Miskin Training.

Many Early Years professionals would in fact welcome changes to the current Early Learning Goals, however what we would welcome even more is a proper consultation on this and the use of valid research evidence to underpin any changes.

There has been a worrying trend in recent years for reception classrooms to become more formal, with many now simply an extension of the Year 1 classroom.

This has been compounded by the Ofsted report ‘Bold Beginnings’ which praised more formal styles of teaching and had an over-emphasis on formal Literacy and Mathematics.

The report also suggested the Reception year should meet the “now increased expectations of the national curriculum” (p4).

When the National Curriculum was reviewed in 2014, this would have been the perfect opportunity to ensure that the expectations in Year 1 mapped to and built on the Early Learning Goals. This did not happen, and instead the Year 1 curriculum continues to be misaligned with the Early Learning Goals whilst the Bold Beginnings report seems to suggest that it is the task of Reception teachers to extend their curriculum beyond the statutory EYFS curriculum and start teaching Year 1 objectives.

Do we really want children to leave school without having developed the ability to think critically and challenge the social constructs of the world in which they live?

The concern is that teachers and Senior Leadership teams who are inexperienced within the EYFS will read the Bold Beginnings report and will instinctively move to a more formal approach in order to please Ofsted.

Ofsted themselves say that they have no preferred style or method for teaching, and yet they failed to provide a balanced report and offer alternative approaches other than formalised teaching methods.

As Bold Beginnings rightly states; the reception year is unique, for many children this will be their first experience of education and so needs to be handled with care.

As reception teachers we have the ability to set children on the right path of learning, we can equip them with the skills to become life-long, inquisitive learners. Or we can switch them off to learning, asking them to complete tasks which are too difficult and are not developmentally appropriate, making them feel like a failure before they have even turned 5.

As a result of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) education has become preoccupied with the following ‘standardization, literacy and numeracy, predetermined results and test-based accountability policies.’

Who then is benefitting from the current overpreoccupation with these elements within education, since it is certainly not the children?

Why would the government not want our education system to produce critical thinkers who challenge the status quo?

What do they stand to lose?

It seems that those who own the large education based ‘Do we really want children to leave school commercial organisations and who profit from the current without having developed the ability to think education system are the ones who have the most to lose from critically and challenge the social constructs of an education system which creates critical thinkers. It would the world in which they live?’ pose a real threat to those very companies who profit from the current system of testing and standardisation and indeed Bold beginnings seems to completely ignore the would create individuals who are willing to challenge those in Characteristics of Effective Learning which are based on power. ‘established evidence on the role of self-regulation in forming Where then does this leave Early Years Education? strong dispositions for later learning and successful lives, and I know the journey that I will continue to take the children how to encourage those.’ These characteristics underpin the in my class on through their first year of school, I know whole of the EYFS curriculum and are an essential part of a which path I will be leading them towards. I will continue to child’s learning. teach the ‘whole child’ since I refuse to create a classroom If children are given opportunities to develop these which has an over-emphasis on intellectual development and characteristics they will literally be developing the ignores the other aspects of a child’s moral and social ‘foundations’ of learning for the rest of their school careers development. and beyond.

My concern is that I am increasingly becoming part of a Many ‘Outstanding’ reception classes do follow a minority and as more and more experienced teachers are completely play based approach and achieve high levels of leaving the profession due to unrealistic demands from our development. These schools manage to provide meaningful government, what hope is there for the future generation? experiences for children and real life contexts in which to What will become of Early Years education? What will support children to reach a ‘Good Level of Development’ and happen to play? n beyond.

Yet none of these less formal approaches were mentioned Notes in the Ofsted report. There was a clear sense that Ofsted was 1 TACTYC (Association for Professional Development in Early Years). (2017) BALD BEGINNINGS, A Response to Ofsted’s favouring a preferred style of teaching in the Bold Beginnings (2017) report, Bold beginnings: The Reception curriculum in a report; one which sees children as commodities on a sample of good and outstanding primary schools. (TACTYC). production line where the end product is of far more 2 Robertson S. (2015) ‘What Every Teacher Needs to Know About the GERM’ in G. Little, Global Education ‘Reform’: importance than the process.

Building resistance and solidarity (Manifesto).

The end product being human capital.

education for tomorrow 29

pedagogy

Vygotsky, Freire, Guevara In search of a radical pedagogy

Gawain Little

E

DUCATION PLAYS a number of different contradictory roles in capitalist society. On the one hand, it is essential to the reproduction of labour power – without education, there will be no skilled workforce to keep the system going – but at the same time, under the neoliberal politics that has been dominant for the past 40 years, it is increasingly becoming a direct source of value, and of profit, as everything from cleaning contracts to education advisory services, from teaching resources to supply contracts, and even schools themselves, are tapped for a quick buck.

Education also plays a key ideological role in the reproduction of capitalism. It acts both as a mechanism for the reproduction and crystallisation of class differences (through academic and social selection, the rationing of qualifications, etc.) and for the transmission of the social norms of capitalist society. These, of course, go hand in hand. The ideology which educates children to “know their place”1 sits perfectly with the very mechanisms that sort them into those places.

However, education itself is a site of struggle2. Whilst the dominant ideology of any society is the ideology of the dominant class3, hegemony is maintained through painting these ideas as the ideas of society as a whole4. Because capitalism relies on a careful balance of coercion and consent5, the ruling class has always had to compromise its vision of education with that of the working class. Decades of working class struggle for universal comprehensive education have shifted the balance of that compromise but always within the confines of the capitalist system.

And yet education also has a broader liberatory potential.

Critical education can give working people the power to name their oppression and to challenge it, and beyond that is fundamental to the creation of an alternative society of the future. Whilst these aspects are rarely revealed under capitalism, they are always present, as untapped potential of the education process.

The question of pedagogy is key to the battle between these different visions and purposes of education.

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire argues that there are two 30 education for tomorrow

distinct concepts of education – the banking concept and education for critical consciousness – each of which implies, and is based upon, a fundamentally different vision of society6.

The banking concept of education considers students as empty vessels to be filled by the teacher. It rests on a number of assumptions which are entirely compatible with acceptance of, and compliance with, capitalist society7.

This approach of ‘depositing’ knowledge into passive students is not just a missed opportunity to develop critical consciousness. By depriving students of control over the learning process, we deny them control over their own lives.

“The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.8”

The education profession is also debased in the process. In the banking concept of education, the role of the educator is divided into two distinct steps: a cognitive phase in which the teacher works alone to understand the material, and a narrative phase in which the teacher attempts to transmit this understanding to the students. Essentially, the educator functions as a delivery mechanism, usually for content decided elsewhere.

As an alternative to this banking model of education, Freire counterposes the idea of a problem-posing education, where educator and students work alongside each other to pose and solve the problems of people in their real environment. In this process, the educator’s role becomes much more fluid. They are at all times cognitive and in dialogue with the students, who are also cognitive and in dialogue with the educator and each other throughout.9 Dialogue is central to Freire’s pedagogical approach. He argues that knowledge only exists and can only be understood in relation to others, that thinking cannot be confined to the relationship “thinking subject – knowable object” but must instead be understood as a relationship which involves other thinking subjects.10 Freire describes dialogue as “the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world”11. He gives language a key role, arguing that words contain within them an essential unity of action and reflection: praxis. He goes on to argue that, “liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.12” It is this praxis, this reflective action to transform the world, that is at the heart of the Freirean conception of education13,

described by Unwin & Yandell14 as the “polar opposite” of the neoliberal policies popularly known as the Global Education ‘Reform’ Movement or GERM.15 “Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in relations with the world. ‘Problem-posing’ education, responding to the essence of consciousness – intentionality – rejects communiqués and embodies communication.”16 ‘In Vygotsky’s approach, consciousness is the product of social interaction in the process of acting on the world. Language works as a tool which, acquired socially through interaction with others, becomes internalised and facilitates the development of verbal thought as a more powerful act of cognition’

This concept of consciousness, defined by its intentionality, is the essence of Freire’s vision of education, captured in the phrase: “liberating education consists in acts of cognition not transferrals of information”.17 It also, as Vittoria18 notes, mirrors perfectly Marx’s distinction between humans as social beings, who work consciously to transform reality, and other animal species who act out of instinct19. It is this conscious work which transforms both nature and man.

The development of consciousness is the main focus of the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky challenged both vulgar behaviourism and subjective idealism in his “struggle for consciousness” in Soviet psychology20.

Against those who tried to explain consciousness either as a simple product of stimulus-response mechanisms, or as essentially metaphysical and unknowable, Vygotsky presented a complex dialectical process in which language plays a key role in changing thought not only quantitatively but qualitatively.

In Vygotsky’s approach, consciousness is the product of social interaction in the process of acting on the world.

Language works as a tool, acquired socially through interaction with others, which becomes internalised and facilitates the development of verbal thought as a more powerful act of cognition.21 This dialectical interaction of thought and language provides the answer to the vexed question of the development of thought in the child, replacing both the vessel-filling banking concept of education and the Piagetian thesis of internal maturation or stages of development. The educator’s role is no longer trapped in the dichotomy of trying to fill an empty vessel with dead facts or sitting back and facilitating a natural process of ‘growth’ on which they have little impact.

Education is recognised as a social process and the role of the educator as a more experienced other becomes crucial in guiding and participating in that process.22 One of the key implications of this understanding is Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development.

According to this idea, the area in which each individual child

is best prepared to learn in any subject is the space between what they can currently do independently and what they can do with some level of adult or peer support. This suggests that, in assessing children’s learning and developing next steps in the process, we need to look not just at what they can do unaided but also what they can do collaboratively or with a level of adult support.23 Significantly, this also suggests that the role of the educator is not only to identify the zone of proximal development but to work alongside the child in this area, in much the same way as that described by Freire.

The social nature of learning which was fundamental to both Vygotsky and Freire was further explored by Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Guevara declared that, “society must be a huge school”24 in which both individual influences (teachers, parents, family, comrades) and collective influences (social group, society, environment, media) are consciously directed towards the goal of education.25 This approach has since been developed in Cuba as “social education”, described as “society’s educating action on every person”26. This social education is differentiated from socialisation because, where the latter is mostly spontaneous, social education is intentional and directed.

In addition to recognising the role of the whole of society in the process of education, Guevara also commented on the way in which this process should be carried out. He emphasised the reciprocity of the educational relationship, that “you educate or instruct by learning from those who learn from or are educated by you”27, stating clearly in an address to medical doctors in 1960, “the first thing will be not to offer our wisdom but to show that we have come to learn with the people”28.

Whilst this approach, in which every aspect of society – schools, health centres, workplaces, media – works as a single system, with education as a conscious and intentional goal, carried out by conscious actors learning alongside each other, may be specific to a society in the process of revolutionary transformation, the approaches involved and the recognition of the role of society cannot be ignored. As Freire argued, “while only a revolutionary society can carry out this education in systematic terms, the revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they can employ the method”. They can’t use the banking concept temporarily “with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be revolutionary – that is dialogical – from the outset”.29 Guevara described the role of education as being a “conscious act” of building socialism30 and described how he saw this process unfolding: “I don’t think education shapes up a country…But neither is it true that the economic process alone can bring about an economic transformation at that level. Education and economic development are constantly interacting and fully shaping themselves.”31 The end goal is clear – the creation of a new human consciousness: “We will build the 21st century man; we ourselves. We will be tempered in daily actions, creating a new human being with a new technology.”32 “Our task would not be done if we were only producers of goods, of raw materials and not, at the same time, producers of men.”33 Key to this process is the development of collectivism as a guiding principle of Cuban education. This rested on

education for tomorrow 31

Guevara’s understanding of the relationship between the collective and the individual. Cuban educationalist Lidia Turner Martí.34 has argued that the collectivism Che spoke about “is manifested when man’s thoughts and actions are geared, above all, to the interests of the collective and when he feels the internal need for direct social action”; when “moral and political commitment are raised to a higher stage so that social behaviour and individual self-determination can be joined in one and the same action”. The aim, she argues, is “self-regulated personalities that consciously coincide with the collective interests”.

This dialectical relationship between collectivism and the fullest development of the “forces, capacities and moral quantities of the individual”35 has implications for education.

Whilst social compulsion is necessary to establish collective norms, Guevara was concerned that too much social compulsion, without adequate understanding, would lead to a “guided behavioural model” and eventually to hypocrisy and opportunism, because the goals are based on social recognition and the removal of conflict with society, not on the intrinsic motivation of being an effective part of the collective and on the alignment of the goals of the individual and the collective.36 Whilst we may not be engaged in the process of revolutionary transformation that the Cuban people have been for the past 60 years, is our goal, as radical educators, not fundamentally the same? Is it not to encourage our students to participate in the collective advancement of human society? Is it not to equip our students with the tools to fully understand and take control of the society in which they live – to understand it in order to change it, as Marx37 would have said?

In that context, we have much to learn from the work of Vygotsky, Freire and Guevara. Together, they may provide a starting point for the development of our own radical pedagogy. n Notes

1

2

3

4 5

6 7 8

Simon, B. (1991) Education and the Social Order 1940-1990 (Lawrence & Wishart) Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism (New Left Books) Marx, K. (1976) The German Ideology, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5 (Lawrence & Wishart) Engels, F. (1940) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Lawrence & Wishart); Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence & Wishart) Hoffman, J. (1986) The Gramscian Challenge: Coercion and consent in Marxist political theory (Wiley-Blackwell) Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p54 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p54.

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32 education for tomorrow

This concept of fragmented views of reality fits with the process of development of knowledge outlined by Lenin (1948) Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (Lawrence & Wishart) but with the ruling class intentionally retarding the development of knowledge about society.

9 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) 10 Freire, P. (1998) Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those who dare teach (Westview Press) p92 11 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p69 12 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p60 13 Freire, P. (2013) Education as the Practice of Freedom, Education for Critical Consciousness (Bloomsbury Academic) 14 Unwin, A. & Yandell, J. (2016) Rethinking Education: Whose knowledge is it anyway? (New Internationalist) 15 Sahlberg, P. (2015) Finnish Lessons 2.0 (Teachers’ College Press); Little, G. (2015) Global Education ‘Reform’: Building resistance and solidarity (Manifesto) 16 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p60 17 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p60 18 Vittoria, P. (2016) Narrating Paulo Freire: Towards a pedagogy of dialogue (Institute for Education Policy Studies) 19 Marx, K. (1965) Capital Vol. 1 (Progress Publishers) 20 Wertsch, J. (1985) ‘Introduction’ in Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (Cambridge University Press) 21 Vygotsky, L. (1986) Thought and Language (MIT Press) 22 Vygotsky, L. (1986) Thought and Language (MIT Press) 23 Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes (Harvard University Press) 24 Guevara, E. (1997) Socialism and Man in Cuba, Che Guevara Reader (Ocean Press) p202 25 Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 26 Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 27 Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 28 Guevara, E. (1997) Speech to Medical Students and Health Workers, Che Guevara Reader (Ocean Press) pp101-102 29 Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin) p67 30 Guevara, E. (1997) Socialism and Man in Cuba, Che Guevara Reader (Ocean Press) p202 31 Che Guevara, quoted in Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 32 Guevara, E. (1997) Socialism and Man in Cuba, Che Guevara Reader (Ocean Press) p213 33 Che Guevara, quoted in Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 34 §Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 35 Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 36 Lidia Turner Marti (2014) Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara’s Ideas on Pedagogy (Fernwood Publishing) 37 Marx, K. (1976) Theses on Feuerbach, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5 (Lawrence & Wishart)

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obituary

Tony Farsky

Martin Brown

T

learnt to value Tony as a comrade, as a colleague and a dear friend.

Those meetings were a revelation. His wide range of ONY FARSKY, who died last October at the age of interests, his knowledge and experience, his jokes and 98, was a lifelong campaigner for social justice, peace anecdotes and his enthusiasm didn’t match the impression I’d and socialism. Following military service in World formed of him before.

War Two, he trained as a teacher and then taught in primary You could depend on Tony. He never promoted himself, but schools in South London before retiring as head of if he agreed to do something it would be done. As EfT editor I Gordonbrock Primary School, Lewisham, in 1983. appreciated the fact that when he agreed to write an article, it A union activist and a communist, he was involved from would arrive in full, and on time. the very beginning in the campaign for comprehensive As we watched European socialism unravel and English schooling, alongside other campaigners like Brian Simon and state education being prepared for privatisation, thanks to Max Morris. For Tony, teaching was much more than a job.

Tony there was a strong bond in the group, and a shared world He was on a mission to improve the lives of teachers, the view. New issues arose, such as the initiative for professional children they taught and their families. unity that we were able to unanimously support.

I first met Tony in 1970 at a big meeting of London Tony, with his wife Florence, was involved in peace teachers. He chaired that meeting and hundreds of others over campaigning especially through the World Peace Council and the years. He was a President of Lewisham Teachers’ the World Disarmament Campaign. The very first article in the Association and President of the Inner London Teachers’ very first issue of EfT was a report of an international teachers’ Association (ILTA). At that time, ILTA Council was notorious conference on peace, and he carried on writing articles for sharp political differences that often erupted into open promoting peace for the journal for the next 30 years. hostility. I witnessed Tony’s chairing skills being tested and When Tony retired, he joined the pensioners’ movement honed to the limit. He always appeared calm and polite. and helped set up the Southwark Pensioners’ Action Group Education for Tomorrow( EfT) was set up by Tony and (SPAG). Tom White, current SPAG health spokesperson said: other comrades in 1984. And, of course, he chaired the “He was such an inspiration. He campaigned for vulnerable meetings. So when I joined the EfT editorial board shortly people of all kinds and when I went to a meeting and heard after it was formed I had great respect for him. him speak I joined SPAG immediately.” SPAG campaigned to But EfT board meetings weren’t like any other meetings defend the National Health Service including local mental I’d ever been to. They took place on a Sunday, lasted most of health services. the day and importantly, we had a break for lunch which Tony loved jazz, especially mainstream, and was a regular included a glass or two of wine. Instead of rushed meetings at attender at the Appleby Jazz festival. At his 90th birthday party the end of a working day when everyone was exhausted, we the distinguished line-up of musicians included Bobby Wellins had time to analyse events, explore ideas, plan the content of and Dave Green. the next issue and relax with one another. It was there that I He will be greatly missed. n education for tomorrow 33