So, What's Wrong With School?

Please comment

2009-08-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

I have now posted the entire first draft. The contents page that follows indicates where to find each part. Postings in June were up to reason 12. Postings in July were up to the end of chapter 4 and the remainder were posted in August. Comments are welcomed-including personal experiences of the institiution of school, clarifications, additions, what doesn't work and what needs more explanation.

2009-08-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

So, What’s Wrong With School? 125 reasons why you should never send your kids.
POSTS IN JUNE:
CONTENTS
Dedication
Opening Quote
Preface
Introduction
Evidence, Statistics and Truth

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING
Introduction to learning

1. They don’t learn what you think they learn
2. They don’t learn what is taught
3. They don’t learn anything useful
4. They don’t learn anything really useful
5. They don’t learn anything important
6. They don’t learn what they want to know
7. They don’t learn anything in context
8. They don’t learn to think
9. They don’t learn to understand
10. They don’t learn to make choices
11. They don’t learn to be creative
12. They learn to fail

POSTS IN JULY:

13. They learn to be bored
14. They learn to obey
15. They learn to be stupid
16. They learn to be labelled
17. They learn to rely on external motivation
18. They learn to rely on experts
19. They learn that there is one right answer
20. They learn what ain’t so
21. What is wrong with the curriculum.
22. The problem with educational objectives
23. Rigid methods for rigid minds

Learning Summary

CHAPTER 2: SEPARATION

Introduction to Separation

24. School separates children from themselves
25. School separates children from each other
26. School separates children form their parents
27. School separates children from adult community
28. School separates children from their home culture
29. School separates children from indigenous culture
30. School separates children from nature
31. School separates subject from subject
32. School separates work from play

Separation Summary

CHAPTER 3:THE CULTURE OF SCHOOL

Introduction to culture

33. School promotes dishonesty
34. The lie of deferred gratification
35. Myth: school is the only way
36. The myth of parental choice
37. Myth: Everything is measurable
38. Myth: there is valid evidence to support everything that happens in school
39. Myths about children
40. Myth: reward and punishment are the way
41. School encourages a dubious morality
42. The myth of benign competition
43. The three Rs: Rules, Routines and Rituals
44. Relentless boredom: the pace of school
45. School stifles communication
46. What children do in class
47. Schools blame-shift
48. Schools demand conformity and uniformity
49. Bullying is rife in schools
50. Schooling is violence
51. Truants are voting with their feet
52. Exclusions
53. The language of school distorts our thinking
54. Playgrounds are worse than jungles
55. Schools invade privacy
56. Schools maintain the status quo
57. Schools shape and justify inequality
58. The three Cs of school: control, constraint, compulsion
59. Rights do not exist in school
60. Schools create powerlessness
61. Justice does not exist in schools
62. Schools self perpetuate
63. School institutionalises for life
64. Schools are a wing of the corporacy
65. Schools are paramilitary organisations
66. School limits and defines cultural expression
67. Failing schools

Summary Culture

CHAPTER 4: TEACHERS

Introduction to teachers

68. Teachers are undermined and overwhelmed
69. Teachers are stressed, miserable and driven mad
70. Teachers are sick and absent
71. Teachers are not experts
72. Teachers are incompetent
73. Teachers are jailers and bullies
74. Teachers expectations are shaped by prejudice
75. Teachers don’t like children
76. Teachers may not be safe around kids
77. Teachers are leaving in droves
78. What motivates teachers?
79. Teachers can’t be agents of change in the current climate.

Summary teachers

POSTS IN AUGUST:

CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

Introduction numbering our children

80. School reduces children to numbers
81. Some problems with grades
82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless
83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense
84. What are tests for?
85. Socially sorting our children
86. Exams hamper real learning
87. Exams shape, limit and dumb down textbooks
88. Exams are unfair
89. Exams damage self-esteem
90. Exams cause stress and distress
91. Qualifications do not represent competence
92. Diploma disease
93. School reports
94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all
Summary to numbering our children

CHAPTER 6: HEALTH-SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK

95. Schools are sick places
96. Schools rob our children of rest
97. Schools, food and health
98. Schools make kids unfit
99. Discomfort is the norm
100. Schools are unsafe places
101. The weather
102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards

Summary schools and health

CHAPTER 7: MENTAL HEALTH- SCHOOL DRIVES KIDS MAD

Introduction to mental health

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad
104. School makes kids stressed and anxious
105. School depresses kids
106. Too much too young
107. School denies a right to happiness
108. School denies the traumas in kids’ lives
109. School damages self image
110. School refusal is a sane response
111. School pathologises just rebellion
112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry

Summary mental health

CHAPTER 8: DON’T SEND THEM IF….
Introduction to don’t send them if..

113. Don’t send them if they are boys
114. Don’t send them if they are girls
115. Don’t send them if they are different
116. Don’t send them if they may be gay
117. Don’t send them if they are from a minority ethnic group
118. Don’t send them if they have a special educational need
119. Don’t send them if they are born in the summer
120. Don’t send them if you are poor
121. Don’t send them if they have a health problem

Summary don’t send them if..

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS

Introduction to the true cost of schools

122. Schooling is very expensive
123. School destroys the planet
124. Schools have a huge social cost
125. Schools damage humanity and autonomy

Summary true cost

ENDS AND MEANS

RESOURCES AND THE WAY FORWARD

So, What’s Wrong With School? 125 reasons why you should never send your kids.

CONTENTS
Dedication
Opening Quote
Preface
Introduction
Evidence, Statistics and Truth

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING
Introduction to learning

1. They don’t learn what you think they learn
2. They don’t learn what is taught
3. They don’t learn anything useful
4. They don’t learn anything really useful
5. They don’t learn anything important
6. They don’t learn what they want to know
7. They don’t learn anything in context
8. They don’t learn to think
9. They don’t learn to understand
10. They don’t learn to make choices
11. They don’t learn to be creative
12. They learn to fail
13. They learn to be bored
14. They learn to obey
15. They learn to be stupid
16. They learn to be labelled
17. They learn to rely on external motivation
18. They learn to rely on experts
19. They learn that there is one right answer
20. They learn what ain’t so
21. What is wrong with the curriculum.
22. The problem with educational objectives
23. Rigid methods for rigid minds

Learning Summary

CHAPTER 2: SEPARATION

Introduction to Separation

24. School separates children from themselves
25. School separates children from each other
26. School separates children form their parents
27. School separates children from adult community
28. School separates children from their home culture
29. School separates children from indigenous culture
30. School separates children from nature
31. School separates subject from subject
32. School separates work from play

Separation Summary

CHAPTER 3:THE CULTURE OF SCHOOL

Introduction to culture

33. School promotes dishonesty
34. The lie of deferred gratification
35. Myth: school is the only way
36. The myth of parental choice
37. Myth: Everything is measurable
38. Myth: there is valid evidence to support everything that happens in school
39. Myths about children
40. Myth: reward and punishment are the way
41. School encourages a dubious morality
42. The myth of benign competition
43. The three Rs: Rules, Routines and Rituals
44. Relentless boredom: the pace of school
45. School stifles communication
46. What children do in class
47. Schools blame-shift
48. Schools demand conformity and uniformity
49. Bullying is rife in schools
50. Schooling is violence
51. Truants are voting with their feet
52. Exclusions
53. The language of school distorts our thinking
54. Playgrounds are worse than jungles
55. Schools invade privacy
56. Schools maintain the status quo
57. Schools shape and justify inequality
58. The three Cs of school: control, constraint, compulsion
59. Rights do not exist in school
60. Schools create powerlessness
61. Justice does not exist in schools
62. Schools self perpetuate
63. School institutionalises for life
64. Schools are a wing of the corporacy
65. Schools are paramilitary organisations
66. School limits and defines cultural expression
67. Failing schools

Summary Culture

CHAPTER 4: TEACHERS

Introduction to teachers

68. Teachers are undermined and overwhelmed
69. Teachers are stressed, miserable and driven mad
70. Teachers are sick and absent
71. Teachers are not experts
72. Teachers are incompetent
73. Teachers are jailers and bullies
74. Teachers expectations are shaped by prejudice
75. Teachers don’t like children
76. Teachers may not be safe around kids
77. Teachers are leaving in droves
78. What motivates teachers?
79. Teachers can’t be agents of change in the current climate.

Summary teachers

CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

Introduction numbering our children

80. School reduces children to numbers
81. Some problems with grades
82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless
83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense
84. What are tests for?
85. Socially sorting our children
86. Exams hamper real learning
87. Exams shape, limit and dumb down textbooks
88. Exams are unfair
89. Exams damage self-esteem
90. Exams cause stress and distress
91. Qualifications do not represent competence
92. Diploma disease
93. School reports
94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all
Summary to numbering our children

CHAPTER 6: HEALTH-SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK

95. Schools are sick places
96. Schools rob our children of rest
97. Schools, food and health
98. Schools make kids unfit
99. Discomfort is the norm
100. Schools are unsafe places
101. The weather
102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards

Summary schools and health

CHAPTER 7: MENTAL HEALTH- SCHOOL DRIVES KIDS MAD

Introduction to mental health

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad
104. School makes kids stressed and anxious
105. School depresses kids
106. Too much too young
107. School denies a right to happiness
108. School denies the traumas in kids’ lives
109. School damages self image
110. School refusal is a sane response
111. School pathologises just rebellion
112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry

Summary mental health

CHAPTER 8: DON’T SEND THEM IF….
Introduction to don’t send them if..

113. Don’t send them if they are boys
114. Don’t send them if they are girls
115. Don’t send them if they are different
116. Don’t send them if they may be gay
117. Don’t send them if they are from a minority ethnic group
118. Don’t send them if they have a special educational need
119. Don’t send them if they are born in the summer
120. Don’t send them if you are poor
121. Don’t send them if they have a health problem

Summary don’t send them if..

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS

Introduction to the true cost of schools

122. Schooling is very expensive
123. School destroys the planet
124. Schools have a huge social cost
125. Schools damage humanity and autonomy

Summary true cost

ENDS AND MEANS

RESOURCES AND THE WAY FORWARD

So, What’s Wrong With School? 125 reasons why you should never send your kids.

CONTENTS
Dedication
Opening Quote
Preface
Introduction
Evidence, Statistics and Truth

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING
Introduction to learning

1. They don’t learn what you think they learn
2. They don’t learn what is taught
3. They don’t learn anything useful
4. They don’t learn anything really useful
5. They don’t learn anything important
6. They don’t learn what they want to know
7. They don’t learn anything in context
8. They don’t learn to think
9. They don’t learn to understand
10. They don’t learn to make choices
11. They don’t learn to be creative
12. They learn to fail
13. They learn to be bored
14. They learn to obey
15. They learn to be stupid
16. They learn to be labelled
17. They learn to rely on external motivation
18. They learn to rely on experts
19. They learn that there is one right answer
20. They learn what ain’t so
21. What is wrong with the curriculum.
22. The problem with educational objectives
23. Rigid methods for rigid minds

Learning Summary

CHAPTER 2: SEPARATION

Introduction to Separation

24. School separates children from themselves
25. School separates children from each other
26. School separates children form their parents
27. School separates children from adult community
28. School separates children from their home culture
29. School separates children from indigenous culture
30. School separates children from nature
31. School separates subject from subject
32. School separates work from play

Separation Summary

CHAPTER 3:THE CULTURE OF SCHOOL

Introduction to culture

33. School promotes dishonesty
34. The lie of deferred gratification
35. Myth: school is the only way
36. The myth of parental choice
37. Myth: Everything is measurable
38. Myth: there is valid evidence to support everything that happens in school
39. Myths about children
40. Myth: reward and punishment are the way
41. School encourages a dubious morality
42. The myth of benign competition
43. The three Rs: Rules, Routines and Rituals
44. Relentless boredom: the pace of school
45. School stifles communication
46. What children do in class
47. Schools blame-shift
48. Schools demand conformity and uniformity
49. Bullying is rife in schools
50. Schooling is violence
51. Truants are voting with their feet
52. Exclusions
53. The language of school distorts our thinking
54. Playgrounds are worse than jungles
55. Schools invade privacy
56. Schools maintain the status quo
57. Schools shape and justify inequality
58. The three Cs of school: control, constraint, compulsion
59. Rights do not exist in school
60. Schools create powerlessness
61. Justice does not exist in schools
62. Schools self perpetuate
63. School institutionalises for life
64. Schools are a wing of the corporacy
65. Schools are paramilitary organisations
66. School limits and defines cultural expression
67. Failing schools

Summary Culture

CHAPTER 4: TEACHERS

Introduction to teachers

68. Teachers are undermined and overwhelmed
69. Teachers are stressed, miserable and driven mad
70. Teachers are sick and absent
71. Teachers are not experts
72. Teachers are incompetent
73. Teachers are jailers and bullies
74. Teachers expectations are shaped by prejudice
75. Teachers don’t like children
76. Teachers may not be safe around kids
77. Teachers are leaving in droves
78. What motivates teachers?
79. Teachers can’t be agents of change in the current climate.

Summary teachers

CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

Introduction numbering our children

80. School reduces children to numbers
81. Some problems with grades
82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless
83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense
84. What are tests for?
85. Socially sorting our children
86. Exams hamper real learning
87. Exams shape, limit and dumb down textbooks
88. Exams are unfair
89. Exams damage self-esteem
90. Exams cause stress and distress
91. Qualifications do not represent competence
92. Diploma disease
93. School reports
94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all
Summary to numbering our children

CHAPTER 6: HEALTH-SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK

95. Schools are sick places
96. Schools rob our children of rest
97. Schools, food and health
98. Schools make kids unfit
99. Discomfort is the norm
100. Schools are unsafe places
101. The weather
102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards

Summary schools and health

CHAPTER 7: MENTAL HEALTH- SCHOOL DRIVES KIDS MAD

Introduction to mental health

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad
104. School makes kids stressed and anxious
105. School depresses kids
106. Too much too young
107. School denies a right to happiness
108. School denies the traumas in kids’ lives
109. School damages self image
110. School refusal is a sane response
111. School pathologises just rebellion
112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry

Summary mental health

CHAPTER 8: DON’T SEND THEM IF….
Introduction to don’t send them if..

113. Don’t send them if they are boys
114. Don’t send them if they are girls
115. Don’t send them if they are different
116. Don’t send them if they may be gay
117. Don’t send them if they are from a minority ethnic group
118. Don’t send them if they have a special educational need
119. Don’t send them if they are born in the summer
120. Don’t send them if you are poor
121. Don’t send them if they have a health problem

Summary don’t send them if..

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS

Introduction to the true cost of schools

122. Schooling is very expensive
123. School destroys the planet
124. Schools have a huge social cost
125. Schools damage humanity and autonomy

Summary true cost

ENDS AND MEANS

RESOURCES AND THE WAY FORWARD

So, What’s Wrong With School? 125 reasons why you should never send your kids.

CONTENTS
Dedication
Opening Quote
Preface
Introduction
Evidence, Statistics and Truth

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING
Introduction to learning

1. They don’t learn what you think they learn
2. They don’t learn what is taught
3. They don’t learn anything useful
4. They don’t learn anything really useful
5. They don’t learn anything important
6. They don’t learn what they want to know
7. They don’t learn anything in context
8. They don’t learn to think
9. They don’t learn to understand
10. They don’t learn to make choices
11. They don’t learn to be creative
12. They learn to fail
13. They learn to be bored
14. They learn to obey
15. They learn to be stupid
16. They learn to be labelled
17. They learn to rely on external motivation
18. They learn to rely on experts
19. They learn that there is one right answer
20. They learn what ain’t so
21. What is wrong with the curriculum.
22. The problem with educational objectives
23. Rigid methods for rigid minds

Learning Summary

CHAPTER 2: SEPARATION

Introduction to Separation

24. School separates children from themselves
25. School separates children from each other
26. School separates children form their parents
27. School separates children from adult community
28. School separates children from their home culture
29. School separates children from indigenous culture
30. School separates children from nature
31. School separates subject from subject
32. School separates work from play

Separation Summary

CHAPTER 3:THE CULTURE OF SCHOOL

Introduction to culture

33. School promotes dishonesty
34. The lie of deferred gratification
35. Myth: school is the only way
36. The myth of parental choice
37. Myth: Everything is measurable
38. Myth: there is valid evidence to support everything that happens in school
39. Myths about children
40. Myth: reward and punishment are the way
41. School encourages a dubious morality
42. The myth of benign competition
43. The three Rs: Rules, Routines and Rituals
44. Relentless boredom: the pace of school
45. School stifles communication
46. What children do in class
47. Schools blame-shift
48. Schools demand conformity and uniformity
49. Bullying is rife in schools
50. Schooling is violence
51. Truants are voting with their feet
52. Exclusions
53. The language of school distorts our thinking
54. Playgrounds are worse than jungles
55. Schools invade privacy
56. Schools maintain the status quo
57. Schools shape and justify inequality
58. The three Cs of school: control, constraint, compulsion
59. Rights do not exist in school
60. Schools create powerlessness
61. Justice does not exist in schools
62. Schools self perpetuate
63. School institutionalises for life
64. Schools are a wing of the corporacy
65. Schools are paramilitary organisations
66. School limits and defines cultural expression
67. Failing schools

Summary Culture

CHAPTER 4: TEACHERS

Introduction to teachers

68. Teachers are undermined and overwhelmed
69. Teachers are stressed, miserable and driven mad
70. Teachers are sick and absent
71. Teachers are not experts
72. Teachers are incompetent
73. Teachers are jailers and bullies
74. Teachers expectations are shaped by prejudice
75. Teachers don’t like children
76. Teachers may not be safe around kids
77. Teachers are leaving in droves
78. What motivates teachers?
79. Teachers can’t be agents of change in the current climate.

Summary teachers

CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

Introduction numbering our children

80. School reduces children to numbers
81. Some problems with grades
82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless
83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense
84. What are tests for?
85. Socially sorting our children
86. Exams hamper real learning
87. Exams shape, limit and dumb down textbooks
88. Exams are unfair
89. Exams damage self-esteem
90. Exams cause stress and distress
91. Qualifications do not represent competence
92. Diploma disease
93. School reports
94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all
Summary to numbering our children

CHAPTER 6: HEALTH-SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK

95. Schools are sick places
96. Schools rob our children of rest
97. Schools, food and health
98. Schools make kids unfit
99. Discomfort is the norm
100. Schools are unsafe places
101. The weather
102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards

Summary schools and health

CHAPTER 7: MENTAL HEALTH- SCHOOL DRIVES KIDS MAD

Introduction to mental health

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad
104. School makes kids stressed and anxious
105. School depresses kids
106. Too much too young
107. School denies a right to happiness
108. School denies the traumas in kids’ lives
109. School damages self image
110. School refusal is a sane response
111. School pathologises just rebellion
112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry

Summary mental health

CHAPTER 8: DON’T SEND THEM IF….
Introduction to don’t send them if..

113. Don’t send them if they are boys
114. Don’t send them if they are girls
115. Don’t send them if they are different
116. Don’t send them if they may be gay
117. Don’t send them if they are from a minority ethnic group
118. Don’t send them if they have a special educational need
119. Don’t send them if they are born in the summer
120. Don’t send them if you are poor
121. Don’t send them if they have a health problem

Summary don’t send them if..

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS

Introduction to the true cost of schools

122. Schooling is very expensive
123. School destroys the planet
124. Schools have a huge social cost
125. Schools damage humanity and autonomy

Summary true cost

ENDS AND MEANS

RESOURCES AND THE WAY FORWARD

Bibliography

2009-08-25T03:26:00.001-07:00

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Rai Bali (2006) Politics: Cutting Through the Crap (London: Walker Books Ltd)
Rogers C. (1983) Freedom to Learn for the 80s (Ohio: Bell and Howell Co.)
Rousseau Jean Jacques (1911) Emile (Translated by Barbara Foxley: New York: Dutton)
Rowe D. (1994) Time on Our Side: Growing in Wisdom Not Growing Old (Harper Collins, London)
Sittirak S (1997) Daughters of Development (London: Zed Books)
Stromquist N (1995) “Romancing the State: Gender and Power in Education” in Comparative Education Review Volume 39 No. 4 pp423-454
Swimme B and Berry T (1994) The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era- a Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (San Francisco: Harper)
Thompson J (1983) Learning Liberation: Women’s response to Men’s Education (Sydney, Dover, New Hampshire: Croom Helm)
wa thiong’o Ngugi (1986) Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (Nairobi, Kenya: Heinemann; London: James Currey)

ENDS AND MEANS

2009-08-25T03:25:00.001-07:00

ENDS AND MEANS
It is only EDUCATION in its widest sense, as guided growth, encouraged expansion, tender upbringing that can secure that life is lived in all its natural, creative spontaneity, in all its sensuous, emotional and intellectual fullness. Sylvia Ashton Warner
(SAW, born in 1908 in New Zealand, prepared ethnically sensitive primers for the Maori children in her classroom in New Zealand, which were then banned and burned. She was repeatedly inspected and downgraded until she resigned)

It is important to realise that education is seen as a means to an end: on a personal level of getting a job; on a societal level of increasing GDP (Gross domestic product) through people getting jobs; and on a global level as a route out of poverty. Even if those ends were certain, were directly attributable to the schooling received, we still need to look at the means by which they are obtained. The end of job attainment fuels qualification escalation and diploma disease. (see diploma disease) The societal damage done by schools exceeds any spurious ‘growth’ and by propping up a corrupt global economic system schools generate the poverty they claim to tackle.

The Gandhian idea, that the ends are inherent in the means, is important here. If we bore children, we do not enable them to have interesting lives. By testing children to destruction, we do not create whole humans able to assess their own work, and their own worth. By separating children from themselves, others, families, their culture we do not enhance the ability to connect or integrate. A tick-box culture does not encourage thinking outside the box.

If we look at what the ends are, the people our schooling produces, we see that even the claim that the end justifies the means, is not justified here. School aims to produce unquestioning obedience and excessive consumers to keep the planetary destruction machine going. It produces people who have learned to deal with their anger and frustration by taking it out on each other, or ‘the other’, the enemy, rather than directing their anger constructively against the insane system, the politicians and corporate bosses, who make a fortune out of their distress.

Cruelty, in child rearing and in schooling, begets cruelty. The saying “You have to be cruel to be kind” is a nonsense. Cruelty is always damaging, no matter what the avowed intent. Raising children with cruelty and hate is never kind and cannot teach kindness. Children are not naturally cruel. They learn cruelty from how they are treated and how they see others treated.

Schools does not and cannot, except by accident, produced thoughtful, autonomous people who question, who utilise their gifts for the betterment of self, of others and the planet, who grow to be fulfilled individuals, comfortably at peace with themselves and others. This is to be truly ‘productive’-not how many unwelcome phone-calls you can make for a living or how many sales you can push on people who can’t afford to buy.

We are at a uniquely precarious point in human and planetary history. The choices we make, as individuals, communities, nations and internationally, will determine whether or not life continues on earth, whether our children, their children, their children’s children, have a planet to live on. The nature of modern schooling does not address that and does not produce young people able to ask the questions and seek the answers that will address that.

But there is a growing movement of parents and kids saying NO to it all: home education, alternative and small schools, kids voting with their feet grow apace-the human in search of a human education, of human values and ideas, of reality checks and hopes. There are teachers struggling to make their classrooms slightly more user-friendly, holding onto values of compassion and integrity and truth in an institution where such things are irrelevant or threatening, because there is no box to tick.

The bombardment with daily news stories about what is wrong with schools needs a coherent voice to say ENOUGH. Our children have been damaged enough. Tinkering at the edges in reactions solves nothing. The generation going through school now will all too soon be running the show. I for one want them to do so with connection to themselves, others and the planet, with emotional connection, with joy and hope and trust not with targets and face-saving and covering their backs. School is dead. Kozol tells us that “We are too much involved in looking to the expertise by which to build a workable alternative to find the time to ask if this is something that we could not do without”. (Kozol The Night p19)

ends and means p2

I will do a section on resources and references.
Any suggestions for websites or organisations to include would be gratefully received.

True Cost- summary

2009-08-25T03:24:00.001-07:00

True cost-summary

Generations have been through our education system, including the ones making the decisions for us all. Our schooling allows us all to live in denial about the damage done to our purses, our planet, and society and our children by the industrial process of education.

To survive, we need to question what has been done to us, what we are doing to our children and the lies we are constantly told. O’Sullivan points out that moving from denial we will go through despair, and that this is normal and natural at this time. To move beyond despair we need to grieve for our losses, which include the loss of the myth of eternal consumption. Only when we have allowed ourselves to grieve and feel our pain can we move forward to constructive critique and visions of transformation. (O’Sullivan)

It is to precipitate a letting go of denial that I have written this book. The evidence of our own eyes and ears must be accepted. In October 2008 a news item on Radio 4 news said that scientists are now certain global warming is real, is caused by man and is happening at a greater rate than previously believed as polar ice has melted during winters as well as summers. They fear we may reach a tipping point, where whatever we do, we may not be able to avert chaos and destruction on an immense scale. But we still send our children to school each day to learn nothing about this or to learn that, well, scientists will solve it.

I was browsing through a SATs test book for 14 year olds and came across the following science question:

Q: Coal and natural gas supplies will eventually run out. This should not be a problem with wood.
(I) Why is this?
(ii) Under what conditions could this be a problem?

So, we are telling 14-year-olds its okay to continue to consume, to use power at unsustainable rates, because we can just cut down trees and burn them.

Over and over again, the true cost of schooling looks like being total planetary, social, personal and financial ruin.

125. School damages humanity and autonomy

2009-08-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

125. School damages humanity and autonomy
I am the survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot and burned by high school graduates. So I am suspicious of education.
My request to you is, help your children become more human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human. Letter from head teacher in US to his teachers at the beginning of each academic year. Quoted in Harber C p15

Humanity
JTG tells us that no-one survives schools with their humanity intact “not kids, not teachers, not administrators, not parents” (JTG DuD p51) I consider humanity to be our ability to connect, to care and to show compassion for all living creatures including ourselves. By dismissing awe for the natural world, damaging our connections to ourselves and others and stifling development of profound human qualities, we do our children a great disservice.

The outcomes of our inhumane institutions are to be seen all around us. TAASA talks of students who endure schooling coming out as “passive, acquiescent, dogmatic, intolerant, authoritarian, inflexible, conservative personalities, who desperately need to resist change in an effort to keep their illusion of certainty intact”. (TAASA p217) We have industrialised our children and denied their humanity. As a result, they are “mistrustful of intimacy”, they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected and addicted to distraction. (JTG 7 Lessons p6)

We do not allow them to grow and develop in whole and connected ways, as we fragment their existence, separate them, coerce them and deny their needs, rights and freedoms. The cruelty we see in our playgrounds, our classrooms, on our TVs, in our foreign policy, in our war on terror is not natural. It has to be learned. As Holt, points out, we have to be trained to tolerate or enjoy suffering and pain. (Holt IOE p114). This is exactly how we are training our young people, by trapping them in institutions that brutalise them.

To become a caring adult it is necessary to be cared about, respected and taken seriously. (CR p178). In order to be able to grow, trust, share feelings, take risks and ask questions children need to feel safe. (Kohn PBR p239) We stifle our young, and then become surprised when a damaged humanity acts out in destructive and cruel ways. Erich Fromm told us that: “Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life”. (Fear of freedom) The strong drive for power, domination, and violence and possession and consumption of goods comes from unsatisfied needs. (MaxNeef cited in Karen Parr’s Dissertation p61) Those needs are for emotional connection, for acknowledgement and for freedom to grow.

Lucinda Green MBE, horsewoman, left school at 15 with no qualifications. Here is what she says about school:

I was stagnated. I couldn’t move forwards or backwards. The whole system had only one effect on me: complete turnoff. My mother took me away. From that moment onwards, it was all flying, wings flapping. I got to an age when I needed to be able to open my wings, and I simply couldn’t. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen is the age of initiation, and it is when most people in the Western world are absolutely unable to blossom out, because the schooling system prevents it.
(quoted in nlp for lazy learning p151)

Our ability to spread our wings is being hampered as young people’s wings are now being clipped until aged 18. This is to prevent them ever being able to fly.

It is like training elephants. When they are young they are tethered by a stake firmly attached to the ground. They learn not to pull. When they are older and stronger, they can be tethered to an unattached stake and they don’t try to escape. (except for Nelly the elephant) (I have this in somewhere else??)
Schools don’t produce people to live in courage and conviction. (Kozol) They act to destroy any sense of justice. By creating highly skilled, but numb and brutal people to be part of the ruling class or the pawns of it, we are creating a loyalty to a “murderous nation and an unjust social order”. (Kozol the night p121)

The inhumane jobs schooling prepares us for continue the damage of our lives. We are all affected by the resentment and anger of unlived lives, of potential confined to boxes to tick, of power crushed and rebellion averted by a brainwashing to believe in our impotence.
125. autonomy p2
Autonomy By autonomy, I mean the ability to think and act for yourself. Levine defines it as: “Self-direction, the experience of potency and the capacity and ability to self govern” (CR p4). Autonomy is about personal responsibility and control. In institutions like school, we are held responsible for actions but are given no control. Schools talk about children behaving responsibly, by which they mean doing as they are told and doing as they are expected to do and doing nothing else. This is not responsibility or autonomy. It is simply compliance and obedience. It creates dependency and acts against young people becoming independent and self directed, and prevents them acting with agency, with meaning and genuine control.

By demanding absolute compliance schools lock children into a set number of ways of responding or resisting to maintain some autonomy and integrity. Acting dumb allows kids to subvert control without punishment, though they may get labelled and acquire dumbness for life. (Holt, Gatto) Active resistance becomes labelled as illness, as mental illness in need of diagnosis and treatment. This is one way school robs agency, denies reasons for behaviour and damages autonomy. Those kids labelled with ODD, CD, ADHD are trying to assert control over their own lives, even if is in destructive ways. Some try to escape with suicide, truancy, school refusal or drugs. Those who conform don’t fare much better. Some respond to the robbing of their autonomy in ways that become seen as illnesses-depression, anxiety and stress.

The stress of being who you are not tells in time, with dissociation from self and confusion over who you are. Forcing children to do and be what they can’t and aren’t has consequences for the child, the institution and society as a whole. The creation of dependent humans “unable to fill their own hours” (JTG speech 31/1/90) is the primary outcome. We are extending childhood and dependence to age 20 and compulsion to attend to someone else’s lessons to age 18. This acts to prevent the development of strategies and values and identities that allow mature, self-determined adults to emerge. An ad man’s dream. We trick children into believing that they can grow up independent and free because our social order needs people to think themselves unmanaged to enable them to be controlled with maximum success. (Galbraith in Kozol the night)

Being self-directed and doing as you love, leads to a lot of resentment among those who do as they hate, do as they are told, and do as they should. (I want to add the story about do as you’re told, do as you should and do as you love, but need to copy it again). This explains why many want children to suffer, to be made to do what they hate “for their own good”. As Alice Miller points out, we justify our cruelty to children by telling them and us that what we are doing is for their own good. (Miller FYOG)

We destroy children’s confidence in themselves, their choices, their abilities by telling them constantly, that they are wrong, not good enough that they can never be good enough. Freire noted, while working with adults “So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything that they become convinced of their own unfitness” (Freire and Macedo p61) This is what children learn at school.
125. autonomy p3
School plays a major role in creating the oppressed in society (which includes the majority): those who have learned to become incapable, to doubt their own abilities, to fear exposure of their inadequacies and to accept their lowly position in an unjust hierarchy. By robbing children of their power, we create a society of easily manipulated, directionless individuals who cannot perceive clearly the damaging institutions in our society or begin to see ways they can act to transform them.

Meaning
We are meaning making beings. When immersed in meaningless busywork for the majority of our childhoods, our ability to create meaning and purpose in our lives becomes hampered. For our lives to have meaning, we require: “inspiration, and presence, and beauty and caring and community” (Thomas Berry in O’Sullivan pxiii). The role of purpose, values, ideals, possibilities, and qualities, (O’Sullivan p 43) is undermined by a schooling with purposes of control and coercion, values of competition and conformity, ideals of boxes ticked, curtailed possibilities and denial of true qualities.
Gatto argues that we find meaning in family, friends, nature, service, ceremonies and privacy, among other things. (JTG 7 Lessons) But we are schooled to look for meaning in a grade, in purchased items, a job title, a number. In his classic book “Man’s search for meaning” holocaust survivor Victor Frankl talks of the existential vacuum that results from loss of meaning in life: “No instinct tells him what he has to do, no tradition tells him what he ought to do, sometimes he doesn’t even know what he wants to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do ( conformity) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism)” (Frankl p128) We are creating children who are “ethically incompetent within a time of torment”. (Kozol p13) School teaches us that we do not have the power to change the world or the responsibility to do so. (Kozol)
125. autonomy p4
To survive as a species and as a planet we need to rediscover meaning, purpose and hope, but they do not show up on any curriculum. To be honest, if these were to be taught in schools it would no doubt be counter-productive. By losing our autonomy and humanity we lose hope. By sacrificing our children to the needs of the state and big business we rob them of meaning and their capacity to create it. And their hope for a better future.

The children are our hope. They are our future. Enabling them to hold on to their humanity, develop their autonomy and use their power in positive ways to push for justice, compassion, truth, trust, connection and life is our only hope of having a future worth living in, or any future at all.

124. Schools have a huge social cost

2009-08-25T03:20:00.000-07:00

124. Schools have a huge social costOr/ schools shape a sick society

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children. Nelson Mandela

We all know there are many ‘problems’ in society. In school we are educated to be part of a sick, unequal, distorted, damaging and damaged society without questioning the structures, powers, oppressions and assumptions of institutions that are responsible for making our world the way it is. ‘Success’ in school comes from conforming and regurgitating on exams to get pieces of paper to allow you to slot into slightly higher up positions in a sick and distorted hierarchy.

Just as a person with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, a government with an education system sees every social ill, from crime to poverty, from teenage pregnancy to homelessness, from ill-health to disaffection as being solvable by more education. The illusion that if you have enough schooling then you won’t be poor does nothing to tackle the existence of poverty or allow you to question that poverty is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. Homelessness is inevitable where there aren’t enough decent, affordable homes for the people needing them and you don’t need GCSE maths to understand that. Crime and disaffection are much bigger problems in unequal societies as are health problems of all sorts.

Forces that exist within contemporary education can flip from liberal progressive education, focussing on the individual, to “back to basics” focussing on obedience and conformity. Quarter and Mathews argue that these are linked to the business cycle: when business is good, there is a move towards a liberal focus; when business is bad the shift is to more authoritarianism. (O’Sullivan) Neither of these approaches questions the “consumer-industrial order”. (O’Sullivan p51) In the UK we have been locked into a ‘back to basics’ model for a long time, with feeble attempts at “personalised education” being swept aside by claims of economic need.

Schooled mindsThe products of schooling, the schooled minds that emerge at the end of an industrial schooling process, are schooled not to question authority, to fear it, to feel powerless. This makes people easier to manipulate and control-by advertisers, TV celebrities, politicians. The socialisation of schooling is akin to brainwashing. Kozol tells us that: “Indoctrination, in a nation dedicated to the idea of free conscience, must be far more subtle than in nations that are openly totalitarian”. (Kozol The night p4)

When educators see their role as preparing their students to slot into the social order, they are unlikely to question it. (O’Sullivan) Students, who lose the power to question, to clearly see injustice, corruption, vested interests and corporate take-over of the planet, also lose themselves. The resulting broken people, addicted to things and spending to fill the gap inside, cannot find contentment.

All the things that aren’t learned- from the useful to the important, from creativity to questioning, hamper individual development and social functioning. The mistaken perceptions induced in the schooled mind were elaborated on by Illich: “medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, the rat race for productive work”. (Illich p9) The social cost of these distortions is immense. Individuals, communities, nations and the planet suffer damage because we can no longer connect to ourselves, our communities or nature. (see Separation chapter)

This puts power into the hands of institutions that have no conscience. Corruption seems to be the norm in all institutions- from lying to cover your back, to cheating to advance personal agendas over communal survival; from abusing power for personal gain to producing propaganda to hide reality. This type of immorality or even amorality is fostered in school. (See dishonesty) Dore argued that organisations can become wholly corrupt and that good men and women get corrupted by corrupt organisations. He observed that this is more likely where a high proportion have experienced “learning to get a job” schooling. (Dore pxiv)

Our schools have become those corrupt organisations, corrupting all who pass through them. By producing masses of corrupted and damaged young people, we create a society lacking any moral direction, often lacking any morality at all.

Separation and disaffectionThe multiple separations in school (see separations section) fragment individuals, communities, families and societies. Genuine connections become harder when bonds to people, places and nature are damaged in early childhood. It’s everyone for themselves. Individuals against the world. Succeed or die trying.

Where communities are destroyed by schooling and hostile government policies, there are now calls to centre all communities on school, for schools to become a 10 hour focal point. Institutions cannot adequately replace the connections of affection, especially when children are so separated from the rest of society, forced to stay in their young people’s prisons all day.
124. social cost p2
Social decline is often blamed on parents inability to ‘parent’ (read ‘control’) their kids. This seems to necessitate teaching parents how to parent and getting children away from their feckless parents at younger and younger ages. Those who cannot connect to their own children have been so separated from themselves, their family, their community, and their peers for so many generations that the structures are not there to raise children with love and consideration for there needs. When we have learned that everything needs to be taught, we have mothers having to turn to the latest childcare guru, or Super Nanny, because they have not been mothered or observed mothering as they and their mothers have been age-segregated for generations.

Those that accept their teaching, or develop nicely schooled minds, neat work, ticking all the right boxes, have their humanity warped and perpetuate a damaged society. Those who are disaffected are differently damaged and contributed to the destructiveness of unlived lives that seem a constant in 21st-century Britain. Those disaffected, who drop out or are thrown out, those school failures, do not disappear. “They remain in the community, and they comprise an endless and growing population dedicated to ‘getting even’ with a society that has reviled and rejected them in school.” (TAASA p186)

The angry young men and women, whose childhoods have been robbed, who either have the bits of paper and ask “is this it” or who don’t and feel cheated and discarded, are those who are going to be running the show, eager to get their own back on a world that has denied their needs.

Holt point out that there is no experience from which we learn nothing. “People doing moronic work learn to hate their work and themselves for having to do it- and in time all those who do not have to do it“. (Holt IOE p12) The moronic work exists inside and outside school. Even the highly educated seem unable to escape totally from the degradation of the quality of the work humans are required to do when we are all simply cogs in huge global industrial machine.

Politics
When the school environment demands behaviour such as dogmatism, intellectual timidity and fear of change it shapes our political and social lives. (TAASA p24)
124. social cost p3
Many vested interests do not want the youth (or any of us) to ask relevant and pertinent questions about important issues in our lives. Why are their poor people? How come we have record levels of obesity here and massive malnutrition in other countries? How come it’s okay to cut down forests for disposable chopsticks or to graze cattle for burgers? Who benefits when the markets slump? Who makes a fortune out of the misery of millions? How do they get away with it?

The vested interests of big business and huge institutions and bureaucracies from schools to the health service, from the military to the police, and governments do not want us to ask any of these questions, because they fear we may find out the answers.

Pushing for positive change usually requires groups of people acting together for a cause, for a positive move forward, for a common goal. Schools’ separations and competitiveness, setting one against the other, act to make stable groups less likely. In the current social climate, with erosion of rights, of privacy, of freedom, campaigns require huge energy to fight to stay still, to try to prevent the slide into totalitarianism and fascism that threatens us all.
The flimsy pretence of democracy is falling apart. Putting a cross on a bit of paper, or more likely not being bothered to because it seems and probably is pointless, is not democracy. Harber described a democratic person as one who celebrates social and political diversity, and regards all people as having equal access and political rights as human beings. He went on to describe further attributes including the ability to reason, open-mindedness, fairness and being able to co-operate, bargain, compromise and accommodate other views. (Harber C)

The global economic system, sold through schooling, pushes us further away from this. The values that we need to foster to enable planetary and social survival include the value of respect for those weaker than ourselves. This must include children. Alice Miller tells us that every brand of fascism lacks this respect, and respect for life and its laws, leading to “psychic death and castrating the soul with the aid of its ideology.” (Miller FYOG p64)

The global model we are trained to see as good and inevitable and just and fair (because, of course, competition is all of those things-see competition) does not provide our needs. Those needs include “meaningful work, affordable housing, fulfilling education, adequate medical care, a clean environment, honest and accountable government, social and cultural renewal or simple justice” (JTG DuD p??)
And, overall, connection to each other so we work together rather than alone at our desk, towards a more humanitarian future.
124. social cost p4
Poverty and poor countriesThe poor in rich societies and poor societies generally get a worse deal from the schooling imposed on the young. Illich argues that the mere existence of schools acts to discourage and disabled poor people from taking control of their own learning. (Illich) The disaffected and rejected lose the ability to question the structures that oppress and disenfranchise them. The export of Western-style schooling to poor countries, pretending that ‘modernisation’ will lift these countries out of poverty, is a travesty. Aid to schools, but not for local food production, contracts for Western businesses, buying into drug company lies, being guinea pigs in drug trials, Tarmacking over the rainforests and vast environmental degradation, low wage slave labour for overseas companies to make profits and cut corners on safety, life in call centre-prisons as a reward for learning English: this is the modernisation we export.

O’Sullivan tells us that it is now becoming clear that what we call development in the northern hemisphere is the major source of underdevelopment in the southern hemisphere. (O’Sullivan p129) Schools play their role in selling this lie.

What will lift these countries out of poverty is fair trade, debt cancellation, ownership of their own land, use of land for domestic food production, rather than cash cropping dictated by structural adjustment and funnily enough, they are not on the curriculum. Training young minds to focus on irrelevancies allows powerful governments and commercial enterprises to literally get away with murder.

In poorer countries, schools separate generations from stewardship of the land, from indigenous knowledge and practices substituting a taught curriculum. In Kenya, traditional inter-cropping of maize and beans was abandoned in taught agriculture, where a monoculture of beans were grown and assessment made simply on yield. Those unfortunate enough to have a plot near the entrance, where cows could come in and eat their plants, were bound to fail.

Dismissal of all indigenous practices, including local languages, without questioning what is of benefit to individuals, communities and the planet results in a loss of connection to previous generations and to nature. It causes a schism, a rift between the schooled and their unschooled elders, whose knowledge and wisdom is judged contemptible and backwards by the schooled mind. Imposed criticism of cultural practices from outside, entrenches them. Questioning has to come from within. Schooling of girls, for instance, when that schooling is profoundly sexist and exists in an environment of sexual threat, does not improve the position of women. In places where high attendance of girls in school and improved status of women coexist (e.g. Cuba, Kerala) evidence indicates that the status increased first by other means before girls have access to what boys have. (may need reference)
124. social cost p5
As O’Sullivan points out education is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. (O’Sullivan) Its entrenches harmful practices, it contaminates the minds and bodies and souls of those who pass through it. Holt put it like this: “Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, of its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas and credentials now seems to me the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind”.(Holt IOE p4)

And it is an invention, not a natural or normal or inevitable phenomenon, not the only way. One of school’s more disturbing features is that it stops many from seeing that there is an alternative, that there could even be one. And if there is, then it has to look like school. (See school is the only way)

Those whose minds have not been warped by this process, those unschooled who are adept at ‘crap detecting‘, would not tolerate the invasion of privacy and erosion of freedom that goes under the guise of ‘national security‘, The unschooled can question corporate propaganda, political spin and their own oppression.

This is perceived as a huge threat by those in power. Recent attempts to regulate home education out of existence unless it looks just like school, with threats to remove children to have them indoctrinated elsewhere, tells us just how much of a threat a free-thinking mind can be.

This tells us, more than anything else, that we are doing the right thing by freeing our children from mental slavery. We need more forces for freedom, for rights, for justice, for the needs of humans and the living planet to be prioritised over profits of the few. Then we can begin to build a society worth living in.

124. social cost p6

123. School destroys the planet

2009-08-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

123. School destroys the planet

Our conventional educational institutions are defunct and bereft of understanding in responding to our present planetary crisis. O’Sullivan p7

School has a major impact on the planet. There are direct effects, through resource usage and waste production. There are indirect effects that play out through policies designed to promote excessive consumption beyond the means of our one planet.

Resource UsageSchools are great consumers of paper. Entire rainforests fall to provide exercise books, textbooks, letters home, the million and one forms teachers have to fill out, Ofsted reports and examinations. The belief that if it is not written down it doesn’t exist, and hasn’t happened, fuels the excessive paper consumption. Writing down, as an alternative to learning, eats up trees at an alarming rate.

Hand in hand with excessive consumption goes waste production, including throw-away kids for our disposable society. Illich argued that: “school gives unlimited opportunity for legitimating waste” (Illich p5) Along with the waste polluting the air and water, we need to add the waste of time, of lives of opportunities to connect to the natural world.

The energy required to run a school, the bell on automatic throughout the holidays, the computers left on, the lights, the heat on when it’s hot, the air conditioning, because windows don’t open, the power required for CCTV and the fingerprint identification. When this occurs at thousands of schools across the land and hundreds of thousands worldwide we are talking about an enormous carbon boot-print.

The energy usage and pollution production of the school run is important here. A survey in 2006 by Traffic Master showed that some journey times during morning rush hour more than doubled during term time. (Manchester evening News 11/12/06 “Congestion chaos caused by school run”) School holidays reduced traffic on the roads by roughly 10%. We need to add in the extra fuel consumption by other cars stuck in the traffic jams. Pickup time from schools, particularly primary schools, creates an additional rush hour and extra congestion, as well as consuming petrol and polluting the air.

Where I live, there is a ‘triangle’, where pollutant levels of particulates frequently exceed recommended levels. In that triangle are four primary schools, where many children are dropped and picked up by car. The increased pollutants in the air are not considered to be a problem for the children whose schools fall in this hotspot, nor is it considered that reducing the car journeys to school may address this.

The school building programme referred to in the previous section is not only hugely expensive it has environmental implications too. Use of environmentally damaging resources, especially for buildings with a short expected lifespan, creates glossy monstrosities that have damaging legacies. The maintenance requirements of modern buildings are high and the materials used are often from non-renewable sources, polluting during production, during disposal, and during use.

The direct damage done by school is only a small part of the picture. The real damage is done by separation from the natural world, (see separation) by a curriculum which fails to address planetary survival, and by indoctrination into a system that has excessive consumption as a highly prized goal. All of these threaten the survival of us all.

Education policy is shaped by globalisation. (O’Sullivan) The jargon goes “Schools must prepare new learners to be competitive in the new global economic community. There are no questions asked on the planetary sustainability of this direction.” (O’Sullivan)
In school, young minds are fed the idea that we have a right or even a duty to consume excessively to keep our economy afloat even if we go into debt to do it. The global economic downturn, caused by financial systems built on sand suddenly caving in, and bringing recession, seems to evoke panic in politicians, urging people to borrow and spend our way out of it rather than seeing this as the death throes of an unsustainable system. The competitive marketplace has been shown by these latest events to be a wholly destructive force, not only for financial systems, but the planet as a whole. It seems to legitimise putting enormous national resources into a corrupt banking system while they are losing sight of this wonderful chance to bury capitalism and replace it with something much more humane and sustainable. When faced with the imminent destruction of the planet there is no comparable mobilisation.
123. planet p2
Questions on the money-management part of PHSE encourage borrowing to get it now rather than saving to get it later even when borrowers pay more, and savers gain more generally.

Young minds are being shaped by the education they receive to look out for number one, to compete for a bigger share of resources and to measure success in terms of evidence of conspicuous consumption. None of this is sustainable. By accepting an industrial and commercial order that has exploitation of the natural world for human consumption at its centre, we are indoctrinating our children into their own demise. (O’Sullivan p45), but that is not on the curriculum.

O’Sullivan tells us that “the fundamental educational path of our times is to make the choice for a sustainable global planetary habitat of interdependent life forms over and against the global competitive marketplace” (O’Sullivan p45) .The silence of educators on environmental matters makes them complicit.

What is the point of learning lots of disconnected facts to get pieces of paper, while adults destroy the world children must inhabit? Gatto tells us that: “School is a distraction, while the world is destroyed” (JTG DUD). He argues that school fuels runaway consumption that threatens the earth, the air, the water of our planet. (JTG DuD)
But school is more than a distraction. It embroils our children in a melee of assumptions about man’s right to exploit the natural resources of the planet. By destroying the ability to question, these assumptions become accepted as true.

The curriculum, from reductionist science to the promotion of the Western world view as objective and true, acts to legitimise planetary destruction. This indoctrination is taken as OK. Any other views are dismissed. It was ironic to find a lorry driver, Stewart Dimmock, in a successful legal fight to prevent Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” being shown in all secondary schools as it was “indoctrination” (Metro 28/9/07 p9 “Gore’s truth misleads, school’s DVD case told” Rosss McGuiness) His claim of indoctrination is farcical. Kids are being indoctrinated in every aspect of the curriculum and the hidden curriculum to devote their lives to the destruction of the planet that sustains us, to live in denial and to believe that the scientists will solve it all. So we need not worry or do anything and just keep consuming. George Monbiot once said that if people are given a choice between planetary survival or a new set of tableware that most people would choose the tableware. (Guardian 2/12/03) What sort of indoctrination makes such choices possible? Such non-choices for a future?

Being able to make realistic choices that might enable us to survive needs people to sort through outdated concepts to see which are relevant and which are not. (TAASA) Schooling locks children into conserving old ideas, concepts, attitudes, skills and perceptions, which are not only no longer relevant but positively harmful.
123. planet p3
Ronald Wright pointed out in 2004 that if civilisation is to survive it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. Ecological markers indicated that in the early 1960s humans were using 70% of nature’s yearly output. By early 1980s it was 100%. In 1999 we were at 125 %.(“A Short history of progress” cited in www.21learn.org/slideshow/packets/2008/january/21-Manchester.pdf)

We can only continue to live this way at all, if we are in denial about the impact our lifestyle and privilege has on our future survival. O’Sullivan tells us that it is Northern hemispheric privilege that is the single most important threat to planetary survival. (O’Sullivan p129) We in the privileged North are in denial that anything is amiss. Our schools do nothing to counter this and make it worse by teaching that reinforces privilege and the right to consume “despite the devastating effects on the planet and other people and species” (O’Sullivan p131)

There is intense opposition to presenting this full reality to anyone. Our educational and other establishments have become subservient to industrial culture. (Universal Story)

In January 2008, a Radio four “Profile” programme (26/1/08) featured the head of the Federal reserve in the USA, who had just announced an unprecedented interest rate cut to stabilise global markets. (Well that worked, didn’t it?) In it, this highly intelligent, Harvard educated economic professor’s acceptance speech said he would do his best for the American economy. This man, brain the size of a planet, can’t think of the best for the planet or see that the American economy is a huge part of the problem when it comes to planetary survival. That knowledge is readily available yet his brain is so full of money and statistics he is unable to see the consequences for us all of “American economy first, f*** the rest of the world” or to see that this will eventually f*** America too.

The educated elite live in denial, because it is the only way they can maintain and justify their privilege. To move to a conscious awareness there has to be a moving away from denial. “This comes when there is a connection made between the global economy’s workings, and the environmental and social devastation that seems to accompany its presence anywhere”. (O’Sullivan p35)

Poorer CountriesThe devastation seems more apparent and more desperate in poorer countries. Places with more fragile ecosystems show us that the whole planet’s ecosystem is, in fact, fragile. It is in these countries that the exported Western education system does the most harm. Where people have lived in stewardship and harmony with their local environment, have gained enormous knowledge of the ways of their forest, their semi-arid land, their peculiar habitats and multi-species communities, all that is threatened by formal schooling that destroys traditional pathways of passing on this knowledge. (Aikman)
123. planet p4Ngugi wa thiong’o shows how capitalism and a school curriculum-based on it is destructive. “Capitalism and the development of science and technology introduced the possibility of conquest of nature: capitalism by uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources ensures a virtual dominance of nature over man by way of drought and desertification”, and now global warming. (Ngugi p66)

By indoctrination into the ways of the West, schools in poorer countries pave the way to their own destruction. Aikman talks of Arakmbut women in Amazonia fighting for the right to not send their children to residential secondary schools run by Dominicans where they are trained to grow non-indigenous plants for cash crops and to exploit and destroy the forest. (Aikman)

So who benefits? McDonald’s, when local people collude in their own demise by not opposing forest clearance to graze cattle for our burgers. The schooled see the ‘benefits‘. The unschooled are dismissed as ignorant and against progress. Big businesses gain when stewardship ties are broken so they can extract and destroy natural resources and habitats to make a quick buck.

Vandana Shiva said that we should not talk of ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ nations but of waste-producing or waste-avoiding societies. The schooled move towards more production of waste, and more justifying that waste. By exporting Western schools and capitalist ideas we make the whole world into a waste-making machine. We in the West are also exporting our waste to poorer countries.

The destruction of fragile habitats, indigenous cultures, and the knowledge we all need to survive, is happening at an ever increasing pace. None of this features in a curriculum except as an occasional add on. Get your GCSE in geography, but don’t question the melting ice caps and mass deforestation. Get your A-level in sociology so long as you don’t criticise capitalism. Get your exams in science, and believe the lies they tell you. Along with it all believe that we are worth what someone is prepared to pay us.

Thomas Berry tells us that “Life requires something beyond mechanism, something beyond commercial worth; life requires inspiration and presence and beauty and caring and community” (Quoted in introduction to O’Sullivan) (Maybe this goes here or at the end of ends and means)

123.planet p5

122. Schooling is very expensive.

2009-08-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

122. Schooling is very expensive.
The United States is proving to the world that no country can be rich enough to afford a school system that meets the demands this system creates simply by existing.
Ivan Illich
There is an enormous global expenditure on formal education. (Harber p7). Huge amounts of money are spent to prop up schools and propagate the idea of their inevitability. According to the Observer, 1.2 billion pounds is spent on education EACH WEEK in this country. (Amelia Hill “Depressed, stressed: teachers in crisis.“Observer 31/08/08) Even when it becomes obvious that schools are not working, are not doing what we are led to believe they do, the solution is seen as more resources, more money and more and more school.

There are fiscal and financial benefits of school. They provide jobs for teachers. (434,900 full-time equivalent teachers in mainstream schools in England. January 2007 figures- full reference in teachers intro). Yet all those teachers are paid from the public purse. The echelons of jobs generated by schools, from cleaners, caretakers, playground assistants to dinner servers and secretaries, from builders and maintenance workers to classroom assistants all have to be paid for. Beyond school, layers and layers of bureaucracy at local and national level support them; from school inspectors to administrators, from educational psychologists to accountants, lawyers to ministers, the number employed and paid for out of taxation increases hugely. If we add in OFSTED, examination boards, textbook manufacturers, exam markers and exercise book manufacturers then we have a huge proportion of the population ‘gainfully’ employed in propping up a system based on the idea that an adult imparts knowledge to a group of children.

Other ‘benefits’ include the provision of ‘free’ childcare to enable parents, especially mothers, to work. I remember one brilliant teacher at my son’s school (only one) who spent her time struggling in an inhumane system to retain and impart humanity. Meanwhile, her own children were passed from pillar to post, from childminders to other, much less able and less caring teachers. It seemed odd to me that raising and educating strangers’ children is valued more than raising and educating your own. Of course, not everyone enjoys, or can stand, spending large amounts of time with their own, or anyone else’s, children. This is a sad indictment of the adults we have become.

Other ‘financial benefits’ of school include removing children from the labour market, where they may compete with adults for jobs and the supposed future benefit of work capacity of the schooled. This latter ‘investment’ idea of schooling, that we are putting money in now so that we will benefit later, is an interesting one. Recently (October 2008) ideas about investment in anything is being questioned as markets collapse that have been built on sand, as the idea of money making money, of anywhere being a safe place to put money are being found to be false. We must question the application of this flawed financial model to our children. They are not ‘economic generation units’, and we devalue us all by treating them as such. Idris Shah once pointed out that the number of people who believe in an idea is not proportional to the sense of the idea. The many who believe schooling is a ‘good thing‘, like the many who believed in the money markets, are mistaken.

Schooling is seen as a way out of poverty. But when that schooling does not allow questioning or challenging society’s structures that require there to be poor people as a warning to the rest of what might happen if they step out of line, then it can change nothing. Schooling doesn’t question capitalism or the idea of disposable people only valued for their economic input into the global machine. It props up obscene systems that need and thrive on the poverty of millions. As long as we have an economic system that requires there to be poor people, ‘excess’ people, no amount of schooling for acceptance will change that. In fact, it will prevent it being challenged.

The economic benefits of school are greatly out -weighed by the costs. The question is: who benefits?

The costs of school have increased hugely over time. Illich argued that these escalating costs act to discourage non-schooled learning. (Illich) In the huge education industry the needs of children are lost. The immediate function of facilitating an interaction between teachers and children becomes buried and subject to ever escalating costs beyond the classroom.

So what does it cost? In 2006 £49 billion was spent on schools (check whether this is England or England and Wales). This is an 83% increase in school spending. That is a lot of money. (Independent October 2007 check date “ 83% increase in school spending brings 1% boost in productivity”) .The article title, referring to productivity, indicates that children are merely economic generation units treating schools like factories, with the belief that more money in should bring more output in terms of grades obtained, exams passed, targets met.
122. Expensive p2
In 2001, educational institutions expenditure accounted for 11.9% of total government spending. (Need updated figures) Per capita, (for each child in school), estimates vary as to how much is spent per year. Hansard 17/05/07, stated that £3580, was the per capita allocation for 2005 to 2006. However, in January 2006 23,670 pupils were educated in pupil referral units and other settings. PRUs cost £15,000 per year per pupil. (Daily Mail 21/5/08) In 2006 the BBC claimed that government spending was £5000 per pupil in state schools in England and Wales and that this was set to increase to £8000 per child by 2012. (bbc.co.uk 23/3/06)

If we add in OFSTED costs of 105 million per year in 2000-2001(BBC 23/3/06), which increased to £236 million in April 2007 (Polly Curtis; “Who watches the watcher?” Guardian 27/3/08). We need to add in the £1 billion per year on anti-truancy initiatives that don’t work (ref in truancy) and the 5 billion spent between 2001 and 2007 on failing to improve basic skills for the adults who leave school unable to read, write or add up. (MEN 29/1/09 “£5 billion spent yet education standards still don’t add up”) we find an enormous amount of our money is being spent on these dreadful institutions.

At school level, most of the money spent is on staffing costs, to pay personnel to provide custodial care, indoctrination and to select children for social roles. (Illich) Very little is spent on educational resources. Of the 3 or 5 or 8000 a year per child less than £16 per child per year is spent on books. (Independent 6/6/06 “Time to bring schools to book”)

Other calls on cash-strapped schools intervene, like £30,000 to hire security guards. (“School spends its book cash to keep out vandals” Alice McKeegan and Yakub Qureshi Manchester evening News 7/7/08 p20) or payment of insurance against parents suing. (“Insure against parent’s schools told” Telegraph 4/7/08) Many people are benefiting by being well paid to subordinate our children.

So what is the direct cost to parents of this free childcare? In September 2008 it was estimated that parents pay about £16,000 to put a child through state education. From £366 per year on transport and buying 46 pairs of shoes. (Research by Norwich union cited in Metro News 1/9/08 “The 16,000 bill for state school”) Parents spend over £1300 per year on everyday costs of a child going to school. (First news 8-14 September 2006, page 3)
This hits lower income families the most. From £388 per year for school meals, £266 on uniform and £207 PE kit, £79 for excursions (based on centre for economic and business research for Asda which has introduced four pounds uniforms Manchester Evening News August 5th 2008) The money required for free child care averages out at over £20 per week, 52 weeks of the year.
122. expensive p3
In 2006, the Citizens’ Advice Bureau published a report on the cost of ‘free’ education, noting that children from lower income families were less likely to flourish at school. “For these children, schools can be divisive and contribute to exclusion” (check ref) particularly when it comes to wearing the right clothes and going on school trips. 55% of families in the lowest income groups struggle to meet the costs. Discretionary grants for uniform, with 42% of local authorities offering no help at all, don’t help when uniforms are compulsory at most state secondary schools. In 2005 lone parents, if they were lucky, received £35 grant towards the cost of a uniform where a blazer alone costs £65. The CAB report noted that uniforms were of high cost and poor quality. (Ref to find)

And of course, children grow. At certain stages of their lives they grow alarmingly. Having to purchase new uniforms, school shoes etc, as well as out of school clothes that may be too small in three months, is a huge financial burden on poorer families.
For the better off there is “prom pressure“, as an export from the States, as teens demand expensive clothes and hired limousines so as not to be outdone. It becomes about competing to see who can spend the most, rather than about sharing a celebration.

School building
The launch of the “Building Schools for the Future” programme, at an estimated cost of £35 billion to build or improve 3500 secondary schools by 2020, indicates yet more spending on education. (Guardian 21/7/08 , page 1 “ £35 billion revamp will produce generation of mediocre schools” Robert Booth) but this is actually spending on building, money going to building firms, architects, building material manufacturers and not any aspect of ‘education‘. When the Public Private Partnership came in it meant that taxpayers money was being spent to line the pockets of private companies. In Scotland, the schools built under PPP mean local councils pay back firms over 30 years (which is less than the lifespan of the buildings) “Over the course of the lease the council will generally pay far more than the cost of the building work”. Playing fields are being sold off to pay for it. (1/6/08: “More schools get private finance” http://bbc.co.uk/1/hi/Scotland/3764721.stm)

The buildings so far produced are not looking good. Shuttleworth College is the second school created under Lancashire county council’s £250 million building schools for the future programme, to be labelled ‘inadequate’ since they opened in 2006. (www.Burnley citizen.co.uk/news/2133609-head-of-struggling-school-resigns 19/03/08)
122. expensive p4
An audit conducted by the government’s own architecture watchdog revealed that 8/10 of the designs proposed for secondary schools are “mediocre” or “not yet good enough“. The problems identified include bullying hotspots, noisy open plan areas, and classrooms too dark and prone to overheating. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), stated: “Ministers believe there is a link between pupil performance and investment in school buildings“. On what is this belief based? There is definitely a link between building firm income and this type of government spending. “In many cases, an overemphasis on car parking, has resulted in designs which resemble edge-of-town retail parks, rather than lively educational establishments” (Guardian 21/7/08 “£35 billion revamp will do use generation of mediocre schools” Robert Booth)

Many modern buildings with safety systems, lifts, fire sprinklers, security alarms and advanced roofing are expensive to maintain and as today’s modern building systems will have a life expectancy that will eventually be very expensive to maintain or replace in 25 to 30 years, then this huge rebuilding programme will be hugely costly in the longer term too. (www.Hansen company.com/News/article-sales tax.htm 19th of February 2008 Duane van Hamert) It used to be possible to build houses and public buildings to last hundreds of years. With modern technology new buildings are wrecked in 25 years or even less.

The huge cost of building mediocre edifices as temples of learning, will cost us all dearly, and not benefit children one bit. Who benefits? The building firms, those employed by Partnership with Schools, to oversee the project, those who distract us all with shiny new buildings from asking what will change about the practices inside them.

The academies programme, whereby an individual can put £2 million in to take over the running of a school, while the state provides the rest of the money, costs £27 million to start each academy, compared to £2.2 million for a ‘fresh start’ school. (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4599150.stm 11/1/06 “schools fail 1 million pupils”) So that’s why the government is expanding the programme-to give jobs to their mates at a cost to your purse.

Special educational needs and mental health
The cost of putting children through a special educational needs statementing process has to be considered against any benefits of having a label. Special educational needs children bring more money into schools, and therefore cost more even when the label and additional support does not benefit the labelled child. Many have argued that overall increases in expenditure on education increase the number of children with special needs. (Illich, Holt?)
If we look at the financial costs of the damage done by schools, driving kids mad and not equipping them for a sane life in an insane society, the cost of disaffection, crime and destructiveness of those angry children robbed of childhood, then the costs seem to greatly outweigh the benefits.
122. expensive p5
Poor countries
In poorer ‘developing’ countries, schooling for children is championed as a route out of national and family poverty. However, the huge financial burden to nations and families of Western-style schooling is often overlooked. When 29,000 under 5s die each day, 4000 because they lack safe water and sanitation, where 12 million have been orphaned by AIDS and 146 million regularly go hungry and 640 million lack adequate shelter we need to question the high cost of public schooling, which takes resources away from health and social infrastructure. This creates more poverty. (statistics from UNESCO http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev/ev.php-URL_ID=11412&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html downloaded on 23/10/08)
When families have to stop growing food for their own consumption to grow cash crops for export to raise school fees this puts them at the mercy of global markets which are never fair or just. By taking money from domestic food purchase and health maintenance the cost of schooling to families impoverishes them further.

The longer term benefits are illusory. When I taught in a secondary school in Kenya the vast majority of pupils, who had studied hard, whose families had made immense financial sacrifices to educate them, would not go into any employment or further study that required secondary education or that earned significantly more than agricultural production. Families incurred debt in the vain hope that their children could work and earn enough to pay it back, support younger siblings and have a ‘better life‘. There is no evidence that this actually happens. What seems to happen is that the huge anger and resentment at the lies our children are told erupt in social disorder. The young, separated for years from home and culture in boarding schools, have damaged connections to their families and damaged connections to themselves. (See separation chapter)

Producing large numbers of young people with qualifications, where there are no or very few jobs requiring those qualifications is a huge problem. (See diploma disease) By raising expectations for millions and millions we do them a disservice. We sell a dream of an unsustainable Western-style consumerist lifestyle as the bait to hook millions into expensive schooling in the hope of the unattainable. This is cruelty of the highest order.

An additional problem in poorer countries is the creation of a new and different type of poverty created by ‘development’ and pushed through schooling. By destroying “wholesome and sustainable lifestyles and instead creat(ing) real material poverty, or misery, by denying the means of survival through the diversion of resources to resource intensive commodity production” (Shiva in Aikman)
122. expensive p6
Destroying subsistence agriculture and the means of subsistence and replacing it with meaningless bits of paper, is the way the first world keeps the poorer countries in third position, by creating dependency, destroying self-reliance and selling everything at a huge cost.

Dismantling these huge costly edifices could allow real learning and ‘progress’ to occur. But there are too many vested interests, too many making money out of the educational impoverishment of the rest of us, for this to be even suggested by policymakers, though the crumbling structures may simply self-destruct. And we will all be collateral damage.

As John Taylor Gatto pointed out “In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking the schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that powerful interests cannot afford to let it happen” (JTG 7 Lessons)
122. expensive p7

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS

2009-08-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 9: THE TRUE COST OF SCHOOLS
The only way out is to give in. Most importantly, to resign himself to the fact that he will have to keep resigning himself to things his entire life long. Vladimir Megre

So, what is the true cost of ‘free’ compulsory schools? The costs play out at many different levels. The ‘free’ part is challenged as schooling is hugely expensive, and we can no longer pretend it is good value for the immense amount of money it takes. Schooling has direct and indirect damaging effects on planetary survival. The social cost of fragmenting and age-stratifying our society and creating dependent angry, resentful young people have to be considered. The impact on individuals, having autonomy and humanity harmed, plays a part in the societal damage. The loss of meaning leaves us all vulnerable and directionless when our survival requires us to act wisely, act with conscious awareness of the plight of us all, and to do so with hope that we can avert the devastation that the global machine creates by merely existing. Schools are in the driving seat of that machine taking us ever closer to the precipice.

DON'T SEND THEM -summary

2009-08-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

DON’T SEND THEM: summary
There are many children for whom school is a bad idea. The different groups represented in this section only cover some of the issues. This section could have filled a whole book. Those who are not academic are tortured and fail to have their true talents developed. Those who are extroverts have their need to talk and connect curtailed. Those who are introvert have their need for alone time invaded. The list goes on. Schools cannot and do not meet the needs of the individual children we put in their care.

121. Don't send them if they have a health problem.

2009-08-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

121. Don’t send them if they have a health problem

School is not a pleasant or safe place for children with certain health problems. A diabetes support group I know of has many stories of diabetic youngsters, realising they are going ‘hypo’ (having blood sugar lows after insulin injection or medication) in school, who become aware of feeling very ill and become fearful they are going into a coma, but are unable to do anything about it. In a class of 30, the teacher often does not notice. Many parents of diabetic youngsters have removed them from school to keep them safe.

Other conditions, from epilepsy to allergies are better managed, particularly in very young children when a concerned parent is able to keep an eye. I am not in favour of wrapping children in cotton wool but question the safety of sending six-year-olds with life-threatening allergy to nuts into an uncontrolled school environment with maybe one member of staff trained to inject adrenaline in an emergency. Apart from the fear and anxiety this adds to the child’s life, there is much more danger of not getting there quickly enough.

Some schools have banned sunscreen, because some children are seriously allergic to some components of it, so other children risk sunburn at break times. Those with immune deficiencies, exacerbated by the stress in school, are exposed to a high and random number of infections in school. Proneness to urinary tract infections and constipation is not helped when school toilets are so awful. (see 102. Toilets) Those with hyper-flexible joints suffer from enforced sitting for prolonged periods.

Add: asthmatics and find data on increase in asthma attacks when children return to school in the autumn - I heard it on radio 4)

120. Don't send them if you are poor.

2009-08-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

120. Don’t send them if you are poor
The mere existence of schools discourages and disables the poor from taking control or their own learning. Ivan Illich
Schools are more damaging to the poor. We are schooled to know our place. Where that place is the bottom of the pile it acts to keep us there. Don’t be fooled by the statement that school lifts people out of poverty. As John Holt pointed out, the comfortable and powerful positions in society are taken and those people are not going to move aside, or step down and let other groups in. (Holt??ref)

Schools are a tool to ‘civilise’ the poor and train them for their subordinate position and to defer to their ‘superiors‘. (Dore) Dore claims that upper-classes either dread the education of the poor, or see it as a way of confirming their subordination. (Dore DD p17)

The education of the poor that is dreaded is a political education to enable them to question the unjust distribution of resources, to question any society, especially a rich one like ours, that allows millions to live in poverty, alongside ill-gotten wealth. Schooling the poor occurs to stop them getting any such education. It occurs to elevate one sort of culture, (white, middle or upper class), above others and to destroy other cultures.

Occasionally, through hard work and self-denial (i.e., denial of heritage, rejection of ‘poor’ culture) someone from a poor background ‘makes it’ (makes money, usually). This is then held up as evidence that anyone can do it. Just like the token woman on the board, the token Black person in a predominantly white management structure, that is not evidence of an egalitarian society, or one based on merit. The line that ‘if you work hard, you will make it’ is particularly insulting to those who work damned hard trying to hold together difficult lives in difficult circumstances.

The poor get poorer schools. ‘Good’ schools mostly occur in middle-class areas; the better the local school is perceived to be the more impact it has on local property prices. But those who can’t afford to buy a house get much less choice. A BBC news item from 2002 stated that “for every additional 10% of children doing well at a primary school in London and the south-east the price of nearby houses jumped by £15,000. In northern England it jumped by £6,100. This excludes children from low income families from the ‘best’ schools. (Maybe this is the true purpose of age 11 SATs and league tables.) The article showed that parents are willing to pay £20,000 more to buy in the areas with the best schools. That is those who have a spare £20,000. (“Primary schools boost house prices” 26/3/02 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1890455.stm)
Children come to school with different linguistic codes. Those who already operate in the codes of school, i.e., white middle-class, will be favoured by teachers. (Bernstein in GBR) Once in school coursework favours the better off who can build a better portfolio of evidence.

Schools let down the poor most, and when poorer families decide to remove their children to home educate they face greater prejudice from local authorities. This is in spite of the fact that poor kids who are home educated do considerably better in life than their schooled peers. (Paula Rothermel’s research and “State schools shunned for home education“ Polly Curtis Guardian Feb 8th 2008). The hostility towards poor families who home educate is due to their challenging their position in society and the fear that they may give their children a political education that challenges the status quo.

By judging working-class backgrounds as inferior and incompatible with school, the remedy has been seen as more school, from younger ages to break the bonds to home culture at earlier and earlier ages as this culture is seen as deviant.

120. poor p2

(See also sections 56 status quo and 57 inequality)
(Maybe find a reference for the Dame schools that provided education before state schools)

119. Don't send them if they are born in the summer

2009-08-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

119. Don’t send them if they are born in the summer

Statistics regarding summer-born children indicate that they have a tough time at school. August-born children are 25% less likely to reach age 11 targets and are 20% less likely to go to university. (20/8/08 BBC Radio 4 news) At school, and in sport, children are less successful if they are born in the summer. The Children’s Plan in 2007 cited this as an issue.

The rigidity of our school system and the rigidity of moving on from one class to the next, from primary to secondary, disadvantages those who are not ready. If you start year one of school just after your fifth birthday in August, you are in a class with some children who are almost a year older than you. A year is a huge amount at such a young age. Teachers consider the children ‘immature‘. Well, they are less mature, because they are younger. A teacher, cited on BBC News, said “the summer born are less confident than their peers. Generally they lag behind in their work and lack maturity” (kttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7178969.stm)

There is evidence that summer-born children (June, July and August) are over-represented in special needs. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, published in October 2007 shows that at age 11 August born girls are 0.4 percentage points (25%) more likely to have a statemented special need and 72% more likely to have a non-statemented special need than September born. Boys born in August are 14% more likely to have a statement of SEN and 46% more likely to have a non-statemented SEN. (www.ifs.org.uk/docs/born_matters_reort.pdf “When you are born matters: the impact of date of birth on child cognitive outcomes in England” by Claire Crawford, Lorraine Dearden and Costas Meghir)

Their normal and natural behind-ness, due to their youth, is seen as a problem and a disease to be labelled. Although it would seem that the difference makes less difference as school progresses it seems the shaky start has effects that last to GCSEs, A-levels and beyond. Being labelled a failure, and compared to children much older than you from an early age seems to have long-term damaging effects.

In the Institute of Fiscal Studies study mentioned above they concluded that: “The main results indicate that there is evidence of a significant August birth penalty in all outcomes, and at every age for children in English state schools”. The document points out that it is not a feature of teacher training and said teachers don’t realise the impact on test scores. If you go to the website and look at the graphs in the executive summary, they are striking. They show test results at key stages for groups of children plotted according to date of birth. They all show a line going down from September to August, with the red ‘girl’ line above the ‘blue’ boy line for all sets of data displayed. It seems astonishing that test results are so obviously dependent on gender and date of birth that it could be argued that all the test results show is gender, date of birth and social class. So we could save a lot of money by scrapping SATs altogether and feeding data on family income, place of residence, date of birth, and gender in to predict what results would be expected.
119. summer-born p2

118. Don't send them if they have special needs

2009-08-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

118 Don’t send them if they have special needs
Learning difficulties rise proportionately with the cost of the curriculum. Illich

All children are born different. Some are born with, or acquire differences that make it more difficult for them to learn and perform some or all tasks. Some only seem to have problems in school, or when they go to school. When critiquing the problems with sending kids with labels, or with unlabelled ‘difficulties’ to school, I am talking predominantly about mainstream schools. I am not referring to the many excellent special-needs establishments that care for children with severe difficulties and disabilities in a therapeutic and caring environment. Such places offer parents a sanity space and respite from constant care of those who may never lead independent lives. Such places can be a lifeline and a blessing.

In a move towards integration into the mainstream, such places are becoming fewer and are being labelled as part of the problem of marginalisation of people with disabilities. However, the problem for the child whose needs are not being met in mainstream are frequency overlooked. Mainstream school can never provide the level of care, therapy, attention to individual needs and hands on interaction necessary when the overriding ethos is one that states all children need to do the national curriculum to achieve according to its objectives, irrespective of the child’s actual needs.

Ofsted indicate that the progress of those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities was inadequate in 467 inspections. (2.8%) with 6% of secondary schools inadequate. (figures from Hansard written answers 11/2/09 via rise trust.org.uk/cgi-bin/category.cgi?q=SEN)

Research by Edinburgh University found that bullying is the main reason children with disabilities move from inclusive schools to special schools. (Bullycide p223) Children with Asperger’s syndrome are more likely to be bullied. Paul Naylor, research fellow in conflict and reconciliation at the University of Sheffield, found that 87% of children with Asperger’s syndrome said they were bullied at least once a week. Yet he still argues that mainstream schools are the proper place for these children. (Guardian 16/4/08 Public Inquiry)

It’s not just bullying that children with special educational needs are more prone to. It’s also permanent exclusion. The government states that pupils with statements of special educational needs are three times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the population. However, the statistics for 2005-2006 on which this statement is based on appear to show a much higher rate:
39 in every 10,000 with statements
43 in every 10,000 with special educational needs and no statement
5 in every 10,000 with no special educational needs
were permanently excluded from school.
(www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/50000733/SFR21-2007.pdf downloaded 27/5/08)
From these figures, it seems that those with statements are nearly 8 times more likely to be excluded and those with noticed special educational needs but no statement are over eight times more likely to be permanently excluded.

So, how many children have special educational needs? There are many difficulties with this question, and this section aims to explore some of these difficulties. Let’s start by looking at government statistics again. In 2007 2.8% of children had a statement of special educational needs. This represents 229,110 pupils. Just under 3/5 of children with statements of special educational needs are in mainstream schools. (http://dfes.gov.uk/trends/index.cfm?fuse action=home.show/indicator&cid=3&iid=13) A statement is the bit of paper that is produced following a lengthy five-step procedure, ending in certification that specifies the needs and what local authorities have to provide to meet them.

Dfes statistics for 2005 indicates that 14.9 percent of all pupils have a special need, but not a statement. This adds up to more than 1 million children. (Guardian 6/12/05 “Rebels without a cause”) There has been a year on year decrease in statements issued. (Hansard written answers 11/02.09) This could be seen as a cost-cutting exercise.
Schools deal badly with difference, with evidence that teachers are more controlling with children with special educational needs labels. (Kohn) .The emphasis is put on behaviour management, often to the exclusion of a concern about learning. (Kohn)

I noticed this with my own son, when at age 4 he was put onto special-needs because he was exceptionally bright and badly behaved in school. They argued that they needed to deal with the behaviour so he could learn. They didn’t consider that by offering a more interesting and challenging activity he would be more willing to engage. At home, he freely engaged with many activities and focused for long periods of time.

A friend’s son has a label, and he languishes in a special school. His teacher told his mother she was often confused about whether his behaviour was due to his condition, in which case they needed to make allowances, or due to him, in which case they needed to punish him. His mother pointed out that he came as a package. If a highly qualified teacher of special educational needs is confused about how to respond to a particular bit of behaviour, how much more confusing is it for the child?

Many children’s differences and difficulties in school are not noticed, especially if they cause no difficulty for the teacher or school’s targets. The extremely compliant child is not seen as having any difficulties. (CR)
118. SEN p2
A friend’s daughter was recently diagnosed, at age 12, with autism. She had been at a prestigious, much sought after, state primary school, where they labelled her a bit slow. A speech therapist picked up on her difficulties. In a class of 30, teachers can’t spot real difficulties, especially if they are immersed in paper work, yet the schools become the gateway to a statement.
The girl with autism struggled in a class of 30, but thrived when many were away for example on trips. At a ‘good’ secondary school with a reputation for dealing well with special educational needs, she refused to go. Now at a small specialist school she is happy to go. In 2007 Ruth Kelley, then communities secretary, refused to send her son with special educational needs to a state school but instead sent him to a £15,000 a year specialist private school to help with his learning difficulties. If those in charge won’t send their kids why should you?
There is a powerful argument that schools create many special educational needs, when the expectations and demands we make of young children are unreasonable, given their level of biological development and needs. (Kohn) We label normal childhood behaviour and attainment as disease. ‘Behavioural problems’ are often merely children being children. (Kohn)

Both Illich and Holt pointed out that the more educational resources are pumped into teaching, the more learning problems, blocks, seem to develop among the beneficiaries of all of this compulsory schooling. (GBR p18)

The question of whether some special needs are simply unmet needs is important here. The environment, processes, beliefs and behaviours in school act together to thwart the natural development of children, their growing and learning and discovering their own talents and who they are. Brains don’t work so well under pressure. No animal behaves normally in captivity.
Those with unusual talents will often be identified by the school and by psychologists as in danger of becoming antisocial, sick or unbalanced. This acts to belittle children’s true strengths, if they are not curriculum related, or if the school cannot gain credit for them. (Illich)

Labelling with special needs often follows failure to meet arbitrary targets. This benefits the school. When children with special educational needs are not included in SATs results the school’s place in the league tables is higher.

But the problems with labels can outweigh their advantages. By labelling any behaviour or level of attainment as being due to an inherent wrongness in a child, we do more than damage self-esteem and the child’s expectations. We remove responsibility from the child, from the school, from the parents for how a child is and how a child behaves.
118. SEN p3
By labelling failure as illness, in need of diagnosis and treatment, we let everyone off the hook, but take away the child’s power and meaning. By not allowing children to develop at their own pace, and labelling them as deviant when they do not attain externally defined targets, we do them a great disservice and a huge amount of damage.

If all difference is considered deviant and deviance is considered disease we end up with a situation where medical explanations are put in place on very little basis. Many diagnoses (ADHD, AS, ODD, CD, EBD) are hugely subjective, based on limited observation, if any, of the child outside of school, and reports by adults of children’s behaviour. Many are made without any attempt to engage with a child or to elicit their own explanations of what they do and why they do it.

Harber claims that lack of genuine diagnostic testing is violence by omission. (Harber C p70) Most diagnoses are done in an artificial context with false assumptions about what is normal. Assuming the modern classroom is a normal environment is the first problem.

Holt told us that, unless they are very lucky, most child psychologists will have their heads full of theories about children before they have had a chance to observe any. (Holt HCL) Expectations shape what we see. If the teacher says little Johnny has a problem, then psychologists looking at little Johnny have their first question as: “what is wrong with little Johnny?”, rather than “what can be done to make little Johnny happy?”

There is, in any case, a shortage of Educational Psychologists. When my son was at school I was told that the whole of his large inner-city primary school had one appointment per term. In 2009 there were 90 statemented kids per Educational Psychologist and 580 kids with no statement but recognised special needs in England and Wales. That is one hell of a case load. (Hansard written answers 12/02/09)

In conversations with 2 ex-educational psychologists I discovered that they had both left because the job changed from identifying a child’s needs and trying to meet them to trying to make the child meet the needs of the institution.

The child who does not reach reading targets had better be labelled dyslexic so the school isn’t in trouble. Having this label does not mean the child will receive any useful interventions as schools deal very badly with dyslexia. A New Scientist article in 2002 stated that current school interventions for dyslexia involves intensive tuition in reading and verbal fluency, and that these interventions have shown only marginal beneficial effect. (New scientist 5/11/02 “Controversial dyslexia treatment works“)
Schools don’t have the patience to wait until children are ready to read. Interventions such as multi-sensory approaches to getting them to read still exist in an environment where multi-sensory learning of other things is curtailed. Being pre-literate does not and should not hamper learning. Children do a huge amount of learning before they become able to read whatever age they do it at. Later readers are labelled as having a sickness that they can never overcome rather than being encouraged to do it in their own time.
118. SEN p4
Undoubtedly, for some children, the unnatural act of interpreting meaningless scribbles on a page to make something meaningful of them is a harder job than for others. In an environment where the written word rules, we write off later readers and those who find it difficult and lock them somewhere where they cannot cope.

Subjectivity plays a huge part in recognition of special educational needs. There are no absolute medical tests for ‘developmental disorders’ such as autistic spectrum disorders, dyspraxia, dyslexia, or ADHD. (EO Newsletter 184 p20 Christine Waterman “ Is a diagnosis necessary or useful when you home educate”) ‘Diagnosis’ itself assumes a disease. We are just looking for its cause inside the child. Diagnosis is often on the basis of observation (where?), parental questionnaires, the child’s response to test questions or tasks, all of which are subjective. A friend’s child, bored and disruptive at school, deliberately dropped a pen in his ‘assessment’ and spent an inordinate amount of time picking it up. “Oooh” said the educational psychologist “Maybe he has dyspraxia”.

Waterman points out “one person may see Asperger’s syndrome, whilst another may see a quirky child with an unusual hobby”. (EO article) Many defining behaviours of Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD are things we all do but to a lesser degree, that doesn’t cause a problem. (Waterman)

Those doing the assessing have preconceived ideas, pet theories about what causes children to have ‘difficulties‘. Waterman tells us that many are blinded by their own interest in a specific disability so that they miss the possibility of a different diagnosis. She gives examples of a dyslexia specialist, who diagnosed dyslexia and missed a significant visual problem that was causing the reading difficulties and tells of sensory problems that are sometimes overlooked by autism specialists.

When my son was put onto special educational needs, in another class, with the special educational needs co-ordinator as his teacher, she said that she didn’t know why he was on special educational needs as nothing in his behaviour was qualitatively or quantitatively different from other children who were not on special educational needs.
118. SEN p5
There is a conflict with the special-needs process. Schools want more statements and labels to allow them to draw in more resources that they can spend however they see fit, and not necessarily to benefit the child whose label bought it. Local authorities providing funding for the statementing process and then having the legal responsibility to provide whatever is on it, want to reduce statements and have done so. (see above) Local authorities having responsibility for the process of statement that then determines how much money they spend have a clear conflict of interest. Parents, and to some extent schools, will fight for more provision with local authorities denying needs because to admit they exist means they have to pay for them. Budgetary concerns will always influence and limit what goes on the statement while schools love special educational needs kids if they bring funding for extra staff, who can help out other children too.

A parliamentary select committee concluded that the SEN process is extremely costly, is slow and unresponsive and that statutory assessment seldom reveals new information. They noted varying rates of issuing statements and expressed concern that statements label children and define them by reference to their difficulties. (http://ww.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmedusks/478/478ii.PDF)

Some labels seem to be increasing. There is evidence that those labelled with ADHD may be bored or afraid. (http:/www.mrc.ac.uk/NewsViewsAndEvents/News/MRC002054 this is an article by Tom Manley, Veronika Dobler and Melanie George: New clues to understanding ADHD in children 28/2/05) This research indicated that children with ADHD might simply stop noticing things on their left visual field, similar to adults with right brain damage. But rather than indicating that these children are brain-damaged, they noted that most children’s awareness of things to their left, but not to their right, significantly declines if they are asked to perform boring tasks for about 40 minutes (Most kids in the average class then!) The right brain is involved in keeping us awake and alert particularly when bored.

This raises the question- are ADHD kids simply more sensitive to the boredom of school? We can link this to neuro-linguistic programming theories of visual field accessing where for most people the left upper visual field is accessed when recalling visual memories, the left middle line visual field is accessed when recalling auditory memories and the lower left visual field is accessed when listening to internal talk. If boredom stops children being able to access visual and auditory memories or to listen to internal dialogue that is vital for self-awareness and self restraint, then the damage done by boring children, especially the most sensitive is worse than we think. If the bored behave like the brain-damaged then maybe we are right to conclude that boredom damages the brain.

Research at the University of Illinois indicates that contact with nature has a detoxifying effect on kids with ADHD. “The greener the setting, the greater their relief” (Toxic childhood p65) These kids are just more sensitive to the separation from nature that schools enforce.
ADHD can be seen as an extreme form of attention seeking behaviour. Seeking attention is seen as a problem, yet we are all attention seeking. When a child’s need for attention, (preferably respectful and acknowledging), is not met in the classroom, because the teacher doesn’t have the time, then children will gain whatever attention, they can, even if it is profoundly negative.

It is also possible that some instances labelled as ADHD are caused by sleep apnoea. An article in The New Scientist referred to research on 83 children with ADHD and found that 1 in 4 with mild ADHD and 5% with strong ADHD had sleep apnoea. They also discovered that a group who had tonsils and adenoids removed, of whom 1 in 4 had a label od ADHD, after 1 year none showed symptoms. (Emma Young “Sleep well, stay sane” New Scientist p36 21/02/09)

A label of ADHD gives a pseudo reality to a set of behaviours that could have biological, environmental and psychological origins. For more information on the problem with this label and the chemical cosh frequently used to “control” it see “112 School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry”
118. SEN p6
When ignored children emerge from school, their need and demand for attention from parents can make things worse, if parents have other demands on their time too. I have seen many stressed mothers, who have picked up their children from extended schools at 6pm, having come from a stressful day at work and needing to do the shopping to get home and feed their brood. They have very little patience with their children who have had their need for attention neglected all day, and it is compounded by stressed parents, who hoped all their kids’ needs would be met in school so that they would not make demands on them.

We tell children to limit their beliefs about who they are and what they can become, because the label tells them that they are inadequate and not good enough. When unmet needs are labelled as a problem and a disease we deny those needs exist as rights.

118. SEN p7

117. Don't send them if they are from a minority ethnic group

2009-08-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

117. Don’t send them if they are from a minority ethnic group
Any treatment of education today that ignores or sidesteps the topic of racism will of necessity, be incomplete. O’Sullivan p134

Racism is endemic and plays a part in all society’s institutions, in many of our lives and has a particularly glaring presence in much that happens in schools. Audre Lorde told us that: “Racism is the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance”. (O’Sullivan p149)

Racism occurs when prejudice, on the basis of perceived race, occurs coupled to power and dominance. Racism is about more than skin colour, religion and country of ancestral origin. It is about dominance and subjugation, and this plays out in the playgrounds and classrooms as well as in society at large. Harber tells us that racism has been a deliberate policy in some places e.g. South Africa. In many places it may seem accidental. (Harber) It plays out in subtle ways, with far from subtle consequences.

At classroom level, teachers’ expectations, shaped by racial prejudice, impact highly on the pupils in their care. Those expectations appear to be that Black children and those from ethnic minority groups will not achieve as well as white children. This expectation can be shaped by many attitudes and beliefs about race, which persist in spite of valiant attempts by enlightened educators to challenge them.

Teachers, it seems, view Black boys’ calls for fair treatment and their anger at injustice as disruptive behaviour and dismiss its causes. (Observer 13/1/02 “Bad teachers betraying Black boys, says expert”)

The labelling of ‘other’ as mad or bad, is one of the key functions of school with minority ethnic groups faring rather badly in this. Programs aimed to ‘help’ minority ethnic groups can unwittingly feed prejudice. When section 11 funding for minority ethnic groups was introduced into schools some schools employed extra staff who were given registers for classes containing a code for a level of language difficulties for Asian children and a code for the level of behavioural difficulties for Black/Afro Caribbean children. There was no code for white kids, as the funding was not for them. This encapsulates vast racist assumptions on behalf of administrators that shape the way our children are dealt with. (Personal communication)

The teachers who are dealing with our children are not representative of society at large. In January 2005 figures for England show that 15% of teachers are from minority ethnic groups, 0.6% from mixed or dual groups, 2.1% Asian or Asian British and 1.6% Black or Black British (www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/5000578/SFR20-2005.pdf). In the population of England and Wales, there are 4.8% of Asian origin and 2.2% of Black origin and 1.4% of mixed race. (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2756041.stm figures from 13/2/03) Black men are one of the least likely groups to pursue a career in teaching. (Big Issue in the North 723 26th May-1st June 2008 p5 “academic question”)

Jonathan Kozol writes of his experience as a young teacher in a ghetto school in the USA, and what he observed of the more experienced teachers handling of young Black people. Leila Berg summarises:
“He watched while more experienced teachers destroyed the identity, the dignity and the confidence of children by treating with contempt what they had to offer and forcing on them middle-class aims which they cynically knew the children could never feel or achieve and deliberately (that is ‘for their own good’) worked against children’s roots and culture and deliberately ( for their own good) destroyed the children’s speech and trust in communication and offered them, chalked on the blackboard, only pleasant words to describe what the children knew to be unpleasant…..blandly and brutally invalidated the children’s true experience”
(referring to Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kozol on www.aspects.net~leilaberg/chchildren.htm)

The idea reflected in this is that the teachers believe they are acting in the best interests of a Black child or an Asian child to somehow turn them, their values, and their beliefs to match those of the dominant white middle-class culture. This process of assimilation, of denying and obliterating difference, is a popular tactic of schools when faced with anyone who can be classed as ‘other’.
Another approach to issues of race, of difference, is one of multiculturalism, that tries to incorporate and celebrate some aspects of differentness, while leaving issues of power and dominance unchallenged. (Harber C p86)

Anti-racist approaches are being used to deal with issues around race. This adds a power analysis and strict rules about prejudice and discrimination to a multicultural approach. (Harber C p86) However, in spite of surface adoption of anti-racist strategies in schools: “schools can and do actively encourage hatred of ‘other’ groups, along with separation, prejudice and discrimination.” (Harber C p86) This occurs due to authoritarianism, which acts to reproduce loyalties and hostilities and deepens them. It is divide and rule.
117. MEG p2
Racist assumptions are reinforced and reflected in a curriculum that ignores the contribution of non-European groups in all subjects from history, science and mathematics to English (which is a mixture of languages). Choice of content, choice of reading material, choice who to laud and who to ignore, acts in subtle and not so subtle ways to deny the contribution to our lives, our history and our culture of different minority ethnic groups.

O’Sullivan argues that historically racism existed for the purpose of monetary exploitation, to justify robbing ‘inferior’ races of their resources and their people. This aspect has rarely been analysed and explored in school history. By omitting the politics of race from the curriculum, we make it disappear. (O’Sullivan)

History GCSE is all about World Wars 1 and 2 (our glorious victories) and covers only Hitler’s racism against Jewish people. It omits our own inglorious past of racial exploitation, colonialism, of Empire and slavery.

A curriculum that defines what everyone must learn, and by extension, defines that which is not worth learning, limits the horizons of all children. For those whose experiences and history didn’t make it onto the curriculum, it destroys their sense of self. The myth that a national curriculum represents a level playing field, of equal opportunities, all you have to do is work hard and you have exactly the same chance as everyone else, acts to blame those who do not succeed in it for their own failure. Education doesn’t work the same way for disadvantaged groups. An increase in education does not increase earnings and employment for Black people in the same way as it does for middle-class white people. (Marilyn French BP p413)

The myth of equal opportunity plays out most harshly among minority groups, who, by denying their heritage to ‘succeed‘, still don’t get the goodies. Those that see through the sham and don’t play the game are treated even more harshly. Black teenage males are four times more likely to be excluded from schools than other groups. (Bali Rai p149) Overall, Black pupils are three times more likely to be excluded. (MEN 11/12/06 p4 “‘Racism’ sees Black pupils excluded”)

In a report “Getting it right” by Peter Wanless, director of school performance and reform, it was stated that the exclusion gap is caused by unwitting systematic racial discrimination. (MEN 11/12/06) The systematic racial discrimination is not always ‘unwitting’. Audre Lorde argues that an institution’s reflection of difference, is an absolute necessity in a profit economy, which needs ‘outsiders’ as surplus people. She argues that we respond to human difference in different ways, depending on how we perceive it. We ignore it or copy it if we think it is dominant or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. (cited in O’Sullivan p148)

Within an institution of racism and labelling and destruction of difference, certain groups are more vulnerable to bullying. Bullycide claims that black and Asian kids are more at risk of bullying. (p143) Xenophobia, being afraid and threatened by anything ‘alien’ is promoted by authoritarian systems and structures due to the attitudes it produces. (Harber C p92)
117.MEG p3
Racism in schools has a particularly devastating effect when it is aimed at indigenous cultures by a colonising power. (see separation from indigenous cultures) The Soweto uprising in 1976 occurred when Black students rejected the white Afrikaans education imposed upon them. This education showed white history, white heroes, inventions, culture and represented white as normal, and everything else as aberrant. In the uprising 700 students were killed and 4000 injured. The power of the state is used to back up these hollow institutions. But as Steve Biko stated, once the chains of the mind have been broken, they will never be the same again. (from the movie Cry Freedom) This is why schools can’t risk their students developing unchained minds.

In order to prop up society’s racism, we justify the lowly position of Black people by ensuring that they fail at school.
Radio 4 10/9/08 suggestions have been made that Black-only schools would improve life for black students due to the low expectations of white teachers. Black supplementary schools, which aim to give Black kids back a sense of personal identity and worth, increase their performance in mainstream school. However, these could act to diminish questioning of racism if the primary aim is assimilation and adoption of the values and ideals of the dominant society.

But many more are seeking to get their own education by walking away from these institutions altogether.

117. MEG p4

116. Don't send them if they may be gay

2009-08-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

116. Don’t send them if they may be gay
School is not a safe place for gay people. Harber C p48

Narrow gender stereotyping makes victims of those who are different. ‘Gay’ is used as an insult, a term of abuse. (John Nixon “Lessons in loneliness” Guardian 1/10/05) Homophobic bullying is rife in schools (Harber C p48), and in society at large. Stonewall estimates that 60,000 gay and lesbian people are victims of homophobic abuse from name-calling to serious physical and sexual assault. (Guardian 4/7/06:”Schools campaign will tackle homophobic bullying” Katherine Demipoulos) One victim recalls “It is the constant taunts and torment, day after day after day. It just chips away at you, until there is nothing left.” (Nixon article) Homophobia is described by Phil Beadle as “the last acceptable prejudice”. He states that “British schools are the final bastion of homophobia and the problem is even worse in faith schools” (Beadle P “Battle to beat the last acceptable prejudice” Guardian 20/01/09)

According to a 2001 study 85% of lesbian, gay and bisexual youngsters experience bullying at school. (Beadle P “Battle to beat the last prejudice” Guardian 20/01/09) The stress drives many to attempt suicide. Bullycide claimed that 4 out of10 gay schoolchildren attempt suicide or resort to self-harm. (p222) Nixon puts the figure at 2 out of 10 who attempt suicide.
Many gay young people are afraid to complain about their plight. Those that do have their bullying dismissed by teachers. (Bullycide and Nixon) and find themselves being blamed for their torment.

There is a good chance that the teachers they complain to are also homophobic. When I trained to teach, in our group of 16 trainees, there was one gay guy and two severely homophobic men who despised and avoided him. On his work placement in a group of older heterosexual men, he was shunned and badly treated.

Sex education is to become compulsory. Where it is currently carried out there is confusion and embarrassment on behalf of teachers when it comes to discussing gay relationships. In 2003 clause 28 was repealed. This clause had banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. In spite of its repeal its effects still reverberate. In 2005 Nixon claimed that local authorities are still confused about whether or not they can claim homosexuality is a valid alternative. Because of this teachers were still being intimidated over what they could or could not say about homosexuality. (Nixon article)

For the 10% of pupils who are gay, or those who have gay parents, this invalidates who they are. If who you are, your origins and life are constantly denied or disparaged then the ability to become a whole, functioning person will be adversely affected.

Gay teachers do not escape either. Taunting by pupils is dismissed. It may be especially difficult, if teachers are not ‘out’ among their colleagues. This could easily be the case when colleagues express their homophobia in the staff room.

115. Don't send them if they are different.

2009-08-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

115. Don’t send them if they are different

All children, and indeed all adults, are different from one another no matter how we choose to package and process them. Each has their own unique way of being, their own temperament, and way of learning. They are different in the time of day they function best, in the way their needs express themselves and in what effectively satisfies those needs. Individuals have different tolerances for forced compliance, for curtailment of liberties and denial of those needs. Individual ideas about the world and unique experiences in it shape who they are. Yet when in school, they are expected to look and behave the same, learn the same thing at the same time in the same way and to be grateful.

Differentness is something to be acknowledged, celebrated and encouraged. Each unique individual has their own gifts to bring to the world. Yet we make judgements and put people into groups that shape our expectations and limit each child’s expression of who they are. All men are not alike, all women are not alike, all Black people are not alike, all white people are not alike, all Muslims are not alike, all gay men are not alike, all single parents are not alike, and all people with disabilities are not alike. But we pigeon hole our young to get them to accept a limited life, a life divided and communities divided by unreasonable groupings on a single trait.

Schools force compliance to norms. This compliance, especially to externally defined norms, cannot foster tolerance of difference. It seems that being different, not complying to the norms, sets children apart and opens them to hostility and bullying. Prejudices based on artificial groupings act as the selection process for those bullies who have an irresistible need to displace their anger onto someone else. (Bullycide p84) (see also bullying section)

A friend of mine, whose nine-year-old son was being bullied, visited the school to discuss this. The teacher remarked that, as he was vegan, he was ‘different’ and therefore would be picked on. She also suggested that it was his mother’s fault for making him ‘different’ that ‘caused’ the other kids to pick on him. Another friend’s daughter in primary school was ‘different’, quite innocent, not into boys, earrings and clothes at age 10. At school, she had no friends, was left out, made fun of and became deeply unhappy.

The torture of having to choose between denial of who you truly are to gain acceptance, or to be who you are and face rejection, is a daily battle most of our children have to face. From those hiding their brightness in fear of being seen as swots to those who may be gay and all manner of expressions of individuality along the way, school hampers the development of strong individuals at ease with themselves.

One ‘group’ particularly vulnerable to bullying and abuse are those that are or appear to be gay.

115. different

114. Don't send them if they are girls.

2009-08-21T12:58:00.000-07:00

114. Don’t send them if they are girls

The sexism of our culture is reflected and magnified in schools through curricula, practices and prejudices of teachers and sexual harassment and violence by fellow students. The system of school and its content, process and context were created by white, middle-class men to suit their purposes and reflect their values. ”This acts to pass off their worldview as immutable, unchangeable, objective and true” (Thompson p30) (I have this as the opening quote to this chapter, but think it should be the opening quote for this bit) . It also acts to make women invisible and devalue their contributions, struggles and lives. “As long as men have written the history books and controlled the general currency of thought, then the philosophy and agitation, the poetry and literature, the art and politics of women have been obliterated from the records.” (Thomson p20) Men’s monopoly of what counts as worthwhile knowledge is one of the foundations of patriarchy.

The science taught at school reflects the masculine idea of domination, control and subjugation of nature. In the same way that the separation of science from religion put the physical above the metaphysically and forever separate from it, the feminine is associated with nature that the male and masculine science must subjugate to control. This undermines women and girls.

IQ tests originally showed girls outperformed boys of the same age by between two and 4%, so originators changed the tests by removing the questions that girls did especially well on. (M French p412). However, girls continue to do better than boys in school, partly because they are socialised to be more receptive.

There have been valiant attempts by enlightened individuals to remove ‘gender bias’ from the curriculum and from curricular material and some interesting things have happened. Firstly, there are claims that it has ‘gone too far’ and now favours girls, so boys, especially poor working-class boys, are being badly done to so now this needs addressing. Secondly, although girls achieve better at GCSE and A-level than boys that does not mean that the material is free from sexual stereotypes or gender bias. It is still lacking in positive images of women, or women doing non-stereotypical acts and often ignores the contribution of women.

There are arguments that coursework favours girls and exams favour boys, that certain kinds of questions appeal more to one gender or another. These are generalisations that ignore the fact that all children are different, and ‘one size fits all’ actually doesn’t. The fact that these generalisations exist at all confirms that sexual stereotyping is alive and well in education. Assumptions that girls won’t be interested in cars and football, and boys will, and that boys won’t be interested in clothes and cooking, but girls will, can become self-fulfilling.

Sexist teachers still exist. When I trained to teach, I was deeply shocked by the attitudes of some of my fellow students. Attitudes such as ‘women get what they deserve, if they are raped’ (This was a young educated woman speaking) and women should not go out alone. (This was a male teacher speaking). Certain jobs and careers are seen as appropriate for girls but they were seen as ‘too soft’ for traditionally male jobs, subjects and activities. Research showed that the same piece of science writing was given lower marks when it was attributed to girls than when teachers were told boys were the authors. (Murphy p39)
.
Of course, schools do reflect the sexism in society at large, while helping create the society of the future. Women still overwhelmingly carry the burden of unpaid drudgery in the home, the care of children and still carry responsibility for the sexual behaviour of men, even when they are still children themselves. In a recent court case, a 24-year-old man raped a 10-year-old girl. The judge said she dressed provocatively, so was partly responsible. Judge Julian Hall has shown great leniency to sex offenders, from telling a 71 year old abuser to buy his 6 year-old victim a bike. He gave a window cleaner a 2 year sentence for raping a 10 year old. (Incidentally, his remarks that aim to justify abuse and deny the damage it does seems remarkably like the behaviour of

The mixed messages we give to our young girls are writ large in school: always be sexually attractive, but not ‘provocative’ or you’ll be raped, and it will be your fault; you can do whatever you like in the world as long as you don’t lose your femininity; you can be assertive but if you are too assertive (i.e., stand-up for your rights) men won’t find you attractive; you are equal to men but must defer to them as they have such fragile egos; compete, but if you are too competitive, especially with the boys, you will be seen as a ball-breaking harridan.

Then there are still double standards concerning sexual activity. Sexually active young men are revered and called stag or whatever. Sexually active young women are called slag, whore or whatever. These act out in emotionally charged adolescents trying to make sense of themselves, their world and their sexuality.
114. girls p2
Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment can be defined as unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or other conduct based on sex affecting the dignity of women or men. (Sutherland and Ramphele Quoted in Odaga and Heneveld 1995) It includes name-calling, taunts, insults, touching, patting, pinching, brushing against, groping, sexual advances, propositions, pressure for sexual activity, suggestive remarks, innuendos, lewd comments, displays of pornography, leering, whistling, and sexually suggestive gestures. In its extreme form, it leads to rape. Even without forced penetration, the fear of rape and the harassment itself is a rape of girl’s minds. It creates a hostile, highly charged, uncomfortable ‘learning environment’ in schools, especially for girls.

“Things are happening in school that would never be allowed to happen in the workplace” said Maria Banos of Womankind Worldwide. Kids don’t have any choice over whether to be there. (Guardian “I was called names like slut and whore” 30/11/07)

A survey by the National union of teachers indicated that half of teachers had witnessed sexist language and bullying and that where it occurs it occurs frequently. As Nan Stein points out, you don’t grow out of sexual bullying, you grow into it. And when it is allowed to go on in public it gives permission for it. (Guardian article) However, by calling it sexual bullying, rather than sexual harassment, for which employees have protection in law, we deny its true nature.

Research in five Jr high schools in America found that 25% of female students had experienced sexual harassment at the hands of male students, and that girls were blamed for their own harassment or believe they are at fault. (Macdonald 1996 cited in Harber c p55)

In an article in Guardian Women (30/11/07 p16-17 “I was called names like slut and whore” Emine Saner), a 16-year-old was called a slapper, because she had a large bust. She eventually had breast reduction so it would stop. The article claims that sexual bullying is rife. “Schools may serve as the training grounds for domestic violence and sexual assault through the public performance of sexual harassment” said Nan Stein (a US research)

There is often no redress and a denial that it causes harm, or is enjoyed. This creates a culture of gender violence that blames the victim and leaves perpetrators unpunished. “Boys will be boys” they say. Testimonies of victims however, expressed the degree of humiliation and undermining that occurs in this setting.

Try travelling upstairs on a Manchester bus at school-out time, and observe the behaviour. The aggression, violence and sexual language in children who would not be allowed into a film that contained it, is shocking. Sexual innuendo, sexual insults, physical touching. In many ways girls now give as good as they get, returning the insults in a highly charged sexually offensive banter.
114. girls p3
Sexual abuse by teachers

According to the BBC website, in the year to April 2007 at least 15 teachers had been jailed for sexual abuse of pupils and 10 for child pornography offences. (Choice in education 108 April 2007 p5) This is those who were caught, convicted and jailed. Bearing in mind that many victims do not disclose through fear and shame until many years after the event and the difficulty in getting convictions generally for sexual abuse of children, these statistics cannot show us the full extent of the abuse that happens. Many offences, unreported, unsubstantiated or lacking a conviction will have occurred. Many high profile cases of adults disclosing abuse they suffered as children involved predatory paedophiles, who sought contact with children through jobs in schools and children’s homes, into positions of power over children. Again, we put our children into the care of strangers and hope for the best.
The combined factors of a gendered curriculum, sexist environment and personnel, sexual harassment and violence and abuse act together to diminish confidence, expectations, self-esteem and cause fear, anxiety and distress. It’s a miracle girls manage to achieve at all, especially through the difficult physical and emotional minefield of adolescence.

114. girls p4

113. Don't send them if they are boys.

2009-08-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

113. Don’t send them if they are boys
School actively encourages violent/macho models of masculinity. Harber C p106

Socialisation of boys in school comes from an immersion in a highly gendered environment where strong stereotypes, expectations and role models shape the gender identity of boys and girls. In school, gender isn’t just a reflection or expression of society but involves an active forging of identity. “They are places where a certain type of ‘top dog‘ masculinity is made, celebrated and confirmed through daily acts of violence and bullying” (Salisbury and Jackson in Harber C p105)

I see the evidence of this not only in the violence in our society, but world wide. On a small scale, my 2 older brothers, who didn’t have a violent upbringing and whose father was a very gentle man, are both grammar school educated, professional middle class men. They both find violence extremely amusing and the perpetrators as deserving respect. Violence is justified, is reflected in their language about ’giving someone a good kicking’, even when only used metaphorically.

The role models boys are exposed to in school, through a preponderance of women in primary teacher, playground helper role, classroom assistant, dinner ‘lady’, cleaner (i.e low status and caring jobs) and a disproportionate number of men in higher posts (head teachers for example) perpetuates the idea that looking after young children, doing the drudge work is the province of women. Almost all school support staff are women and this leaves boys, especially young boys, lacking male role models and male assistance. (Bullycide p224)

Teaching is often seen to be about control. Research has found that many male teachers controlled by fear, threats, loud voices and aggressive discipline. “Boys learn this is how you get what you want”. (Salisbury and Jackson quoted in Harber C p107)

Curriculum content reflects a male view of the world, but a very specific version of maleness. “History was almost entirely about what men did, and a large part of that was fighting” (Holt IOE p98). This acts to legitimise violence as a valid way to get what you want, and war as a valid response. All GCSE history syllabuses, I looked at study wars, particularly the First World War and the Second World War. This acts to justify the act of killing ‘the other’, and to make war seem inevitable, morally right. This acts to sanction acts of violence if they get you what you want. Schools glorify war, praising achievements in battle and young men come to see aggression as an important part of being a man. This is reinforced in other aspects of the curriculum. Harber sees sport as using this masculine model, of determination to win at all cost by ignoring physical pain. He sees sport as a form of warfare. (Harber C p109)
Depiction of men and boys in literature and textbooks see men as fighters, rebels, men of action and women as passive, wife, mother, industrious, faithful, obedient, and devoted. (Harber C p106) Even Shakespeare’s depiction of gender is problematic. Who are the heroes, and why? Men triumph over their emotions to succeed and use aggression and violence to do so.

The sexually charged environment of school, where sexual harassment (predominantly by boys of girls and boys perceived to be gay) is rife, acts to make acts of sexual harassment seem normal. (Guardian 30/11/07 “I was called names like slut and whore” Emire Sarer p16-17)

In a school it is hard for boys and girls to be just friends, without there being taunting that they are going out. For this reason, boys do not learn how to talk to girls or even really talk to each other. Talking is what girls do. Messing about, being tough, violent, macho is what boys do. This stereotypical behaviour is a problem for those who display it, for those on the receiving end and for those who don’t conform to this rigid view of maleness.

Those harassed and bullied suffer at the hands of this model of what it is to be male. Those boys who don’t exhibit these characteristics are likely to be bullied and shunned. But the perpetrators of these acts are themselves harmed by it. It damages their self-image, their future relationships, their emotional development, and their mental health. The alarming statistics for young men committing suicide is testament to how our schooled young men are not learning what they most need to learn-which is how to build a connection to themselves and to others that will make their lives worth living.

School denies the emotional component of life as emotions are seen to be irrelevant to the task at hand. But the real task facing our young people and especially our young boys, is to build a future where compassion is valued more than aggression, where co-operation is seen as preferable to competition, where feelings are valued, respected and nurtured, where hope and trust can be built. These things are often dismissed as too ‘girly’ and not what made the Empire great. (was the Empire great? Not if you were a colonised people having your resources robbed and your people killed)
113. Boys p2
When lack of emotions, and ‘control’ is seen as strong and masculine, and where expression of emotions is seen as weak and feminine, we tie men into a life of sad denial of who they are and all they can be. When any boy showing softness and gentleness is taunted, it means boys cannot develop their sensitivities and emotions and suppress their need for affection.

Schools fail boys in other ways. Starting school early, especially with the rigid curriculum, turns many off. Polly Curtis argues that this has a more negative impact on boys. She puts this down to a contradiction in societal expectations for boys to be assertive and active conflicting with the needs to be passive and receptive in schools, where instruction is the norm. (Guardian 22/11/07: Polly Curtis “is it fun?”) . It seems that boys are vulnerable to being turned off from literacy when introduced to it too soon. When 46% of 11-year-old boys don’t reach targets in writing we need to question whether it is the boys or the targets that are the problem. Telling us and them that nearly half of all boys are failures should tell us more about the system’s failures than it does about boys.

Many people argue that boys particularly shouldn’t go to school until they are seven as they are not ready. We now have three-year-olds slotted into early year foundation stage.

Girls out-perform boys at all SATS, at GCSE and A-level. It seems that it is particularly white working-class boys, who are failing, as only 15% of white working-class boys in England achieved five good GCSEs. (BBC News 31/01/08 they used eligibility for free school meals as an indicator of ‘poor’)

A Daily Mail article (13/06/06) claims that school fails boys by “crushing the competitive spirit needed to succeed”. But I believe it is the competitiveness that is part of the problem. When boys don’t or can’t compete in the academic field, because to do so is seen as swotty or toadying then they compete to be the most macho, the most aggressive, the most of a pain for teachers and girls.

113. Boys p3
Partly because of this, the rate of permanent exclusions for boys is four times that of girls and the fixed or short-term exclusion rate is three times that of girls. (DfES 29/06/06 SFR 24/2006 England stats for 2004/2005) (see Exclusions)

So, if schools are such an awful place for boys, perhaps they are great for girls? Think again.

CHAPTER 8: DON'T SEND THEM IF....

2009-08-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 8: DON’T SEND THEM IF…
White middle class men created a system that suited their purposes and reflected their values. This acts to pass off their world view as immutable, objective and true.
Thompson J p30

Schools are instruments of oppression and within that children are an oppressed group. However, within that structure certain social groups suffer more than others.

I will discuss why schools are a bad idea for boys, and particularly poor boys. I will look at why they are a bad idea for girls. Anyone who is ‘different’, who stands out, who looks different or who has a mind of their own is in for a rough time. Gay youngsters have a particularly horrible time in school. If your chid has a special need, there are many ways that school will fail to address those needs or keep your child safe. Those from minority ethnic groups know only too well that racism is alive and well and thriving in our schools. The poor get a particularly raw deal in school as elsewhere.
If you haven’t been included in any of these categories, then I apologise for leaving you out.

Mental health summary.

2009-08-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

Mental Health-summary

Society highly values its normal men. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus become normal.
RD Laing

By forcing our children to conform, comply and become absurd we severely damage them mentally and physically. Anything that impacts on mental health has physical effects too: coronary heart disease, gastro-intestinal disturbances from irritable bowels to ulcers, immune depletions with stress affecting susceptibility to infections and cancers. The long term consequences for our children and for society of these damaged lives are immense.

We are only just beginning to appreciate the old saying that you need a healthy mind in a healthy body; that both are intimately linked. But this leaves out ‘in a healthy environment’. The environment of school is not a healthy environment for any of the people who spend time there. A parent once described schools she had taught in as “barren places”. They lead to barren lives for so many children.

There are particular groups of children who fare less well in school than others and it is to these groups that I now turn.

112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry.

2009-08-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

112. School is a branch of the pharmaceutical industry
The highest value to the Combine is neither democracy nor accountability but compliance, pure and simple and its favourite strategy is to divide and conquer. And if that doesn’t work, there are always drugs. JTG DuD pxvii from notes on “One flew over the cuckoos nest”

At the point where the institution of school overlaps with institutional medicine, all control is relinquished to the big drug companies. Although “no causal link has ever been established between specific biochemical states of the brain and any specific behaviour” (Breggin in Levine p55) psychiatrists propagate the idea that problems or unhappiness=biochemical abnormalities requiring drug therapy. This biochemical belief system enables psychiatrists working in the medical/chemical model to eliminate all non-prescribing helpers from the marketplace. (Levine p61)

In spite of the paucity of evidence for a biological ,chemical or genetic basis for ADHD, depression and anxiety states, and indications that more harm than good is done by medicating such states, and that often no good is done at all, drugs continue to be used in excess. In carefully controlled double-blind tests with active placebo, many have been shown to have no or negative effects on the “conditions” they are designed to “treat”. (Levine) If we leave in place the situations that make children anxious, restrict their natural movement, take away all their power and constantly negatively judge them, a chemical cosh will not solve their ‘problems’.
As long ago as 1971, Illich noted that: “Pedagogical therapists will drug their pupils more in order to teach them better and students will drug themselves more to gain relief from the pressures of teachers and the race for certificates” (p54)

Money could be a key issue here. In spite of the huge cost of prescribed drugs it can still seem a cheaper option than changing the reality of children’s lives. (Levine p28)

The power of drug companies plays a part. They are the ones to benefit, making a lot of money from kids’ distress. (Levine p28) Levine points out that throughout history there have been institutions that gain from human misery. Currently, it is institutionalised psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry that are gaining a huge amount from the ill-treatment of vulnerable children.

Despite the fact that it is considered unethical to test new drugs on children, it is considered perfectly okay to prescribe drugs to children that have only been tested on adults. This becomes particularly hazardous when we’re talking about drugs that have an effect on the brain, as the developing brain of a child would seem to be more prone to damage to its normal growth and development by chemical interference. Children are not simply mini-adults. Often no long term studies are carried out in drugs that are used in the long term. Our children are guinea pigs of this unregulated, unsupervised testing ground.

I will look briefly at two drugs of great concern that are used extensively on children as a result of their behaviour in school.

Ritalin
Ritalin is prescribed for ADHD. So what is this ‘disease’? Levine tells us “despite extensive attempts to discover genetic factors, biochemical abnormalities, and neurological damage, nothing has been found to mark ADD” (Levine p19) Diagnosis is usually on the basis of parent and teacher ratings. Mothers and fathers disagreed 70% of the time, parents and teachers disagreed 75 to 85% of the time. (CR p19) The subjectivity of the judgement that condemns a child to damaging drug treatment is astonishing and disturbing.

So what happens when teachers and parents disagree? In 2003 BBC news reported that schools were threatening to expel hyper kids who don’t take drugs and were threatening to have kids taken into care if their parents refused to drug them. (24/07/03 BBCNews “Schools in row over Ritalin” www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3093087.stm) Because of course teachers know your child better than you do.

Levine points out that ADD kids do not show “symptoms” when in certain real life situations that are more enjoyable to them than is the classroom: 1 to 1 interactions with an adult, (especially their father), when they choose the learning activity, when they are interested in the activity, it is novel and has a lot of stimulation. (Levine p20)

The diagnosis is “highly culturally dependent” (Levine p20) - it is not perceived to exist in the same way in continental Europe, or indeed much of the world outside the USA and the UK. (Levine) But that may change. The power of the drug companies, played out through the media, may well see the spread of the damning of children who are simply active.
112.drugs p2
Once labelled, on come the drugs. Ritalin is an amphetamine like stimulant, that is frequently prescribed when a ‘diagnosis’ of ADHD is given. In 2005 a Guardian article (Rebels without a cause 16/12/05) cited NICE estimates that 500,000 children in the UK (one in 20) may have ADHD with 100,000 being seriously affected. Prescriptions for Ritalin rose from 2000 in 1991 to 359,000 in 2004 (an 180fold increase) (Guardian article)

Prescription numbers have rocketed, with children as young as 18 months being prescribed this powerful drug. By 2008, the Guardian was noting NICE’s concern about the routine use of Ritalin especially for younger children. (Doctors urged to stop use of Ritalin for under fives by Sarah Bosely 24/9/08 www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/24/children.health)

NICE argue that it should never be used for under fives, and only used in older children if other things have not worked. They advise training parents and teachers i.e., the problem is in the handling and environment, not inside the child. They noted that 55,000 children are thought to have been prescribed drugs for ADHD and that ADHD is thought to affect 3% of the school population.

Ritalin, as a stimulant, has a paradoxical effect of calming some children. But this happens by inducing stereotyped behaviour and reducing the number of behavioural responses by narrowing the child’s focus and diminishing the effect of the environment and their emotional responsiveness. These children may remain ‘on task’, but at a cost. (Levine) As a stimulant, like cocaine, caffeine and other amphetamines, Ritalin directly stimulates neurotransmitters- the chemical messages between nerves in the brain and elsewhere. It affects dopamine levels, norepinephrine and serotonin levels. Because of this kids feel ‘buzzed’ while being otherwise bored. Many kids report feeling uncomfortable and confused while on these drugs. (Levine) Although they can induce attentiveness and compliance to the task, there is little evidence of any long-term benefits, and much evidence of harm. By damaging emotions and self-esteem, these drugs can induce depression, anxiety and withdrawal. (Levine)

Many side-effects have been noted in the short term: nervousness, decreased appetite, insomnia, headache, dizziness, visual problems, changes in heart rate and blood pressure and a ‘rebound’ effect as the drug wears off of increased activity and lack of focus. (Levine) In some, hallucinations, delusional thinking and mania can occur. (www.myomancy.com/2007/04/Ritalin)

In short, low dose clinical trials, side-effects resembling OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) occurred in 25 to 50% of children, with severe effects in 8 to 20%. These ‘symptoms’ include over-focusing, tics, perseveration (sticking at one thing), repetitions and perfectionist behaviour. (Levine p23) None of this is a problem for the school. An over-focused perfectionist with dulled emotions is ideal in a classroom.
112.drugs p3
But what of the long term effects of chemically subduing children? As already mentioned, no long-term trials have been conducted, though the drug is used in the long term so effectively long-term trials are taking place, just without the normal informed consent to ethical drug testing or detailed observation.

Evidence indicates that in the long term Ritalin diminishes natural production of dopamine, epinephrine and serotonin. (Levine) . This has serious consequences and can lead to addiction and dependence on these and other drugs. (Levine) Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were both prescribed Ritalin as children; both went on to develop serious addictions to amphetamines, with Kurt committing suicide at a young age. There are many such cases.

There is evidence of stunted growth. (Guardian 24/9/08) and disturbing indications of brain damage with prolonged use. Recent evidence from the US suggests that over a three-year period some individuals on medication lose as many as 40 points on their IQ. In this study, the greatest positive gains were made by the ADHD, non-medicated group. Those on medication improved their word reading ability, but had problems comprehending words and passages, suggesting they can’t understand what they read. (MEN 6/8/7/ Amanda Clarkson Child Behaviour Specialist)

The surgeon general in the USA stated that in the long term Ritalin has no positive effect on peer relations, academic skills, learning ability, retention, retrieval, or school achievement. (Levine p26) So by dumbing down these kids we are doing them no real favours and are not enabling them to attain self-control. (see ‘stressed and anxious’ section and SEN section for more on ADHD)

By drugging children, the school benefits at the expense of the child. The consequences of long-term drug dependency, brain damage, coupled to low attainment and diminished understanding, are often severe harm to bright able active kids, who would thrive in a different environment. Or probably a different country.

SSRIs
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are prescribed for depression and OCD. We have looked at some of the causes of depression in childhood, from powerlessness to maltreatment. OCD can result from Ritalin usage. When SSRIs are prescribed, assumptions are being made about the nature of depressed and OC behaviour; that they are due to a simple biochemical imbalance that the drug will address. However, as Levine, points out, scientific reviews of the biochemistry of depression have failed to identify a consistent biochemical basis. (Levine p55) In treating depressed children, antidepressants are not proven to be better than placebo. (in Levine quoted from “Psychotropic drugs fast facts” p54) Indeed, even for adults, recent studies of manufacturers own trials of SSRIs concluded that they are not effective. (Early day motion 26.02.08)
112. drugs p4
Levine points out that serotonin is the most widespread neurotransmitter in the brain. “Serotonin exists in the cerebral cortex, the limbic system, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, and the hypothalamus through which it affects the pituitary gland and therefore affects thyroid and sex hormones. Serotonin also acts in the cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems.” (Levine p58)

The mass assault on multiple systems does not, it seems, make people happy. But the more serotonin there is available, the less is produced and the number of receptors is reduced, therefore creating dependence on these drugs. (Levine)
In 2006 Prozac (A SSRI) was approved for use in children with depression by the European Medical Agency (Independent 08/06/06 “Prozac cleared for children aged 8 despite fears of suicide risk” ) Office of National statistics figures indicated that 79,410 children between the ages of five and 16 were defined as suffering from serious depression in 2005. (Metro News 8/6/06) By July 2007 BBC News was proclaiming that child depression and drug use was soaring. (23/7/07 “Child depression and drug use soar” www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6911596.stml) The number of prescriptions for depression in under 16s has quadrupled in a decade. In England, GPs had issued 631,000 prescriptions for children in the year to April 2007. (same article)
More than 85,000 prescriptions a year are issued to children for anti-depressants that are not recommended for use in young people, such as seroxat. 40,000 young people are on anti-depressants. (Independent 08/06/06 “Prozac cleared for children aged eight despite fears of suicide risk”)

There are many side-effects and adverse reactions to SSRIs. Use of these drugs causes involuntary addiction and bizarre and severe side-effects. (Early day motion 26.02.2008) . The rebound effects of withdrawal (the intensifying of symptoms when the drug is stopped) can appear to confirm ‘depression’ as a lifelong state. (Levine)

The Food and Drug Administration in the US has had over 40,000 reports of adverse effects from Prozac, including hospitalisations and deaths. Significant numbers experience nausea, headaches and insomnia. (CR p51) In October 2004 the FDA issued a public warning of an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in children and adolescents given SSRIs. In 2006 they increased the warning to include young people up to age 25. 4% attempt suicide. This is two times greater than that for placebo. (nimh USA)

Tests in animals indicate atrophy of the testicles and foetal loss in rats. In the long term, neurological disorders, disfiguring facial and body tics, indicating potential brain damage, agitation, muscle spasm and Parkinson’s occur. (Levine p55) None of these things will cheer up a depressed child.
112.drugs p5
Drug use in childhood predisposes to drug use in adulthood, for example, amphetamine and cocaine use, because the body compensates for the interference in its natural neurotransmitters and receptors by needing drugs in order to function at all. (Levine) This ‘self medication‘, induced by prescription medication use, is then criminalized.

Watch out for “smart drugs” that we are told boost IQ. It is illegal for athletes to take performance enhancing drugs but it is not currently illegal for kids to be drugged so someone else can gain from their getting a higher score in a test.

What we are doing to our children to induce the states we label as problems, and then compound with drugs is criminal chemical abuse of their right not to have their bodies damaged in this way. Bio-psychiatrists and GPs handing out these dangerous chemicals, and the drug companies who profit from them, are no better than the pushers and dealers lurking outside the school gates. In many ways they are worse.
112. drugs p6

111. School pathologises just rebellion.

2009-08-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

111. School pathologises just rebellion
Forced to comply with someone we don’t respect, we are all hardwired to resent that authority and rebel-that is if we are not yet broken. Levine CR p36

Whenever schools encounter conflict between authority and pupils, the problem is seen to be located in the child. The questions asked are: “What is wrong with this child that they do not behave as we demand?” rather than “What are we asking this child to do that is unreasonable?” We ask “How can we make this child attend to tasks we set?” rather than “What is it that this child would most benefit from?” (Being outdoors? making music? freedom?)

The first step is to say there is a problem; the next is to identify the problem as the child. Then it’s a small step to see the child as mentally ill for not conforming to unjust demands of insane structures. By labelling children as sick and mad, we can stop looking for their reasons, deny there are reasons. In this way, we rob children of their meanings, their motives and their sanity.
Normal behaviour becomes problematic for rigid institutions. The level of activity small children need: to walk, run, climb, jump, to move their bodies- is denied in school, so that the more energetic become ‘a problem’. By robbing children of the freedom to move their bodies, we not only cause discomfort, but also frustration, anger and agitation. These cause difficulties in a restricted classroom so that child is labelled “hyper active” or ADHD. He/she (though usually he) is labelled sick, in need of medical attention.
But any attention may be better than none, until it comes with a chemical cosh.

We are all attention seeking beings. We need and thrive on positive attention from others. In a class of 30 or so, it’s just not possible for one teacher to give everyone the attention they need. Some strong characters find other ways to get it: playing up, seeking peer approval for antics, doing anything and everything to avoid being ignored. Being labelled ‘attention seeking’ though is less harmful than some other labels attached to the more visible children.

Disengagement and alienation in a system that lacks integrity is guaranteed to produce rebellion and disorder in one form or another, which will be labelled, usually as disease. Rebellion takes many forms: non-compliance with authority, which becomes labelled as oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; withdrawal into self, in self protection, which, if anyone notices, will be labelled as depression; and voting with your feet, which may be labelled school phobia or truancy (which just gets your parents sent to prison)

Again, I am reminded of political dissidents in Soviet Russia being incarcerated in mental hospitals and of escaping slaves labelled with ‘drapetomania’, an irrational desire to run away. By removing meaning, we demean. By dismissing reasons we deem people to be unreasonable.

Let’s look at some of the labels, like conduct disorder. According to government statistics, 5% of those aged five to 15 years old, suffer from this. (Data from 2000) This equates to 600,000 children and young people. It is defined as “persistent failure to control behaviour appropriately within socially defined rules”. The specific characteristics are: 1. Defiance of the will against someone in authority. 2. Aggression which appears out of proportion to the experience of the child. 3. Antisocial behaviour that violates other people’s rights, property or person. “None of these is in itself abnormal and can be part of the process of development” (www.wiredforhealth.gov.uk/cat.phd?catid=896&doud=7261)

Looking at each of these criteria, which, on the government’s own admission are not abnormal. Defiance: by assuming teachers have a moral right to tell all children what to do, we set up a situation where those with spirit and will left are going to object, to question, to challenge and refuse. (Do you remember refuseniks?) We admire Aung Sang Su Kyi for defying Burmese authority. We admire Nelson Mandela for defying apartheid’s ‘authority’. Many dissenters have said NO, very firmly and have done so justly. When school is full of angry young people, who resent being pushed around and belittled, defiance becomes one of few options that allow youngsters to maintain integrity, save face, keep a sense of self as separate from the machine. Saying NO is a risky business. (Kozol)
JTG tells us that: “lives can be controlled by machine education, but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference.” (JTG DUD p?)

Oppositional defiance disorder, or saying NO very loudly, is another unfortunate label slapped on dissidents. Levine tells us that :”institutionalised psychiatry cannot identify healthy rebellion”. (p35) Traditional schools with their rigid demands for compliance and conformity are the worst places for kids with attitude. Life will be a constant battle for all concerned. Levine tells us that ODD kids are not mentally ill: “they seem to me the hope of society-and they fight to maintain their own integrity, as they signal to families and society that something is wrong.” (CR p36)
Those yearning for justice find their outrage ignored as schools set about focusing on the dissent rather than the genuine motives that cause it. (Kozol) This sees a tortured conscience as neurosis. “Therapy, at length becomes the final substitute for social change”. (Kozol)
111. rebellion p2
ADHD kids may be signalling to us that we need to reform our “worksheet wasteland” and change our classrooms into more dynamic, novel and exciting learning environments. (Kozol) Or abandon them altogether.
Levine points out that there has been an enormous rise in the number of mental disorders recognised. In 1952 the DSM (which lists mental disorders) had 60 diagnoses. By 1994 the DSM iv had 400 diagnoses. (Levine p1)Who benefits? Psychiatrist and drug companies. By calling everything inconvenient a disease, especially mental disease, we justify denial of rights, freedoms, of reason. This allows us to ignore what these young people are trying to tell us. (Levine)

Once rebellion and disaffection are labelled as diseases, to be diagnosed and treated by psychiatrists and doctors, it puts children and their families at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies.

111.rebellion p3

110. School refusal is a sane response.

2009-08-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

110. School refusal is a sane response
Perhaps children who are school phobic have just understood better. Harber C p13

The term ‘school phobia’ is a misnomer, as a phobia is an irrational fear. To fear school, to be made physically sick by it and have the courage to refuse to go is a sane and sensible reaction to an insane situation.
In September 2008 The Telegraph ran an article on school phobia. (Children develop school phobia Lewis Carter http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2699569/children-develop-school-phobia.html)
The article claims that school phobia is a medically recognised condition, (as was drapetomania-the ‘irrational’ desire of slaves to escape and as was dissent in Soviet Russia). Children feel physically sick at the thought of school. It is claimed to affect one in 20 and is most common in age 11 to 12, with as many as one in four occasionally refusing to go. (Times 24/6/08) The ‘treatment’ (for of course, if it is an illness there must be a treatment) is to send them back as soon as possible.

Although they may have been made ill and driven mad by school, school refusal is not an illness or madness. These children have retained enough sanity and spirit to realise the damage being in school does to them. To refuse to enter a crocodile pit is not ‘crocophobia’ or cowardice, but discretion being the better part of valour. To refuse to go voluntarily to a prison when you have committed no wrong, is not ‘prison phobia’, but a realisation that freedom matters to mind, body and soul. To refuse to go where your needs are not met, where you are bullied and belittled by teachers and peers, when nothing makes sense and you are powerless, is a courageous step into humanity, and we need to listen to what these children are saying.

Most articles published on the subject use the term phobia and claim that the one solution is to get them back into school as soon as possible ( send them back to the crocodile pit and the prison) and to make being at home ‘unpleasant’. Some accounts of this process are heartbreaking in their insensitivity to the genuine pain of children. Facing fear may promote growth, but facing torment daily diminishes our young. The genuine fears of these young people are dismissed, and we do them a great disservice by doing so.

School refusal is a sane response, a sign of health, of the survival instinct winning out over parental and societal pressure to go and be harmed. Refusal to go to a damaging place is a sign of life asserting itself. But this is a threats to the establishment: “School defines the act of saying NO, in general, as unsound and unwholesome; but saying NO to school itself is treason” (Kozol The night p20)

A friend’s daughter refused to go to school after having been relentlessly bullied at three different secondary schools. Once she was beaten up in front of the school’s CCTV cameras yet nothing was done about it. She ran away from home, and when she was found refused to go to school. She was 13. Her parents both worked and didn’t want to home educate so she was out of school with some tuition and weekly ‘mental health’ sessions with the aim of ‘ re-integrating’ her back into mainstream school. The more loudly and clearly she said “I am not going” the more she was labelled mentally ill for not accepting school. The refusal was not seen as a sane, mature decision of someone avoiding abuse and a dehumanising situation but as a child with mental health problems, who needed to overcome her phobia.

School refusal is a sane response to an insane situation. The problem is seen to reside in the non-compliant child and to be a sign of illness, rather than in the sick institution that terrifies children.

110. school refusal p2

109. School damages self-image.

2009-08-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

109. School damages self-image
Too many emerge from our education with no feeling of self-worth, leading to social dislocation, crime and wasted futures Digby Jones of the CBI on R4 News 21/8/05

Identity and self-concept form through childhood experiences. The environment, how needs are met, behaviours towards children, how their behaviour is interpreted and labelled, how their capabilities are formed and questioned, how their values and beliefs are shaped and verified or condemned- all of these have an impact on how a child views themselves.

John Taylor Gatto tells us that in school self-esteem is provisional. Self-respect depends on ‘expert’ opinions. “Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor.” Children learn that they have to be told what they are worth. (Gatto 7 lessons p4)

The emotional abuse in schools acts to destroy self-esteem. With Western childrearing based on hate and fear, school perpetuates this by punishment-based control. By condemning ‘unacceptable’ behaviour we condemn the person so that individuals who do not conform and those that do, come to see themselves as inherently evil. (ASNeill)

Humiliation and embarrassment decrease self-respect. Mager lists some of the many ways this is accomplished in school: by comparing unfavourably with others; by laughing at efforts; by bringing weaknesses to the attention of the class, by belittling and insulting attempts; by repeated failure and embarrassment for over-eagerness in answering questions. (Mager) For those who find reading difficult, it is humiliating to have to read aloud in front of peers and teachers.

I remember a distressing example from my son’s school nursery when a 3year-old had wet herself. The teacher held the child’s wet knickers aloft and berated the child in a room full of other children. Such humiliation can taint a life. When I observed my son’s reception class, his teacher completely lost it with a sweet boy who spent the entire time wandering around unengaged. He had removed something from the home-corner to carry round with him and the teacher screamed at him that he was a thief! Both these incidents happened with me present.

Schools are a closed, authoritarian environment where criticism, sarcasm, discouragement and failure are the daily diet of many and this affects self-confidence. (TAASA) “Aspiration, (for anything but escape) and a healthy self-concept are destroyed” (TAASA p150) It is “soul-murder” (Whitehead in TAASA p150) Lowered self-esteem, a self-image reflecting the hate and cruelty of childrearing, and alienation are the outcomes of this environment and behaviour.

I was reading an article on brainwashing techniques used in Korea and was struck by the similarities to the school experience: This depended upon absolute control over the subject. Once isolated from others (see separation section) and kept in a state of anxious uncertainty, people are more easily manipulated. Mental and physical exhaustion (see sections on rest and discomfort) coupled to sleep deprivation, reduce resistance. Continuous aggressive propaganda (see corporacy, military and what they learn) challenges the prisoners’ habitual ways of thinking and when in a group of others who accept the propaganda, they tend to bend to peer pressure. (Fortean times 195 p16) Children are more vulnerable. Their brainwashing in school sets up habitual ways of thinking rather than needing to alter established values and beliefs. (not sure about that)

The opportunity to develop a positive self-concept by exploring different roles, is hampered by the total conformity and uniformity demanded in school, by time constraints, by work over-load, academic pressures and competition. Adolescence needs to be a time of exploration, asking, ‘who am I?’ but the options for trying out different paths is zilch. You have the academic route or you have the failed academic route. Anything else is irrelevant.
No wonder we have so many lost souls, so many self-destructive young people, so many who don’t care about themselves or others. The ability to grow as a human being, to become someone with self-worth, a hero in your own life, is hampered by school-learned fears, values, beliefs and practices.

109. self-image p2

108. School denies the traumas in children's lives.

2009-08-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

108. School denies the traumas in children’s lives

At any one time, many children are suffering or recovering from traumatic incidents or circumstances in their lives. These can occur inside and outside of school. These traumas are dismissed, even when they are known about, as young people have to get on with their work regardless.

Traumas in school, from bullying to inability to cope with workload, from fear and powerlessness to damaged self-esteem through teachers attitudes, are frequently denied. The problem is seen as residing within the child. When children are traumatized and made miserable by their school experience it affects the whole family. Parents become distraught and bewildered by their deeply unhappy child yet frequently believe they are acting in their child’s best interests by continuing to send them. Many help-line calls to home education support organisations involved deeply traumatised parents whose children are struggling to survive in the school system.

Traumatised children need nurturing, time, space to recover from there traumas, as do adults. Many, like my son, only began to share some of his more upsetting school experiences after he knew he wasn’t going to be sent back.

The trauma children suffer outside school is dismissed as irrelevant to the curriculum. From bereavement to homelessness, from abuse, rape, violence to family separation and accidents the reality of children’s lives outside school plays no genuine part in it. Turning off from trauma hampers recovery. Schools cannot guide children through tragedies effectively because there is no time. Take grief for example. Griefencounters is a charity set up to support bereaved children. They state that up to 70% of schools are dealing with a bereaved child at any one time. While those made aware of a significant loss may have sensitive practices in place, many will not and awareness will be limited to a short spell afterwards. (In government proposals for lone parents on income support, a period of eight weeks is allowed to support a child through a significant bereavement.) Griefencounters point out that it may be six months to a year after a sudden death before a child reacts and that this is normal “grieving is long term work”.

One parent on the site recounted their experience: “I could not hold back my tears at parents evening when my son’s form teacher asked me insensitively whether there was anything wrong at home. It was only six months after my husband’s tragic death. “ (www.grief encounters.com/adult-zone-schools.php)

Although it could be argued that regular routines can make life seem normal after a trauma, when that routine is in an institution that dismisses emotions as a problem, it could hamper recovery and grieving.

According to the Office of National statistics, 3 stressful events in a child’s life make it three times more likely that they will have emotional and behavioural problems. Stressful events range from bereavement, divorce, financial crises or parents being in court. (Radio 4 news 6pm 21/10/08) Stressed adults lead to stressed children.

I met Anton, aged 10, in the park, truanting. His lone-parent mother was in prison and he had moved to live with his grandmother. He couldn’t face going to school because everyone taunted him relentlessly. This sensitive young person had to cope with loss of his only parent, house move, new school and distressing bullying. None of these traumatic occurrences in his life were being dealt with by the school and he voted with his feet.

Many young people truant without their parents’ or carers’ knowledge. However, a growing number are refusing to go at all.

(maybe school refusal goes next . Or maybe this moves to just before school refusal)
108 traumas p2

107. School denies a right to happiness.

2009-08-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

107. School denies a right to happiness
Performing well, jumping through the hoops, doing all the homework, studying for the tests, making the grades, grooming the transcript, pleasing the adults-and hating every minute of it. This profile fits millions of children. Kohn PBR

What makes us happy? What protects us from depression, anxiety, self harm, suicide? What fills us with joy? How do we find that and where do we look?
School sells us the idea that happiness lies in some golden future that we can buy with the right grades. It tells us that what we enjoy in the now is inconsequential, unless it is enjoyment of our assigned task. In fact, if we are ‘off task’, and happy, we will be punished.

However we define it happiness, or contentment is a feeling, and it lies within. School has no time for feelings, except ‘enthusiasm’ for learning the tasks adults set before you. All other emotions are denied or seen as a problem.

If we talk of the pursuit of happiness, we make it a chase of something outside. To go within, to contemplate our inner self and reflect on our purposes and meanings is taken to be idleness and time wasting. Time, space and capacity for these are all robbed by schools relentless push towards a future.

There is probably more information about what makes kids miserable than about what makes them happy, especially as happy children seem to be an oddity, a rarity, almost an aberration. Because it is immeasurable it is not measured, and so it is ignored. The damage done in our child-hating society, with coercive, punitive and cruel discipline in the name of ‘love‘, in the name of ‘for your own good‘ takes its toll. Not only Individuals but whole societies are blighted by that cruelty that replays and plays out as violence to self and others, as cruelty in parenting, in teaching, in policies that ignore kids’ needs, in simple profound human misery. Statistics tell us one small part of the story. Individual stories fill in some of the gaps. But the total of human suffering today, in our world of plenty, and of technological advancement, of wealth and prosperity beyond the dreams of years ago, is staggering and shameful.

In an article in the Observer (“Happiness, the one thing we deny them” Mary Riddell 19 March 2006), Mary Riddell argues that there is an increase in the unhappiness of children. “Dreams that government and society hold for children are either unattainable or suffocating”. We push and shape and demand outcomes, demand they achieve, when this makes them unhappy. ‘Success’ and ‘failure’ both leads to unhappiness. To succeed in school, children have to deny their needs, cut off from their emotions and become performing animals to gain grades and adult approval. This does not make them happy. Those who fail to do so, who try and fail are made miserable by their failure and fear for a future forever tainted by it. Those who rebel and refuse to play the game are punished, vilified and told that they are no good, mad, bad, sick, and they made miserable by it.

The multiple separations (see separation chapter) fragment children’s lives and connections to themselves and their community. This schism causes deep unhappiness in us all.

The unmet needs of individuals in an institution contribute to individual misery. In ‘Ecoliving’ Christensen argues that’s too much noise and over programming can stop children from developing “inner speech” which is the mechanism that helps them to make choices and regulate their behaviour.( Christensen)

For the introvert, school can be a nightmare. The need for solitude is denied by constantly being with other people. Never being alone, never having the opportunity to sit in quiet contemplation in school can be agony. When I was at school, the toilet cubicle was the only place I could be alone with my own thoughts. Now, toilets are prime places for bullying and hygiene failings.

The extrovert’s need to communicate with fellows is curtailed and punished and can be an unbearable suppression of the need for connection to others. This leads to labelling “chatterbox”, as if having something to say, and the need to say it is an aberration.
The emotional abuse, from unfair punishment, from big people shouting at little people, from denial of bodily needs, to forced extreme discomfort, is likely to make kids miserable. The abuse of power destroys self-esteem.

An experienced childcare worker once told me that happy children are easier to manage. It does appear also, that well-being is linked to curiosity and successful learning and information retention. (Do happy children learn more? TES 17/11/06 referring to a scientific American mind. Article) Effective learning does depend on emotional energy. Worried upset and miserable children do not learn very well. Well, maybe they do. What they learn is to be miserable, to not expect happiness, to believe they don’t deserve it.
107. happiness p2
Because of the perceived link between emotional well-being and discipline and social skills, schools have introduced classes in ‘happiness’ to address this matter. However, a report based on 20 international studies showed that these classes leave children depressed and self obsessed. (“Happiness classes depress pupils” Timesonline 9/9/07) Despite these findings, logic-free educational policy intends them to be introduced to all secondary schools. No one noticed that ‘classes’ do not make kids happy. Giving them more freedom, choice, opportunities for genuine connection, something meaningful and real to do might have been a better idea.

Noticing that emotional well-being is important to health and mental health, does not mean it is considered important in school where a cognitive focus dominates. “Emotional expression, if not outlawed, is seen as superfluous and peripheral to the real task at hand.” (Karen Parr MEd dissertation)

Whenever connections are made between happiness and learning, happiness and behaviour, happiness and health it seems as though we are saying happiness has to be functional, it has to have an outcome in some other sphere, rather than being a valid outcome in its own right. We deny that children have a right to be happy and making them miserable has long-term adverse consequences for us all.
107. happiness p3

106. Too much too young.

2009-08-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

106. Too much too young
I went to school when I was three years old, and I used to run away-it was like a nightmare. I just couldn’t learn anything. I couldn’t learn to read. Terence Stamp in nlp for lazy learning

Targets, requirements and standards have an impact on the mental health of those who are targeted. In the UK, we are applying stringent requirements on to tots, with the labels of ‘failure’ coming with un-ticked boxes. The introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage on 1 September 2008 makes it necessary for all early years providers, from childminders to private and state schools, to submit children from age 3 to a programme to attain 117 ticked boxes by the age of five. (Goals to be attained by the September after age 5) This defines “What is required to be taught”. The Early Years Foundation Stage profile sets out 13 skills with nine points in each exactly what each child needs to achieve.

When the permitted ratios of one adult to 30 children exist in reception classes, each reception teacher will have to tick 117 times 30 boxes, rather than interact positively with and guide about 30 children to do what they are best at-learning through play.
If we add in the specific legal requirement for space: children under two require 3.5 metres squared per child, children aged 2 to 3 require 2.5 metres squared, children aged 3 to 5 require 2.3 metres squared. We can see how children are being mentally and physically confined in ways that stop them being able to “show curiosity and interest by exploring surroundings”. How they can possibly do this with only 2.3 m square each is not made clear. (all refs this page www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/eyfs/resources/downloads/stautory-framework.pdf)

Whereas childminders can have a maximum of six children under the age eight in their care at any time, school reception ratios are 1 to 30 and school nursery provision allows 1 to 13 for over threes. (same ref)

The goals laid out could in fact be mutually exclusive. When a rigid and regimented system is put in place so that the correct boxes can be ticked, this conflicts with early years foundation stage goals that by age 5 children should “continue to be interested, excited and motivated to learn, be confident to try new activities, initiate ideas and speak in familiar groups, maintain attention, concentrate and sit quietly when appropriate.” Those who are turned off by being taught when they really need to play will lose their curiosity and their confidence. Sitting still for long periods of time is not what young children are designed to do. Expecting adult-length attention spans to adult initiated tasks from small children is to deny their needs.

EYFS goes on to say that children should “understand that they can expect others to treat their needs, views, cultures and beliefs with respect.” But how can they “understand” this when their need to be small children is not respected, when their view that “this is boring and I’d sooner play in the sand pit” is not respected, or their belief that they’d be happier at home is denied.

The need of childcare providers, including schools, to produce evidence of attainment will conflict with the needs of children to develop at their own pace. Boxes un-ticked will equate with failure, with labelling and intrusive assessments on children, who just aren’t ready yet to read, write, do maths on paper, or sit still for prolonged periods. Permanent records of achievement mean your behaviour and aptitude at age 3 or four can label you for life! The stress of constant surveillance and monitoring and its effect on performance and mental health are relevant here too.

One unfortunate consequence of EYFS was shown up at a local adventure playground. Following its introduction, the adventure playground could no longer accept under 5s as to do so would require the application of EYFS and the Ofstedisation of children’s play.

Another problem with these targets (‘oh, they are not targets, but goals’ say ministers), which can be amended at any time by the Secretary of State, is that the government is saying that, here are the qualities we want to see in adults, so we’ll make sure children have them by age 5. By forcing an adult model of the world, with an adult-defined timetable, and adult-judged outcomes onto small children, is to abuse them.

Take literacy, for example. Because literacy in adults is ‘a good thing’ it is seen to be a ‘good thing’ to get it at the earliest possible age, not acknowledging that children are developing, and that their natural development can be hindered by forcing them to do that which they are not yet ready to do.

Marshall McLuhan argues that immersion in print permits psychological conditioning in ways of uniformity and repeatability, and involves a separation from “imaginative, emotional, and sense life” (McLuhan p88) Acquiring literacy at very early ages could be very damaging to many children, as Steiner recognised. Steiner schools, and a good deal of Europe, don’t start ‘formal’ education until age 6 or seven, acknowledging children’s needs to be children and to develop other parts of their capabilities before literacy takes over and dominates. By being made to do that which they are not ready to do we damage children’s self image and create an ‘I can’t’ attitude when what they should say is ‘I’m not ready yet’.
106. too much too young p2
Many argue that children should not start formal learning until they are age seven. Lillian Katz, Prof of education at Illinois University, tells us that teaching reading and writing earlier than this puts many off for life. “It can be seriously damaging to children who see themselves as inept at reading too early”. Boys are particularly vulnerable in the long-term. Children who are taught early on are not better off. (Guardian 22/11/07 Polly Curtis “Too Much Too Young“))

A spokesperson for the Department for children school and families, argues that making progress in literacy and numeracy is critical to the “Ability to get the most out of learning later on”. (same Guardian article) Of course, in a setting where work is given and set in written form and constant assessments are made on written output, this is the case. But this is not the same as promoting learning. When literacy is acquired, writing things down becomes a substitute for learning. By writing things down in order to remember them, our photographic memories fall into disuse. (nlp for lazy learners)

Countries like Sweden, where formal schooling doesn’t start until age seven, have better ‘ outcomes’ at the end of schooling in terms of literacy. Three-year-olds have not been ‘turned off’.
Russian researcher Galina Dolya believes that early pressure feeds emotional and behavioural difficulties leading to frustration and burnout. (cited in Toxic Childhood by Sue Palmer)

Proposals in 2008 to include sex education for all children at age 5 forces very young children to confront issues that they are not emotionally, mentally or physically ready to acknowledge. Research indicates that confusion results in talking about adult -embodied sexual activity to children as their own bodies don’t feel that way to them so that it makes no sense. In “Any Questions” on radio 4 on 1/11/08 a psychiatrist pointed out that very young children don’t have the capacity to imagine adult body image and activity and can get very upset by it. There are also questions over whether teachers are the best people to teach it.

The long-term mental health impacts of ‘too much too young’ will take a while to show up. But children robbed of childhood are not happy children and cannot be expected to grow into happy adults.

106. too much too young p3

105. School depresses kids.

2009-08-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

105. School depresses kids (or school makes kids depressed)
By making men abdicate the responsibility for their own growth, school leads many to a kind of spiritual suicide
Illich p65

Depression, as a clinical or sub-clinical disease, can be described as abject misery that contaminates all aspects of a life. However, the act of making it into an illness sees a disordered or chemically unbalanced mind as the problem, rather than seeing the life situations that make us miserable. In 1999 the World Health Organisation ranked depression as the world’s fourth most devastating illness, projecting it will climb to second place by 2020. The WHO defines ‘devastating illness’ in terms of total years of healthy life stolen by death or disability. (Levine CR p62)

Levine defines depression for us: “Depression is an extreme form of helplessness and hopelessness. It is a direct experience of impotency, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation and dehumanisation.” (Levine p57)

Helplessness comes from dependency on that in which you have no trust or respect. (Levine) Dependency on an institution and its guardians, damages the development of self-reliance, self-image and promotes a learned helplessness that underpins most depression.

Many young people learn helplessness in school but they don’t get a box ticked and a grand certificate to proudly proclaim they have learned it. Instead they get a miserable life, a medical diagnosis, drugs to separate them from their feelings even more and, in more and more cases a chance to ‘progress’ to kill themselves when it all becomes too unbearable.
By separating children from their feelings (see separation form self) in an emotionally sterile but threatening environment, with little or no guidance on dealing with overwhelming feelings (which are seen as an ‘inconvenience’ if they interfere with ‘learning’) we produce emotionally illiterate young people, lacking any useful coping strategies for the insane world we live in.

‘Maturity’ is considered to reside in those who ‘turn off’ their fear, anxiety, frustration, distress and discomfort and knuckle down to their work diligently and consistently and relentlessly day after day. By ignoring their emotions, their turmoil and their boredom young people learn that their feelings are unimportant. In fact, when teens protest that no-one cares about their anguish, they are mostly right.

However, those feelings do not go away just because they are judged invalid. They gain a harmful pseudo-reality when they become diagnosed as disease or bio-organic disorder because we still do not have to acknowledge the extreme distress of our young as being anything to do with the world we have created and the institutions we force them to attend.

Statistics on ‘depression’ in children are of necessity those whose misery has been noticed, been considered a ‘problem’ and who have been taken to a medical person to have a label (and usually a pill) Those who still manage to function, whose misery is hidden through fear, whose withdrawal is not a problem for anyone but themselves, don’t get the label and probably, if they survive, get a better deal.

Some statistics lump depression and anxiety together as ‘emotional disorders’ underlining that the individual’s reaction to their life situation is considered abnormal. Figures from 2000 from a government website indicate that 4% of children aged 5-15 had an ‘emotional disorder‘. This represents 480,000 with “clinically significant depression or suffering from anxiety”. (www.wiredforhealth.gov.uk/cat.phd?catid=896&doud=7261)

In 2009 Manchester Evening News ran an article claiming that 1 in 10 young people in the North west do not think life is worth living. This was based on a report by The Prince’s Trust on under 25s. 11% felt life was meaningless. 1 in 3 admitted being often or always down or depressed. 1 in 4 say they often feel like crying. (MEN 5/1/09 “10% of young think life isn’t worth living” Ali Nobil Ahmad)

A handbook for teenagers (“Everything you ever wanted to ask about things that can kill you- a teenage hypochondriac’s guide” Kreitman T and Jones R 2005)
stated that 5% of teenagers are seriously depressed but that many are undiagnosed. They claim one in three young people feels depressed at least once a week. (They don’t say whether this coincides with a return to school on Monday mornings.) They point out that depression increases alcohol and drug use. (see pharmacy) They note that the main triggers include bullying and exam pressures. (p48)

Office of National Statistics figures for 2005 show that 79,410 five to 16-year-olds are defined as suffering serious depression. (Metro News 8/6/06 p1 “Children of 8 can be given Prozac”: Sarah Hills) This is the tip of the iceberg. Under the surface, are those only mildly depressed or simply miserable or those who manifest misery in different ways.

In 2008 an article in the Guardian quoted a survey from the Children’s Society, showing that one in four teenagers are depressed. 8000 fourteen to sixteen year olds were surveyed. They cited academic studies at school, peer group pressure from classmates, high expectations within the family, bullying and pressure over how they looked. 27% said “I often feel depressed” (“Survey finds one in four teenagers depressed” John Carvel http://guardianonline.co.uk/society/2008/apr/24/mentalhealth.children)
105. depressed p2
Whatever the statistics show they indicate a lot of miserable, unhappy and distressed school-aged children.

Over the years, I have heard many home educators talk of their children’s misery in school lifting when they were told they didn’t have to go any more. Being removed from a depressing place and situation of powerlessness eased severe, distressing feelings and emotions. (I hesitate to use the word ‘symptoms‘, as it implies it must be a disease.)

I know a friend’s child who changed from a bubbly, exuberant young child into a depressed and defeated one, through his early years of primary school. A defeated child is not causing a problem for the institution if they become quiet, withdrawn and not disruptive, and may even go through the motions of producing work set them. But their life is destroyed by their defeat, by a system that will not and cannot allow them to be themselves.

Severe depression and hopelessness can lead to suicide. Statistics for suicide in children are less clear than they need to be. A verdict of ‘suicide’ is rarely recorded, especially for young people, with coroners recording a technical verdict e.g. died from an overdose of non-prescription drugs, died from collision with train, died from drowning, died from strangulation by rope. This means that suicide statistics under-estimate the true numbers. (Marr and Field)The reason given for the change to technical verdicts is that a verdict of suicide fills everyone around a child or young person with guilt but a verdict that denies the intent to kill keeps open the possibility that the death was not intended, even when there is a suicide note. For most deaths a coroner’s verdict is based on the balance of probability, but for a verdict of suicide or unlawful killing the stronger “beyond all reasonable doubt” is used. An open verdict is also often used. The Coroner’s and Justice Bill March 2009 allows for secret inquests while widening the Data Protection Act to allow increased disclosure of data (but in secret) (www.justice.org.uk) The conspiracy theorist in me believes it is a ploy to stop us becoming more aware of the alarming number of young people who do kill themselves.

Government statistics for 2000 (downloaded on 2/2/08) report the suicide rate for 15 to 19-year-olds as eight per hundred thousand for males and 3 per 100,000 for females. (statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1229) Those are ‘successful’ suicides.

In Bullycide , we are told that at least three teenagers deliberately injure themselves or attempt suicide every hour in Great Britain. (p222) In January 2008 Telegraph article (What drives children to suicide/” 14/1/08) claims that more than 4000 under 14s tries to kill themselves in the UK last year. This is only those who end up in hospital.

Kreitman and Jones claimed that in the UK every year, 19,000 young people make a suicide attempt, and of these, 700 eventually go on to kill themselves. The suicide rate for young men has doubled in the last 20 years. Suicide is the second most common cause of death among young people after accidental death. There are twice as many deaths from suicide as from road traffic accidents. At least 1 in 3 deaths of young people are due to suicide. (Kreitman and Jones)
105. depressed p3
The sense of hopelessness, so severe that suicide seems the only way to block out unbearable emotional and mental pain, is contaminating our young people’s lives. (Kreitman and Jones0

There are of course many other factors in the lives of young people that can lead to depression and suicide. If you don’t buy the argument that schools play a significant role, there is still a need to question the nature of a schooling that does not provide young people, especially boys, with the coping mechanisms to prevent them seeing self-destruction as the only way out of intolerable situations and pain.

ChildLine stated that constant bullying on its own is enough to make children want to kill themselves. (see section on bullying)( Guardian 21/7/01 “Steep rise in child suicide attempts”)

When ‘depression’ becomes a noun, a ‘thing’ that people have, that doctors can identify and chemically erase, we all lose our power to change insane situations that make us miserable. Children have less power, and fewer rights than adults, and learning their helplessness young gives them more to overcome. I am reminded of how elephants are trained. When they are young, they are restrained by a stake in the ground that they can’t pull up. They learn not to pull. Later, the stake doesn’t even have to be secure as the elephants have learned to limit themselves. (Except of course for Nelly)(may have this in under powerless too)

Levine points out that there is a lack of scientific reliability in diagnosing depression. If it can’t be accurately diagnosed, any links or correlations with genes on neuro-transmitters are flawed. (CR p56) He states that we cannot be sure that depression is a valid disease. From his work he has concluded that it could reflect “an emotional and aesthetic sensitivity, a greater capacity to reason and see truth, a greater disdain for authoritarianism, and a more pained experience over lack of community”.(p56)

As long as we think in terms of individual disease, rather than in terms of situations that make children miserable and learn to be helpless, we will not strive to change the situations that make our children profoundly unhappy.
105. depressed p4
If there was any reliable indication of the role of neurotransmitters, and there isn’t (see pharmacy) we have to look at how life events and powerlessness affect neurotransmitters. Levine tells us “from my experience of depression, it is always a psychological, social and spiritual event and providing morale for someone at a crossroads in his or her life is perhaps the most important thing one human being can do for another” (p62)
School hampers the chances of children finding their own source of morale.

104. School makes kids stressed and anxious.

2009-08-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

104. School makes kids stressed and anxious
There are very few children who do not feel, during most of the time in school, an amount of fear, anxiety and tension that most adults would find intolerable. John Holt

In this section I am going to look at fear, anxiety and stress. I use ‘fear’ to describe the feelings we have when we are threatened in some way, when our needs are not met, when we perceive danger, harm or pain in the present or in the future. Children learn to fear adults when they are punished, hurt, humiliated and treated harshly. Some adult’s talk of children having no ‘respect’ for authority, when what they really mean is fear of authority. I use ‘anxiety’ to refer to fear about the future; the uncomfortable, agitated state that accompanies uncertainty and negative anticipation about what may happen to us. I use ‘stress’ to refer to the generalised unpleasant feelings, including fear and anxiety that result from exposure to unpleasant events and environments. All of these involve the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism. The impact on individuals is exacerbated when neither flight nor fighting seem possible, and when we cannot change the situation. This is how we learn that we are helpless.

When reading “Girl 16, Pants on Fire” by Sue Limb, I was fascinated by the depiction of fear of teachers in a system where the heroine was nearly old enough to leave school. Terror of being shouted at was used to induce ‘good’ behaviour. Being ‘on report with loss of leisure’ meant she did not have time to eat or drink at break or lunch. The rules of employment, with requirement for breaks and access to toilets do not apply to children in school because teachers make arbitrary decisions without ascertaining the facts that remove ‘privileges’ (that would be considered rights for an adult) in prejudiced and unfair ways. To speak up for your rights is ‘insolence‘. To protest injustice is a punishable offence.

By maintaining children in a state of constant fear, they become easier to manipulate and control, in some ways. Children come to fear failure, humiliation, being seen as or feeling stupid. (Holt HCF p48) Fear of failure can drive people to ‘succeed’ but any success will be hollow if it is underlined with a fear that won’t go away; the fear of the judging teacher standing and waiting to pounce on any errors.

The psychologist Dorothy Rowe pointed out that fear can affect people in different ways; they either go quiet or act out. She describes how the observed behaviour labelled ‘hyperactivity’ is the same as the symptoms of fear, arguing that these kids are simply afraid, and that those labelled ‘bipolar’ are very afraid. She tells us that very few of the psychiatrists who hand out these diagnoses have had any long or detailed conversations with children: “we label everything inconvenient as psychopathology” (D.Rowe 16 June 2007 New Scientist “Not mad or bad just scared” p24)

Anxiety, like fear, is spreading in our schools. Relentless testing, each test, bringing the possibility of failure, plays some part in this. When our society stresses exam success as the only way to future employment, failure confers future destitution and misery. The focus on academic success as a passport to happiness, with failure confining to a scrap heap, taints our children’s lives. The stress and anxiety caused by extreme working conditions of competition and testing causes harm to our children. (Harber p45)

Our children are being turned into performing animals at younger and younger ages, told their entire future depends on how they move their pencil across a piece of paper now. Anxiety and stress results from the confusion engendered by school, the meaningless knowledge out of context.

I overheard a conversation in the post office:
A: how is X, doing?
B: fine, fine. She’s just started secondary school.
A: which one?
B: WRGS
A: great! She managed to get in.
B: yes, but she’s off sick at the moment with a stomach problem that the doctor thinks is due to stress.

This was four weeks into the new academic year.
Friends of mine who are councillors say there is a massive increase in requests for counselling of children with stress, anxiety and depression. Research backs this up.

An MRC study in Scotland showed that psychological stress in children has increased significantly since 1987. (Harber C p113) In Germany, (where, incidentally, home education has been illegal since Hitler outlawed it in 1938 to ensure no children escaped state indoctrination) at least one fifth of primary school children are on medication for stress, and it may be as high as one third.
Globally, stress, and anxiety in kids means they are too busy doing school to have a life, or are driven to suicide by failure. (Harber C p114)
104. stressed and anxious p2
The pace of school, the relentlessness of testing, coupled to the boring pace of daily lessons, leaves no time for reflection, the synthesis of learning or finding meaning.
Some of the many sources of fear and anxiety in pupils range from being told that you will fail, public humiliation, being compared to others, demands for compliance and the threat to report back to parents. The unpredictability of some teachers adds to the stress. (Mager)

Frustration from too fast a pace, lack of clarity, refusal to answer questions, having the same place for all and being stopped when absorbed, adds another level of stress to the school day. (Mager) Extrinsic incentives also act to increase anxiety and helplessness. (Kohn PBR p1500

The effects of fear, anxiety and stress are many, including interference with the process of learning and remembering. It is ironic that the professed purpose of school is hampered by its treatment of pupils. Those who fear mistakes are unlikely to ask for help or take intellectual risks or become intrinsically motivated. (Kohn PBR) Where mistakes are punished, constant anxiety results. (Kohn PBR) It is said that we learn by our mistake, but what we learn depends upon how mistakes are viewed and treated. If mistakes simply cause self-hate, fear and anxiety, we learn only those reactions and not whatever the ‘right’ thing was. ‘Mistakes’ can be feedback, but when they come with the label of ‘failure’ it can hamper the feedback. When it comes from exams, where we can’t even see where we went wrong, then we can learn nothing from it except not try next time.

Fear, stress and anxiety don’t only have unpleasant mental and emotional effects. They cause disease in our bodies too. From the 11-year-old referred to in the overheard conversation, with a stress-related digestive problem, to sleeplessness and asthma (serious asthma attacks are more likely at the time that children go back to school: North West Public Health Observatory: cited in The Big Issue 653 Jan 15-31 2007 p4). Long-term stress has debilitating effects on all systems of the body. We are setting up long-term health problems to mirror the mental health problems that children suffer now.

Fear and anxiety primarily arise from a lack of trust. Trust is vital for the development of psychosocial health and is constantly undermined in schools. Self-trust is destroyed before it has a chance to develop in a system where you are not trusted and your judgement is constantly judged as flawed. Trusting adults is difficult, when teachers can’t have the best interests of 30 or 100 or so children at heart, and can’t be trusted to be fair, to treat children decently or to give them the attention and care they crave and deserve. Trusting the institution to meet your needs will result in profound disappointment.
104. stressed and anxious p3

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad.

2009-08-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

103. Powerlessness and cruelty drive kids mad
Underlying many of psychiatry’s 400 diagnoses is the experience of helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation and de-humanisation-culminating in a loss of autonomy and community connectedness.
Levine CR p6

In most societies children are an oppressed group, dependent economically and in all ways on the goodwill of others to provide their needs. Their only economic power is ‘pester power’. Their choices are few and constantly restrained by fear of punishment, which is often ‘cruel and degrading’ as it often includes removal of rights, humiliation and acute psychological distress. The needs of children are always defined by adults and are frequently overridden by an adult agenda. Childhood is being extended to age 18, whereby 16-year-olds will not have the choice not to learn what someone tells them they must. Extending powerlessness ensures no escapees. Prisoners of war cannot be forced to work, according to the Geneva Convention, but children in school can be even when exhausted and afraid.
As AS Neill pointed out many years ago, Western child-rearing is based on hate and fear. Schools perpetuate this with punishment-based control and condemnation of unacceptable behaviour so that individuals who don’t conform (and even those that do) come to see themselves as inherently evil. (Summerhill) This damage to mental health, to sense of self is at the root of destructiveness.

When we label children and adults ‘mentally ill’ we situate the problem within them, see it as a failure or disease of their mind. No one’s fault, really. But even if we can detect physiological, neurological or chemical differences in people who we label (and often we can’t), we deny the social and environmental causes of those changes. When we use a pseudo-medical label: depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, ADHD, conduct disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, it is big business for psychologists and psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry. It lets the rest of us off the hook.

In Bullycide Neil Marr and Tim Field argue that much that we call mental illness is, in fact, the result of psychological injury and trauma, from the trauma and stress of bullying to the assault on dignity and self that occurs within punitive-based control systems like schools (and a lot of families) (Marr N and Field T 2001)

It is the powerlessness and helplessness that result from rigid control that damages individuals. Control over our own lives is important for health and mental health and emotional adjustment increases with self-determination. (Kohn PBR and Levine). The amount of self-determination children are allowed in school is practically zilch. The choices they have are: to relinquish self-determination, ‘conform’ and squash themselves or to rebel and face punishment, condemnation, humiliation and constant censure.
The frustration of being in this situation plays out in many ways. Responses to this situation vary from aggression towards the cause of the frustration, displaced aggression towards other people or object, or apathy, withdrawal and indifference-a learned helplessness. (Atkinson, Atkinson and Hilgaard p428) We see all of these in school. The most problematic for the school is the first. The most problematic for fellow students is the second. But the third could be the most problematic for the child with all life squashed out of them.

In 2000 the Guardian ran an article claiming 20% of poor children are mentally ill. (10/7/00) In it they claim that the most disaffected are being penalised by a structure based on targets and league tables. It is the most powerless-the children of the powerless-who suffer most from the institutions inflicted upon them. Institutions increase helplessness. (Illich, Levine). Schools introduce our youngsters, at earlier and earlier ages, to huge bureaucratic structures in which they are totally powerless. “Burnout” results from situations where we feel powerless and controlled. (Kohn PBR p192)

What we see as disaffection, as disease is the result of the cruelty we inflict, the needs we deny, the pain of loss of self. The emotional and behavioural problems that we see are natural reactions to our institutional society, which results in loss of autonomy, community and humanity. (Levine)

Insanity is a normal reaction to insane situations. (RD Laing) Schools, as logic-free control-freaks, are one of the most insane situations we force our children into.
Powerlessness and the fear that accompanies it are at the root of stress, anxiety and depression.

103. cruelty p2

CHAPTER 7: SCHOOLS DRIVE KIDS MAD.

2009-08-21T12:39:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 7: SCHOOLS DRIVE KIDS MAD
If human equality is to be forever averted-if the Highs as we have called them are to keep their position-then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity. George Orwell 1984

The social consequences of disturbed mental states, of misery and distress are becoming more and more apparent. There has been an increase in psychological disorders particularly in the young, from suicidal behaviour, depression, eating disorders to drug and alcohol use. (Rutter and Smith cited in Humphries) Schools have a role in this. JTG tells us in Dud:” lives can be controlled by machine education, but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference”.

The mental health foundation estimates that half a million teenagers are self harming, 10% of 11 to 15-year-olds have a clinically recognised mental disorder, with 13% of 16 to 19-year-olds having neurotic disorders. (Guardian online Feb 3rd 05 “it is adults who have made teenagers lives a misery”) In Bullycide, it is pointed out that psychiatric injury from traumas such as bullying and other acts of psychological violence against an individual is often misdiagnosed and labelled as mental illness. (Marr N and Field T 2001)

Figures for 2004 in Great Britain (www.statistics.gov.uk/cci.nugget.asp?id=1229) indicate that 3.7% of 5 to 16-year-olds have emotional disorders (anxiety and depression), 5.8% have conducted disorders, 1.5% of hyper-kinetic disorders, 1.3% have less common disorders, concluding that one in 10 children have a mental disorder.

Wherever we look, we see evidence of the distress that a lot of children suffer, in school and out. The upbringing and the education of our children is not equipping them to live whole lives and school plays a key role in that. From the impact of stressed teachers to the entire culture of the institution, and the multiple separations of children’s lives to what they learn and how they learn it: whatever aspect we consider, schools are not producing happy, rounded individuals, who are self-reliant, able to make choices in their best interest and effectively self evaluate.

Powerlessness and cruelty damage children’s mental health and sense of well-being. By making kids stressed and anxious our schools hamper their coping abilities. By depressing kids schools squash all life out of them, even to the point of suicide. By denying the real traumas of children’s lives, schools dismiss children’s distress and do not allow them to develop ways of dealing with overwhelming emotions. No acknowledgement is made that children have a right to happiness.

We force young children to be and to do what they aren’t and cannot and do not respect their rights, and in so doing damage their sanity, their self image and their ability to cope inside and outside school. In these circumstances school refusal is a sane response. This and other forms of just rebellion are labelled as diseases to be chemically controlled, giving up children’s and parents’ power to drug companies only interested in making a profit out of human misery.

School drives kids mad p2

Schools and health- summary.

2009-08-21T12:39:00.001-07:00

Schools and health-summary

Through unmet needs and sick buildings, through confiscated rest, poor food, inert days and discomfort, children become programmed for a life of half-health, to expect this as normal. When we add stress of being there, its impact on the immune and nervous systems, its long-term impact on all systems of the body, it’s no wonder the health of our nation is so poor. The mental straitjacket we encase children in with their schooling has a profound impact on physical as well as mental health. We are only now discovering the power of the mind to influence our health. Shackled minds cannot know their own power to heal, to connect, to know and truly understand.

102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards.

2009-08-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

102. Toilets, kitchens and other health hazards

In 2005 The Guardian ran an article about the dreadful state of school toilets. 40% had no toilet paper, 84% were not cleaned regularly. The only legislation affecting schools with respect to toilets was (check this is still the case) confined to setting a minimum number of toilets and washbasins. There is nothing in the law about their location, their condition or whether children have access to them at all times. (www.guardian.co.uk are/education/2006/Nov/21/schools.uk) In workplaces, there are comprehensive standards set out concerning cleanliness, ventilation and accessibility. Adults have more protection under the law than children do. (Guardian 11/7/05 “Survey reveals bog standard state of school toilets”) Adults are legally entitled in their place employment to clean toilets that afford privacy and have sinks with hot and cold running water.

When my son was at school, he hated using the toilets-they smelled awful, children had to ask for toilet paper as it was frequently stuffed (or dropped) down toilets and blocked them, the doors didn’t lock and there was no soap.

In 2001 the Guardian asked young people to describe their perfect school. “Nearly every entry talked about toilets. They were dirty, smelly and neither the chains nor the locks worked. There were pleas for paper and soap”. (Future Perfect 5/6/01 Dea Birkett http://education.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4197861,00html downloaded on 15/11/2001)

The state of toilets is itself a health hazard and dissuades children from using them. This leads to urinary tract infections, constipation and phobias. We recently visited a school and there was a sign up in the toilet saying not to eat there, because they were ‘disease-ridden‘. So, how often do they get cleaned? How high a priority are they? Not washing hands (no soap, and nothing to dry them on so why bother) is an important factor in the spread of, not only diarrhoeal and other gastrointestinal diseases but also other infections such as coughs and colds.

In January 2008 BBC News online published an article concerning school bullying fears. In the article, the British Cleaning Council warned that children are unwilling to use unhygienic toilets. Too many toilets are closed for part of the day, and poor hygiene increases infections. Dehydration is rife as children avoid needing the toilet. Toilets are hotspots for bullies. In the online discussion after the article there were stories of no working taps, smelly disgusting places, dirt, no soap, lack of privacy with no locks and gaps around doors. Even ‘good’ schools with ‘good’ reputations often have appalling toilets. Some pupils truant to go home to the loo. There is often no access during lessons and teachers humiliate older children who need to go during lesson times. (27/01/08 www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7213977.stm)

Inspection of toilets is not on Ofsted’s remit.
As school’s move towards the extended day the state of toilets becomes more critical. Locking children in buildings where they will not use disgusting loos from 8 am to 6 pm will cause huge damage in urinary tract infections, constipation and dehydration with short and long-term health effects from substandard toilets.

Schools frequently locked toilets during lessons to stop kids hiding out there, making it more difficult for those who need to go. Privacy, hygiene and access are all left to local managers. Bog Standard (www.bogstandard.org.uk) regularly get emails from children and parents reporting that a child was so desperate they ended up wetting or soiling their pants or girls having to sit in a pool of blood during menstruation.

The appalling state of school toilets led to the setting up of the charity Bog Standard to promote better toilets for pupils: “to increase awareness of the health benefits of better toilets, to encourage schools to improve conditions in school toilets and allow pupils to use them when they need to, and to get laws that will make pupils’ toilets nicer to use.” (www.bog-standard.org.uk) The state of school toilets has an impact on physical and psychological health. The starting point needs to be acknowledging that children are human beings, and have a right to provision of clean, decent toilets in the 21st century in the fourth richest country in the world.

Toilets are also considered prime places for bullying, with some kids frightened to go alone to these places. The ‘solution’ is proposed of more observation, of CCTV inside school toilets and teacher observation. Schools do not have to notify parents that CCTV is installed in students’ toilets and parents are shocked to find out. (21/2/08 Daily Mail “school removes CCTV cameras from children’s toilet after furious protests from parents”) 10% of teachers admitted to the presence of CCTV cameras in school toilets. (politics.co.uk 18th August 2008) The same article claims that teachers don’t know their school’s official policy on the use of CCTV.

102. toilets p2

The toilets may be disgusting but your school lunch is not prepared there. In September 2008 Times Education Supplement ran an article on school kitchens. (schools named and shamed on hygiene www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6002022) Hygiene inspectors found 15 school kitchens in Leicestershire, with poor hygiene. This included mouse droppings, dirty floors and walls, incorrectly stored and heated food. The report only came to light after local newspapers, used freedom of information legislation to gain access to council reports. Your kids’ school would not need to tell you if they fail a hygiene inspection.

The Doncaster Free Press used Freedom of Information in 2007 to access local authority records of hygiene inspections of schools in their area. They found that 80% breached food hygiene standards. Many were ‘slight’ breaches, but some were serious enough to put pupils at risk of contamination. (www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/free/SCHOOLS-FAIL-ON-KITCHEN-HYGEINE.1956693.jp) The report noted dirty floors, chemicals stored next to vegetables, cooked food in contact with raw food, mouse droppings and a dead mouse.

The poor standards of hygiene and cleanliness in kitchens are just another indication of how little schools value the health of our children.
102.toilets p3

101. The weather.

2009-08-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

101. The Weather

The Schoolboy by William Blake

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsmen winds his horn,
And the Skylark sings with me;
O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O It drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then, at times, I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning’s bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child when fears annoy
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

O father and mother, if the buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care’s dismay,

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?
In the UK we don’t have a climate, we have weather. It obeys no rules and its unpredictability and changeability are its only constants. The weekend was grey, grim, cold and wet. Monday morning came with glorious sunshine, clear blue skies, a stiff breeze perfect for kite flying. Yet 3 to 16-year-olds are in classrooms, studying vector geometry, Egyptian sun gods and weather patterns, staring out of windows dreaming of the day.

In 2006, after blazing hot days in July the sun fizzled out as the last school broke up for the summer to give way to a cold, wet, miserable August. As the schools went back in in September there was glorious sunshine for weeks. A friend of mine thinks that the weather gods home educate. We can work with the vagaries of the British weather. On dry days we can be outside in the best of it. On wet days we can still be outside and come in to dry off and change if necessary.

In school there is no flexibility to adjust to conditions. No longer can the teacher decide on a whim inspired by sunshine, to take his or her charges out to the park. Now it needs safety assessments, enrolling extra adults and planning weeks in advance. On a glorious sunny November day, we can be out in a meadow learning willow weaving and making hurdles for an animal sanctuary.

It seems cruel to keep small children cooped up in stuffy classrooms on a sunny day. It’s even worse on rainy days, as schools fear children getting wet so keep them locked inside all day. It also seems cruel to put exams in the summer, not only for hay-fever sufferers, but for all young people who want and need to be outdoors, not inside cramming when the precious few nice days are with us.

Deprived of fresh air, sunlight to make vitamins D and space to move in these children either climb up the wall or sink into inert despair. Spending a lot of time indoors, especially now we ferry our kids to school in boxes and keep them inside for fear when they come from school, we deprive them also of an appreciation of the weather. The changing seasons, the air temperature and moisture differences, the 28 different types of rain we have, the excitement of thunderstorms, the elation of running with the wind, the calm joy of cloudless blue sky, crisp frosts and icy puddles to break, muddy ones to splash in, the taste of snow on our tongues and standing to watch it fall, sudden showers and the smell of rain after baking heat: our indoor children lose so much.

I have a childcare books from the 1950s (The care of children aged 1 to 5), and although I do have a problem with the idea of tying infants to a potty, much of the advice is sound. Basically, the cure for any ‘problem’-eating, sleeping, behaviour- is to take children to wide open green spaces and set them free.
101. weather p2
We are incarcerating out tots at younger and younger ages. Now we are to have free full-time childcare for 2 year olds. Why do we live in a world where people cheer at that, rather than in one that is horrified at the institutionalisation of our toddlers? A generation is growing up thinking the weather is just something adults talk about when they have nothing to say.

100. Schools are unsafe places.

2009-08-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

100. Schools are unsafe places

The dangers of school are often underestimated. (Illich) In 2007 a Pirls International survey found English schools near the bottom for pupil’s safety. The survey looked at injuries by classmates (i.e. bullying and other violence) and focused on pupils’ reported feelings of safety. England was ranked 37th out of 45. When English head-teachers were asked, they ranked themselves first. (Guardian p10 1/12/07 “English schools near bottom for pupils’ safety”) Head-teachers, with their head in the clouds and paper, are totally divorced from the reality of the children in their care.

According to AHED statistics 450,000 children are bullied in school. More than 360,000 are injured in school each year. (http://ahed.pbwiki.com/children+at+risk+in+schools) According to a ROSPA report in January 2007 based on the number of accidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive using RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995) there were a total of four fatalities and 8367 non-fatal injuries in 2005-2006. (www.rospa.com/fact sheets/accidents-overview.pdf) Many minor accidents and injuries would not be reported. A Welsh survey of different schools found different levels of reporting explain differences in statistics from different schools rather than the difference in incidents. (check ref on Google Scholar)

I run a home education drama group, and we have to abide by the ratios set down in Every Child Matters of one adult to 10 children over 8, one adult to 6 under 8s. These ratios do not apply in schools, in classrooms or playgrounds, as if being in the confines of school makes things somehow safer. In school, a teacher can be in charge of 30 or so, even under fives. At lunchtime, a couple of low paid people can be in charge of a whole school full of boisterous, stressed kids. A number of authorities specify one mid-day supervisor for every 75 junior pupils (age 7-11), 1 to 30 infants (age 5-7) and 1 to 20 for nursery pupils. (www.Gloucestershire.gov,uk/media/word down loaded 7/8/08, Cornwall have the same ratios) This lack of supervision in a situation where often hundreds of kids are confined in a playground, let out from tighter confinement to let off steam, makes playgrounds rather dangerous places.

The other side of the safety problem is that schools have become so fearful that anything remotely challenging is severely limited. Outings where full safety assessments and Every Child Matters minimum supervision are required, are severely curtailed, limiting opportunities to be out in the real world.

A recent report by the health and safety executive stated that children’s play areas and not challenging enough so kids look for adventure in more dangerous places. (need ref..) The need for challenge, to stretch themselves physically, to realistically assess risk and how to handle it are natural tendencies among the young of all species. Instead our children are told simplistic safety messages such as “Never touch matches”, when, as adults, they need to know how to handle matches safely. Kids are taught how to cross roads in a classroom, without actually being near or on one. They are told not to talk to strangers by strangers.

This makes it more difficult for children to navigate real dangers, in real places when they are taught to fear and not to deal with things. These safety talks are given to children, even those whose daily lives are full of incredible danger and violence and fear.

In a recent earthquake in China, all the schools collapsed. It seems that schools were the only public buildings not to be built earthquake proof.

When my son was at school nursery, aged 3, he escaped out across the road before anyone noticed. I stopped a three-year-old escaping when no adult was in sight of the door. Children try to escape these oppressive institutions from early ages, and the brighter ones succeed. In February 2006 a seven-year-old boy escaped from school and went missing for several hours. (lancastereveningtelegraph.co.uk/2006/2/15/886313.html) In May 2008, a three-year-old wandered off from school in Pontefract. These are just two of those reported in newspapers, available on the Internet. If we can’t even trust them to contain little children or to keep them safe while they are there, why do we send them?
100. unsafe p2

99. Discomfort is the norm.

2009-08-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

99. Discomfort is the norm

So from being stiff, nervous wrecks, children can become unmotivated lumps, slumping all day at desks, and sprawling all night in front of television. Glynn Macdonald: The Alexander Technique

Discomfort is defined as “uneasiness, hardship and mild pain” (Mager) It occurs due to unmet needs that are constantly attracting attention (the full bladder, the empty stomach, the hard and comfortable chairs, the physical passivity, thirst, fatigue). All this occurs in an air-less, hot, stuffy box. By preventing pupils from taking care of their personal needs, we tell them those needs are not important, and are to be denied. By turning off from the needs of our bodies we become less able to care for ourselves and to maintain our health.

Denying needs does not make them go away. They still exist and demand to be heard. The young peoples’ needs to move, to breathe, to stretch, to run around, use the toilet, to drink, still vie for attention with today’s spelling test. We somehow consider it admirable to be able to ignore real individual needs and to be able to focus on the institution’s needs instead.

I hate anything constrictive around my waist and recall the discomfort of sitting for hours in skirts with too tight a waistband, in chairs where my short legs didn’t properly reach the ground. Restricting the functioning of the guts by slumping at a desk for hours, unable to breathe from the diaphragm, hampering the flow of energy in the body, contributes to constipation, anxiety and discomfort.

When my son was in this reception class, at age 4, we walked to school so he was layered-up with T-shirts, longs-sleeved top, jumper and coat. Each day, I collected him, red-faced and hot, still wearing three layers in an overheated stuffy room. No one thinks to tell four-year-olds to take off a layer, and when they have nowhere to put their clothes they are less likely to do so. Human ability to maintain a comfortable body temperature depends on behaviour, how we dress, open windows. These need to happen in addition to sweating and shivering to keep us at a comfortable temperature. This only works if we are in control of those things.

For little children, putting off going for a wee or a poo is at best uncomfortable, and at times embarrassingly impossible. In 2007 NHS guidelines urged parents not to force their children to wait to go to the toilet. 82,000 five to 16 year olds have urinary tract infections each year in Britain. But most of the time, they are at school being made to wait or not wanting to use the disgusting toilets. (Metro Aug 22 2007 p16 John Higginson “children ‘mustn’t wait for the loo’ “)

Putting off drinking when thirsty, eating when hungry, can be unbearable for small stomachs and dehydrated minds.

I recall an incident from my son’s reception days, aged 4. He had been playing in the water tray one morning. When I collected him, on a chilly January afternoon, for a half-hour walk home, I discovered that he was saturated through every item of clothing, except his socks. He had been like that most of the day, in spite of telling the teacher about it. The comfort of small children is deemed unimportant by a teacher whose job it is to force them to deny their needs.

Long-term postural and back problems result from the forced immobility of growing bodies in uniform seats the wrong size for everyone, when work occurs slumped over desks for long periods of time. There is also lower back pain from carrying heavy book bags all day and back problems from poorly designed classrooms. (Harber)
Those with hyper-mobile joints find it particularly uncomfortable to sit still for long periods. When I was in primary school, although I ‘achieved’ academically, I couldn’t sit still and so sat at the back to avoid constantly being told off for ’fidgeting’.

Getting used to discomfort can stop us being aware when our bodies need rest, need nourishment and water, need movement, need to stand and run rather than sit and squirm. This can have serious implications for short-term and long-term health.

99.discomfort p2

98. School makes kids unfit.

2009-08-21T12:33:00.001-07:00

98. School makes kids unfit

With growing obesity levels in children, exercise is an important part of the picture. When my son was at primary school there were only 3 sessions of 40 minutes P.E. scheduled a week, most of which seemed to be spent standing around watching or being shouted at.
Between the ages of 5 and 18 it is recommended that children do at least an hour’s activity a day and twice a week do strength-based activity such as skipping, aerobics or basketball. (First News 8-14 Sept 2006) It is not only to ward off obesity that exercise is required. Development of respiratory and cardiovascular system, brain and muscles are all affected by immobility. In immobile, sluggish children everything from the digestive system to the memory becomes sluggish too. Exercise affects mood, staving off depression and anxiety, and helps build strong bones, decreasing osteoporosis in later life.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that as ‘important exams approach e.g. Sats or GCSEs that are important for the school too, P.E. can be squeezed out to cram for tests. The outlet and positive benefits of being physically active outweigh any positive effect of cramming. (if there are any positive effects of cramming.

In “Toxic Childhood” Sue Palmer points out that the exam orientation of schools not only decreases time for P.E. but changes the way that P.E. is taught. She argues that P.E. has become “academicized” with teachers being required to concentrate on development of technique rather than allowing general exercise and enjoyment. In this way P.E. lessons become about curricula targets (more boxes to tick) rather than an opportunity to “run, jump, be active, let off steam”. (p58 TC by SP)

In MEN (5/8/08) John Stapleton pointed out that 60% of girls and 40% of boys do less than an hour’s exercise a day, with a quarter of 5 year olds and one third of 10 year olds being overweight or obese. (p8)

Children’s limbs want to and need to move, to be used. Constricting this natural need to move at younger and younger ages has adverse consequences for health and mental health in the long and the short term. The restlessness and anxiety that come from suppressing this need affects many aspects of a child’s life. Enforced physical inertia, and the mental inertia that follows, lead to physical strain, unhappiness and mental strain, as well a contributing to obesity. Again, focussing on the easily measurable (some seemingly objective measure of obesity) denies the aspects that are more difficult to measure, as well as the subjective experience of the captives.

School P.E. is woefully inadequate to prepare children for a lifetime of enjoyable physical exercise. I remember being forced to chase a ball up and down a freezing hockey field, while my legs turned blue, followed by the ritual humiliation of the communal supervised shower. This was bad enough. Not being chosen to be on teams was another downside. I hated competitive sports, which seemed to dominate-tennis, rounders, hockey, netball. My heart still sinks at the thought of it. My poor and deteriorating eyesight made seeing the ball difficult and judging distance nearly impossible, but I still remember the humiliation of being made to stay behind for ‘throwing and catching practice‘ as I had been unable to catch a ball.
Yet, I enjoyed swimming with my dad on Saturdays and contorting my body into assorted poses from yoga books in the privacy of my own home and running barefoot in a field was exhilarating. The best report I had for P.E. stated that my attitudes to the subject had improved. (I stopped going altogether) As an adult I walk everywhere, practice Qi Gong every morning and I’m reasonably fit for my age, but I was in my 20s before I could face any form of exercise class.

So the misery of PE doesn’t help many to become fit but of course there’s always playtime. Observing playgrounds I have seen that in many football dominates, with other activities pushed to the periphery. Small groups stand around talking at the edges. Not a lot of exercise actually happens.

Selling off school playgrounds and fields for car parks to raise cash reduces the space kids have to move in. Following the general election in 1997 a government policy of forcing schools to sell off playgrounds was supposed to come to an end. Now sales have to be signed by the Secretary of State and revenue reinstated in educational facilities. But on 30 March 2008 an Observer article claimed that 187 plans to dispose of playing fields have been approved since 1998. (http://bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7321208.stm)

At my son’s old school, children were never allowed to play on the grass field, which now has a Sure Start building on it. Diminishing school playgrounds become even more important when we propose to lock children in school, from 8am to 6pm by 2010.
98. unfit p2
When I was young, we came home from school and went out to play until dark. Climbing trees, running around games (‘kick the can’ was a favourite), skipping, ball games, roller-skating in streets empty of cars, and in time empty of homework. All that has changed. Now the captives set free from school have homework from age three. Parental fears keep kids indoors outside of school time. We are creating a generation, stifled of physical movement, of delight in their own bodies. Middle-class parents pay for swim lessons or karate classes but these still don’t anywhere near reach the one-hour daily minimum requirement.

Sitting watching the Olympics will not have increased fitness levels for most kids or inspired many to be competitive elite athletes. When competitiveness and winning are seen as the goals, rather than enjoyment of physical exercise, it alienates the many who don’t have a chance in hell of winning, but would love dancing, skipping or hula-hooping, or chasing a ball for fun.

98. unfit p3

97. Schools, food and health.

2009-08-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

97. Schools, food and health

Generally, eating habits and food in Britain are appalling. High consumption of processed food, rich in sugar, salt, unhealthy fats and low in vitamins, minerals or anything of genuine nutritional value, means we are a severely malnourished nation despite being the fourth richest in the world.

Few know how to cook, in spite of the plethora of celebrity TV chef’s and their books. For generations, children have been sent to school, away from their mothers and grandmothers, making it much more difficult to pass on the skills and passions of food and cooking. Cooking isn’t on the national curriculum. It is to be ‘offered’ at all schools from September 2008 though few have adequate kitchens any more. Going out to the shops, to choose and buy ingredients, taking them home to combine lovingly into something nourishing and pleasurable to eat-if this happens at all in families it has to happen without the full involvement of school age children.

In school, cooking has been replaced by food technology, where packaging and marketing pre-prepared pap is studied, but not in a way that adequately questions the content of the manufactured food we buy. Schools don’t take kids shopping and get them to critique misleading claims of ‘fat-free equals healthy’ or to question the chemistry lab of ingredients on packaged food. Corporacy overrides healthy eating guidelines and schools buy into voucher schemes from junk food.

The consequences of poor diet are many: from obesity to coronary heart disease, from cancers to mental and behavioural difficulties. Poor diet accounts for one third of deaths from cancer and chronic heart disease. (www.bbc.co.uk/food/food-matters/school meals.html 2006) Schools have a captive audience of 6 hours a day from age 3 onwards. It would seem an ideal opportunity to override advertisers and overwhelmed parents with skills, questioning and modelling of healthy eating.

It took Jamie Oliver and his school dinner’s programme to alert the nation to the appalling quality of meals served in schools. Following the removal of minimum nutritional standards many kitchens only have facilities to re-heat pre-prepared food. Jamie Oliver’s programs led to junk food (meals high in salt and fat) being excluded from school dinners from the start of autumn 2006. (BBC ref above) This aimed to exclude crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks and low quality meat. From 2008 primary schools have to stipulate vitamin content of food; from 2009 secondary schools do. But there is still no minimum required by law.

However, as schools meal ingredients cost 50p per child in primary and 60p per child in secondary (BBC ref) with rising food costs, it becomes impossible to produce anything nutritionally valid on that amount of money. The Soil Association, at that time, stated that 70 p was the minimum if reasonable nutritional standards were to be met. Feeding our children healthy meals becomes impossible on such small amounts of money. School meal improvements don’t tackle lunchbox crap, and the power of advertising to shape what goes into them.

Our tendency to overeat, to eat ‘comfort food‘, to consume that which we know is harming us and too much of it stems from a deep emotional and spiritual emptiness. We over eat because we are emotionally hungry. Schools don’t equip children with a connection to self, emotional nurturing or the skills to eat healthily. It has not equipped their parents either. The multiple separations at school, turning off from our bodies and their needs and demands is particularly harmful.
Information alone will not change people. It is need, not greed, that makes us fat. Unmet needs for comfort in a troubled world has us reaching for the short-term feel-good foods instead of long-term feeling better foods.

Diet is one main factor in growing childhood obesity levels. In April 2006 (21/4/06) BBC News said that one in four children were obese. By the end of 2007 BBC radio four news, claimed that UK obesity levels were the highest in Europe. (21/11/07) We doubled the number of obese children in 10 years. Only 33% of 16-year-olds meet the current body mass index limits. (Metro News 3/1/06)

Food is only one part of the equation that leads to obesity. Inactivity also plays a major role and schools have their part to play in this too.
97. food p2

96. Schools rob children of rest.

2009-08-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

96. Schools rob children of rest

We are a sleep-deprived nation and our overstretched, overstressed children follow suit. We drag them from their beds protesting, to force them off to school where they sit half daydreaming and immobile for most of the day. Then homework and electronic media eat up with the rest of their lives. Anxiety robs us of sleep and school-anxiety robs children of theirs.

Teens particularly are sleep deprived, as the need for sleep increases with adolescence. Many sources recommend 10 hours a night for 13-year-olds. (ref?? Dr Greene NLP book check this ref) Growth, huge body and brain changes, the onset of periods for girls, all make adolescence a tiring time when more sleep is required to enable those changes to happen smoothly. School eats up the day, with the requirements to be there, often by 8.30am, conflicting with an adolescent’s body-clock, signalling later sleep and waking. (ref? Andr…et al check ref) This has led to recommendations that high-schools should, in fact, starts two hours later. With homework eating into leisure time, with cramming for tests and exams, then the need to socialise, to interact with others and technology means many get too little sleep, though they may have learned to look awake while dozing in class.

A cumulative sleep deficit causes mood swings, impaired reaction times, produces loss of alertness, and impairs critical and creative thinking, memory and concentration. (NLP coach) Tired children are cranky, more wired and uncontrollable. (Toxic Childhood) School attendance requirements can therefore act against its overt aims. Missing the first couple of hours of the day to catch up on sleep would seem to be educationally beneficial, but of course, if our teens are not hurried half-comatose to school before we go off to work, they may never get up to go. Sleep deprived teens seek stimulation to counteract fatigue. (NLP coach) In a boring classroom ‘stimulation’ will come from making interesting, if disruptive, things happen to break up the monotony.

But chronic sleep deficit has adverse physical effects, especially on the immune system. (nlp coach)

It is not only teens who are deprived of sleep and the need to rest. The very young are put into school at an age when many still need an afternoon nap. Being denied quiet, comfortable places and times in the school day to just rest and chill out, means most young children come home from school exhausted, drained of all life and play. When my home educated daughter tried to visit and play with school friends aged 4,5,6 or7 even they were invariably exhausted by the day and just wanted to slob in front of TV to recover.
The post-prandial dip (lowering of energy after a meal) means most are a bit groggy in the afternoon, but the curriculum powers on with requirements to perform, to fight fatigue, and a natural desire to lie down. Add to these differences in larks and owls- with those who are alert in the morning required to be present and attending in afternoons, while those who don’t mentally surface until later in the day required to be there in the morning and to be made to go to bed when most mentally active. My son (an owl) was most receptive to structured instruction in anything mentally challenging at 9 pm, when if he was in school he would be required to go to bed. School forces all children to live by alien timetables.

Rest is an important part of recovery from illness. Convalescence is disappearing as children are hurried back to school to meet attendance targets, so parents can go back to work, and in the belief that if they miss a single day they may never catch up. Time to recuperate is lost. Being knackered and in need of rest is not taken by schools to be a good enough reason for absence and rest, denying children’s needs. This locks children into a medical system, where a rushed recovery and antibiotics is seen as preferable to resting and allowing healing to happen unhurried.

I remember, the nightmare of sitting in classrooms with a migraine, dizzy, sick and unable to focus, yet because I was present, had a tick in the right box, it was assumed I was learning, and able to do the homework even when I went home to collapse.

In a school there are no resting places, nowhere for solitude, for peace and quiet, nowhere for a 10 minute lie down. The long-term impact of denial of bodily needs is that we turn off, tune out those needs with adverse long-term health consequences.
96. rest p2

95. Schools are sick places.

2009-08-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

95. Schools are sick places

My overwhelming recollections of classrooms and lecture theatre is of stuffy, airless, overheated places where the major challenge was to stay awake while inert and bored. Cramming lots of children into poorly ventilated classrooms, putting them under stress to ‘produce’ to someone else’s timetable is to treat them like battery hens. And like battery hens, exposure to others in crowded conditions makes schools places where disease spread is rife: exposure to lots of others in a perfect breeding ground for bugs. Ring worm, impetigo, scabies, head lice, diarrhoeal diseases, coughs, colds, vomiting, infections of various kinds become a part of normal life for many schooled kids. When overcrowding is coupled to stress and exhaustion and poor hygiene, ill-health can become the norm. Being hurried back to school, so parents can return to work, makes it more likely that infections will be spread.

By keeping children indoors for much of the day, schools deprive them of exposure to natural daylight. Fluorescent flicker becomes the normal lighting, even when it induces migraines and other headaches. Natural daylight is responsible for the manufacture of vitamin D in the body, which plays a part in calcium metabolism. Extreme deficit leads to rickets. Less extreme deficiencies have been linked to many long-term problems from cancer to coronary heart disease, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. (Gilly Radio 4 15/9/08: a biological scientist, referring to Scotland’s ill-health is due to lack of sunlight)

Artificial lighting, increases stress. Eight out of ten classrooms are fitted with excessively bright and flickering lights, causing eyestrain and loss of concentration a Cambridge University study found. (“Fluorescent lights giving pupil’s headaches” Graeme Paton 6/9/07 Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562331/fluorescent-lights-giving-pupils-headaches.html) The same article points out that this is made worse by computerised whiteboards. Flicker causes visual discomfort and makes it more difficult to read accurately.

Classroom glare can cause Vision-linked stress syndrome in children who are sensitive to particular light frequencies. They have difficulty seeing words properly, concentrating and even hearing clearly. A study of 111 eight to ten year olds found 27% reported significant symptoms of VLSS e.g. seeing double, jumbled words, blurring. (Times Education Supplement 12/08/05 “Classroom glare can stunt young learners” Sue Leonard)

By building schools without opening windows, fresh air becomes a rarity. As Christensen points out in Ecoliving, when active children are confined in a closed room for hours, it can lead to air quality worse than that in a submarine. (p187)

Add to that toxins from school uniforms: in 2004 it was revealed that cancer-causing chemicals and other toxins (perfluorinated chemicals) are used in school uniforms to give durability and stain resistance. These are classified as cancer-causing. Children are more vulnerable to the effects of chemicals than adults. (Metro News 1/9/04 p7 “School uniforms are toxic, say scientists” David Harding)

In 2009 a local paper in Trafford applied under Freedom of Information law to discover that 43 out of 59 state school buildings in the borough were contaminated with asbestos. Claims that it should not present any danger as long as it is not exposed are not very reassuring when buildings are crumbling. (Trafford Metro News 16/1/09)

Other toxic chemicals, from cleaning products to pesticides are routinely used in and around schools. (Ecoliving p187 Christensen) Add in the hair products, the deodorants, the face creams, that waft and accumulate and your children are breathing in recycled, contaminated air for 6 hours a day. When wet weather prevents playing out at break time, even this small amount of fresh air and ultra-violet light is denied to kids who then behave like the caged animals they are.

Temperature regulation becomes another issue. Set too high, it causes drowsiness, discomfort and increases the spread of diseases. Uniform rules and lack of space to store clothes safely means overheated kids.

The expansion of WiFi to 80% of secondary schools (January 2008) also causes grave concerns. (Ecologist Dec/Jan 2008 p43 “The gathering brainstorm” Mark Anslow). WiFi is untested for safety, as it uses an unlicensed part of the radio spectrum. (Ecologist) These networks in school can give off greater levels of radiation than mobile phone masts. (MEN 21/5/07 “Radiation fear over computers in the classroom” 21/5/07 by Mark Coady) Panorama visited a comprehensive school in Norwich and measured the radiation signal strength from a classroom WiFi enabled laptop and found its peak was three times greater than peak signal strength from a mast. (MEN article) Some schools are taking them out after teachers complain of headaches. (Ecologist) Because teachers, as employees, have more rights and protections than your children it is their voices that are listened to, even though children are more vulnerable to radiation emissions than adults.

This combination of airlessness, toxicity, infectivity and electromagnetic smog, all combine to make schools about as healthy as sending children up chimneys.
In Ecoliving Christensen argues that in years ahead, we can expect that the effects of environmental factors such as air quality and natural daylight will be considered more seriously due to its impact on student behaviour and academic performance. The long and short term effects on health of the school environment have been overlooked too long.
95. sick places p2
The school rebuilding programme, spending billions to create modern, hermetically-sealed sick buildings, is likely to make the situation worse. In 2004 Scotland’s school building programme, based on public-private partnership, was criticised by the EIS teachers union as involving poor planning and shoddy workmanship. Many of the buildings have narrow corridors, leaking roofs, poor soundproofing, small playgrounds, and cramped conditions inside. These were seen to contribute to poor behaviour. Inadequate insulation and poor water supplies were also cited. (http://bbc.co.uk/1/hi/cotland/3764721.stm)

In July 2009 The Yorkshire Post reported that 3 young people in Yorkshire had collapsed at different schools built under BSF during a heat wave. Large expanses of glass were thought to be to blame. When there is such a lot of glass with un-openable windows, a decent air conditioning system is essential- though they come with their own problems. (Yorkshire Post 9/7/09 “School designs blamed after pupils collapse” Robert Sutcliffe)

Sick building syndrome occurs when symptoms of fatigue, headache, and general malaise are prevalent in some buildings without a clear clinical diagnosis. Building-related illness occurs when clinical illness is related to particular buildings. Both occur in schools. Air conditioning can produce a build-up of endotoxin (parts of bacteria) which accumulate on wet surfaces and is called slime. It accumulates inside air conditioning, is a major allergen and affects respiration. (www.aspergillus.org.uk/patients.News/sbarticle.php “Health complaints in air-conditioned buildings” Dumbrowsky Y and Hill J)

95. sick places p3

CHAPTER 6: SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK

2009-08-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 6: SCHOOL MAKES KIDS SICK
OR/ WARNING: SCHOOL CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
Your health is bound to suffer, if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just fiction, it’s a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space, and is inside us like the teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity. I found it painful to listen to you, Innokentii, when you told us how you were ‘re-educated’ and became mature in jail. It was like listening to a horse describing how it broke itself in. (Boris Pasternak: From DR Zhivago

Unmet needs lead to ill health. Children’s needs are constantly denied in school and in society at large, so that children grow out of touch with their own needs for health and well-being.
Like animals reared in battery conditions, crowded and stressed, infections spread rapidly, necessitating regular use of antibiotics to combat them. The airless buildings, the lack of sunlight, of rest, combine to stress children. The appalling toilets and unhygienic kitchens create a health hazard.

Discomfort becomes a constant-from dehydration, to hard chairs the wrong size for you, form carrying bags all day to being in sick buildings. Restricting the desire to move and keeping children inert for long periods is damaging physically and emotionally.
It is not just the health of the inmates that is damaged. Younger pre-school siblings have to be woken, have to eat and poo in time for the school run and can’t be kept home to recuperate from illness if parents have to take school-age kids out. I remember my daughter, age 1, being ill and me having to take her with me to deliver my well son to school, which meant her being out in the cold for 2 hours each day when being in bed would have been better for her.

School also trains children into being ill as the only legitimate way to get out of going. For those whose schooling is unbearable, it can seem a reasonable choice.

If we want to raise healthy, happy children we need to look critically at the impact of the places they spend a huge proportion of their waking hours.

Numbering our children -summary

2009-08-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

To be done.

94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all.

2009-08-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

94. Ofsted: the engine that drives it all
Here comes the examiner-of-all-examiners. So you had better get away, I warn you, or he will examine you and your dog into the bargain, and set him to examine all the other dogs, and you to examine all the other water babies. There is no escape out of his hands, for his nose is 9000 miles long, and can go down chimneys and through keyholes, upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber, examining all little boys, and little boys’ tutors likewise. Charles Kingsley “The Water Babies” written in 1876

Ofsted (the office for standards in education, children’s services and skills) is a non-ministerial government department that is supposed to be independent from government. Ofsted is a surveillance, inspection and number generating institutions, that acts as the police force of the state’s mind control program. Like the examiner in the water babies quote above, its expanding remit acts like a cancer, consuming all in its path. In August 2008 Ofsted were responsible for inspecting, grading and ranking schools, initial teacher training, local authorities, children’s homes, residential special schools, boarding schools, childminders, nurseries, secure training centres, secure children’s homes, fostering and adoption services, residential family centres, CAFCAS and learning providers for over 16s, among other things.
Their role is to gather the meaningless numbers generated by all these organisations, to perform superficial short term subjective inspections, pass judgements and label each organisation as passing or failing some arbitrary and moving standard. Labels of poor, satisfactory, good, excellent are meaningless, and most parents know this.
OFSTED have taken charge of children’s lives from the cradle. Childminders have to have educational outcomes and provide educational activities for the tiniest tots. They can’t be left to explore their world in their own time and their own way, unless they are at home with a parent. Once they are aged three, the early year’s foundation stage ensures all institutions have to toe the OFSTED line.

Expansion and Role change
The expansion OFSTED into children’s social care and adult workplace learning has seen this High Examiner become a huge megalith. Polly Curtis (“Who watches the watchdog? 27/03/08 Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/MAr/27/children.ofsted) points out that some fear its power is getting out of control. OFSTED defines ‘successful’ schools and changes the boundaries of that definition. Decisions are based upon CVAs, which are contextual value added scores and ‘light touch’ inspections lacking depth. (Polly Curtis) From previous sections, we must question the accuracy, validity and honesty of any scores, especially if given by schools that will be judged on them. (see dishonesty, targets) . The article points out that OFSTED is in many ways now controlling school policy and that it has shifted from an organisation that works with schools to drive up standards to an information provider for parents. They are there to produce numbers and ratings, not to help, support or advise.

With April 2007s expansion of remit came a budget of £236 million. However, Ofsted has its own target-to reduce this to £186 million by 2008-2009. (Polly Curtis) This will lead to even more superficial numbers being produced. OFSTED themselves have targets on inspections done. It has been suggested that this means they rush inspections and miss many negligent practices. (BBC radio 4 PM News 5/3/08)

The expansion to include inspection of children’s services at a time when Contact Point (see privacy) comes online while reducing spending by 20% does not bode well for children’s safety. Contamination of social service with new “targets, standards, numbers” to be produced rather than children being engaged with, ensures that children at risk will be lost in the melee. Social workers are already, like teachers, undermined and overwhelmed. Wait until they’ve dealt with Ofsted for a year or so.

Teacher training

Ofsted also drive initial teacher training. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers expressed concerns that the Ofstedisation of initial teacher training has signalled a shift from teachers being taught practical skills grounded in knowledge and understanding to teachers being trained to implement the decisions of others. (ref? downloaded on 25/08/08)

In Harry Porter and the order of the Phoenix, Prof Umbridge from the Ministry of Magic is made the High Inquisitor and goes around measuring (Literally in the case of the small teacher) the teachers. She demands prophecies on demand, requiring more and more ludicrous actions in compliance from teachers and pupils alike. There is some rebellion, but mostly through fear, there is feigned compliance. This resembles OFSTED with its ludicrous measuring, it’s superficial, subjective inspections, its information gathering to control and judge.

OFSTED is also gathering information from children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. In the Tellus 2 and Tellus 3 programs, a database of children’s lifestyles, health, happiness and details of their parents are being gathered. There is no guarantee of confidentiality. It is more surveillance for the purposes of control.
94. ofsted p2
Along with the lack of validity of any grade, schools have a huge vested interest in disguising problems from inspectors who are there to judge and not to help. John Carvel (“School trickery dupes Ofsted” Guardian 4/3/99) points out that there is evidence that head teachers connive in a variety of ways to cheat OFSTED and secure a more favourable results.

A friend who works in a pupil referral unit, told me of a recent inspection. The school is made to attempt to teach the full national curriculum to traumatised, disaffected boys who can’t sit still and are made to be in a classroom. The management, by all accounts, bullying, incompetent and guilty of nepotism, presented a false image of the school. During the inspection teachers felt unable to give their honest opinions, out of fear of reprisals, paperwork was pristine, and the most troubled young people were conveniently off-site for the day. This horrendous unit, that fails to do anything beyond mere containment (and not even that, if the truth be known) was rated ‘satisfactory‘.

But things can change dramatically. Schools can be catapulted from ‘excellent’ at one inspection to ‘failing’ at the next and vice versa. Whatever the report, number crunching, statistics on passes suggest, all schools fail our children when they are jumping through OFSTED’s hoops rather than focusing on the children in their care.

Failure at an inspection is demoralising to all in the school. Staff and students alike are judged wanting. Teachers in this situation can begin to see what being labelled ‘failure’ does to their motivation to work and may glimpse what such labels do to their students. In many ways, OFSTED’s relationship with schools resembles the school’s relationship with students.

OFSTEDs targets drive the grade inflation and diploma disease that is harming the fabric of our society. The push for test results makes content irrelevant. Gaining qualifications, passing tests becomes valued over developing skills, knowledge, competence and confidence. Achievement becomes seen in terms of getting the grades.

But OFSTED is not immune to being used itself for political purposes. Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, claims inspections were made tougher so more schools would fail, and so qualified for academy status to satisfy the policy of expanding the semi-independent sector. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/Mar/27/children.ofsted)

Ofsted’s own targets on inspections mean they rush inspections to tick boxes in increasingly superficial ways. On Rado 4 PM programme on 5th August 2008 reports were presented of nursery inspections where Ofsted failed to notice significant breaches e.g. people with no CRB or reference checks looking after children.
94. ofsted p3
Wherever there are complaints about the quality of children’s education, it seems to be responded to with calls for higher standards to be overseen by OFSTED and expansion of its role and power, rather than seeing that it is one source of the problem. Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of School Masters and Union of Women teachers (NASUWT) said that changes “tinkered with an already flawed and punitive system and would not improve children’s education”. (Guardian 20/5/08 p8 “, one in five in 11-year-olds failed to make grade on the 3R’s warns Ofsted” Anthea Lipsett)

Commenting in the same article on more frequent inspections for ‘satisfactory’ or ‘failing’ schools, John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of school and college leaders said “It is the equivalent of weighing the pig more often without attempting to fatten it.”

Children aren’t allowed to just play any more. Their activity has to fit into some narrow tick box category of ‘educational’. OFSTED ensures that this type of ‘education’ takes place at nurseries, childminders, schools of all kinds, as well as ‘ensuring standards’ at teacher training establishments and local authorities. The only way children can escape this monster of pedagogic dogma is to be home-educated. And this may change. Allowing young children and babies to develop at their own rate becomes seen as negligence. Directing their activities until they are unable to direct their own becomes the prescribed assumed good. This now starts at younger and younger ages, and it is, literally, driving and children mad.
94. ofsted p4

93. School reports.

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93. School reports
Reports…. signal approval or… mark exactly down to a single percentage point how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. (JTG 7 lessons)

I have copies of my childhood reports. In primary school I was ‘well-behaved’ (compliant) and coped well with academic work, getting those grades that are supposed to tell you that you are all right. However, there is always a place on them for comments from the class teacher and the head teacher. One (from about age 7) said that I was “an untidy child with a tendency to sulk“. My adult self is appalled that the institution judged me in such a way. What right have they to criticise my appearance and character!? (I say in a sulk)

These documents put fear into the hearts of children. It is a communication, often from a teacher to parent without the approval or often knowledge of the child, where judgements and criticisms are made of their work, their attitudes, their character, their prospects and their worth.

Reports and grades may be the only window parents have into what goes on in school. (Kohn) There is an assumption that they are a true reflection of a child’s worth and that time, effort and great care goes into their production. As JTG points out: “some people might be surprised how little time and reflection goes into making up these mathematical records, the cumulative weight of objective-seeming documents”. (JTG 7 Lessons p4) On the basis of these numbers, children arrive at decisions about themselves and their futures even though they are the “casual judgements of strangers”. (JTG)

By defining success in academic terms, the non-academic automatically become failures. What report-cards, grades and tests tell children is that they cannot trust themselves or their parents but need to rely on the evaluation of certified officials. (JTG)

Reports are often full of euphemisms. In my fifth year I had a P.E. report saying that my attitude to the subject had improved. I had stopped going. Now there are computer programs to help report writing, with meaningless stock phrases to be inserted without thought.

There are plans for daily updated computer-based reports that parents can access (well, unless they are parents without computers). This will increase the workload of teachers while not providing any meaningful information. By 2010, all secondary schools in England will have real-time reporting on work and behaviour. This will involve sending e-mail reports to parents. Of course this will be a secure online system. (haha). All primary schools will follow by 2012. This is described by the Professional Association of Teachers as “A Big-Brother style monitoring of everything a child does in school, replacing personal contact with cold electronic data”. (http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/1hi/education/7176741.stm from 9/1/08 “School reports going electronic”) This increases the surveillance and intrusion into the privacy of children’s lives. (see school invades privacy)

93. school reports p2

92. Diploma disease.

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92. Diploma disease

The testing and qualification function of schooling becomes ever more important, to the detriment of the teaching and learning function. R Dore

In 1976 R.Dore looked at education in a number of countries and coined the phrase “diploma disease”. He pointed out that if we increase the number of people with qualifications while there is no increase in desirable jobs requiring qualifications this leads to higher and higher requirements. This makes the content of education less important. In this scenario, common the world over, education becomes “ritualistic, tedious, suffused with anxiety and boredom, destructive of curiosity and imagination”. (Dore in Childhoods in Context p149) He describes going to school for these purposes as anti-educational, pointless, wasteful and damaging.
This process is most detrimental in Third World countries , where the myth that education improves people is sold in the drive for development. The later in world history that a country’s development drive starts, the more deeply entrenched and more disastrous the consequences. It acts to increase the gap between rich and poor and leads to an increase in the educated unemployed. (Shugurensky)
We are seeing this more and more in Britain with 50% of young people going on to higher education (with huge debts) and no increase in jobs that used to require a degree. Now you need a degree, or even a Masters or a PhD for jobs that years ago could be entered at 16 with a reasonable crop of ‘O’ levels. The level of capability required for these jobs hasn’t increased, merely the new entry requirements. ‘A’ levels are now the standard school leaving qualification, though they are not preparing students for university, (MEN 22/1/08) or for jobs or for life.

I saw a sign in Morrison’s supermarket for management training. It required 15 months on the job training for post-graduates. After 15 years of schooling, 3 or 4 years studying for a degree and maybe a post-graduate course, you still need 15 months training in retail. Years ago, someone with ‘O’ levels, reasonably bright would have started at 16, gained real retail experience and could progress from there. In fact, my mother began working in Debenham’s, at age 40 with no qualifications and progressed to departmental manager in a few years over 40 years ago. She had the personality, responsibility and ability to learn quickly, to manage people humanely and was greatly respected for her hard work and competence. But now, well, you need those bits of paper, and bigger and bigger bits of paper, to even get your foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, irrespective of your abilities, qualities or personality.

This ‘qualification escalation’-the requirement for higher and higher levels of education in order to stay competitive in the work environment has had detrimental outcomes, which have “negatively impacted upon the employability status of individuals, the social fabric of various countries and the overall health and well-being of mankind”. (http://www.oise.Toronto.ca/research/edu20/moments/1976dore.html article by Shugurensky D in selected moments of the 20th century: the history of education Oise)

Dore talks about different kinds of learning: learning-for-its-own-sake, and learning-to-do-a-job, arguing that these involve socialisation in a non-self interested moral culture. But learning-to-get-a-job, to gain a passport into a job, embeds people in total self-interest in a rigged competition, where beating others becomes the main goal. (Dore xiv) “The effects of schooling, the way it alters a man’s capacity and will to do things, depends not only on what he learns or the way he learns it, but also why he learns it” (Dore p8)

He goes on to explore different purposes of learning in his ‘taxonomy of educational purposes’ or the reasons why one ought to learn:
1.) To acquire knowledge and skills as ends in themselves
1a) because the process of mastery gives pleasure. (END in ITSELF LEARNING)
1b)because it is a moral duty (to God, to society, to one-self) to develop one’s full capacity. (DUTY LEARNING)

2) in order to be able to use the knowledge:
2a) because the open ended use of acquired skills is a pleasurable goal in itself. (PLEASURABLE USE LEARNING)
2b) instrumentally, in order to win power over others, gain income from others or to win respect from others by skilful performance in the use of skills learned. (SELF-REGARDING ACHIEVEMENT LEARNING)
2bi) by virtue of qualifications gained through tested learning, and the weight the institution and society place on those qualifications. (SELF-REGARDING QUALIFICATION-SEEKING LEARNING)
2c) instrumentally, in order to make one’s community or one’s nation a better place. (SOCIETY-REGARDING ACHIEVEMENT LEARNING)

Dore argues that the biggest problem with schooling is its focus on qualifications, leading to a misallocation of social resources and degradation of teaching and learning.
This happens due to bureaucratisation of recruitment, where the selection for jobs is done by educational attainment. This is coupled to ‘qualification escalation’ (a steady rise in qualifications required for any job) and ‘qualification inflation’ (a steady fall in the job-getting value of any qualification). The result of these factors acting together leads to people staying in school longer than they can possibly personally benefit from.
92. diploma disease p2
This has led to a shift from a focus on personal aptitude for any job to a reliance on quantitative measurable educational achievement. The exam-passer gets the job, not to the person best able to do it. But the value of any qualification depends on how many people have it. Qualifications become a screening device, they are seen as ‘ability filtering devices’ but they are also ‘prestige conferring devices’ (Dore)
All these factors act together to devalue learning and qualifications in terms of what they really mean but also drives the desire for them: “The paradox of the situation is that the worse the educated unemployed situation gets and the more useless educational certificates become, the stronger grows the pressure for an expansion of educational facilities”. (Dore p4)

By producing qualification oriented people, we create those lacking imagination, creativity, honesty, curiosity, and the desire to do a good job for its own sake. (Dore p12) By creating self-regarding individuals who are only concerned with their own success and their own social advancement, all social goals become ignored. (Dore p12)

There is also a problem with all learning and training being done by age 22 before people have any work experience, and with no obligation for the next 40 years to learn all the exploding knowledge in any field. (Dore p25)

The impact on social cohesion and on personal integrity of creating masses of self-seeking individuals trying to outdo each other was explored in the section on competition. It needs emphasising here how qualifications feed that and how damaging that can be in all societies.

92. diploma disease p3

91. Qualifications do not represent competence.

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91. Qualifications do not represent competence
A diploma often has no relation to any useful skill or job.
Illich

Qualifications, exams and tests give the appearance of producing capable people. When people are valued according to meaningless bits of paper, rather than for their real qualities, skills and usable knowledge, we devalue those skills and mislead everyone.

Exams and essays are educational constructs seldom replicated in the real world. I never had to sit an exam in any job I’ve done. I am more likely to have had to write lists, results tables, and comments on essays, and memos than a perfectly constructed argument with beginning, end and references. (current project excepted) When education is to acquire qualifications, irrespective of the content of the knowledge acquired or whether it is retained beyond the test, it becomes merely a measurement of compliance.

On BBC Radio 4 news (21/8/06) businesses claimed that even those with good GCSEs needed remedial teaching in numeracy and literacy. Learning on the job and unlearning on the job become standard. Even when we are told that schools are being shaped by the needs of industry and business, exams passed do not represent competence in anything apart from passing exams.

The certification of practical skills (e.g. cookery, performing arts, dance) seem to involve layering academic busywork on top, to improve ‘credibility so that the actual skills of cooking, etc becomes secondary.

90. Exams cause stress and distress.

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90. Exams cause stress and distress
Anxiety at constant testing, fear of failure, punishment and disgrace, severely reduces the ability both to perceive and remember. Holt HCL p140

The anxiety, stress and distress that testing introduces into our children’s lives is often underestimated. Because they all have to do it, the processes are seen as ‘normal‘. It is ‘normal’ to be nervous. It is ‘normal’ to be stressed. It is ‘normal’ to be fearful. It is ‘normal’ to be distressed to the point of paralysis. When self-worth, future prospects and the drive to fulfil expectations (parents, teachers, schools) combine, the pressure this puts children under is anything but ‘normal’.

“Tested to Destruction” (a report cited in Harber p113) tells us that the pressure starts in infancy and increases as children go through school. More than one third of seven-year-olds suffer stress over national tests. By age 11, two thirds show signs of stress at national tests. “20% are so busy revising; they have no time to play with their friends” (p117)

Sustained stress has many forms and many impacts, from immune depletion, resulting in frequent infections, to constant agitation, sleeplessness and eating disorders. (Harber C p113) Even 30 years ago I had friends who were put onto tranquillisers in the run-up to O-levels at age 16. I know of individuals who’ve had anorexia sparked by exam anxiety or who have had major breakdowns approaching exams.

The stress of constant testing damages the physical and emotional well-being of our children and robs them of their childhood.

89. Exams damage self-esteem.

2009-08-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

89. Exams damage self-esteem
Every un-asked for test is, above all else, a statement of no confidence in the learner. Holt HCL p143

Throughout a school career children will have repeated votes of no confidence in their ability to learn and to self assess, and this leads to “provisional self-esteem“. (JTG 7 lessons) By being constantly evaluated and judged, our children come to depend on expert opinions and exams for a measure of their worth. (JTG, Harber)

When our self-worth is given a number or a letter by a stranger, it hampers our ability to self-assess in a positive way. When we are told constantly that we are useless, we come to believe it. We can’t be who we are; we become who they tell us to be. Even ‘successes’ have their self-image damaged by the judgement and selection process. I have met many postgraduate students, who, having attained outstanding marks to degree level and beyond, fear they are frauds, and that at some point they will be found out. They have lost the ability to realistically and positively consider their own worth as human beings, in spite of the high numbers they have attached to them. (First class honours degrees, this prize, that prize). It is the act of testing itself that damages confidence and self-esteem. (Holt HCL p143)

Neuro-linguistic programming provides an interesting model for looking at this. Neurological levels of environment, behaviour, capability, values and beliefs, identity, and spirituality all play a part. In the environment of an exam, certain behaviour is used to define and limit capability and make assumptions about abilities. However, the importance attached to grades and marks, their value and beliefs about them, impact on children’s sense of identity, at the level of who they are and influences how they come to see themselves. They come to see themselves as failures, potential failures or frauds who seem to have succeeded but will soon be found out. None of those are particularly comfortable states to be in. They are certainly not resourceful states that enable children to become all they can be.

88. Exams are unfair.

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88. Exams are unfair

There are many ways that exams are unfair: they don’t reflect true abilities; they penalise those whose performance is limited, not by lack of knowledge but by anxiety, hay fever, and knowing more than the syllabus or perceiving ambiguities. Luck also plays a part. What comes up, whether it’s the bit you remember, whether you are feeling well on the day, the time of day and your body clock, whatever else is going on in your life, how anxious exams make you, how much pressure you are under to perform all affect how well you do, how well you perform. And it is just that, a performance not a true measure of your knowledge, understanding or worth.

I recall exams when the questions were a dream, and I could easily remember and others where they precisely hit the gaps in my remembering. I remember ones where I easily transferred facts to paper. In all, I struggled with writing quickly and legibly (It was one or the other). In all, an absence of time to contemplate, to synthesise ideas, to reflect, to consider, meant all real learning opportunities were lost. Questions, real meaningful questions, can be the start of genuine meaningful learning. But “guess what I’m thinking” questions, narrow the mind and limit the ability to think for yourself.

If you know too much, you can’t give the correct answer. If you perceive ambiguities and haven’t simply memorised the correct form, the accepted terms, only what they told you in class and not what you learned beyond it, then you’re likely to get it wrong. It’s a game not a search for the truth. A point-scoring exercise, not a measure of knowledge, ability or aptitude. Some are good at playing the game, others less so. Some with endless curiosity, but who fear judgement, fail and lose the game. Others know they are defeated before they start, because they are already labelled a ‘failure’ by the system. “Children give ‘wrong’ answers because they are not sure, or are offended by the question or fear a trap has been set for them.“ (Holt HCL p143)

At exam time, there is a general increase in educational pressure to match a rise in environmental temperature. It’s a test of stamina, of endurance, the ability to perform under pressure. It is not an effective test of what has been learned. Those with calm personalities, who don’t suffer hay-fever and can write quickly and legibly, are at an advantage. Those who need time to think, who create in less stressful situations and whose expertise lies outside the narrow curriculum, will fare less well, as will those who struggle to get their ideas into legible words on paper quickly enough.
The idea that children can be separated into ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ on the basis of a couple of hours in a hot sweaty exam room is quite shocking. Exams can never be an accurate measure of knowledge and understanding, let alone a measure of an individual’s ability and worth. Yet they are given immense significance in our culture. To fail is to be consigned to the scrap-heap, to be denied status or the chance of a ‘decent’ job. (Why aren’t all jobs decent?) The testing in school starts at age 4 when a subjective, and often inaccurate, baseline assessment is done to see what little Johnny or little Hannah know already so the school can claim credit when they show that the numbers increase with time. With the Early Years Foundation Stage measurements now starts at age 3.

When formulating ideas into writing, I find that it is not a linear process, that the introduction is the last thing I write, as it is only when I have a final shape that I can introduce it. Ideas occur in the process and it is exciting and fulfilling. In exam situations students are mostly required to produce memorised answers in a formulaic, ventriloquised form. In fact, most assessment requires it. The assessor has a set marking scheme, with points for this and points for that. Linear thinking is straitjacketed, lacks depth and lateral connection. It lacks synthesis of different ideas. This is the kind of thinking that exams test, and it puts off and limits brighter students able to use their brains more effectively.

Another unfairness with exams occurs when exams have different levels as a teacher, based on their prejudices and previous performances, can limit possible outcomes in a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know of two people who failed significant exams within weeks of significant bereavements. The record is written forever as failure. It is only those who can totally turn off from whatever else is happening in their lives who can survive the exam system.88 exams unfair p2

2009-08-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

87. Exams shape, limit and dumb down textbooks

Authors of textbooks claim that they’re being lent on to write more simplistic texts to win the multi-million pound contracts. They are told to write books to encourage “parrot learning”: to get pupils through exams. (Polly Curtis “Schoolbooks Dumbed down for Exams, authors claim” Guardian 1/12/07 p15) Textbooks are becoming increasingly narrow. “The textbooks that are being used are being reduced to answer books for the exams. There is no opportunity for children to read beyond the test.” (Elizabeth Haylett of the Society of authors in the same article)

An author of a science text-book was told to write a factually incorrect answer, because the error had been made in the curriculum and the book had to match. (same article)

The same people end up writing the exam and the textbooks, in contravention of the code of practice. Sue Palmer, author of “Toxic Childhood“, described it as ‘a cartel’ and pointed out that the long-term effect is to produce a tick list of learning. (the same article)

The rigid linking of textbooks to limited exams takes learning out of any real context. It becomes a game of trivial pursuits with right/wrong answers, errors, inaccuracies, out of context learning and valuing only the ability to digest and regurgitate snippets on command. It is not just textbooks and other educational resources that are dumbed down by exams; it is our children too.

86.Exams hamper real learning.

2009-08-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

86. Exams hamper real learning
Our constant checking up on children’s learning so often prevents and destroys learning, and even in time, most of the capacity to learn. Holt HCL p140)

Exams drive a tick box culture, where one prefixed view of the world is valued, where thinking outside the box is not only discouraged but actively punished with a label of failure. When we are told that standards are improving, because exam results are getting higher we need to look at the effect of teaching to the test.

Teaching to the test becomes inevitable when teachers and schools are assessed on public league tables, which affect popularity, pupil numbers and funding. Teacher salaries can also depend on ‘outcomes‘, as measured by test results, not by the emergence of whole, thinking, feeling humans at the end of 11 years compulsion.

Teaching to the test hampers real learning and adversely affects the ability to think about the world. With the form of exams and the type of teaching it induces, students forget real-life uses of knowledge and concentrate on swotting for exams. (DD Dore) Coaching in exam technique is favoured over grasping a body of knowledge. Grade inflation has resulted, as teachers become better at teaching how to pass tests rather than imparting any meaningful knowledge that may be applicable in other situations or any transferable skills.
This is beautifully portrayed in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” which demonstrates wonderfully how schools get it wrong. When Prof Umbridge takes over the ‘defence against the dark arts’ post she gives students a simplified text containing no ‘real’ magic and says it will get them a good grade in the exams, which she considers more important than being able to protect themselves in the real world. (HPaOOP JK Rowling) This is precisely what happens in school. Exams limit what is to be learned. If it is not on the exam, or the test, then you don’t need to learn it. This was illustrated in an edition of radio four’s “The learning curve” (1/10/07) when a young person who had been home educated went on to college and remarked that they were constantly being told what they didn’t have to know i.e. “you don’t have to know that as it won’t be on the exam”.

The relentlessness of testing is a destructive force in education. In “Tested to Destruction” Jenni Russell states that “Education has become a straitjacket in which an impoverished curriculum and relentless testing are turning children away from learning.” (Guardian 21/04/03) Constant testing also drives children away from the material being studied and into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking that they know what they don’t really know. (Holt HCL p140) In 2008, Andy Ballard, the new head of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, spoke out about the overly tough testing that is boring pupils and causing them to misbehave: “Rigorous tests which fulfil no useful function are taking the fun out of learning and contribute to bad behaviour…. from the moment they walk into pre-school until after A-levels children are tested to death.” (Metro News 1/9/08 “children tested to death” p4)

The learning that is done for tests and exams isn’t retained in the long term. It creates “Educational bulimics who stuff it in quickly beforehand and regurgitate it at the right time to clear a space for the next binge. “(NLP Workbook p24)

In preparation for exams, the already impoverished curriculum (impoverished of enjoyment and connection) further contracts to eliminate non-exam subjects altogether. The subjects that might bring some relief to the tedium (PE, art, music) are dropped to drill pupils for exams. (Telegraph 7/8/07) The activities that may bring meaning to children’s lives are devalued as they are not on the test.

Professor Bill Boyle of Manchester University found that 55% of teaching time is spent on English and Maths leaving little time for other subjects to be crammed in. He claimed that it also leads to rigid and repetitive lessons so that boxes can be ticked.(M.E.N. 11/02/09 “Teachers call for Sats to be scrapped” Yakub Qureshi

Examinations assure that a very low and base sort of learning will be achieved. Learning involves a process of kids turning their hunches into knowledge. Testing interferes with this process. Children will not be able to test their hunches against experience in a secure environment to enable real learning to take place. (Holt HCL p140)

86. hamper learning p2

85. Socially sorting our children.

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85. Socially sorting our children
The chief role to promote learning is compromised when educational institutions act as personnel selection agents for society. Milton et al in Kohn PBR p202

The testing and exam regime in school is a social sorting mechanism shot through with bias and prejudice. (See also: Status Quo, inequality, don’t send them if you are poor) Exams define what a society considers to be core competences of its citizens. (DD Dore)
Certification is a form of market manipulation. (Illich) It aims to lock children into a rigid position in society, convince them it is based on their worth and that they do not deserve better. Grades, tests and exams enable rating and sorting of our children “to categorise them so rigidly that they rarely escape”. (Silberman in Kohn PBR p201). Success is defined academically. Other positive characteristics of a child become irrelevant.

The class, race and gender bias in schools, grading and exams is layered on top of teacher prejudices. Together they act to label difference as inferior according to a white, male, middle-class ideal. The seeming objectivity of tests disguises the prejudice and discrimination at the heart of schooling to know your place. The qualification system maintains and legitimises these class differences. (Collins in DD Dore)

Parents don’t seem to mind if their kids are sorted-middle class parents have their kids sorted near the top so they are OK with it; parents from other social groups will have had their own self-esteem so damaged by their own schooling they may be unable to question their own children being labelled as failures.

Qualifications, of course, are for those who will work for others. The wealthy don’t need them as they work for themselves, which is why they are wealthy, or do not need to work at all. (Gill Kilner blog)

Criticism of the sorting mechanism focus on how well we are sorting: are students getting put in the right pile? Are there too many in the excellent pile? But: “The problem is not that we are sorting students badly. It is that we spend so much time sorting them at all.” (Kohn PBR p202) When a token poor person does well, or a token Black person does well it is held up as evidence of fairness. That the majority of poorer pupils do exceptionally badly can then be attributed to individual failings. This acts to undermine individuals and whole communities, so reducing the chance that they will be able to stand up for their right to a meaningful education untainted by injustice.

84. What are tests for?

2009-08-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

84. What are tests for?
A much more important and indeed essential social function of Schools is ranking-that is grading and labelling, putting children into pecking orders, dividing them into winners and losers.
Holt IOE p157

Holt points out that the only legitimate use of tests is to find out where the student is so the teacher may better order his or her tasks. (Holt IOE p80) But that is not how they are used in school. Tests in school and not done to find out what you know but to find out what you don’t know. This is not done to help the students to discover gaps in their knowledge but so that they can be told whether they are better or worse than other students. (Holt IOE)

The main purpose of testing is political control of schools through ‘accountability‘. (Harber p70), and also to control children, society’s future adults. The exam system is a way of forcing children to work through fear of failure, and the social consequences of that, without it seeming as if anyone is responsible. Exams are just part of the environment that the child is powerless to do anything about except try to pass them. (GBR)

Testing encourages acceptance of rankings, and serves a political purpose of screening and selection to maintain scarcity. (Harber C p70) This makes social engineering and inequality of access to comfortable positions in society seem to be objective and on the basis of ‘merit’. In this way, tests enables schools and governments to socially sort our children and pretend it is due to the intrinsic worth of the child.
By “constantly measuring, categorising, ordering and regulating …control becomes accepted by the majority as normal and natural. (Harber C p65)

83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense.

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83. Standards, targets, league tables and other number nonsense.
The evidence strongly suggests that tighter standards, additional testing, tougher grading or more incentives will do more harm than good.
Kohn PBR p151

It is a good job for the government that our schools fail to equip people with the ability to think critically and promote a fear of numbers to stop us questioning their ludicrous pronouncements on standards and targets. These numbers our children are supposed to achieve are defined and controlled by the establishment and are made to seem objective. (GBR) “Accountability” is bandied about, and it is simply accounting, counting. We need to make schools accountable to the children whose lives they blight.

The idea that standards equals quality of education, and the myth that measurable targets obtained indicate that some worthwhile learning has taken place, need questioning. One purpose of targets and standards is to give the illusion that quality of education is improving when the opposite is the fact the case or to disguise the fact that quality is diminishing by any criteria that are not being measured.

Targets can produce unintended behaviours, leading to teachers having to prove themselves and to a climate of distrust of staff. They damage motivation and squeeze out innovation. Reaching a target leads to the bar being raised.

Teachers have superficially straightforward targets handed to them by the authorities. They must get 85% of their students to the required stage in SATs exams and their students must attain measurable progress. (How to spoil the pleasure of learning: Tessa Livingstone: Education Guardian p6 22/04/08)

Schools have targets too. By 2012, they must ensure that 30% of pupils reach the GCSEs benchmark. At present, one in 10 pupils sit fewer than five GCSEs (http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/I/hi/education/7348088.stm on 15/4/08) How are they to do that? It will only happen by dumbing down the tests.

The rating and ranking of teachers and schools all hang on the performance of pupils in tests and assessments. The obsession with targets, standards and accountability has lead to an escalation of testing “Not for the diagnostic benefit of learners, but so that schools, education authorities, governments, countries, even individual teachers can be measured, ranked and judged to provide market information and therefore market ‘choice’ to parents”. (Harber C p111) The pupils, their needs, their true worth are lost as they are redefined as number generation units.

In law parents must ensure their child receives a suitable education, according to their age, ability and aptitude and any special needs they have, at school or otherwise. Schools focus exclusively on the ‘age’ part of suitable education. All the targets are age-based and ignore ability and aptitude. Special needs become created when children fail to attain meaningless targets.

Age dominates what is delivered, and what is expected. Setting targets such as ‘all children must be reading by age 6’ ignores individual differences. In many European countries, literacy levels are higher and structured learning does not start until age 6 or seven. Here, we get them to try to read from each three. I know of children who learned to read at age 3, and others who learned to read at age 12 and all steps in between who are all ‘normal‘. A friend’s child, assessed as being in the top 3% of his age group at school didn’t read until he was eight. Einstein didn’t read until he was nine.

Such pronouncements on targets are like saying all children must be walking by 10 months. Will those who don’t until age 18 months be subject to labelling, intrusive examinations and special teaching? How about all children must be talking in sentences by 18 months, with compulsory speech therapy for those that aren’t? Those ideas are no more ludicrous than the targets set down in our schools.

The thing that targets do most acutely is create failures. (see they learn to fail). When standards, pronouncement from idiots on high, are not reached, pupils, teachers and schools are said to have failed. What happens to failing children? Labelling with special educational needs can get the school off the hook. ‘Extra help’ can provide some individual attention to the child lost in a mass of 30. But when it comes with a label of ‘thick’ it can cause more harm than good.

In 2007, BBC News online (30/8/07) announced that six year olds with severe literacy difficulties would get extra daily help with reading. (www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6970206.stm) . The fact that we can label a six-year-old as having severe literacy difficulties beggars belief. Leave them alone! Let them learn to read when they are ready! They are small children, who should be playing outside and in sand pits and dressing up as Batman and enjoying having stories read to them and making noise and running about and skipping and laughing and enjoying their bodies and building friendships and learning to play co-operatively and all or none of those things as they choose. By forcing them to do what they are not ready to do and that they should have no duty to be ready to do we create great disaffection, destroy self-esteem and blight children’s lives.
83. targets p2
On 1 September 2008 England introduced the Early Years Foundation Stage, with goals for 3 to 5-year-olds. (they say they are not targets, but as Ofsted are involved it is simply a name change) .On that day Radio four Woman’s Hour ran a feature on the situation in Sweden, where formal learning starts at age 6. They reported from a Swedish preschool. The attitude to children was markedly different from ours: children play all day, make choices “in order to understand democracy”. They are there to have a good time in a ‘here and now’ approach. Talking and what they say is seen as important. There are no targets or tests, no measuring according to ‘norms‘. The feature points out that the danger with targets and testing at a young age labels later learners as failures, but also, when those that meet targets are ignored to focus on others to get them to the level, this holds back many so all can reach the targets. In Sweden, childhood is a stage with a value of itself. Here, we focus on making children into proto-adults. (Katie Whittaker on radio four woman’s hour 1/9/08)

The Early Years Foundation Stage provides a set of goals to be reached by the September after age 5. From age 3, there is a rigid framework of what is to be taught (not what is to be learned) and arrangements for assessments. Gathering evidence (ticking boxes) becomes more important than interacting with children, allowing them to develop in their own way, and their own time. Being forced to jump through hoops set down from on high will pigeonhole them from earlier and earlier ages. (See Too much too young)

The need for children to read and write early is the institution’s need to present work in written form and assess it in written form because teachers do not have the time, energy, and sometimes the will, to connect with each child in their charge in a way that suits the child.

We are told that schools will be assessed on ‘value added’, by comparing a meaningless number assigned at an early stage, with a bigger number given now. Schools will take credit for any increase. This assumes that children don’t and can’t develop and improve their skills, knowledge and ability without the intervention of a school. Competence increases with age. It’s what growing up is about. By not comparing with an ‘unschooled’ group schools rob our children of a belief in their own ability to grow.

When middle-class parents send their kids to Kumon maths and extra tuition to increase their exam results the school takes the credit.
83. targets p3
Tessa Livingstone outlined one teacher’s experience of an Ofsted inspection: “You have to work out what level each kid has reached in different subjects for OFSTED but we didn’t have time. So we stayed up all night and made them up. One new teacher did them honestly, but some of the kids hadn’t progressed. So the Head teacher bumped them up anyway- it seems they must go up.” (Teacher quoted in Tessa Livingstone “. “How to spoil the pleasure of learning” education Guardian p6 22/4/08)
Prof Jim Taylor, of Lancaster University management school, argues that school league tables are “inherently misleading and potentially harmful”. He claims that raw exam scores only tell us about the performance of pupils, and virtually nothing about the performance of schools. They are potentially harmful as schools with low GCSE results may be ‘performing’ well, but suffer from a selection bias in intake, and that ‘value added’ is also a product of socio-economic background. (17/1/06: Are the new school league tables harmful? Jim Taylor http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/news/taylortables)

When the targets become more important than children, their needs and humanity are compromised. Katerina Tomasevki (Special Rapporteur on Education for the UN Commission on Children’s Rights) said she believed that the British government was “in technical breach of the United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights, by imposing a targets and testing regime that ignores their needs”. (cited in Harber)

Targets, more than anything else, promote dishonesty and cheating by schools and teachers, from adjusting answers to excluding those likely to fail. (see schools promote dishonesty).

The numbers are meaningless, a distraction but they are not harmless. Increasing failure and disaffection, penalising teachers and schools for children not being ready to attain for the sake of others, the pressure on all in the system needs to be seen in the context of: who suffers most? The children denied rights and needs because some politician has invented a new target to try to persuade parents that schools are achieving something that they most patently are not.
83. targets p4

82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless

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82. Marks are subjective, inaccurate and meaningless
A grade can be regarded as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgement by a biased judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material. Dressel in Kohn PBR p202

There is a false assumption that grades and marks have some sort of objectivity, some validity separate from the bias and prejudice of the person marking. Assessment is highly subjective. (Broadfoot in Harber C) The same teacher can give different marks at different times for the same piece of work and different teachers will demonstrate even larger differences. (Kohn PBR) A grade is as much a product of the teacher’s ability, characteristics and behaviour as of the student’s. (TAASA)

Reality is forced to conform to subjective categories forced upon it. If a teacher says you have ‘failed’ then you are branded a failure and that label will stick. It reminds me of Douglas Adams’ Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy stories. In the second book the offices of the Guide claimed that the book was definitive and if there were any differences between the Guide’s claims and reality, then it was reality that was at fault. (Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

When marking a pile of scripts, teachers and assessors will become bored, will find the process tedious and exhaustion (and sometimes despair) will creep in. This adds to the errors that are produced, as well as subjective differences between teachers and between teachers and reality.

I became aware of the errors held up as fact, when my son had a baseline assessment done in his reception class. On just one sheet of paper, his teacher had to colour in bars on three charts, transcribe the bar lengths into numbers and add the three numbers together. Even assuming the bar lengths had some meaning and accuracy (which I very much doubt) there are two transcribing errors, and she adds up three numbers incorrectly. (each number is five or less)

When it comes to national tests, similar disturbing inaccuracies appear. In an article in the Guardian (6/11/07: “Education Policy Fails test for 7up“. Ashley Seager) Lord Adonis claimed that test results for a third of primary students are wrong. This statement was made following a Cambridge University review of primary education in which it was claimed that SATS results for seven and 11-year-olds are unreliable. (Guardian 2/11/07). The report showed that short papers with questions that have a narrow range of possible answers mean that pupils’ skills are not rigorously tested. This leaves a large margin for error. The increase in SATS test results was “A reflection of schools getting better at teaching pupils to take tests”.

In July 2008 (17/7/08 BBC radio 4 pm news), marking irregularities were exposed in SATS tests for 11 and 14-year-olds. In August 2008 the company responsible for marking tests was sacked following delays, lost scripts and marking irregularities. In October 2008 SATS tests for 14-year-olds were to be dropped. These SATS are not used in league tables so are not of use to schools. They were never of use to kids.

Looking at key stage tests indicates that ambiguities hamper students getting it right. This makes teaching to the test more important than learning and understanding a body of knowledge. I looked at Key stage two science SATs tests and found I didn’t know what the questions wanted. It was unclear what was required. (This was science. I have been a scientist, have a science degree, have taught science, and have worked in medical research for nine years). I didn’t understand the questions. Unclear questions, full of ambiguities, indicated that the tests were more about finding out what answer is required than actually understanding the concepts or experiments outlined. The tests contain snippets of experiments, not to actually be carried out but to be interpreted, to say what might be expected to happen. All this is aimed at getting the mysterious tick or damning cross.

Concern that tests and exams don’t reflect true ability has two sides to it. The first is that many are unable to demonstrate what they can do and do know, because of the format, stress and prejudices of the tests and marking. The other side is that they can indicate abilities and knowledge that the students don’t actually possess. In August 2008, 9/10 secondary school teachers said they believed that the tests for 11-year-olds do not reflect their true abilities, and that: “A notable proportion” pass key stage two tests because of coaching for tests. (MEN 5/8/08 “Exams fail to reflect the true abilities of pupils”)

Anastasia de Waal of the think-tank CIVITAS said that SATs have become little more than vanity testing-”Proof for the government of increasing standards in primary schools”. Secondary schools don’t agree that standards are improving and believe that the grades are inflated so that two thirds of secondary schools are retesting kids on entry. (MEN article above 5/8/08)
So why are we doing it? Testing our children to destruction when the marks have so little validity? Well, it probably has something to do with targets….
82. Marks subjective p2

(try to find a news Item from BBC radio four news in 2008 August??aabout appeals for incorrect SATs and GCSEs. on the programme they demonstrated that an Asian girl’s script was of a higher quality than that of a boy with an English surname, who got a higher mark)

81. Some problems with grades

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81. Some problems with grades
From today she would begin to fear the future… every test brought with it the possibility of failure… there was no escape and no end. William Nicholson The Wind Singer

In school children receive grades and mark for class-work, homework, on tests, exams and quizzes. Assignment of a value, a number or letter is universal. Grades are justified by the assumption that they make students perform better for fear of receiving a bad grade or in hope of receiving a good grade. (Kohn PBR), Grades are used to sort children according to their performance, which provides a service to colleges and employees. They are assumed to provide useful feedback to students about how they are doing and where they need improvement. (Kohn PBR), but as Kohn points out these are fatally flawed arguments. Grades undermine intrinsic motivation and are a powerful de-motivator. The anxiety they produce hampers both learning and performance. (Kohn PBR p200) Instead of letting students know how they are doing grades become an end in themselves and students rely on them more and more as they get older. (Kohn PBR)

One key assumption about grades and assessment is that the results can be interpreted in terms of what was intended to be assessed. (P Murphy) Difference in performance is assumed to be due to knowledge and understanding of the material being assessed, rather than being related to different experiences both inside and outside of school. As Murphy tells us: all pupils who fail to give the answer are assumed not have the knowledge being assessed. (Murphy)

Kohn outlines some of the problems with grading our children and their output: grades dilute the pleasure of successfully completing a task; they encourage cheating; they reduce control over our fate; they strain the relationship between teacher and student and can induce blind conformity. (Kohn PBR p156)

Students who are motivated by grades or other rewards typically don’t learn as well, think as deeply, care as much about what they are doing or choose to challenge themselves to the same extent as students who are not grade oriented. (Kohn PBR)

Students can become totally conditioned to work for a grade, rather than the knowledge that grade was supposed to represent. (Pirsig) Asking children questions about things they are only just beginning to learn “is like sitting in a chair which has only just been glued. The structure collapses.” (Holt HCL p141) It is like pulling up plants to see if they are growing. (Holt)

Grades act to hide bad teaching and give the illusion that learning is taking place: “grades really cover up the failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores of an irrelevant test and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not.“ (Pirsig)

Most public criticism of grades relates to how well we are dividing up our children-whether we are putting them into the correct categories of ‘pass’ or ‘fail‘. Arguments rage around grade inflation-too many put into the ‘excellent’ pile. Their argument is that the categories are too rigid, the criteria too subjective or the tests too superficial. (Kohn). There is less questioning of the whole system of numbering and labelling our children for life.

Tessa Livingstone wrote in the Guardian about her daughter’s experience:

A few years ago, my daughter, then a bright seven-year-old, came back from school, wielding a list of spellings. They were difficult words, so she asked for help. But she was insistent that she did not want to learn any definitions, she only wanted to learn the correct spellings. Sure enough, the next day she got a gold star and a few days later she forgot all about the words without ever having understood them.
Zoe was doing what pretty much everybody does when given a target with an incentive attached. Like water running down a hill, we take the easiest route to success, especially if failure is punished…..If Zoe’s teacher assumed she would know what the words meant and use them in her writing, she was sadly let down, because what Zoe did was largely useless.
(Education Guardian 22/4/08)

The assumption of objectivity, fairness and equality that grades portray hides many problems with incomparable responses to our questioning. When a group were given a task to design learning activities for younger children there were profound gender differences. Boys tended to design adventure/assault courses in drawings, designs for games about numbers and shapes and these were often computerised. Girls produced letter games with animals and colour, commonly gave their ideas in writing or by making prototypes and didn’t use computer games. (Murphy P) Assessing these outputs will be shaped by the prejudices of the assessor.

In another task, pupils were asked to design a model boats to go around the world and see how much load it could support. Some girls were seen collecting watering cans, spoons and hairdryers. Teachers assumed they had not understood the problem. When questioned, the girls explained that if you are sailing around the world, you would need to consider stability in monsoon, whirlpools and gales, which they were attempting to recreate. (Murphy P)
81. grades p2
Anyone who sees the bigger picture, knows too much or thinks outside the box falls at the hurdle of simplistic assessment. Multiple-choice questions are particularly notorious for this, as there is no opportunity to explain reasoning in out of context questions. For those who can perceive ambiguities, who are aware of ‘noise’, who can see more than one right answer or see that actually none of them are right, these tests are a problem. (Murphy P) There do seem to be gender differences in approaches to multiple choice. They seem to suit boys more than girls. (Murphy P)

One problem with our tick box schools is that everything is graded and assessed. My neighbour came round for help with her dance homework. Dance homework?!!! . Surely ‘homework’ would be practising dancing? No. She came round with a slip of paper that was impossible to understand. It was about researching 1. Musicals 2. Dance of the 1920s and 30s 3. The depression. It was unclear whether the research should link all three, choose one or whatever, and it gave no indication about what the research should entail or how it was to be presented. But the real problem was that an assessment in dance, a part of the curriculum that could appeal to the non-academic, involved layering busywork on top to give credibility. Surely dance is about body learning, about giving the non-academic a chance to shine. This is Illich’s vision of a future tainted by schools‘ contamination of everything by grading and certifying.

Putting children on the spot makes them cautious and defensive. (Holt) Fear of being wrong, fear of humiliation, and fear of failure make classrooms, assignments, tests and exams anxiety- producing situations. “Trying not to fail is very different from trying to succeed”. (Kohn PBR p158)

Grades are different from informational feedback. (Kohn). They can make a child defensive and make him or her believe that learning does not mean figuring out how things work but getting and giving answers that please grown ups. (Holt)

In order for children to learn and grow from the errors we all inevitably make, we need classrooms to be safe places where students can safely own their ignorance, admit their misunderstandings and be able to ask the help. (Kohn) “Grades and tests….. are the enemies of safety. “(Kohn PBR p202)
81. grades p3

80. School reduces our children to numbers

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80. Schools reduce our children to numbers
The children are numbered so that if they get away they can be returned to the right class… Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered by schools has increased dramatically, until it becomes hard to see the human beings plainly under the weight of numbers they carry. JTG 7 lessons p2

Because learning is inside a person and invisible, we have no instruments to truly measure it, and no real way of knowing what it is, whether it has actually taken place, whether it is a temporary or permanent change, how it has occurred, what has enabled it to happen or what stops it happening. We indirectly measure, by observing behaviour, how someone acts, what they say, write or do. We can’t see what it is they believe, think and feel or why they act, say, write or do what they do. Attempts to make this invisible process visible, in order to measure it, hamper the process, distort, confine and define it in ways that can never be real.

Pronouncements made on the basis of test results, exams, grades, which are presumed to tell us whether or not some learning has taken place, are false. In school, measurement occurs in artificially constructed situations-tests, exams, assignments, essays-based on artificially acquired knowledge, from lessons out of context. The role of fear, confusion, anxiety, self-perception and just rebellion are not measured. All assignments, tests, or exams can show is that at one particular time a child did or did not produce an answer we wanted them to to a question that we chose.

As Holt points out, test scores are frauds, as no one really knows what the test scores indicate. (Holt How Children Learn p169) The spreading of assessments and other educational measurement occurs as a result of a belief in modernity-a belief that science and rationality can together lead to social and economic improvement. (Harber C) What it actually does, through the myth that everything can be measured, is to propagate acceptance of all kinds of rankings. (Illich) Because, more than anything else, educational measurement is about measuring in comparison to one another, rather than to some objective criteria. (Morton Deutch in Kohn NC p26) This feeds competitive resentment and separation, while sorting into successes and failures.

The process of our belief in ‘number magic’ occurs through perception change with measurement: “The first step is to measure what can easily be measured; the second step is to disregard what can’t be measured; the third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily is unimportant; the fourth is to say that what cannot be measured does not exist”. (Jodha in N Kabeer (1995): Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought)

What are we missing, ignoring and pretending does not exist? Those things that are difficult or impossible to measure are considered unimportant, not to exist. Exams promote this idea; a focus on grades pretends that compassion, integrity, honesty, love, self-determination, imagination, creativity, hope, joy, trust, commitment, charity, devotion, self-knowledge, confidence, are all immaterial, and to be disregarded.

In “Commonsense Rebellion” Levine points out that institutional tests exclude wit, creativity, the capacity to determine truth from propaganda, interpersonal and emotional skills and one’s capacity for self reliance and survival. (Levine)
When we test students we make it difficult for them to put across what they actually do know by the style and format of questions, by ambiguities in what we are asking and the stress we put them under to perform. Tests never assess what is learnt that is not on the test. (Holt HCL p169)

If we are truly to assess everything a student has learned from being in the classroom we must look at the interactions that occur there. The student may have learned that the teacher is arrogant, belittles mistakes and those who make them, ignores girls or boys, has a racist view of intellectual potential and is muddled on this topic. They may also learn that the topic is boring, and that the lesson has no relevance to their lives. The students however will not gain any marks for having learned these things.

By standardising exams and tests, we devalue the uniqueness of each learner’s perceptions. (TAASA) Each individual’s perception shapes their meaning and knowledge. Labelling it with ticks and crosses, putting a number or worth on performance can stop the learning process in its tracks.
80. numbering p2
The ease with which children can share what they have learned is stifled when it is measured in a way that creates failure. As Holt points out: “It is only in the presence of loving, respectful, trusting adults that children will learn all they are capable of learning or reveal to us what they are learning.” (HCL p21)

CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

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CHAPTER 5: NUMBERING OUR CHILDREN

INTRODUCTION

Neither learning nor justice is promoted by schooling because educators insist on packaging instruction with certification. Illich p19

Britain probably has the most tested kids in the world. (Harber C) Maybe this has always been the case as Tony Crossman, back in 1967 declared that we were exam ridden. In the last 40 years this has worsened so that by the end of secondary school pupils will have taken 105 official tests and exams. (Harber C) This is only the official ones-all the class tests, quizzes, marked and graded assignments and homework bury our children under numbers and letters.

By numbering our children and socially sorting them, the tests and exams hamper real learning, damage self esteem, cause stress and distress and are inherently unfair. Marks are inaccurate, subjective and frequently meaningless. They do not measure competence or knowledge. League tables and targets all pushed by OFSTED, increase the numbering and labelling of children, teachers, schools and local authorities. By focussing on qualifications and scores, rather than developing all children’s talents and abilities, we devalue them and us all. This feeds grade inflation and ‘diploma disease’ and damages the fabric of society.

As Illich points out: “certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is only plausible to the schooled mind” (Illich p22) Even amongst home educators exams and qualifications can straight-jacket our thinking from: “oh you don’t need GCSEs to get into college or university” i.e. you don’t need certain qualifications to gain certain other qualifications rather than challenging a system that values irrelevant measurables and pieces of meaningless paper over qualities and skills.

“The Prisoner” cult TV program from the 1970’s had a lead character, who in the opening credits announced “I am not a number. I am a free man.” Though of course he was number 6.
As Dore points out in his book “The Diploma Disease”: “it is in the bread and butter importance of educational certificates -on their universal use in job allocation- that the survival of the whole education industry depends. One could hardly expect that industry itself to devalue their importance”. (Dore p96-97)

We need to question the value of the numbers that we stick on our children. Kozol tells us that: “Numbers can organise. Numbers can explicate..but numbers cannot make us cry.” (the night p57) But they can. When we are told we are zero it can break our hearts.

CHAPTER 4: Teachers Summary

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Chapter 4: Teachers-summary

We don’t need state certified teachers to make education happen-that probably guarantees it won’t.
John Taylor Gatto

Teachers, and society as a whole, have a huge vested interest in believing children can’t and won’t learn without them. In fact, the idea of children learning without them, is threatening. (Holt) Teachers can’t exist without learners, but learners can and do exist without teachers. Illich tells us that: “The equal right of each man to exercise his competence to learn and to instruct is now pre-empted by certified teachers” (Illich p29)

But looking at the state of the teachers, the strangers we hand our children over to, should give the most committed schoolophile cause for concern. Demoralised, miserable, stressed, made ill by their job- these are the sad struggling adults you trust to care for your kids in an institution that doesn’t care.

As John Taylor Gatto, an award-winning New York teacher, told us in a speech in 1990: “Although teachers do care, and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic, it has no conscience. It rings a bell and a young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and moved to a different cell where he must memorise that man and monkey derive from a common ancestor. “

79. Teachers can't be agents of change in the current climate

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79. Teachers can’t be agents of change in the current climate.

Being mainly broken to the public school harness most experienced teachers consider free and inventive teaching to be impossible.
GBR

Or/

They are the ones who learned best what they were required to do: to sit quietly, to accept without question whatever nonsense was inflicted on them, to ventriloquise on demand with a high degree of fidelity, to go down only on the down staircase, to speak only on signal from the teacher… they learned not to think, not to ask questions, not to figure things out for themselves.
TAASA

Teachers mostly got to be teachers by not questioning, critiquing or challenging the system that they choose to perpetuate. Their view of schooling and its inherent value stop them seeing school as the problem and not the solution. Those who believe they can change the system from within are misguided and will become disillusioned, get sick and leave.

The schooling and education teachers receive shapes their perception and limits their vision of change. They can only see more school, slightly altered schools, or better schools as a solution to society’s ills. The possibility that school itself is at the root of society’s ills may never occur to them.

There are caring, considerate teachers who strive to be human, to treat their pupils with gentleness and humanity and to improve their lives the life chances. However, within the confines of the school system that brutalises teacher and pupil alike, these become the teachers who leave, whose integrity is compromised if they stay, who are driven mad by the effort of being themselves in a system that wants them to be just another cog. Those who do perceive the problems, the true nature of the beast, are hampered by the rigid structures if they do try to instigate change.
The rigid, hierarchical bureaucracy, the edifice of the national curriculum, act to limit the freedom of teachers to experiment or implement changes that could be positive.
Sylvia Ashton Warner (born 1908), a New Zealand primary school teacher prepared ethnically sensitive primers for her Maori pupils which were banned and burned. She was inspected repeatedly and downgraded until she left.

Schools that attempts to bring positive change, especially to disadvantaged groups, have a rough ride. Risinghill, a comprehensive in the 1960s, with an impoverished and criminalized intake, strove to respect and promote the autonomy of its pupils. Of course it had to be closed. Anything seen as ‘left wing’ must be stamped upon. Right-wing, military style authoritarianism, however, that stamps on children’s individuality is fine, thanks. One is seen as ‘too political’, while maintaining an unjust status quo is seen as somehow ‘apolitical‘. As Kozol tells us: “Schools cannot both socialise to the values of the oppressor, and at the same time act for the liberation and potency of the oppressed”. (Kozol the night p185)

Whistleblowers are ousted and shunned. Not towing the line receives more reprimands them being an obnoxious bully. The resistance to change of the institution means isolated individuals can change nothing but their job. The unions seem more concerned with pay and conditions of teachers than with real education or respect and compassion for pupils.

Yet more reasons why those who could be a force for good in the lives of children become disillusioned, sick, mad and leave if they can. When failing to make life better for children, teachers can come to blame their charges for not being good enough to change. They come to see their pupils as the problem.

I’m frequently amazed at how many home educating parents are teachers and ex-teachers. Not only do they realise the damage it does to their own children, to all children they also realise the damage it does to teachers.

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78. What motivates teachers?

2009-07-14T03:50:00.000-07:00

78. What motivates teachers?

The man addicted to being taught, seeks his security in compulsive teaching.
Illich p45

A friend of mine working on a project for in-service teacher training used to begin each session by asking teachers to close their eyes and think back to what initially motivated them to want to teach. For many this is an extremely emotional exercise as they came to realise how far from that spark the reality of their job actually was.

Some teachers begin with a love of children, a desire to make a positive difference in children’s lives, a passion for a subject they excel in, and the belief that their chosen path has real meaning. However, being stuck in a hugely bureaucratic system that robs teachers of any autonomy and faced day-to-day with real kids, rather than imaginary compliant ones, all these positives fade.

Then of course there are those drawn to the profession in order to have power over the most powerless in our society, with rigid views on how children have to be and the desire to crush children to become it. For some it’s simply the long holidays that are attractive or fit in with their own children’s holidays from school.

When teachers were asked for their motivation some honest and disturbing answers were obtained: “I can control people; I can tyrannise people; I have a captive audience; I have my summers off; I love 17th-century non-dramatic Elizabethan literature; the pay is good considering the amount of work I do; I don’t know.” (research cited in TAASA p206)

I remember in my teacher training an inspired lecturer in philosophy, telling us why it is important to know something about the philosophical underpinnings of education. He asked us: once you have the methods, what then sustains you? What keeps you engaged and involved in the process? (or in my case, what questioning enabled me to disengage from the process).

The philosophical, political, social and economic underpinnings of education are rarely explored in any depth or questioned in any fundamental way. School is seen as the only way and to work it needs teachers, preferably compliant and believing in the value of the machine and keen to uphold the institution against threats from within and without.

77. Teachers are leaving in droves

2009-07-14T03:49:00.001-07:00

77. Teachers are leaving in droves
(this may move to after “sick and absent)

No wonder the desertion rate of teachers is overtaking that of their students
Illich p69

It is hardly surprising, given that teaching makes people sick and drives them mad, that there are so many teachers leaving the profession. BBC News on 24 April 2008 pointed out that over half the teachers who train have left the profession within five years. In March of that year, BBC Radio four news reported on the NUT conference, claiming that 50% leave in the first three years.

In 2001 (1/9/01) BBC reported that an estimated 40% of trainee teachers never enter the profession. Most cite poor pay, low status, stress, bureaucracy and pupil misbehaviour.(http:/bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/2000/newsmaker/1519138.stm)

The gap between expectations, from poster campaigns of enthusiastic, compliant learners just gagging for your instruction, and the reality of bored, bolshie, stressed aggressive young people who really want to be elsewhere, is too big for many to bear.

Figures from January 2007 indicated that teacher vacancies in nursery, primary, secondary and special schools are approximately 0.6%. (2040) (www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000725/SFR15-2007.pdf downloaded on 14/08/08)

With high stress, high sickness and vacancies, maintaining an adequate workforce in school becomes a nightmare for head teachers. Recruiting and keeping head-teachers is just as difficult with a reluctance to take the helm of the sinking ships that our schools are. 2,600 schools advertised for a head in 2007 with 37% of primary and 25% of secondary schools having to re-advertise. (“Primary schools suffering head teacher shortage” Anthea Lipsett Education Guardian 18/1/08)

76. Teachers may not be safe around kids

2009-07-14T03:47:00.000-07:00

76. Teachers may not be safe around kids

In 2006 parents were shocked to hear that an OFSTED report showed councils fail to keep adequate records and could not prove that teachers had been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) The situation is worse for supply teachers and given high teacher absences many supply teachers are employed. (Metro news 20/6/06)

In January of that year we were told that the paedophile monitoring system needs more resources. List 99-which is a list of people barred from working with children, had “inconsistencies” when compared to the Sex Offenders Register and a number of teachers on the register were not on List 99. (Guardian 18/1/06) Teachers were employed who were convicted sex offenders. 5 were allowed to continue working in spite of being on the SOR. Although new additions to the SOR will now go automatically onto list 99 this is not retrospective so past offenders can still escape. (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1503291/system-let-88-sex-offenders-escape-ban-on-teaching.html)

Closing the loopholes, these failures of the system, does not mean that the teacher in charge of your child is not going to sexually exploit them. In the UK in the year to April 2007 at least15 teachers were jailed for sexual abuse of children and 10 for child pornography offences. That is just those reported on the BBC news. (Choice in Education 108 April 2007 p5) That is just those convicted, jailed and reported nationally.

Screening, CRB checks, List 99 and the SOR do not make teachers safe. All of these systems have their limitations. List 99 is those barred from working with children on the basis of misconduct or on medical grounds. People are only on it if there suitability to work with children became an issue while they were already doing so. (BBC News 14/1/06) So if someone committed an offence against a child while working as an accountant, and later became a teacher they would not be on list 99. Schools have been given ‘list 99 discretion‘, whereby teachers can start work after a check that they are not on list 99 while awaiting a full CRB check. (BBC News 14/1/06) Some people on list 99 have had their prohibition relaxed to allow them to continue working in schools, for example with different types of children. (how many types are there??) List 99 is not foolproof; for example a man who indecently assaulted a child in 1980 and had convictions for fraud, forgery and theft worked in schools as he was not on list 99. He had been dismissed three times following CRB checks, but this had not got him on to list 99. (BBC News 14/1/06)

In April 2007 “Personnel Today” reported that teachers and carers still worked with children and vulnerable adults before checks on them were completed. In 2006 we were told that long serving teachers would not have been CRB checked as they were only introduced in 2002. Whereas other professionals had regular CRB’s every three years this was not the case with teachers. (14/02.06 community care.co.uk/articles/2006/02/14/52784/adss-urge-long-serving-teachers-to have-crb-checks.html Amy Taylor)

CRB checks are not a fool-proof way of weeding out those we don’t want near our kids. By February 2003 when the CRB had been running for less than a year there had been 225 ex-gratia payments by the CRB for maladministration. (Hansard 3/2/03) Prior to the setting up of the CRB a parliamentary home affairs committee report on the quality of data on the police national computer stated: “It would be unacceptable if errors on the PNC let even one undesirable person through the checking system. Equally, inaccurate data should not be allowed to traduce a blameless individual. The manifest level of PNC error makes us doubt whether it can support a system of records certificates.“ (ref= police national computer data quality and timeliness: second report on inspection by her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary 19/2/02: http://inspectorate.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmiic/docs/prncdqt.pdf?view=Binary)
The same report points out that between the initial input of data about a person and the final result (that is conviction, caution, or not guilty verdict), the nature and substance of charges can change virtually out of all recognition. There is a backlog of data to be inputted sometimes going back years due to insufficient staff.

A process of ‘back record conversion’ occurs for police records kept prior to 1995 to put them on the Police National Computer. By September 2005 Avon and Somerset Chief police officers stated: “there is approximately 500 feet of shelf space within the constabulary which contain paper records dating back to approximately 1992... including 75,000 CPT records… 30% contain no date of birth” (www.aspela.org.uk/documents/CachedDocuments/870_20060224145542.pdf)
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Some police authority’s score ’poor’ on police National computer inspections. Targets for inputting data can compromise the accuracy of the data inputted. Errors, delays in inputting new information, huge gaps in old information affect the quality and reliability of the data on the Police National Computer. It is on this data that the CRB checks rely. Only those who have an enhanced CRB done will require looking for locally held data in police files, but this is not a simple or thorough check.
Even if the CRB system were based on 100% accurate PNC data we have to be aware that offences from a long time ago may not be on it or readily available. Offences committed and recorded from the 1970s and before are kept on microfiche records. Someone caught a long time ago, who has learned to be more careful since, would not be so easily detected. A personal story of a friend whose partner had convictions in the 1970s for sexual offences against children found it hard to track down the details as he had given a false date of birth at the time of his arrest.

We can’t turn to the Sex Offenders Register and comfort. This was set up in August 2000. Probation officers then had the job of registering 6000 convicted sex offenders. The obligation for a sex offender to appear in person at a police station to register their address “will increase non-compliance”, as will lack of confidentiality. (http:/www.community carer.co.uk/Articles/2000/05/24/19218/probation-officers-struggle-with-sex-register-workload.html) Anyway in 2006 we were told that ministers cleared adults on the sex offenders register to work in schools. (Independent 11/1/06)

Systems will not spot the most manipulative and clever ones who have escaped detection by making children afraid to tell. Supply teachers may not even have a CRB check done and overseas teachers may have unreachable records. A shortage of teachers makes it seem necessary to cut corners to fill positions. Schools also employ many other people from cooks to playground supervisors, who are in a position to groom kids. All these people are employed in a capacity to have contact with young people in an institution where the parents can’t see what’s going on.

Very many sex offenders are unknown to the police and social services. It is more than possible that sexual abuse and exploitation of children is endemic in our society and present in great measure in all strata. The powerlessness of children is the prime reason for this. Putting adults into positions of absolute power over them sets up a situation ripe for abuse.

Many children do not disclose abuse out of fear. Many high-profile cases of adults disclosing abuse they suffered as children involved predatory paedophiles who sought contact with children through jobs in schools and children’s homes, in situations where they had power over them. Outwardly charming and loving towards children, these men (It’s usually men) fooled, manipulated (and helped others to fool and manipulate) themselves into positions of power over children, who they could then sexually exploit. High-profile cases, where adults disclose abuse they suffered decades ago, indicate how victims often don’t feel able to tell anyone while the abuse is actually happening and how one person disclosing publicly enables others to do so.
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The fact that “most child abusers have no criminal record” needs to be understood. (Dame Elizabeth Hoodless, executive director of UK volunteering charity CSV in Timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article=4217558.ece article entitled “quarter of adults must be CRB checked under new rules”)

By focusing on databases to keep our kids safe, we neglect empowering them with strategies to keep themselves safe. The same article claims that CRBs replace judgement, and often give a false sense of security, as if a piece of paper can change the dominating, authoritarian attitudes to children, which are what really put them at risk.
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75. Teachers don't like children

2009-07-14T03:46:00.001-07:00

75. Teachers don’t like children

Well, they may start out liking them, maybe even thinking they really like them. But most teachers starting out have had very little contact with real children in our age-stratified society. After a few years of trying to make reluctant kids do meaningless tasks, dealing with resistance, defiance, feigned stupidity, partial compliance, and the dullness that school promotes they reconsider children. Or it may be just one or two ‘bad apples’ they dislike, blame or even hate.

Those that start out liking children find it hard to maintain compassion in a system where they are prison guards, forcing children to do that which they would not choose to do themselves. It is a rare human who can maintain a love of children as they truly are when they have them in bundles of 30 in a situation of power-over where teachers are made to make the kids do things all day. Five days a week, 39 weeks a year. Even when it is only one or two ‘problem’ kids the teacher focuses their dislike upon, fundamentally, the act of teaching in school damages the possibility of a positive relationship between adult and child.
If you are the kid the teacher doesn’t like or have an ‘equal opportunity’ teacher who hates children equally your life can be blighted. In primary schools, you could spend a whole year in a class with someone who dislikes or even hates you. All day. Every day. In a situation where they can act on their dislike in many unpleasant ways. In secondary school, the teacher who hates you could put you off their subject for life. But in primary schools it puts you off everything.

If you do start out liking children, the prisoner/guard phenomenon can make you hate those you dominate and despise the ones you can’t for making life difficult. Love of children only when they are doing as you want them to, only when they comply with your power over them, is only a love of your own power.
The belief prevails that children have to be coerced, punished, shaped to become something other than what they are, that children can’t be trusted to learn what they want to learn, to choose the right thing to learn, that they can’t be trusted at all. This feeds the idea that they have to be watched and monitored constantly to check that they are doing it right, that is our way not their way. Few teachers manage to maintain a love of children as they are within the child-hating schools that prop up our child-hating society.

A personal story in NLP coach (MacDermott I and Jago W page 178) tells of a young man who went into teaching, who liked children. He worked hard to share his love of his subject. “After a few years, he found himself becoming disillusioned, not with the children or their parents, or indeed the community in which he lived but with the system, which he saw as disadvantaging and marginalizing them. As the pressure built up, he became irritated with his pupils, those he had felt so committed to. Of course, he left teaching. Others when faced with these pressures don’t see the system as the problem. They see the problem as the ‘little shits’ in their care and their ‘awful’ parents. A teachers using an online virtual staff-room made death threats against the children in his care. One fantasised about using a “large handgun to blow the head of the first pupil who failed to shut up/do homework/sit properly at their desk/speak politely to me.” Note that none of these behaviours, that generate murderous thoughts, are serious or uncommon. (teachers chat room death threat: Gary Eason 29/11/02 www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2527647.stm)
It is hard to believe that a teacher with such attitudes is in charge of children. Another teacher cited in the same article spoke of her satisfaction at having ‘vengefully’ reduced a 6-year-olds to tears.

Browsing through the TES Virtual staff-room, it is noticeable how some teachers refer to their pupils in disrespectful ways. From “a couple of idiots in my class” , to “little swines”. Mister J (20/7/08 post) restrains himself “However much it would appeal to the sense of right, we can’t lay into the delightful swines physically or verbally.” No, but you can make their lives miserable in other ways, because you have power over them and so dislike them.

One teacher (dc521. Posted on 20/7/08) “My reputation in my school is of the ‘tough bastard‘. Its built-up as I deal with immature and vile year 6s, with obnoxious parents and incompetent people with the manner they deserve: short, sharp and to the point.” This is a primary school teacher who proudly describes year 6s as ‘immature and vile‘. These are the people you hand your kids over to.

In an article on ADHD in Times online an anonymous teacher is quoted as saying: ”speaking as a special needs teacher, I’m quite sure that it is a lot of b. I get sick of being trashed by some little s, who then tells me I can’t punish him, because his pill hasn’t kicked in yet. When you give a kid syndrome, you give him an excuse.” (ref??) There is no compassion here, no ability to see things from the viewpoint of the child other than to blame the child and label them as a little s. While claiming one label (ADHD) is not deserved there is no realisation of the harm done by the other.

Of course, these teachers are laying the blame in the wrong place. It is not the children who make teachers’ lives a misery. It is the structures they are forced to operate in. It is the illusion of power in a rigid system. Those who perceive It clearly get out or are driven mad by it.
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74. Teachers' expectations are shaped by prejudice

2009-07-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

74 Teachers’ expectations are shaped by prejudice

The secret curriculum is the teacher’s own lived values and convictions.
Kozol the night p101

Teachers view children through a distorting lens shaped by their own schooling and training. This is put in front of eyes already blinded by prejudice and tainted beliefs about children. The expectations of teachers can have a profound effect on pupils’ performance, self-belief and life chances. Expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

An experiment administered bogus tests to pupils, which teachers were told would identify ‘late starters’ in the class. The teachers were told the tests would identify those who would be expected to spurt ahead in a few months. Several months later, the experimenters returned to find that the pupils identified did considerably better on tests than control people pupils they had previously done the same as. (Rosenthal and Jacobson at www.sociology.org.uk/as4tm4f8.htm) A classic experiment showed that when teachers were told that brown eyed children were brighter than blue-eyed children the marks of the brown eyed children in their class later indicated this. (see www.Jane Elliott.com for more details of this classic experiment and more details below) This effect will be exacerbated by information sharing. Merely knowing that little Johnny misbehaved in his last lesson will effect how his next teacher treats him.

The expectations in a classroom come from the teachers own beliefs. The disliked child fails. The group of the teacher thinks are thick fail. We have to remember that a teacher’s whole value system is brought to bear when evaluating children’s behaviour. ‘Prejudice’ is to pre-judge. Teachers prejudge children according to their own views, according to gender and racial stereotypes, according to their own class position and knowledge and according to their immediate impressions of children and their parents. As teachers are part of a culture, both inside and outside of school, that is steeped in prejudice and discrimination, it is virtually impossible for them not to be tainted. By reinforcing their prejudices, and seeing what they want, their expectations become self-fulfilling.

Another classic experiment from 1968 showed this in action. Jane Elliott, an American schoolteacher, devised a way to demonstrate how racism worked to her class. She labelled her all white class as being inferior or superior based on the colour of their eyes. This exposed them to the experience of being a minority. (Initially she said Blue Eyes were superior to Brown eyes but after a few days she told them she had got it the wrong way round.) She noticed changes in behaviour-the preferred group becoming arrogant and bossy and the “inferiors” becoming cowed and timid. But this also led to dramatic academic differences with increased grades for the preferred group and those labelled inferior stumbling over simple questions they previously could answer. (www.janeelliott.com)

Language shapes perception. TAASA points out that: “When someone says ‘John is stupid’ what they really mean is ‘when I perceive John’s behaviour, I am disappointed or distressed or frustrated or disgusted. The sentence I use to express my perceptions and evaluations of these events is ‘John is stupid’.” (TAASA p100) So when John comes to your class, already labelled as stupid, you see what you expect to see.

When I trained to teach I was horrified by some of the attitudes I encountered in my fellow students. These ranged from extreme homophobia (We had a really lovely gay guy on our courses, which seemed to threaten some of the other guys) to beliefs that women who are raped were asking for it (this from a seemingly intelligent young woman). There were differing expectations about students on different courses at further education: A-level students must be more intelligent than GCSE students. There were racist perceptions about students worth and possibilities.

When I was at school, the head-teacher at my grammar school, told me on my first day that girls from the estate I lived in (a council estate) were nothing but trouble. This set a difficult path for me. Some teachers seem to hate boys- too rough and noisy so let’s praise the girls who can sit silently and immobile while unengaged. Some dislike anyone or anything that is different- it disrupts their neat ideas about how children should be. Some are simply intolerant of how children are and can be and are hard on any who exhibit normal childlike emotions and needs and behaviours dismissing such as immature. Funnily enough, it is the nature of children to be immature and expecting them to behave like mini-adults from age 4 or so, does them a great disservice.
I remember a friend’s four-year old. He was joyfully boisterous with irrepressible energy, no malice and a joy to be around. His mother was told he was ‘too bouncy‘, and they’d have to curtail his youthful exuberance for him to ‘fit in‘. His mother was saddened by this as the essence of her son was being criticised and stamped on.

Teachers’ prejudices are not likely to get them sacked. A BNP teacher is complaining that he has been suspended over misuse of a computer. (note he has not been suspended because of his racist beliefs and affiliations) Adam Walker used a racist internet chat room during lessons. He posted comments critical of asylum seekers, Muslims and immigrants. He could become the first teacher in Britain to be removed from the General Teaching Council register because of religious intolerance. So none have so far been struck off for such intolerance, not even in faith schools. (METRO 22/9/08 p15 “BNP teacher faces being struck off”.)

Black boys who appeared aggressive, often just wanted fair treatment, and this drive for fairer treatment should be channelled by teachers, rather than dismissed as disruptive behaviour. (Bad teachers betraying Black boys, says expert Observer 13/1/02)
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In the UK in the year to April 2007 10 teachers were jailed for porn offences. (That’s just those on the BBC News) (Choice in education, 108 April 2007 p5) Prosecutions depend on being caught. How many teachers view our daughters or sons as just so much meat? How does this affect how they treat them? How they interact with them? One article tells how a teacher had porn on his school laptop having received, stored and distributed indecent sexist and racist material over five years. (Teacher had porn on school laptop Jenny Loweth, Bradford Telegraph and Argos 6/2/07)

Again and again, we need to question the sanity of handing our kids over to complete strangers and hoping for the best. The strangers come with their own beliefs, prejudices and expectations of children according to the social, gender or other groupings of children, and any visible or known characteristics from address or knowledge of siblings. Many are labelled because an older sibling had certain, usually undesirable, traits.

A year with a racist, or sexist, or merely child-hating teacher can have a profound effect on all our children. This effect can only be made worse by burgeoning databases, where one skewed and prejudiced observation or comment becomes codified as true for all to see.
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