Scenes From The Battleground

… you missed the news, my blog is now here:

http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/

Here I will address the claim that children are not responsible for their actions because they are too young to understand how to behave.

I’m sure that plenty of behaviour in primary schools is down to the extent to which very young children are not always able to do things that adults take for granted or are ignorant of the significance of their actions. I’m also sure that children cannot be held responsible for breaking complex rules that they had no reason to know about or think existed. What is more incredible is the extent to which it is claimed that secondary school students, who have been in formal education for the better part of a decade, are ignorant of the basics of how to conduct one’s self. Nobody gets to the age of eleven without knowing that you are expected to obey your teachers; that it is wrong to hurt people, and that there are words you shouldn’t use in polite company. It’s not as if the students who continually misbehave aren’t also continually told to stop. “He doesn’t know any better” is an obvious falsehood. Only those behaviours which a child will never have seen or tried before should ever be considered in this light. This is not to say that children are always to be considered to be as responsible as adults for their actions, but there is no reason to consider the action of being told to “fuck off” by a fifteen year-old as involuntary, like the crying of a baby, or simply a result of a lack of awareness of the fact that it wasn’t polite.

The sort of behaviour that most concerns teachers (disobedience, bullying, verbal abuse, violence) is, of course, the sort of behaviour that children learn is wrong at a very young age. This does not stop appeals to theories of moral development such as those of Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1958) who both claimed that children developed their moral reasoning in stages. Many criticisms have been made of their ideas, but whether there is truth in their theories or not, no amount of research into the moral reasoning of children tells us about the moral acts of children. It does not take a sophisticated standard of ethical thought to do what you are told while you are at school or to refrain from telling your teacher to “fuck off”. Any teacher can tell you that children’s behaviour does not tend to continually progress in a positive way as they grow. Where behaviour improves over time it is more likely to be related to social factors (like going into the sixth form, a change in peer group, or an increase in responsibilities) than some kind of natural development. If there are developmental milestones in behaviour they would actually be points, such as adolescence, where behaviour is prone to getting worse.

Of course, even if we accept that children do follow a natural process of behaving better as they mature (or more plausibly they are socialised into at least some good habits over time) then it would still make no sense to see them as beyond blame. Even if the young were more inclined to do wrong than the old, then that would still not absolve them of responsibility. Being more strongly tempted to do something than another person does not mean you are no longer obliged to resist that temptation. “But I wanted to …” is no excuse at any age. Society can show mercy to wayward children, punish them less strictly than it would adults. It cannot, however, justify declaring them to be either free from sin or without free will. Children are not to be worshipped as saints or dehumanised into animals. They are people, and that, rather than any inherent deficiency in the young, is why they do bad things.

References

Kohlberg, Lawrence, The Development of Modes of Thinking and Choices in Years 10 to 16. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Chicago 1958

Piaget, J., The Moral Judgment of the Child, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co, 1932

Human wickedness, if accepted by society, is changed from an act of will into an inherent, psychological quality which man cannot choose or reject but which is imposed upon him from without and which rules him as compulsively as the drug rules the addict.

Arendt (1951)

In my last entry I talked about how, in the absence of more traditional views of human nature in which people are generally disposed to do wrong, it was necessary to come up with imaginative explanations of why children are not responsible for their behaviour, thereby allowing them to be innocent victims even when they are observed to be behaving like complete bastards.

The explanations were:

• Children are too young to understand how to behave.
• Children’s behaviour is determined by their background.
• Badly behaved children have a medical or psychological condition.

It is possible to imagine situations where this is true, but a moment’s thought would tell you that these sorts of situations are obviously rare exceptions to what is usual. But if you were a believer in the inherent innocence or goodness of children then it is impossible for a child to do wrong without some kind of explaining factor, an explaining factor usually picked from this list. Invariably what happens is that normal moral judgement is suspended and the discipline of psychology is bastardised to provide morality-free explanations of children’s behaviour to replace the obvious explanation. As if this way of thinking wasn’t damaging enough it also requires that teachers must be assumed to be oblivious of the “science” of human behaviour and require endless training in pop psychology. Then, having been thrown out the front door, moral judgement is sneaked in the back door in order to condemn the ignorance or intolerance of those who have not accepted the pseudo-scientific, psychological explanation of children’s sins.

The truth is that we don’t need a scientific model of the human mind to understand why we do wrong. We all have minds of our own (complete with weaknesses and a general susceptibility to temptation). A quick study of one’s own mind, and the minds of those one knows, suggests that people think, feel and do bad things. Trying to suggest a complex personal motivation for an individual’s history of sinning is like trying to suggest personal reasons why an individual might inhale oxygen or bleed red.

In the next few posts I will cover each of these “explanations” in turn and explain why they do not constitute grounds for ignoring the more obvious forms of moral reasoning. The likely complaint is that by identifying the human condition as an unavoidable cause of bad behaviour I’m not addressing how to “fix the problem”. My point, of course, is that I’m not saying it to “fix the problem”, I am saying it because it is true. People do bad things for no good reason. And this isn’t a frustrated statement about naughty kids; it’s a fact about human beings generally. This is a problem that we are not going to solve. We can’t change ourselves into saints through the application of rational principles, so why do we think that we can have that effect on future generations?

References

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Schoken, 1951

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin–a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

Chesterton (1908)

… some American literati have professed their naïve belief that temptation and coercion are really the same thing, that nobody could be asked to resist temptation. (If somebody puts a pistol to your heart and orders you to shoot your best friend, then you simply must shoot him. Or, as it was argued – some years ago in connection with a quiz show scandal in which a university professor had hoaxed the public – when so much money is at stake, who could possibly resist?) The argument that we cannot judge if we were not present and involved ourselves seems to convince everyone everywhere, although it seems obvious that if it were true, neither the administration of justice nor the writing of history would ever be possible. In contrast to these confusions the reproach of self-righteousness raised against those who do judge is age-old; but that does not make it any the more valid. Even the judge who condemns a murderer can still say when he goes home: “and there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Arendt (1963),

Those who wish to declare themselves to be either more compassionate or more enlightened than others are keen to appeal to the inherent goodness or innocence of a badly behaved child. Claiming that a fifteen year old who tells their teacher to “fuck off” has actually done something morally wrong, let alone saying that such a student deserves to be punished, is seen as unenlightened and unfair. Those who advocate blame and punishment are seen as either cruel tyrants who hate the adorable little kiddiewinks or superstitious primitives who have no understanding of the science of human behaviour.

There is, of course, a problem with the suggestion that children are inherently good or innocent: it is not true. Children do bad things all the time. This is not a surprise as, of course, we adults do bad things all the time too and for the same reason. It is in the nature of human beings to fall short of moral perfection. We do not achieve moral perfection even for a short time, the best we can hope to do is to seek to recognise our moral failings and consider them grounds for admitting our fault; resolve not to repeat the offence; attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way try to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong.

There are problems here because what I am describing are the religious concepts of Sin (literally “falling short”) and Repentance. In suggesting an existing inclination to moral failure I am echoing at least part of the doctrine of Original Sin. This is not to say these ideas rely on a religious perspective. What I have talked about here can be deduced from obvious observations of both the world around us and one’s own inner moral world, but that doesn’t stop them being seen as religious ideas. It may even be this that causes the difficulties and the claims to greater rationality of those who pretend that, morally, children are either blank slates or, worse, natural saints. We are in a culture where people don’t like to use religious concepts in moral reasoning and so there is an incentive to replace this view of morality with another more “modern” (or “progressive”) one. “Sin” in particular has become devalued, often in two opposite directions. One is to view it as simply a euphemism for sexual activity, as in “living in sin”. The other is to view it only as conspicuous, serious wrong-doing, leaving us without the terminology to discuss either our personal failings or the everyday failings of humanity.

Without the concepts of Sin and Repentance, whether they are expressed in religious or secular ways, we are at a loss to deal with moral issues, except by ignoring them. Ignoring our moral failings is something many are loathe to do explicitly – people usually stop short of announcing their own sainthood – but such a claim is implicit in any moral theory that ignores what it is actually like to do wrong. Sometimes they don’t stop short of virtual self-canonisation. Two teachers I know told me that they never sinned. (My response was to suggest it was about time they started.) But if we accept as genuine the universal human experience of doing, saying or thinking things that our best judgement tells us are wrong, then without an acceptance of our inclination to sin and the need to repent when we do so, we simply cannot explain our own moral universe. We cannot explain where we have been or where we should go. Without the concepts of imperfect human beings needing to confront their weaknesses, we end up with a contradiction: our convictions and beliefs are in opposition to our inclinations and actions. If we deny that this contradiction exists due to our own imperfect natures, then it can only be resolved by

1) abandoning our convictions

or

2) denying our responsibility for what we feel or do.

The first of these options (abandoning any principle in response to the inclination not to comply with it) is often disguised as a dislike for Puritanism or hypocrisy. “Why should anyone suggest I shouldn’t do what I want to do?” people ask, even in cases such as speeding or smoking where the harm (or potential harm) to one’s self or others is obvious. When applied to schools this takes the form of a mindless anti-authoritarianism. Teachers are portrayed as ogres, driving students to bad behaviour through their unreasonable requests and unpleasant personalities. Any teacher who has been told they were at fault for enforcing the school rules will be familiar with this form of disapproval.

The second option (denying responsibility for feelings and actions) is one that people are sometimes cautious about applying to themselves as it does have implications of insanity, although people increasingly do seem willing to express even obviously selfish feelings as if they can’t be judged for having them. It is, however, seen as tolerant and broadminded to deny the responsibility of others for their actions. Where once being non-judgemental meant refraining from the casting of stones, it now seems to require looking at the obviously guilty and saying “well they couldn’t help themselves”. Temptation can now be a considered a medical or psychological condition. Examples of this are easy to identify, just by flicking through a newspaper. I’m sure it was with a great deal of sympathy and good intentions that those who were inclined to drink excessively were told they were suffering from the “disease” of alcoholism, but I wonder if they would have accepted such a diagnosis if they knew it would lead to the promiscuous being diagnosed with the laughable condition of “sex addiction”. Where psychological and medical explanations don’t explain our mistakes, then the alternative is simply to separate actions from consequences. The results of our actions are simply quirks of fate beyond our control. It is presumably for this reason that newspapers now report women “falling pregnant” in the same way somebody might “fall ill” or “fall over”.

With regards to education, the belief that children are not responsible for their actions is the default position for those attempting to reconcile their denial of human nature with the rather obvious fact that all children do bad things. The usual explanations of why children are not to be held responsible for their actions are:

• Children are too young to understand how to behave.
• Children’s behaviour is determined by their background.
• Badly behaved children have a medical or psychological condition.

For those of you reading this who are teachers, is this sounding familiar?

References

Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Revised Edition, Penguin, 1963

Chesterton, G.K., Orthodoxy, 1908

I am planning to write a few posts on the ethics of education. I have already entered this territory before, (for instance in these posts: Values and Professionalism) but I have become more and more convinced that the problems in our schools are philosophical and ethical. The values and the beliefs that shape large parts of our education system, and public discourse about education, are not simply misapplied, they are wrong. Improving our education system does not simply require a change in techniques or organisation; it requires that we re-evaluate some of the concepts currently used to justify how our education system is, and some of the concepts that have been unwisely discarded.

In particular, (and this will be familiar to anybody who reads this blog regularly) we no longer seem expected to believe that students are responsible for their actions, or that they might deserve punishments (as well as rewards) for those actions. It is controversial to even challenge this. The received wisdom – that children are beyond blame – is seen by its adherents as axiomatically correct to an extent where it is morally wrong to question it. These are all comments (and I could have found dozens of others) that have been aimed at me where I have argued merely that children are morally responsible for their actions and are deserving of punishment when they do something bad:

A basic antagonism to student [sic] underlies everything that you say and recommend.

http://oldandrew.edublogs.org/2007/11/14/in-praise-of-harshness/#comment-672

[he] was probably fired for assaulting a student years ago and blogs to relive its “glory” days.”

http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=004257;p=1

I really hope you are not teaching anymore and am thankful that more enlightened teachers are around (and perhaps trained in more uptodate [sic] methods and ideas). I have no intention of continuing with this thread as I find your comments offensive.

http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/p/147936/281940.aspx#281940

If you are still caught in the pessimistic cycle of believing in inate [sic] misbehaviour then maybe a career change.  Apologies for sounding rude but i [sic] believe the old saying “if you’re not part of the solution then your part of the problem

http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/p/244410/3800204.aspx#3800204

The outrage that is felt at the suggestion that children are both responsible and culpable is astounding to me. It seems to be based on a belief that failing to accept certain doctrines about children, amounts to an actual hostility to children. Those who make these arguments believe that you must agree with them in order to have genuine concern about, or knowledge of, children. This is held so strongly, and so blatantly in defiance of reason, that it is plausible that they adopt these stances entirely so that they can consider themselves to be more compassionate and enlightened than others.

Of course, there is a strong element of hypocrisy in the comments. They object to my willingness to apply moral judgements to student behaviour, but are enthusiastic to apply such judgements to me. I would argue that this sort of incoherence is inevitable. Like much modern moral debate they have thrown key moral concepts out through the front door (specifically: responsibility, judgement and desert) only for them to return through the back door. This is because the concepts they were rejecting were indispensable. If children are blameless then somebody else must be to blame, and inevitably the conclusion is reached that I must be to blame for everything I describe. It is simply impossible to start ethics from scratch without accounting for the concepts we already rely on to make sense of the world, and blame is one of these.

In fact, this is true of philosophy generally. As Midgley (1996) argued, philosophy is like plumbing:

Plumbing and philosophy are both activities that that arise because elaborate cultures like ours have beneath their surface, a fairly complex system which is usually unnoticed, but which sometimes goes wrong. In both cases, this can have serious consequences. Each system supplies vital needs for those who live above it. Each is hard to repair when it does go wrong, because neither of them was ever consciously planned as a whole. There have been many ambitious attempts to reshape both of them. But, for both, existing complications are usually too widespread to allow a completely new start.

Another philosopher, Macintyre (1981), suggests that the plumbing of ethics has already been torn up:

What we possess … are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not entirely— lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.

Whether this is accurate or not across the whole of ethics, my point is that it is most definitely true in education. Basic moral concepts, such as responsibility and desert, have been lost from our schools. We educate as if we don’t even know what human beings, let alone children, are actually like, and as if we can’t hope to make moral judgements about what we, or our students, are doing. We need to consider these ethical issues, as what is happening in our schools is not just inefficient or harmful, it is morally wrong.

My plan is to post in the next few weeks on the topics of:

• Human Nature
• Blamelessness
• Needs
• Desert

References:

Midgley, Mary, Utopias, Dolpins and Computers, 1996, Routledge

MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, 1981, University of Notre Dame Press

For this entry I have turned my blog over to a friend so he can write about his experience of teaching, in the next level of the education system:

As a friend of Oldandrew for many years I agreed to write a guest entry for his blog. Unlike Oldandrew, I have not become a school teacher but have experience of teaching undergraduates at University. I have been teaching mathematics to students in a computer science department in a University whose computer science department is one of the top ten in the country. Here are a few of the important rules for teaching we were given in how we should handle students:

1. Answers need to be marked for presence not correctness. These students are not mathematicians and are studying computer science so we can’t expect them to be interested and intelligent enough to be able to answer these questions correctly so as long as they attempt an answer it is fine.
2. International students cannot fail. International students pay a lot of money for their tuition and if we fail them we may not get anymore and this will reduce our income.
3. Teachers must teach at the speed of the slowest, one must never stretch the smartest students.

Sadly, the introduction of tuition fees has greatly influenced the attitude of students. It becomes increasingly common for students to demand good grades because they pay for their degree so they deserve to get a first. Similarly, students will refuse to hand in work at given times because they pay the wages of the lecturer.

International students also cause further problems for lecturers in that in some countries there is no concept of plagiarism. This means that even though students are made to sign an agreement not to commit plagiarism and the concept is explained to them in detail, international students regularly do. International students are nearly always caught because the quality of their English is below the standard of that used on Wikipedia and so whenever they cut and paste written extracts from Wikipedia it is stands out like blood in snow. If you point out to students that they are committing plagiarism then they will accuse you of racism because either you do not understand their culture (special sessions are now being put on for staff to help them understand the cultures where plagiarism is acceptable), or that you are expecting them to have too high a level of understanding of English.

A few words are in order about the ability of students from school. As a rule the only students who are actually capable of the work are Germans and Indians. The English students are often completely incapable of doing mathematics at a university level. When I went to university we did not cover anything we had done at A-level but instead starting doing new work but this is very rarely the case except at the very best universities, now the A-level syllabus is recovered in the first year so that all students are at the same level for their second year when they can be taught new material. In fact the ability of English students is so bad that at one point I was trying to prove, by induction, that something was divisible by three and I had shown that it was divisible by six. I then had to explain repeatedly that since six is three times two, anything divisible by six was also divisible by three. I even had a couple of students claiming that six was not three times two. It is at this point that I should point out that these students all have A grades in A-level mathematics.

Even when I was at university various courses were being moved from the second to the third year so the dumbing down of university of degrees has been going on for a number of years. Our education system is failing students and a lot of universities are doing their best to compensate, but this means that a lot of degrees have been dumbed down to the point where they are useless.

Continuing the account of a school trip.

You will need to read this entry first.

I awoke to find the boys from Anna Brown’s form all over their corridor, bags strewn across the floor. I told them that they, and their bags, should be in their rooms, unless they were showering, or alternatively they could sit in the lounge. It appeared that they were at their most energetic and I repeatedly had to make sure they were not wrestling in the lounge, or turning the lights off and playing in the dark. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it hadn’t been for Jon. First, he wouldn’t leave the corridor at all, then he re-emerged into the corridor in his boxer shorts dancing and singing “Sex Bomb”. Soon he was displaying his packet of chewing gum (prohibited by the residential centre’s rules) blatantly while stood right next to me. My requests for him to hand over the gum resulted in him running at breakneck speed down the corridor. I soon discovered that there was an unlocked kitchen at the near end of the corridor when I had to remove Jon from it. Then he joined the other boys in the lounge and realised that if he held the light switch down then I couldn’t switch the light back on. It was a relief when he decided that if I wouldn’t allow fourteen boys to wrestle in a dark room it was no fun and ran out towards the dining room, but by this point some of the other boys from Anna’s form were beginning to kick off.

I asked two boys who were on the verge of fighting with each other to follow me and went down to the dining room. Jenny Goodyear was in the kitchen and I asked if she could keep an eye on the two boys. She said she was too busy cooking and it was my responsibility so I should put them at the end of the corridor. I did this, only to find Jon there running his fingers across the fire alarm. I decided that I couldn’t hope to deal with Jon and the other boys at the same time. I insisted Jenny come out of the kitchen to speak to me, I told her that there was no way I could deal with Jon and the other thirteen at the same time. She said I’d have to and I pointed out that I had already made it clear that Jon was a health and safety risk and as she hadn’t acted at the time then would have to deal with it now. She told me I couldn’t speak to her like that and that Jon was fine. Then she complained that it was in front of the kids (despite the fact there was nobody in the empty dining room and I had asked her to come out of the kitchen for precisely this reason). I told her that the very first thing I’d do when I got back to school was contact my union rep. about how she’d ignored my repeated warnings about health and safety. She then told me she’d take Jon but she’d have to cancel breakfast. Then she declared that she’d have all the boys and stormed down the corridor to the boys’ dormitories and announced to them, “You all have to come with me because apparently you are wild and out of control.” I said that she only needed to take Jon but in front of the students she refused, leaving me alone in the boys’ corridors.

I took the time alone to recover from the shock of this behaviour on her part. A couple of boys (one from my form, one from Anna’s) came and chatted to me until other boys were sent to tell them to return. A brief walk round gave Jenny the chance to ask me to write a list of students and comments to go on their certificates. She didn’t explain what certificates so I didn’t ask and just did my best sat back in the boys’ corridor. Anna was organising dodgeball in the hall and I popped in to talk to some of my form. I lost my enthusiasm for being there when I caught Jon cheating and Anna ignored me when I pointed it out.

After helping with a number of tasks set by Jenny I joined the students in the dining room and sat alone at the staff table chatting to the students until Jenny came in to declare that nobody was allowed to talk across the room and to tell me to go and help Clark load the van. I complied. I returned and ate with the other staff (breakfast wasn’t cancelled). Jenny had now gained enthusiasm for setting me tasks. Unfortunately my willingness to do them seemed to encourage her to set more tasks – now with the apparent aim of forcing me to assert my authority (particularly over Jon) and then watching closely as if to pick fault. First I had to help with the next round of the “people at my table” quiz. Then I was shocked to hear it announced that all students were to join me in the hall for games. Fortunately Clark decided to join me and did a far better job of organising four-aside football than I could have done. We even managed to stop Jon climbing up the walls in the hall without having to ask more than four or five times. Eventually Jenny came and got Clark to leave and then watched me, but with the game in full swing there was unlikely to be a problem. Having watched for a bit she called the students back to the dining room to sort out last minute packing. Jon began climbing the wall in the dining hall next to Anna. She ignored it.

I was then given the task of helping students pack their bags in the hall with anything they’d bought while orienteering yesterday. This task was made more difficult by Jon trying to join us through the other door despite having nothing to put in his bag. Then Jenny began sending students through the hall with boxes to put next to the front door of the residential centre. The second student she sent was Jon, who on discovering the large collection of “circus toys” left by the youth workers near the door began playing with them with little regard to safety. Then a large crowd of students came through into the hallway leaving it overcrowded and making it hard to stop Jon’s latest antics. I asked what was going on and the students told me that Jenny had sent them through to stand by the door. I went to her and asked what was going on and she told me she was packing and told me off for failing to keep students out of the hall, I didn’t believe that over a dozen students had spontaneously decided to try and line up at the front door and tell me that she’d instructed it, but I felt there was little point arguing about it. I sent them back out. I’d got most of the crowd out, but Jon started claiming that Jenny had told him he should be at the door. I told him he needed to go back and he couldn’t stand near the door (even though I suspected he was correct about Jenny’s instructions there was no way I was prepared to supervise him in a room full of circus toys while also holding back a crowd). At this point he pushed me out of the way (more due to my shock at being attacked in this way than due to his physical strength).

Apalled by the assault, I left the hall through the crowd, finding Anna in the dining room. I asked her to take Jon away immediately as I’d been assaulted. She said, “I’m doing this, you have to sort it.” I couldn’t believe that anybody could take that attitude about a member of their own tutor group and told her: “You don’t tell a teacher who has just been assaulted that they have to sort it themselves,” and left for the calm of the boys’ corridors, which were now cleared and being cleaned, to recover from what was by this point quite an extreme level of stress. After a few minutes a crowd of boys appeared at the door of the connecting corridor. “Miss Goodyear sent us to stay here,” they told me. Fortunately it was mainly boys from my own tutor group and they quickly went back when I told them the rooms were being cleaned. However, I did have to stop to take two sponge balls away from students who were playing with them, unsupervised, at the top of a steep set of stairs.

The cleaner saw I was less than happy and encouraged me to sit in the lounge. I did so, only to see Jon, in the corridor, grabbing at my bags and possessions, presumably because of the two sponge balls beneath them. I sent him away and the cleaner locked the door of the corridor to keep him from rejoining us. Jon appeared to be utterly unsupervised at this point and free to seek me out despite what had happened.

Eventually I heard that it was far quieter outside and I left and was able to join my tutor group in the mini bus. Overall I had actually had a positive time with my tutor group and even most of Anna’s.

However I felt that I had been repeatedly undermined by having my warnings about Jon – based on my own direct observation and professional judgement – ignored and by the way I had been spoken to, particularly in front of my tutor group. I also felt I’d been undermined by being put into a situation where the only meaningful consequence for poor behaviour was one that I couldn’t deliver and where my requests for others to deliver it were ignored.

I felt that students had been repeatedly endangered by being left with Jon, as had Jon himself, and by being in a situation where it was not possible to adequately supervise them. During large parts of Friday morning it appeared that Jon was free to run around doing whatever he liked. There seemed to be no constraint on where he could go unsupervised in the building and even potentially dangerous behaviour was being ignored. I am also concerned about the hygiene implications of asking students to remove litter from bins of dog mess and cleaning up vomit unsupervised. There had been no guidance on health and safety given to staff. Had I known how the two days were to be run and how little control I’d have over the environment my tutor group were in I would never have agreed to attend.

I felt that the way Jenny had treated me personally was not just unprofessional but had become a form of bullying. The use of the technique of announcing what I was going to be doing in front of the students without telling me first placed me in a situation where I had to choose between putting myself in further stressful situations or arguing with another teacher in front of the students. In particular the repeated efforts to get me to supervise Jon after I had explicitly told her that I considered him to be a danger to himself and others seemed designed to cause me ever increasing amounts of stress. Jenny was willing to send Jon to “help” me with washing up but both she and Anna appeared unwilling for the most part to have Jon in the kitchen with them and used the fact that the were carrying out tasks in or near the kitchen as a reason Jon should be supervised by me rather than them.

I felt that I’d been unsupported even when going through the stress of having been assaulted. The cleaner who had locked the door of the corridor to the dormitories to keep Jon out while I composed myself after the assault had told me that I looked physically ill. She saw me in distress and sat me down, locked the connecting door and checked to see if I was okay. My teaching colleagues on the other hand had ignored my distress, and Jenny had even attempted to send all the boys to me while I was in that state. Only Clark asked me at any point during the trip if I was okay. I am still feeling the physical effects of this level of stress.

It’s probably not a shock to discover that nothing much happened as a result of all this. Jon had already got himself (temporarily) excluded for beating up another child in front of a teacher and a room full of children so there was no point trying to get him excluded for his assault on me. Jenny and Anna had rushed to the head first to complain about me (God knows what for) and if any action was taken against Jenny I was not told about it. Nor did it stand in the way of their subsequent promotions, although unconfirmed rumours in the school suggested that Jenny’s meteoric success as the school’s chief appeaser of naughty boys, came to an end after a dispute with a member of senior management.

On the other hand, it didn’t seem to do any permanent damage to my relationship with my form, or my ability to manage their behaviour (which was often positively commented on a couple of years later when they were causing trouble for other members of staff).

The incident also served to educate me in the dishonesty of appeasement. Jenny and Anna encouraged and praised Jon, they ignored awful behaviour and gave him lots of attention. At times this seemed to please him, but ultimately it made no difference; they could not contain him which was why they repeatedly dumped him on me. Appeasement simply doesn’t work for very long, it is a strategy used only to survive long enough to blame somebody else for the resulting mess.

A final note: I cannot imagine going on any school trip where I haven’t handpicked the students for their obedience. Otherwise school trips are simply not worth the risk. The following news stories all involve students being killed or maimed in circumstances where students disobeyed teachers:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1456897.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/4413357.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/3004667.stm

Please notice where the finger of blame is usually pointed.

In my first year at the Metropolitan School I was given a year 7 form group. It was a tradition at the school for new form tutors to take their forms on an overnight stay at the Skylark Residential Centre in the first few weeks of term where there would be a chance for us to get to know each other, and take part in a variety of outdoor activities. There they would be supervised by Jenny Goodyear, a veteran of the school (a former primary school teacher) and Dave Levy the school’s youth worker. We were also to be accompanied by Clark Ferris who was a “mentor” employed by the school to assist the year group. Being new to the school I made the error of agreeing to this, and not taking an early slot at the Centre. By the time my form’s turn to go came around other forms had gone and discovered it wasn’t much fun. As a result less than half of the form signed up to go. It was at this point that I made my second error. I was asked if I minded if my form went at the same time (Thursday to Friday) as Anna Brown’s form who were also lacking willing volunteers and I agreed. Here was the account I presented to the headteacher after I returned from the trip:

On arriving at the Skylark Residential Centre on Thursday morning it was explained to students and staff that there were, unlike at school, very few rules. However the one rule was that students were to follow instructions immediately without arguing for reasons of safety. Furthermore, because of the importance of this any student unable to follow instructions would have to be sent home and also barred from future trips. Staff were introduced to students, with Jenny Goodyear encouraging students to call her and Clark Ferris by their first names. Anna Brown also agreed to be called by her first name, leaving me to be put on the spot as to what I wanted to be called, I opted for “Sir”. Neither the lack of rules nor the use of forenames had been discussed with me beforehand. It was also explained that even though there were two tutor groups on the trip (Anna Brown’s and mine) the purpose of the trip was for students to get to know the others in their form and their form tutor. I took it to be the case, as I had when I agreed to go on this trip, that my priority would be to build on my relationship with the members of my form.

It became clear that there were a number of other aspects of the trip I wasn’t previously aware of. I hadn’t realised that neither Clark Ferris nor Dave Levy (who arrived later) would be there for the whole two days, and so in the boys corridor I was, at times, to be left in charge of all the boys, including those from Anna’s form who I didn’t know. This concerned me. I trusted my own tutor group but there were at least a couple of boys in Anna’s form who seemed less than able to follow instructions and, not being able to drive, I was in no position to carry out the threat to take them home if required, leaving me with responsibility but without power. I found out very early on, as we unpacked, that the boys I didn’t know were quite boisterous in their behaviour, as they began running along their corridor into my forms’ corridor, something that Clark came and warned them about. Fortunately, he was in a position to warn them that if they didn’t comply he could take them home. I did ask Anna if there was anything I needed to know about Jon Scott and another boy from her form who seemed very poor at following instructions. She said they weren’t on the SEN register so there probably wasn’t any real grounds to be concerned about their behaviour.

Another surprise was the schedule. I was given no advance warning of what activities were planned and when. I often only found out what was to happen next when it was announced to the students. This was inconvenient, not least because Connor from my form (previously mentioned here) needed to take medication at regular intervals, but it also meant organisation was entirely centred on Jenny Goodyear rather than on all staff working together as a team. I was also surprised to discover that while I was not in the room students had been told that they were to find out the favourite TV programme and a “family fact” about each person at their table at dinner, for them to be quizzed about later. The fact that I wasn’t in the room when the game was announced did not stop Jenny from quizzing me in front of the students about the people at my table, and my poor performance at this was given as a reason for me to do the washing up in the evening. While I would have been quite happy to do this task it seemed rather odd to put me on the spot in that way in front of the students without warning, but I assumed it was down to an oversight.

As the day wore on I began to realise that Jenny seemed not to trust my judgement or skills. I was repeatedly given advice on minor matters. When we went orienteering after lunch I was repeatedly told what to do and quizzed by Jenny on how I’d done it. When (as instructed) I encouraged students to clean up their litter I was quizzed on whether I’d made sure they went to the right bins. I was told off as some of them had used the bins designated for dogs’ mess, and students were instructed to remove litter from those bins in order to put them in another bin. They had been divided into teams and after I had to tell a student in my form off for leaving his team I informed Jenny that (as instructed) I’d yelled at him only to be told, “I don’t think you did. Your problem is that you don’t yell at them.” I remained calm and polite and was supportive of Jenny when members of my form came to see me to tell me that they felt they weren’t enjoying the orienteering as they felt that she was picking on them because she’d had trouble spelling their team name (“The Four Musketeers”).

As I mentioned, Jon Scott had become a concern: he seemed slow to follow instructions and prone to arguing. After the orienteering had finished, Dave Levy led all of the students, two sixth formers employed as youth workers (Lee and Steven) and me on a lengthy walk. I was to look after those at the end of the line, particularly one boy who was asthmatic. We soon became concerned that Jon was behaving in a dangerous manner. As we followed a path up the hill he kept running and climbing on the steep hillside next to the path in a very reckless manner. Dave asked him to stay with him at the front of the line, however he kept running back and forth. He repeatedly ignored instructions from me and from the two youth workers. Apart from climbing on the hillside he also attempted to climb trees and signs, to rip holly leaves off of trees and menace other students with them (despite my repeated request that he put them down). When one of the youth workers instructed him to walk with Dave he said to them (and in front of me), “I’m not doing that, he’s a batty boy.” I felt strongly that his behaviour was dangerous, particularly to himself, to the extent that he would need to be sent home.

When we arrived back at the centre I began explaining my concerns to Dave and to Anna Brown. Before I’d even finished I was told they’d deal with the issue. I returned to my room to freshen up following the long walk. When I left my room I found Jon had entered my form’s corridor and was spraying an aerosol deodorant on himself. Students had been told that, due to the fire alarms, corridors were the best place to do this. I asked him to return to his corridor as this much spray in the air could be hazardous to health as there were several asthmatics around, and he shouldn’t have been there anyway. He refused and continued to spray even more deodorant in an elaborate display.

I was now even more concerned that Jon’s behaviour was dangerous. I returned to the dining room to explain to Jenny (as team leader) and the other staff my concerns. I repeated what I’d said before, and repeated what Jon had said about Dave. Again I was told it would be dealt with before I’d even finished explaining, leaving me in some doubt as to whether anyone was even listening as I explained about the incident with the aerosol. A little later I discovered that the action taken was to give Jon a further talking to, to get him to apologise to me and to ask my permission before he was allowed to rejoin the other students. This seemed entirely inadequate. However, as I couldn’t be the one to drive Jon home I was unsure as to what I could do to get further action taken. At least something had been done, although during dinner I began to wonder how seriously it was being taken when Jenny made a point of telling one of my tutor group who described Jon as “naughty” that labelling was inappropriate. I also felt that other staff (particularly Jenny) now seemed far less friendly to me, although I realised that perhaps I was less friendly due to feeling stressed and frustrated at how my concerns had been ignored. In particular it seemed a little off when during a further round of the “talking about others at the table”-quiz, now involving the headteacher who had popped in for a short visit, Jenny instructed him that we all wished to be called by our first names despite my previously expressed desire to the contrary. I was grateful when he did not heed that advice. The reprimand she gave me for giving one of the students a 500ml bottle of water as opposed to two smaller bottles of squash – “you’re cleaning it up if she wets herself”- was by this point not even a surprise, although with hindsight it seemed strange to speak to me in this way three hours before the students’ bedtime and in front of the headteacher.

After dinner those who had done poorly at the quiz at lunchtime (i.e. me and several members of my form) were consigned to the kitchen to wash up. I was surprised to discover that as well as those deemed unsuccessful in the quiz we were to be joined by those who had misbehaved, which meant Jon and another boy from Anna’s form. Having been unable to constrain his dangerous behaviour in other environments the kitchen, full of knives and hot water, seemed an entirely inappropriate place for me to have to supervise him further. The moment he entered he grabbed a tea towel and began flicking it at the other students. I immediately expelled him from the kitchen, assuming that this would make it even clearer that I would not be able to maintain a safe environment if he was with me. It did however seem more than a little unjust when I and the other washer uppers (mostly from my form) finished only to discover Jon was already playing with the other students in games organised by the youth workers.

However, there were no further problems that evening. (That said, it did concern me that when one of the girls in my tutor group was sick, Jenny declined to assist, and told the girls to clear it up themselves. Fortunately Anna decided to ignore Jenny’s suggestion to leave them to it). Dave and I even managed to get the boys in their rooms ready to sleep at a good time. Although the youth workers left not much later, Dave was intending to stay in the same corridor as me and the boys meaning their were two adults to supervise any potential night time disturbances. Unfortunately Dave had to leave early in the morning, meaning that from seven o’clock on Friday morning it was just me supervising the fourteen boys (including Jon).

TO BE CONTINUED…

I know this has been around for a few years, but I only recently saw it for the first time:

Apologies again to anybody who can’t access youtube.

There are some writers and advisers out there who give genuinely useful advice about classroom management (see this post for some book suggestions). They focus on concrete ideas about routines, classroom organisation, or language. However, I increasingly encounter behaviour “experts” who try to pass on ideas about the character and personality of the teacher. These “experts” paint a fairly consistent portrait of the kind of teacher who experiences poor behaviour:

“Teachers with negative attitudes generate problems for themselves. They wind kids up; they expect trouble (and get it). Their classroom has a negative air. When behaviour problems occur, which they frequently do in this environment, they quickly escalate into serious confrontations because the teacher’s response tends to be aggressive, sarcastic or dismissive.”*

From http://www.eteach.com/DataFiles/CMS/1/files/Behaviour%20Needs%20May08%20Prevention%20-%20expectations.pdf

“Those who adopt the punitive/hostile approach when dealing with pupils tend to see relationships as a waste of valuable time and aren’t concerned about the feelings of the pupils they teach. It’s ironic that these teachers are often the ones who complain most about standards of behaviour in school.”

From http://www.eteach.com/DataFiles/CMS/1/files/Improve_Classroom_Management_with_Consequences_Aug08.pdf

The message is clear and echoed by hundreds of other educational professionals: it is the attitude of the teacher that causes problems. This principle is one that can be extended to suggest that if a teacher is upset by the behaviour they endure then it is their fault:

“A classroom that is managed by emotional responses from the teacher is an unpredictable and often frightening place in which to learn … They are watching for your reactions and testing when emotion will take the place of reason. If you display your ‘emotional buttons’ don’t be surprised when they are pressed.”

From http://www.pivotaleducation.com/behaviour/058.pdf

“If the students see you becoming tense and angry, you are giving them an incentive to misbehave in future. An explosive reaction might be just what they want to get from you!”

Cowley (2001)

There is some truth to the suggestion that, if you are upset, it will diminish your ability to do your job. There is plenty of truth to the suggestion that teachers who are upset are probably having trouble managing behaviour, but, of course, this is to muddle cause and effect**. Children do not behave badly because their teachers are upset; their teachers are upset because they behave badly. Telling teachers not to be upset is simply blaming the victim. This is wrong, not because there is any great benefit to being upset, but because children should not be allowed to upset teachers.

The “human sponge” theory of teaching, in which teachers simply soak up the abuse without complaint has very little to commend it. While rage and frustration is not constructive, a neutral response to the unacceptable helps to make it acceptable. Behaviour would not improve if teachers were inhuman teaching machines, able to stoically accept all abuse without any hurt feelings, because part of behaving well is considering the feelings of others.

Now, the other side of the picture is the teacher whose classes behave well. Inevitably the good teacher isn’t good because of any ability to enforce discipline. It is their attitude to pupils that mark them out:

“[T]eachers who choose to see ‘problem’ pupils as ‘pupils with problems’ and reach out with offers of support, assistance, trust and respect generally have the most success in terms of preventing and dealing with incidents of bad behaviour. Those who see positive relationships as an essential part of teaching can often perform miracles with the most challenging pupils”

From http://www.eteach.com/DataFiles/CMS/1/files/Improve_Classroom_Management_with_Consequences_Aug08.pdf

“The drive to be part of a group, connected to something, valued, appreciated, heaven forbid call it ‘loved’ – is essential to all human beings. We all positively need to be loved … positive relationships are a sure-fire way to get the most from any under-performing pupil and are the foundation of any successful discipline plan.”

From http://www.eteach.com/DataFiles/CMS/1/files/The%20Needs-Focused%20Approach%20to%20Preventing%20Behaviour%20Problems%20June08.pdf

“Do try to make your students feel that you like them, and that you are interested in the things that interest them”

Cowley (2001)

Again there is some truth here. Nobody thinks mutual hatred is the classroom ideal. Those few forms of poor behaviour that are motivated solely by hatred of the teacher may not be directed against a teacher who is well-liked. But again cause and effect have been muddled. Are children really well-behaved in classes because their teacher likes them? Isn’t it more likely that teachers like classes where the children are well behaved?

But there is a more important point here. There is a basic contradiction in these two ideas. The teacher who (at least apparently) is never angered by cruelty, or disruption to learning and the teacher who (at least apparently) cares about their students are unlikely to be one and the same. You cannot be concerned about children and unconcerned about behaviour that harms them. The only teachers who are comfortably numb about bad behaviour are those who don’t care about its consequences. Even the pretence of being emotionally indifferent to poor behaviour spells out clearly that you don’t care about those children who lose out due to poor behaviour. Concern for those who suffer injustice and anger at those who cause the injustice are utterly inseparable. The behaviour “experts” may think that they have identified a virtue and a vice, but actually they have attempted to separate two sides of the same coin. You cannot bisect a teacher into two parts existing in different moral universes; one part wanting children to learn and the other part hating it when they don’t.

One suspects, however, that if the behaviour “experts” didn’t slice teachers in half they couldn’t simultaneously get them to pay for behaviour advice and still blame them when the advice provided doesn’t work.

*You may have noticed that most of these quotations are from one or two individuals. I apologise if this comes across as picking on anybody, but it is, if anything, a compliment to how clearly they write. Or as Midgley (2001) put it when she found herself repeatedly quoting and criticising the same writer: “I do not do this in order to persecute him, but for a reason that is greatly to his credit, namely, because he writes so clearly. Clear expressions of important mistakes are very useful things, making it much easier to move on beyond those mistakes than it is when they are wrapped in confusion”.

**Despite clear warnings from the Philosopher Jack White.

References

Cowley, Sue, Getting The Buggers to Behave, Continuum 2001

Midgley, Mary, Science and Poetry, Routledge, 2001