Yes it's another internet rant on discipline in education. You've probably read enough about it in the newspapers since the time of Moses so do skip this post as it is indulgent and adds nothing to the debate as you know it - which, if you know it at all, you know does not matter one bit. Not one little bit. Go eat a pizza, they're bad for you but they're tasty. Oh and I've just read this through again and it's not very good even by my own terrible standards.
I've had the opportunity to do day to day teaching of RE in schools and have mentioned that and waffled about it before. I've had the recent opportunity, however, to do some supply teaching across many subjects in Secondary at several schools, and even two days in two different Primary schools (in the UK). It's the experience of supply that really interests me in regards to behaviour, because when schools work well they're typically described as having developed relationships. Developing relationships is the one thing that a supply teacher in a new school cannot have done, and I have noticed that this can turn apparently good schools into bad schools, and apparently bad schools into the ninth level of hell. Ofsted reports are misleading, to what extent is arguable, but I'll wager on my experiences that day to day school activity can be misleading also. That means the relationships between teaching staff and students, and even extending to the school's relationship with the parents through the management of their expectations through formal and informal reporting ('living with the school'), though I won't waffle on about that.
So here's what usually happens - the vast majority of children in the average class (not the 'bad' classes) will behave almost impeccably, but a group of 4, usually 2 groups of 2, will misbehave from the moment they walk in, and usually boys. Usually two are the 'off their heads' type whom I quickly identify by their fidgety, laugh-a-minute gestures, loud voices and constant eye contact with others (as if to say 'you're with me this time right?'). Most of the time I can get the behaviour under control with some techniques that don't include shouting or the giving of sanctions, because something 'clicks' in the student's mind and they put me on parity with other teachers and end up 'having to' do what you say, in the soft sense of necessity rather than force. Sometimes they simply make the choice that they will keep pushing and not engage me properly despite attempts on my part, only avoiding sanction at each last minute instance, before settling back into minor misbehaviour.
Well that is the usual picture for probably all supply teachers, and the debate can rage over what to do with these children who will not participate in the class. Some say hard sanction, some soft, whatever, it is what it is. What is interesting, however, is the following scenario:
I am told the class are a top or middle set, and will not pose any challenging behaviour. This is not the case. After so many years of education and educational conditioning, students fail to 'treat a visiting teacher with the respect that they deserve' - which is really only the measure of the respect they need to keep an ordered class. Children that aren't normally naughty are 'let free' by the nature of the situation and from the moment they walk in, just as with their 'low ability' counterparts, the poor behaviour is chosen and is removed only with difficulty. That's a really interesting situation to me and though it is the exception rather than the rule, I think this exceptional quality shows something interesting.
Rant speculation - it shows something about the nature of education as bullshit.
This kind of spoils the choices for behaviour management somewhat. I've been in schools where they have a 'no shouting' policy. Many people would be put off by this idea already, probably because they read tabloids (although they don't read obscure blogs so they're likely not you), but most are liberal enough to realise that education has to be a positive and inclusive experience, and shouty teachers means negativity and exclusion (that's the rationale anyway). I have also visited schools where behaviour is managed through this negativity, which, while present, was rarely needed (not at all by staff that I saw, and not very much by myself). I'm going to explain the choice on offer here with reference to my experiences in Primary schools, as they differ to my experiences of secondary, and I believe they show something important.
It seems to me that Primary schools in particular, but perhaps not exclusively, have a curious way of ensuring manageable behaviour - fuss. In Primary school children are constantly filling in reading records, ensuring they have the correct colour sticker for lunch, moving their names up and down reward-based wall charts, collecting colour pencils (and putting them away), bringing their bags, coats and lunch boxes into class (and putting them away), having 'roles' for each task such as 'interpreter' and 'explainer' which again have their own recording process, and so on and so on. The successful teacher is the multitasking adult, whose fussy behaviour is simply more highly developed and can therefore be the necessary force of control through relentless management.
I want you to think of this 'positive' behaviour management as the relentless renewal and enforcement of behavioural expectations in the intellectually vulnerable (which is what children are), and that it works because of the fear of escalation that will exist in young minds exposed to it. Managing an adult class in such a way would be met with dirision and rebellion simply because adults can handle any escalation. A child, on the other hand, feels that 'if I lose my place on that particular star on the wall chart my world will surely end'. I'm not convinced that this process is educationally useful. I can test this idea by imagining its role for adults and on simple reflection it adds nothing to adult experience. It's not just cynicism as adults that prevents the using of wall charts (in a graduate programme at a University for example), and this is ultimately because adults know that it cannot possibly help their behaviour or their methods of learning. You can imagine a University administration trying to push this policy through and getting nowhere. The argument can be put forward that the regimented and organised mind that is produced by 'fussy' Primary schools is ultimately the essential support that the adult mind needs for the free assessment of evidence and the clear thinking needed for decision-making, even if it has no further place once used in childhood. This argument is stupid for a multitude of reasons that I will not go into here, so we'll just drop it, okay?
Digression: The root of faith in the fuss method is probably the simple prejudice that even though adults feel free and willing, and do not stand as witness to any unhelpful patterns in thier own behaviour, they nonetheless notice these patterns in others and prescribe disciple and moral code (because how else does anyone but me think!). 'Just make them tick these boxes forever and everything will be ok - for me ... perhaps'. I think this pathos of distance idea is more or less correct because of the seemingly chaotic nature of the young mind and the simple distance in years between that mind, and its vibrant biological needs, and the adult mind with its structure and need for relative calm (and the 'magic' of knowledge to be imparted requiring a priest?). Anyway, on with the blah.
Given this view I cannot but suspect that an otherwise good environment with some shouting might even be preferable to an otherwise good environment with heaps of fuss. This is because shouting can be used as a very limited device for the immediate correction of singular situations, but fuss is always used consistently as a device for mind-bending. I have met primary children who refused to write down what I asked them to write down, in the course of my helping them with their work, because they do not have the correctly coloured pencil, or a ruler, or a line guide to write on, or all three (and I have experienced this several times over the course of only two days in two primary schools - such weird and predominant behaviour). In any case it is clear to me that we over-value fuss, because any change in control of that fussy behaviour (like a supply teacher) leads to insecure behaviour (or at the very least 'breaks the spell' in an uncomfortable way). For any closed social code, a stranger is an outsider, and an outsider is always dangerous.
So fuss is a more extreme example of what I feel happens at secondary - that once you strip away the usual relationships and expectations between teacher and student there is nothing left to support a positive 'learning' environment. Given that the work will be relevant to what students would have been doing anyway, although it is often 'boring' and underdeveloped (and that in itself surely cannot stand in principle), there is no recognition of the work, the environment, or the visiting professional that can continue to support learning in the limit situation of good kids behaving badly.
All behaviour management has bullshit in common with other behaviour management (whatever it is they seem to fall for it!). It is, of course, a manipulation. But the student's reward for participation in the manipulation of the behaviour managment is the self-esteem that could be taken from them if they refuse to participate. A large percentage of all students in the UK have little or no self-esteem to lose (if 4 out of 28 then 14%), so they misbehave somewhat globally, but when it doesn't look likely that self-esteem is threatened - perhaps by the vulnerable person in the room initially at least being the supply teacher - any student can feel that all bets are temporarily off. The belief in education simply does not save the class, that is that the basic structure of the situation falls apart - and something seemingly so innocuous as a classroom! All things being equal (and I assure you they are), for that to happen, the society I live in must have really f-ed up.
I want to end my rant by saying that no matter what form discipline (whether imposed or nutured as self-discipline) takes in schools, the one thing that will perhaps never be honestly examined is the reason for education and its relationship to the content of that education. The 'what' and the 'why' of learning have no place in the modern classroom. They are simply non-motivational factors. The ultimate reason for this, I suspect, is that the sum of human learning, even if front and centre in a classroom, has no real place in adult life. Schools are horeshit because life is horseshit. Children behave because it is encumbent upon them to do so, not because it is important to do so, and that isn't because they don't care, it's because despite massive progress in philosophy and the sciences, almost everyone is excluded from sharing in the joys of this life, as lived through this society, for the foreseeable future.
So there.
V
I've had the opportunity to do day to day teaching of RE in schools and have mentioned that and waffled about it before. I've had the recent opportunity, however, to do some supply teaching across many subjects in Secondary at several schools, and even two days in two different Primary schools (in the UK). It's the experience of supply that really interests me in regards to behaviour, because when schools work well they're typically described as having developed relationships. Developing relationships is the one thing that a supply teacher in a new school cannot have done, and I have noticed that this can turn apparently good schools into bad schools, and apparently bad schools into the ninth level of hell. Ofsted reports are misleading, to what extent is arguable, but I'll wager on my experiences that day to day school activity can be misleading also. That means the relationships between teaching staff and students, and even extending to the school's relationship with the parents through the management of their expectations through formal and informal reporting ('living with the school'), though I won't waffle on about that.
So here's what usually happens - the vast majority of children in the average class (not the 'bad' classes) will behave almost impeccably, but a group of 4, usually 2 groups of 2, will misbehave from the moment they walk in, and usually boys. Usually two are the 'off their heads' type whom I quickly identify by their fidgety, laugh-a-minute gestures, loud voices and constant eye contact with others (as if to say 'you're with me this time right?'). Most of the time I can get the behaviour under control with some techniques that don't include shouting or the giving of sanctions, because something 'clicks' in the student's mind and they put me on parity with other teachers and end up 'having to' do what you say, in the soft sense of necessity rather than force. Sometimes they simply make the choice that they will keep pushing and not engage me properly despite attempts on my part, only avoiding sanction at each last minute instance, before settling back into minor misbehaviour.
Well that is the usual picture for probably all supply teachers, and the debate can rage over what to do with these children who will not participate in the class. Some say hard sanction, some soft, whatever, it is what it is. What is interesting, however, is the following scenario:
I am told the class are a top or middle set, and will not pose any challenging behaviour. This is not the case. After so many years of education and educational conditioning, students fail to 'treat a visiting teacher with the respect that they deserve' - which is really only the measure of the respect they need to keep an ordered class. Children that aren't normally naughty are 'let free' by the nature of the situation and from the moment they walk in, just as with their 'low ability' counterparts, the poor behaviour is chosen and is removed only with difficulty. That's a really interesting situation to me and though it is the exception rather than the rule, I think this exceptional quality shows something interesting.
Rant speculation - it shows something about the nature of education as bullshit.
This kind of spoils the choices for behaviour management somewhat. I've been in schools where they have a 'no shouting' policy. Many people would be put off by this idea already, probably because they read tabloids (although they don't read obscure blogs so they're likely not you), but most are liberal enough to realise that education has to be a positive and inclusive experience, and shouty teachers means negativity and exclusion (that's the rationale anyway). I have also visited schools where behaviour is managed through this negativity, which, while present, was rarely needed (not at all by staff that I saw, and not very much by myself). I'm going to explain the choice on offer here with reference to my experiences in Primary schools, as they differ to my experiences of secondary, and I believe they show something important.
It seems to me that Primary schools in particular, but perhaps not exclusively, have a curious way of ensuring manageable behaviour - fuss. In Primary school children are constantly filling in reading records, ensuring they have the correct colour sticker for lunch, moving their names up and down reward-based wall charts, collecting colour pencils (and putting them away), bringing their bags, coats and lunch boxes into class (and putting them away), having 'roles' for each task such as 'interpreter' and 'explainer' which again have their own recording process, and so on and so on. The successful teacher is the multitasking adult, whose fussy behaviour is simply more highly developed and can therefore be the necessary force of control through relentless management.
I want you to think of this 'positive' behaviour management as the relentless renewal and enforcement of behavioural expectations in the intellectually vulnerable (which is what children are), and that it works because of the fear of escalation that will exist in young minds exposed to it. Managing an adult class in such a way would be met with dirision and rebellion simply because adults can handle any escalation. A child, on the other hand, feels that 'if I lose my place on that particular star on the wall chart my world will surely end'. I'm not convinced that this process is educationally useful. I can test this idea by imagining its role for adults and on simple reflection it adds nothing to adult experience. It's not just cynicism as adults that prevents the using of wall charts (in a graduate programme at a University for example), and this is ultimately because adults know that it cannot possibly help their behaviour or their methods of learning. You can imagine a University administration trying to push this policy through and getting nowhere. The argument can be put forward that the regimented and organised mind that is produced by 'fussy' Primary schools is ultimately the essential support that the adult mind needs for the free assessment of evidence and the clear thinking needed for decision-making, even if it has no further place once used in childhood. This argument is stupid for a multitude of reasons that I will not go into here, so we'll just drop it, okay?
Digression: The root of faith in the fuss method is probably the simple prejudice that even though adults feel free and willing, and do not stand as witness to any unhelpful patterns in thier own behaviour, they nonetheless notice these patterns in others and prescribe disciple and moral code (because how else does anyone but me think!). 'Just make them tick these boxes forever and everything will be ok - for me ... perhaps'. I think this pathos of distance idea is more or less correct because of the seemingly chaotic nature of the young mind and the simple distance in years between that mind, and its vibrant biological needs, and the adult mind with its structure and need for relative calm (and the 'magic' of knowledge to be imparted requiring a priest?). Anyway, on with the blah.
Given this view I cannot but suspect that an otherwise good environment with some shouting might even be preferable to an otherwise good environment with heaps of fuss. This is because shouting can be used as a very limited device for the immediate correction of singular situations, but fuss is always used consistently as a device for mind-bending. I have met primary children who refused to write down what I asked them to write down, in the course of my helping them with their work, because they do not have the correctly coloured pencil, or a ruler, or a line guide to write on, or all three (and I have experienced this several times over the course of only two days in two primary schools - such weird and predominant behaviour). In any case it is clear to me that we over-value fuss, because any change in control of that fussy behaviour (like a supply teacher) leads to insecure behaviour (or at the very least 'breaks the spell' in an uncomfortable way). For any closed social code, a stranger is an outsider, and an outsider is always dangerous.
So fuss is a more extreme example of what I feel happens at secondary - that once you strip away the usual relationships and expectations between teacher and student there is nothing left to support a positive 'learning' environment. Given that the work will be relevant to what students would have been doing anyway, although it is often 'boring' and underdeveloped (and that in itself surely cannot stand in principle), there is no recognition of the work, the environment, or the visiting professional that can continue to support learning in the limit situation of good kids behaving badly.
All behaviour management has bullshit in common with other behaviour management (whatever it is they seem to fall for it!). It is, of course, a manipulation. But the student's reward for participation in the manipulation of the behaviour managment is the self-esteem that could be taken from them if they refuse to participate. A large percentage of all students in the UK have little or no self-esteem to lose (if 4 out of 28 then 14%), so they misbehave somewhat globally, but when it doesn't look likely that self-esteem is threatened - perhaps by the vulnerable person in the room initially at least being the supply teacher - any student can feel that all bets are temporarily off. The belief in education simply does not save the class, that is that the basic structure of the situation falls apart - and something seemingly so innocuous as a classroom! All things being equal (and I assure you they are), for that to happen, the society I live in must have really f-ed up.
I want to end my rant by saying that no matter what form discipline (whether imposed or nutured as self-discipline) takes in schools, the one thing that will perhaps never be honestly examined is the reason for education and its relationship to the content of that education. The 'what' and the 'why' of learning have no place in the modern classroom. They are simply non-motivational factors. The ultimate reason for this, I suspect, is that the sum of human learning, even if front and centre in a classroom, has no real place in adult life. Schools are horeshit because life is horseshit. Children behave because it is encumbent upon them to do so, not because it is important to do so, and that isn't because they don't care, it's because despite massive progress in philosophy and the sciences, almost everyone is excluded from sharing in the joys of this life, as lived through this society, for the foreseeable future.
So there.
V
No comments:
Post a Comment