by Guy Claxton
● Information about real-world learning.
● Information about 21st century habits of mind.
● Amount of time parents spend helping schools.
● Average cost of a child’s education between 5 and 19.
To get a meaningful answer you might have to be more precise than we have been. But the point of an FOI request is not simply to get an answer but also to get a line of questioning onto the national agenda as the answers are published on various government websites.
The second specific lobbying option is an e-petition. According to the government’s e-petition website, “e-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government and Parliament in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons.”2
At the time of writing, a petition to ‘Reverse ban on holidays during school term time’ is on the front page of the site. In a reasonable attempt to send a message about the importance of attending school, a ban on taking holidays in term time was introduced. But it has had various unintended consequences. Parents with very sick children have been prosecuted, as have parents wanting to take their family to spend time with a dying relative. The ban also poses a question that is close to the argument of this book: what is it about school that is so sacrosanct that a well-planned trip of a lifetime might not actually be full of more real learning than a few days of school? Could it be that the ban is more about our current obsession with Ofsted, as ‘unauthorised absences’ count against a school in its Ofsted report? Or are schools so geared to the taking of tests and examinations that they cannot think of a creative way to enable a pupil to carry on learning while on a holiday? Bill took his older son on an extended trip to Tasmania during one January term and the powerful learning experiences are still with his family more than a decade on. What teacher can honestly say that this would be true of a month of attending their lessons?
E-petitions cover many subjects. Here’s another educational one currently struggling to get enough supporters: ‘Much needed change to the rules in school with regards to head lice and nits’. It’s tempting to make light of it, but any parent whose child has got nits from her school for the third time in a week will have considerable sympathy with the need for tougher enforcement of nit-free heads on children! (Interestingly the term ‘nit-wit’ comes from this unfortunate consequence of putting children together in a schoolroom!) If you go to www.educatingruby.org you can find out more about e-petitions relevant to our attempt to create popular groundswell to rethink schools. We will be suggesting an e-petition every half term until we create enough of a groundswell to change schools.
Using the web and social media
One of the simplest ways of finding out more and joining the debate about schools and education is to start to find your way around the growing number of educational blog sites. Many are written by thoughtful teachers or parents. Some are clearly mad. Many seem to believe that the answer to everything is technology. Most are deeply opinionated (aren’t we all?). The best combine evidence, analysis of issues and description of promising practices in the way that we have attempted to do in this book. A good way of starting out here is to use one of the many ‘intermediary sites’ which signpost education blogs. You can do this by searching for ‘best education blogs’, for example. Ten years ago one enterprising company with great prescience even set up an annual award for the best education blog.3 And you can vary your search technique to narrow the field as you wish – for example, ‘most worthwhile education blogs’ or ‘UK education blogs’. On the website which accompanies this book (www.educatingruby.org) we have linked to bloggers who seem to us to be thoughtfully exploring the kinds of issues with which we are grappling.
Online videos are a useful source of ideas and a good way of entering into the debate. Set Google’s search capability to ‘Google Videos’ and you can find much stimulating material, often through the medium of YouTube and increasingly using the TED talks format (powerful talks of less than 18 minutes’ duration).4 In the last few years, TED talks about education have been increasingly popular, with Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate talk, ‘Changing education paradigms’, challenging the educational status quo and arguing for the power of the arts, being viewed well over 13 million times.5 Other thoughtful recent contributors include Sugata Mitra on how children’s learning can be hindered by adults and enabled by the web and Jamie Oliver on the need for a food revolution in schools.
The web is full of both useful and distracting websites about the topics we are exploring in this book. Take any of our seven Cs for example – confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment, craftsmanship – and play about with combinations of search strategies such as, ‘how to develop confident children’, ‘how schools can develop children’s curiosity’, ‘creative activities for parents and children’, ‘how to develop craftsmanship in children’. One of our favourite examples is ‘Austin’s Butterfly’, which we have already mentioned. Turn on a few pages and we have included some more suggestions like this to get you started.
We shouldn’t forget the ubiquitous Wikipedia in equipping you to enter the debate. While you will naturally need to apply appropriate caution to its claims, it is a prime example of collaborative learning in action. There is a growing educational movement which is at your fingertips via a search engine, starting simply with searches such as, ‘educational wikis’, ‘educational wikis for parents’ and progressing in whatever direction you want.
There are various existing campaigns and grass-roots movements which may offer you encouragement and stimulate your thinking. These include:
● www.savechildhood.net – Save Childhood ‘aims to identify and highlight those areas of most concern, to protect children from inappropriate developmental and cultural pressures and to fight for their natural developmental rights’.
● www.toomuchtoosoon.org – Too Much Too Soon believe that “children in England are starting formal learning too early, that the value of their creative and expressive play is being undermined, and that they are subject to developmentally inappropriate pressures that are damaging to their long-term health and wellbeing”.
● www.unicef.org.uk – The work of UNICEF UK is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets out the rights of every child, no matter who they are or where they live, to grow up safe, happy and healthy.6
● http://en.unesco.org – UNESCO regularly contributes to research and practical action to promote well-being in children and young people.7
These are just four examples. There are many more from which you might derive good ideas.
Running in parallel with the web are the various social media options. Probably the most relevant here is Twitter. There are people who tweet about policy, research and classroom practice. Tweets can, of course, be utterly banal, but increasingly thoughtful tweeters are using them as a means of signposting more substantive resources on the web. The discipline of the 140 characters allowed in a tweet can also be a useful clarifying and focusing device! On this book’s website – www.educatingruby.org – we have a Twitter feed (something that we have only very lately started) as well as links to those we think are contributing to the education debate we want to see. As with everything we have been suggesting in the last few pages, searching for ‘best education tweeters’ and so on will narrow the field.
If your exploration of blogs, websites, videos and wikis begins to become overwhelming, one simple self-protection strategy is to set up a Google Alert with a small number of key words in it. It will then prompt you by email when a chosen blogger has made a new post or something new has appeared on a particular topic. If you want to further screen out content then try Google Scholar which will take you to sites which start from a research context.
The simplest thing you can do is to join the debate on www.educatingruby.org. In
doing so we can begin to see how many of us share a common view of what needs to change in schools. At a practical level you can also find out which other parents, grandparents and concerned citizens are active in your local area and join forces.
Finale
Let us finish by reminding you why your voice and your participation are so important. The changes that need to happen involve encouraging, connecting and celebrating the initiatives of the kind we illustrated in Chapter 5. There are many, but they are still in the minority. If we are to reach the tipping point that is needed, they have to scale up faster. In terms of Gleicher’s formula, we have to help people to articulate their dissatisfactions with the status quo, to be able to imagine a better future and to understand the small, practical steps that can help any school make progress firmly in the right direction. All of these are vital because resistance is still high in many places. Change takes energy, so people need reassurance and encouragement – and a bit of pressure – to put in the effort it takes. We need to keep reassuring everyone that the results go up, not down, if you do start to shift the school’s culture.
If change is to happen faster, though, we need not just brave school leaders but a change in the political weather. General elections are a competitive event that come round every four or so years. They are like the World Cup, but with only a small number of teams. Politicians’ lives are geared around these events, and the worst thing that can happen is to lose. The very worst thing that can happen for any individual politician is to do something that contributes to their side losing. This means that, for much of this five-year cycle, politicians are obliged to play defensively, at the same time as creating the impression of doing all kinds of things that are eye-catching and important. They have to look busy and decisive, while at the same time doing nothing that might upset the Daily Mail or the Murdoch press. This all means that they cannot engage with anything that is subtle, complicated, hard to sell or long term. In other words, they are condemned, by the very nature of short-term, cyclical, competitive, two or three party politics, to fail to do what is necessary – especially as far as education is concerned. Politicians are bound to do too little, too late. It’s a miserable position to be in, and they deserve our sympathy.
Unless. Unless the mood of the populace changes, and they begin to fear that they will lose substantial numbers of votes if they don’t do what is required. Only the real fear of losing is strong enough to force them to overcome their natural caution. Only when it looked like the No Campaign might lose the Scottish referendum was the Westminster bubble galvanised into action. Only when UKIP threaten to drain substantial numbers of voters from the Conservative Party does the leadership respond – first by bullying and then, if that doesn’t work, by shifting policies to try to attract those perfidious voters back.
At the moment, the best chance of getting our educational movement heading in the right direction is for all of us to get off our backsides, stirring up our friends and relations, asking awkward questions of our MPs, signing online petitions, fighting for places on the governing bodies of our local schools and all the rest of it.
It’s not about party politics; it’s about how to get people in power to do the right thing. It’s about being able to speak confidently about our dissatisfactions: the amount of time wasting and real damage that too many schools still inflict on bright young minds. It’s about being able to talk passionately about the need, and the practicality, of focusing more intently and explicitly on the development of 21st century character strengths. It’s about sharing as widely and loudly as we can the stories of deep success that we come across – not just crowing about A level results. If we can do that, policies will begin to change, the political wind will begin to fill the sails of change and teachers will feel support for finally being able to teach in the way that made them want to do the job in the first place. They will be truly able – as our friend Art Costa has put it – to prepare young people not just for a life of tests, but for the tests of life. And that will make millions of young people, and their families, very happy.
1 See http://www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=foi-releases&topics%5B%5D=all&departments%5B%5D=department-for-education&world_locations%5B%5D=all&direction=before&date=2012-11-01.
2 See http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/.
3 See http://edublogawards.com/.
4 See www.ted.com/.
5 See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson
_changing_education_paradigms.
6 See, for example, UNICEF, Child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview. Report card 11 (2013). Available at: http://www.unicef.org.uk/Images/Campaigns/Report%20card%20briefing2b.pdf.
7 See, for example, Asher Ben-Arieh, Measuring and monitoring the well-being of young children around the world. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007. Strong foundations: early childhood care and education. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001474/147444e.pdf.
Thirty ways you could help a local school1
In many cases the offer of help (even if refused!) can stimulate thought on the part of the school and, once you have started you will never look back as you develop a more meaningful relationship with the school. You are likely to be asked to undergo a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check (which used to be called a CRB or Criminal Records Bureau check) to ensure that you are a suitable person to be working with children.
1. Share your enjoyment of a hobby with a class or after-school group.
2. Offer to run a school club.
3. Offer your time and talents – computing, gardening, engineering, painting.
4. Offer to talk about life in a different country.
5. Offer to coach a small group of students in reading, maths, languages, computing, art or any other subject in which you are confident enough to help.
6. Help coach a team.
7. Offer to help with or start a music group.
8. Help children put out a school or classroom newsletter.
9. Volunteer to help on a school trip.
10. Help create a display.
11. Help build something such as a storage area for work in progress or a tree house.
12. Volunteer to answer the schools’ phone.
13. Demonstrate cooking from a particular country or culture to students.
14. Help bring senior citizens to school to watch a student production.
15. Share information about your workplace or chosen career.
16. Help arrange learning opportunities in the community such as an internship or apprenticeship for a student at your business, organisation or agency.
17. Host a one-day ‘shadow study’ for one student, or a small group of students, about your career in business or some other organisation.
18. Go on a local field trip with a teacher and a group of students.
19. Help to create a natural area outside the building where students can learn.
20. Join the PTA and increasingly play an organising role.
21. Help design a parent and/or student survey for the school.
22. Help arrange for a political leader (mayor, city councillor, MP) to visit the school.
23. Help write a proposal that would bring new resources to the school.
24. Donate books or materials to the school.
25. Help other parents develop their parenting skills.
26. Help organise a workshop for parents on ways they can help their children to learn.
27. Help write, publish and distribute a list of parenting tips.
28. Start a parents’ reading group or Twitter book group (see pages 199–201 for book ideas).
29. Start an Educating Ruby group www.educatingruby.org at school (you can print off posters and find lots of templates to use in your school and local area).
30. Create your own list of 30 ways to help your school!
1 This list draws heavily on the list cre
ated by the Center for School Change at http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/
envrnmnt/famncomm/pa1lk20.htm. You can augment it by searching for ‘ways parents can help schools’.
A selection of thought-provoking books
The following are just a few books that have made us think, including some of our own:
Baumeister, Roy and Tierney, John (2012). Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength (New York: Penguin).
Benn, Melissa (2012). School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education (London: Verso Books).
Carner, Lauren and Ladavaia-Cox, Angela (2012). Raising Caring, Capable Kids with Habits of Mind (Mechanicsburg, PA: Institute of Habits of Mind).
Claxton, Guy (2008). What’s the Point of School? Rediscovering the Heart of Education (Oxford: Oneworld Publications).
Claxton, Guy, Chambers, Maryl, Powell, Graham and Lucas, Bill (2011). The Learning Powered School: Pioneering 21st Century Education (Bristol: TLO).
Claxton, Guy and Lucas, Bill (2004). The Creative Thinking Plan: How to Generate Ideas and Solve Problems in Your Work and Life (London: BBC Books).
Dweck, Carol (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Random House).
Gardner, Howard (2009). Five Minds for the Future (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press).
Gatto, John Taylor (2002). Dumbing Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers).
Gerver, Richard (2010). Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today: Education – Our Children – Their Futures (London: Continuum).
Hallgarten, Joe (2000). Parents Exist, OK? (London: Institute for Public Policy Research).
Henderson, Ann, Mapp, Karen, Johnson, Vivian and Davies, Don (2007). Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships (New York: New Press).
Kaufman, Gershen (1999). Stick Up for Yourself: Every Kid’s Guide to Personal Power and Self-Esteem (Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing).