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featured, The Education Fables
December 28, 2020 jamestheo	1 Comment
This is the third in a series of blogs on the key philosophers of education. Part 1 can be found here. Click here for Part 2.
A.S. Neill
Neill was a Scottish educator who is most known as the founder of Summerisle, a school that gained notoriety in the 20th century for its progressive philosophy. He was famously portrayed by the actor Christopher Lee in a 1973 film about life at Summerisle.
The actor Christopher Lee received plaudits for his portrayal of Neill
Neill was a very poor student at school, so he decided to become a teacher. It turned out that he was also a very poor teacher, so he went into school leadership instead.
Neill co-founded a progressive school in Dresden in 1921. This school taught Eurhythmics, a new wave synth pop band, which is basically like people teaching Stormzy today.
Neill left Germany in 1924 and founded Summerisle in Dorset. He then moved the school from Dorset to its present site in Suffolk in 1927, a move that clearly influenced footballer Matt Holland some 70 years later, when he left AFC Bournemouth to sign for Ipswich Town in 1997 for £800,000. Unlike Holland, Neill remained in Dorset for the rest of life. Holland, of course, signed for Charlton Athletic six years later and became a club legend. Holland also represented the Republic of Ireland thanks to an Irish grandmother. As far as I am aware, A.S. Neill has no international caps for a country that he has only a tenuous connection to.
In his biography of Neill, Richard Bailey describes an algebra lesson taught at Summerisle by Neill himself, saying that his "explanation of algebra was incoherent" and concluding that the lesson was "simply awful". Neill was clearly ahead of his time though as the same lesson would almost certainly have been graded 'outstanding' in the 2000s.
Bailey also says of that same lesson that Neill "dealt with individual difficulties by resorting to insults", thus revealing the provenance of the approach taken by other high profile progressive educationalists on social media today.
Socialist author Ethel Mannin wrote of Summerisle in 1930 that it "is, I think, the happiest place in the world". But then, at the point, she'd never been to a TGI Fridays.
R.S. Peters
Richard Stanley Peters was the protagonist in the BBC sitcom Porridge, who later went on to do philosophy and that.
R. S. Peters looking philosophical with a pipe.
R.S. Peters famously created the concept of 'the educated person'. Before Peters, all people were idiots.
Peters' defined 'the educated person' as someone who is in pursuit of truth, a bit like Anneka Rice in Treasure Hunt. Peters doesn't specify whether the educated person needs to wear a tight-fitting jumpsuit, so that's probable optional. I just wear one to be on the safe side.
Other characteristics of the educated person are:
can eat three Shredded Wheat
knows all the dance moves to 'Saturday Night' by Whigfield
can get at least to level 6 on Snake on a Nokia phone
has watched all of The Matrix movies without getting bored
doesn't tweet about it when they get a question right whilst watching University Challenge
can name all of the S Club Juniors
can see magic eye pictures without showing off about it
constantly questions why only the orange Smartie is flavoured and yet all of the other seven colours aren't
has no time for music these days – it all sounds the same
hasn't fallen for the big olive con of having multiple different types of olives to choose from when they all just taste like salt anyway
can recite pie to 12 ingredients
In 1981, the Ford Capri RS Turbo was introduced to Europe. Contrary to the popular belief that the RS stands for 'Rallye Sport', it is actually named after R.S. Peters. Ford went on to produce RS versions of many of their cars, including the Escort, the Fiesta and the Sierra. A fitting tribute to a great philosopher, I'm sure you'll agree.
1980 Mercury Capri R.S. Peters Turbo
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist whose work has heavily influenced Western philosophies of education. In a 2002 survey, he was ranked as the second most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, after Frasier Crane, but ahead of all of the Ghostbusters.
Jean Piaget as Monsieur LeClerc in the popular BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!
Piaget came up with a theory of cognitive development, which he cleverly called 'Piaget's theory of cognitive development'. Within this theory, Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development, which corresponded with different ages of our lives.
The first stage is between the ages of 0 and 2 years old, and is called the sensorimotor stage. Within this stage, children develop an understanding of object permanence: the idea that an object continues to exist even though you can't see it, like when I left my lunch at home this morning and I know that it's still on the side where I left it. This is not to be confused with when a pupil leaves their homework at home, which is called object fabrication.
During the second stage, called the pre-operational stage, children cannot understand concrete logic or mentally manipulate information. This occurs between the ages of 2 and 7 years old, but can be triggered again in adulthood by simply placing a MAGA cap on your head.
The third stage is the concrete operational stage and occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years old. According to Piaget, this is the stage when the child can use logic appropriately. But if this is true, why do some children sometimes ask their teachers if they remember World War I or if Shakespeare is still alive? Also, I still don't understand Inception and I'm 44 years old.
The final stage is the Aztec Zone, and after that you get to go to the Crystal Dome and collect gold and silver tokens. For every crystal you picked up over the four stages of cognitive development, you get five seconds in the Crystal Dome.
Piaget's theories have been criticised for being "conceptually limited, empirically false, or philosophically and epistemologically untenable". Piaget's influence on education academia and research today is massive.
(Editor: Are these last two sentences meant to be separate points? Shall I put them into separate paragraphs before publishing? It just looks like you are making a link between those two points and I'm not sure that you meant to do that?)
(Editor: Hi, did you get my message about the last two points?)
(Editor: I'm not getting any replies, so I'll just leave them as they are and hope you haven't made a terrible mistake.)
A.S. NeillJean PiagetR.S. PetersTheory of cognitive development
August 19, 2019 jamestheo	8 Comments
One of the lovely things about the online teaching community is the sharing of resources. Teachers have an innate desire to help – not just their own pupils but other teachers too. Most are happy to share freely the resources they have created. We are at heart a collegial profession and the free sharing of resources is really one of our greatest strengths.
And whilst this is a good thing, it has also created a system where The Resource has achieved an elevated status in the currency of teaching.
The problem is that I think that the elevation of The Resource has obscured what should be the gold standard of teaching: subject knowledge.
I have worked in a department where the PowerPoint was king. In that department, all scheme of work planning had to be accompanied by a PowerPoint to share with the rest of the teachers. The premise being that teachers could just deliver your slides without having to spend the time thinking through the process of how they were put together. The Resource there not only trumped subject knowledge, I think it actively inhibited the development of it. It stopped teachers from having to think through the subject, build a bank of knowledge and sift through it to create a resource. But the knowledge that doesn't make it onto a resource is vitally important: it sits beneath a resource like the larger, submerged part of an iceberg and gives it its power.
A few times I've had a go at teaching a lesson using a PowerPoint written by someone else. It's almost always ended badly. It's not that it was a badly written set of slides – I am certain that the person who wrote them knew exactly what they were doing and it was well thought through. But the problem is that I didn't do the thinking. In the author's hands, I bet the lesson flew. In my hands, it usually fell flat at some point. I had The Resource, but not the knowledge or thinking to teach it. I had, as they say, all the gear but no idea.
Today I saw a perfectly reasonable request on Twitter for help in challenging a class with high level questions and lessons on one of the GCSE Literature texts. Lots of lovely and well meaning teachers offered up resources. I'm not sure that this is the right answer to that request. To me, the best way to challenge a class with high level questions is to the know the text well. The answer to the request should be to improve your own knowledge of the text: read it, annotate it, study it – read critical essays on it. Don't worry about resources, think about improving your own subject knowledge. Forget the gear, get the idea.
The Resource has achieved an elevated status in teaching. But it is a usurper. Subject knowledge is the rightful king. So excellent a king, that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr. And subject knowledge is your best bet in understanding that reference.
resourcessubject knowledge
May 26, 2019 jamestheo	1 Comment
Best Way Story (1961)
An adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, this 1961 movie centres around the tension between two rival groups of teachers, the Trads and the Progs. The arguments and the blockings are all played out through brilliantly choreographed dance scenes and a truly memorable musical numbers.
With music composed by Leonard Bernstein, who can forget the wonderful lyrics from the pen of the great Stephen Sondheim? Every time I watch, I can't help but sing along to such classics as:
Trad Song
When you're a Trad,
You're a Trad all the way
From being postgrad
To retirement day.
Gee, Inspector Spielman
Gee, Inspector Spielman, we're very upset;
We never had the funding that ev'ry school oughta get.
We ain't no special measures,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside we're at least a good!
I Feel Shitty
I feel shitty,
Oh, so shitty,
I feel shitty and gritty and tired,
Ofsted told me
That improvement is required.
Dead Poets Society 2: Special Measures (1991)
In this sequel to 1989's Dead Poets Society, John Keating, having been fired from the prestigious prep school Welton Academy, has decided to try his hand as a supply teacher. We find him on his first day having been sent to a school that is struggling with poor behaviour.
As he attempts to inspire the pupils to take an interest in poetry, he finds himself facing a variety of obstacles, from getting the pupils to stop ripping up the textbooks to trying to stop them from standing on the tables during lessons.
At first, Keating attempts to use the methods that we saw him use to inspire the pupils at the elite Welton Academy. He tells the pupils at this new school to question authority. They tell him to **** off. He tells them to 'seize the day'. They take the day off school to play Xbox. He tells them: 'make your lives extraordinary'. They tell him to **** off again.
Eventually, Keating realises that questioning authority and listening to the trophy cabinet whisper Latin phrases are all well and good if you have already established structure and discipline, and that he needs to work towards building those things before he can inspire the pupils. He realises that this isn't something that he can do on his own and needs a whole school approach, so he resigns and leaves the school.
As he leaves the school he walks past a classroom, and through the window we see pupils standing on the tables, some making hand gestures and some shouting names at him.
The Breakfast Club (2019 reboot)
An arthouse reboot the original, updated for the modern era. The premise is the same – on a Saturday, five pupils are meant to report for an all-day detention. However, as the pupils' parents feel that a Saturday detention is inhumane, none of the pupils turn up for the detention. Instead, we follow Assistant Principal Richard Vernon alone in the school all day, going through an existential crisis and questioning his future in teaching.
A largely improvised film, the highlight is obviously Vernon's melancholic and balletic dance montage to The Smiths' 'I Know It's Over'.
Best Way StoryDead Poet's SocietyThe Breakfast ClubWest Side Story
May 25, 2019 jamestheo	2 Comments
Back in the early 90s, my older brother managed to get me a second-hand Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It came with two games which, as I had no money to buy any others, occupied much of my time for months on end. One was the classic arcade game Kung Fu Master and the other was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Whilst Kung Fu Master didn't take long to, er, master, TMNT was a different beast. It was impossibly difficult. It was so difficult that, along with a handful of other NES games, it contributed to the phrase 'Nintendo hard' entering the English language. Some of the levels were almost unplayable (I seriously think the one with the van was solely created just to crush the spirit of children), but what made the whole experience impossible was the fact that this was in an era when there was no 'save game' feature on consoles. So every time I lost the game, I had to start again at the beginning. I don't want to work out the number of hours I threw away making barely perceptible progress on TMNT.
But as the saying goes, 'When I became a man, I put away childish things'. Whilst anyone who even vaguely knows me would know that this obviously isn't even slightly true of me, I have definitely moved on from wasting endless hours trying to overcome such frivolously difficult tasks – tasks where I ultimately get nowhere and have to start right back at the beginning again after each attempt. That is until I became an English teacher. Because, since I became an English teacher, I've had to take part in standardisation. Regularly.
Standardisation, to the uninitiated, is the act of moderating assessment with colleagues in order to establish a standardised level of accuracy in grading. Seems like a wholly appropriate thing for any English department to do, particularly in the days of coursework and controlled assessment. The problem is that standardisation, whilst well-intentioned and seemingly necessary, is a bit like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES.
Because moderating and standardising assessment, certainly in English, doesn't mean we get standardised grades. Like TMNT, we seem to make progress whilst we are standardising: agreeing on grades and reaching some kind of harmony with our marking. But also like TMNT, the next time we come back to the marking, we have to start all over again: much of what we gained in the standardisation process is lost.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the Ofqual report, 'Marking consistency metrics', on the quality of marking in general qualifications. Bear in mind that examiners of GCSEs and A Levels undertake more rigorous standardisation than your regular classroom teacher, the findings of the report are pretty depressing. For their report, Ofqual put seeded papers (those that have been pre-marked and assigned definitive marks) out to be remarked by the team of employed examiners. Below is a table showing the probability of a candidate being award the definitive mark. For English Literature, it's around 50%. History isn't much better at around the 60% mark.
From the Ofqual report: 'Boxplot of the probability of a candidate being awarded the definitive grade for a range of units. The mean probability for each subject is denoted by the white triangle.'
The elephant (or turtle) in the room when we standardise is that, when left to our own devices, much of what we gained in standardisation is lost – lost to unconscious bias, lost to the subjective nature of grade descriptors, lost to tiredness, lost to caprice, lost to the fact we might subconsciously compare against the previous piece of work we marked.
And yet we still seem to give up lots of time to standardisation.
The idea that, by practising assessing, and by moderating with colleagues, we are standardising our marking and getting more accurate is a tantalising one. And tantalising is the perfect word for the whole process, as its very etymology brings to mind another good analogy for the largely futile activity. For the word derives from the character in Greek myth, Tantalus, who was punished by his father, Zeus, in a rather spectacular way. Tantalus, a mortal, was invited to dine with the Gods on Mount Olympus. He wanted to test whether the Gods really did know everything, so (obviously) he decided to kill his own son, Pelops, chop him up, cook him and serve him up to see if they knew what they were eating. The Olympians immediately knew what had happened (except Demeter, who was probably looking at her phone and so wasn't paying full attention). Zeus then dished out the most delicious punishment: Tantalus was made to spend eternity in a pool of water which sat beneath trees hanging with bounteous fruits just above his head. But every time he bent to drink the water, it would drain away so he couldn't get to it, and every time he tried to reach the fruits above his head, they would rise up away from his grasp. Hence: tantalising – 'tormenting or teasing with the sight or promise of something unobtainable'.
That's the perfect analogy for standardisation: it torments and teases us with a promise of accuracy, something that is ultimately unobtainable. We should probably be cautious about investing too much time on it. Which is exactly what my mum kept telling me about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mums are always right.
(Yes, gamers, I know it was called 'Teenage Mutant *Hero* Turtles in the UK; the original US title is used here to avoid quizzical responses from non-European readers.)
assessmentgrade descriptorsmarkingstandardisation
May 5, 2019 jamestheo	Leave a comment
This post has been agreed by several teachers and is shared across several blog sites.
In the last couple of years, we have openly expressed concern at the approaches taken by Tes Education Resources to plagiarism and copyright violation, theft of resources, and the selling of resources that violate copyright. This is not a blogpost intended to cast disapproval on those who sell resources. It is a simply an open expression of concern at the approach taken by Tes Education Resources, when these incidents are uncovered. We also wish to make clear that this is not about an individual or anybody working for Tes Education Resources. We believe that this is a systemic problem that should not fall on one person to solve.
We feel that the following issues need to be properly addressed by Tes Education Resources:
· The fact that people upload and sell plagiarised resources, which have been clearly copied from free shares on Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes from colleagues.
· The fact that although Tes Education Resources offer 'goodwill' gestures to those who give public challenge, and offer compensation when they recognise plagiarism, the onus is on the victim of theft to report and prove the theft.
· The fact that customers are being advised to buy resources to check the content if they suspect a theft has occurred, and then claim the money back.
These issues need addressing because:
Plagiarism can constitute copyright violation, which is covered by legislation in both UK and EU law, as well as being a feature of international treaties and agreements. We believe that this is not being taken seriously by Tes Education Resources, who provide a platform for the sale of resources which have been taken, copied, and presented as original resources by the thief. Tes Education Resources describe themselves as 'one of the world's largest peer-to-peer platforms for teachers to trade and share digital teaching resources' (Tes Education Resources Ltd: Annual Report and Financial Statements – Directors' Report 2017). We feel that a company of this scale, regardless of financial status, should not be placing the onus on individuals to identify instances of copyright violation.
A goodwill gesture is something given on a case-by-case basis. It means that those with the time and tenacity to challenge instances of copyright infringement are being offered compensation, but there are victims who are unaware of the issue, or perhaps who do not have the time and resources to prove the provenance of the resource. We believe that the Tes Education Resources could and should ensure there is parity here.
Tes Education Resources have conceded that only 5% of their resource downloads are purchased. The rest are free downloads. We appreciate this valuable resource, but feel that the 5% are being prioritised over the 95%. It is understood that the 5% is the download, rather than the upload, figure – but the point still stands – 95% of people downloading from Tes Education Resources are downloading free resources.
We also believe that asking people to buy resources to check for copyright issues, in order to then claim a refund, is an unfair and illogical request. Perhaps most pertinent is the fact that all of these issues are contributing to our workload. The Tes recognise this too. In fact, they have an entire section of their website dedicated to this issue – you can read this here: https://www.tes.com/news/hub/workload. In refusing to adapt their practice, either by demonetising the site or by taking further steps to prevent these incidents, teachers are being forced to spend time searching the site for their own resources. When teachers locate stolen resources, the expectation that they buy their own work and prove its provenance is onerous and frustrating.
What Tes Education Resources Can Do:
– Have a long-term aim to demonetise the site and subsidise it, to enable an entirely free sharing platform for those working in education.
In the meantime:
– Improve checks on resources to identify plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.
– Allow for full download with retrospective payment, rather than asking people to buy resources simply to check for copyright infringement.
– Enable reviews of paid content without purchasing – so that copyright infringement which is clearly evident in the preview pane can be challenged in a review.
– Avoid downloading from Tes Education Resources until the long-term aim (above) is fulfilled.
– Use your Social Media account to inform your followers that you are doing this.
– Share your resources through Dropbox and any other suitable medium.
April 13, 2019 jamestheo	4 Comments
This is the second in a series of blogs on the key philosophers of education. Part 1 can be found here.
Whilst sounding like she might be a woman, Michel de Montaigne is actually a dead white man – a group who seem to dominate the philosophy of education throughout history, which is quite impressive given that they are all dead. Born to an incredibly wealthy family in 1533, Montaigne went on to become one of the most prominent and influential philosophers of the French Renaissance.
He is famous for inventing the essay, and as such is the scourge of students ever since. Before he invented the essay, all clever ideas had to be communicated via pictures, charades, or in singular messages of just 280 characters.
Montaigne's own education was an interesting one. Soon after he was born, his father sent him from the family chateau to go and live with a peasant family in a local village for three years, to cultivate in him an empathy for the poor and to "draw the boy close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help". It's merely a coincidence that the infant Montaigne was shipped off to live with another family during the period of his life that involved night feeds, teething and 'the terrible twos'.
When Montaigne returned to the family chateau at the age of three, his father insisted that he learn Latin as his native tongue, probably because "I done a poo" sounds much more sophisticated in Latin. He was sent to a prestigious boarding school from six years of age. When he had mastered the curriculum by the age of thirteen, he left the school to enter university. This seems impressive, but let's not forget that Doogie Howser had managed to complete medical school and was a practising physician by the time he was 14, so Montaigne isn't all that.
Whilst at boarding school, Montaigne studied a humanistic curriculum comprising of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy, built largely on a Classical model of education. Yet, despite benefiting from being taught an impressive body of knowledge himself, his own philosophy of education for others was rather different. Montaigne suggested that, "in true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum." This is perhaps the best argument I've ever seen against a knowledge-rich curriculum: Montaigne benefitted from one and yet still came out with the daft idea that "the blunder of a servant" is "as good as a book".
Montaigne went on to be very critical of academics, once remarking that, "I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly." Of course, Montaigne himself was very well educated so make of that reasoning what you will.
Elsewhere, Montaigne wrote in his essay, 'On repenting', that "I am not teaching, I am relating", which is exactly the sort of annoying smart-arse slogan that you see in people's Twitter bios right before you click 'mute'.
John Dewey
Born as one of a set of triplets in 1859, Dewey went on to become more famous than his brothers Huey and Louie. He is now considered one of the most influential educational thinkers of the 20th century. To get a sense of his significance, he's right up there alongside Johnny Ball and Mr. Belding.
Like many philosophers of education, Dewey began his career as a classroom teacher, spending two years teaching in a secondary school and one year teaching in a primary school. And like many education academics, he very soon decided that he'd much prefer telling people how to teach rather than being a teacher himself. However, with as many as three years of teaching under his belt before moving on, Dewey managed to inoculate himself against the kind of criticism that many Teach First candidates regularly have levelled at them for serving just two years in teaching.
During his career as an academic, he published over 700 articles and about 40 books, which, let's be honest, is too many. But at least I know that you haven't read everything that he wrote, so I can play fast and loose with the truth here. Among his many achievements, Dewey was in the original line-up of the Sugababes, as well as being the inventor of the Corby Trouser Press.
Most significantly, Dewey was a proponent of experiential and 'hands-on' learning. This means that he thought that people learn better by doing than by simply reading about things. You can learn all about Dewey's theories of experiential learning and his many other teachings by simply reading some of the SEVEN HUNDRED ARTICLES AND FORTY BOOKS THAT HE WROTE.
Dewey famously said, "If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow." But I tested this theory out and I don't agree with his conclusion. I taught today's students as I taught yesterday's and it just meant I was able to have last night off as I was able to use the same planning. As such, I've rewritten Dewey's aphorism: If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we get to binge-watch some Netflix/go to the gym/see family/have an early night.
On the purpose of education, Dewey wrote that: "Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible realisation of humanity as humanity." This is absolutely spot on, so totally and utterly true, and should be the singular aim for every single school. But does anyone know which bucket 'the realisation of humanity as humanity' goes in to improve your Progress 8 score?
Paolo Freire
Freire is one of the leading philosophers and proponents of critical pedagogy, which is a teaching approach inspired by critical theory. Critical theory is a social theory that aims to change society rather than document it, and is largely derived from Emmanuelle Kant (a French erotic film from the 1970s) and Groucho Marx. Critical pedagogy also takes inspiration from radical philosophers, such as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Theodore Logan, who are considered most radical, dude.
Freire enrolled to study law at university in 1943 but rather than taking it up as a career, he became a school teacher instead. By 1946 – just three years after he entered university – he was appointed Director of Education and Culture for the entire state of Pernambuco, which is as speedy an ascendency into management as that really ambitious colleague of yours could possibly dream of achieving. You know the one I'm talking about.
In his seminal book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire criticised what he called the "banking model" of education, in which students were seen as empty accounts to be filled by teachers. I'm not sure that Freire has ever seen a teacher's bank account.
He also proposed elsewhere that teachers should learn from their students. Assimilating this idea with the above banking model, Freire is suggesting that, instead of seeing students as empty accounts waiting to be filled, we should see them as overdrafts with which to dip into so we can spend money that isn't actually there. Or something like that.
A focus of Freire's philosophy was what he identified as "the teacher-student contradiction". He suggested that education must begin "by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students." Which reminds me of the time that I set half of my clocks and hour late and half an hour early and got stuck in a space-time continuum loop. Here are some of the ways in which you can overcome the teacher-student contradiction so that you can become simultaneously both a teacher and a student:
occasionally call your line manager "mum" or "dad" by accident
ask every individual pupil "what are we doing today?" as they enter your classroom
ask yourself if you can go to the toilet when you are bored of your own lesson
ask your pupils if you can do bubble writing when doing board work
P.E. teachers: get a note from your mum to get you out of teaching your lessons
Elsewhere in his work, Freire advocated for teachers to be political. In We Make the Road by Walking, he said that "the educator has the duty of not being neutral. The educator as an intellectual has to intervene. He cannot be a mere facilitator. He has to affirm to himself or herself." What Freire's followers will point out here, though, is the unspoken caveat: This is only applicable to teachers on the political left. Obviously, teachers on the political right have a duty to be completely politically neutral in the classroom.
Quotations from Freire are often cut and pasted into nice fonts inside colourful boxes and shared on the internet as a form of inspiration for teachers. Here is an example of one such quotation:
Such quotations continue to inspire educators around the world. For example, this particular quotation inspired Clark Kent to take a journalism course rather than study for a PGCE.
Freire is still very popular today, some twenty years after his death. In particular, he enjoys popularity amongst educators who like to think they are Joe Strummer because they don't want to face the idea that, as a teacher, they are a part of the establishment that they've always railed against.
Perhaps Freire's greatest legacy is his contribution to literacy teaching. In 1962, he taught 300 sugarcane harvesters to read and write in just 45 days. This model has been taken up by institutions all over the world. For example, many tabloid newspapers are staffed by 'journalists' who have clearly only been taught to read and write in the past 45 days.
John DeweyMichel de MontaignePaolo Freire
December 22, 2018 jamestheo	10 Comments
Socrates was a brilliant man. Not only is he considered the father of Western philosophy, he was also a great teacher and, what's more, a great teacher trainer. One of Socrates' most successful students was Plato, who, in turn, went on to teach Aristotle, who himself would then tutor Alexander the Great. There are no records of Alexander the Great's teaching career, so I imagine he was one of those that didn't quite make it through their NQT year. Who knows what he did after that. Anyway, it's clear that teacher retention was an issue even in ancient Greece.
But back to Socrates. He was a true polymath – aside from all the philosophising and teaching, probably his greatest moment was captaining Brazil at the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain. Not bad for a Greek. To put that into context, fellow philosopher of education Paulo Freire was actually a Brazilian national and he didn't even get a single cap for Brazil, let alone captain them at a World Cup.
But what about Socrates' educational philosophy?
Socrates saw education as a way to train the individual to become a "noble puppy" who will be friendly with familiars and fierce with foreigners. A bit like Katie Hopkins. But, unlike Hopkins, Socrates didn't rely on some sort of deep-seated psychological need for attention to achieve this attitude. No, he used education. Specifically, Socrates believed that all people needed was an education in music (for the soul) and gymnastics (for the body). Just those two subjects. It's basically what the EBacc would be if Sir Ken Robinson was Secretary of State for Education.
Socrates also invented the Socratic method, which is a method of birth control in which a partner is continually questioned and challenged during the act of coitus until they are so disconcerted that they are unable to achieve climax/no longer fancy it.
Ultimately, Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting his students, which is the worst Ofsted grade you can get.
Socrates' last words were "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; please pay it and don't forget", which pretty much sums up why you don't see him quoted very often on motivational posters.*
(*Although, I'm going to declare right now that I'd work for any headteacher who has this on their office wall.)
John Locke was born in 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, which is in Middle Earth. Amongst his many philosophical ideas, Locke believed that a legitimate government is one that represents the will of the people. His views on a second referendum are unclear.
Locke lived through one of the most turbulent times in English history – witnessing Charles I quarrelling with Parliament and his subsequent execution, the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, the Glorious Revolution, Dirty Den's murder, Arthur Fowler stealing the Christmas Club money, and Janine pushing Barry off that cliff.
What about his thoughts on education?
In 1693, Locke published his treatise 'Some Thoughts Concerning Education'. A treatise is a 17th century blog. If Locke were writing it today, it would be called 'Musings on Education' and it would have been reblogged by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Locke suggested that, when we are born, our mind is a blank slate or 'raisin de table'. Locke said that we are basically like an Etch-a-Sketch: our minds begin with a blank screen and, whilst some of us are lucky enough to be adorned with beautiful detailed pictures like the one below, most of us end up with a crude, unintelligible picture of something obscene.
As such, Locke believed that education makes the man, arguing that "nine parts of ten" of what constitutes a person comes from their education. The tenth part is made up of all lies they tell about themself on their CV and dating profiles ("love my work", "really into existential theatre", "do a lot of work for charity", "quinoa is delicious", etc.)
Locke was pretty much a utilitarian when it came to curriculum. He hated the idea of spending hours learning Latin when children could be improving their native language instead. Essentially, whenever a pupil repeats the classic refrain, "Why are we learning this? When am I ever going to use this?", they are pretty much quoting Locke.
We can see further evidence of Locke's utilitarianism through his attitude to various subjects. For example, he thought that pupils should be taught to draw because it would be useful for them to sketch things that they see when they are travelling foreign places and then bore family and friends when they return by showing them this visual record of their trip: "Here's the waiter in the hotel that Margaret flirted with every night… ooh that's me coming out of the flume… yes, those Speedo's were a bit tight…"
Most of Locke's ideas on education were aimed at the middle and upper classes, but he did turn his eye to the working classes in his 'Essay on the Poor Law'. In this piece, he argued that working class kids were a burden on society and so 'working schools' should be established, in which poor children will be "inured to work" from three years old. To be honest, I find it hard to reconcile my shock at this attitude towards young children being sent out to work with the fact that I've watched and enjoyed 'Bugsy Malone' at least a dozen times. Locke's influence on Western thought has been considerable, but I think we can all agree that it reached its finest moment with that film.
Rousseau was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland in the 18th century and, among his many achievements, he is known as the inventor of off-rolling. He is thought to have had five children but this figure is uncertain as he did not keep adequate records of them. Rather than bringing up these children and educating them himself, he famously off-rolled them and they ended up being educated at the local foundling hospital instead.
But this is good news for us because, with his children out of the way, Rousseau was able to formulate his theories on education and child-rearing for which he is celebrated today.
After hearing about Rousseau's children, Voltaire called him a "monster". But presumably he meant like one of those nice friendly cuddly ones from Disney Pixar's 'Monsters, Inc.' that are all child-centred and that by the end of the film.
What exactly were Rousseau's views on education?
Rousseau wanted to share his views and ideas on education, so he wrote a treatise on education in which he put forward his philosophies on education. He called this book 'Émile'. But then anybody picking the book off the shelf in Waterstones wouldn't have known what it was about so his publisher made him give it the alternative title, 'On Education', which made more sense. It's like when they renamed the 1987 comedy 'Harry and the Hendersons' as 'Bigfoot and the Hendersons', so everyone knew it was about a Bigfoot.
After its publication, 'On Education' was banned in Paris and Geneva and authorities ordered that copies of the book should be burned, whilst Rousseau himself was threatened with arrest if he ever set foot in his hometown again. This is basically like having your Twitter account suspended except not quite as traumatic.
'On Education' later became the most viewed TED talk during the French Revolution and eventually formed the basis of a national system of education.
Er, yeh, but what was his actual philosophy of education?
In Rousseau's book, we follow the title character Émile throughout his early life, and the author uses the character to illustrate how a child should be educated. To begin with, Rousseau divides childhood into three stages:
The first stage up until the age of 12, when children are guided by their emotions and impulses.
The second stage between 12 and 16, when reason starts to develop.
The third stage, from 16 onwards, when the child develops to adulthood.
It is notable that the three stages of childhood are precisely inverse to the three stages of Twitter:
The first stage, lasting about three months, when the adult sets up their Twitter account and begins to develop their usage.
The second stage, from 3 months to a year, when reason starts to dissipate.
The third stage, from a year onwards, when users are guided entirely by their emotions and impulses.
In his book, Rousseau describes the way a child should be educated at each stage of their life. First he suggests that a child should learn to paint the fence and wax the car, before he then moves on to more formal training in order to achieve the ultimate aim of entering and winning the All Valley Karate Championship.
A key tenet of Rousseau's philosophy is that, upon entering formal education during the teenage years, the child should only study what they are curious about. This, he believes, will then lead to them nurturing a love for all things. There's no mention in the book as to whether, when told he should study only what he is curious about, Émile locked himself in his room for the next three years and demanded that nobody enter under any circumstances.
Rousseau went on to write a sequel to 'On Education', called 'Émile et Sophie', which was directed by François Truffaut, stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and is adored by pretentious sixth formers.
Jean-Jacques RousseauJohn LockeSocrates
Teaching, The Education Fables
An art history of autumn term
September 23, 2018 jamestheo	1 Comment
The way that artists have portrayed education throughout history has been something of a fascination for me in recent years. Over a series of blog posts, I have explored how artists from various eras and artistic movements have cast their eyes, their brushes, their lenses and their, er, casts over the educational landscape before them. You can catch up with these blog posts by clicking on the links below.
An art history of school inspections
An art history of back to school
An art history of exam season
An art history of inset
In today's post, I will be looking at the various artistic representations of the longest and darkest period of the academic year: the autumn term.
I'll be begin by discussing one of the most famous paintings depicting the beginning of the autumn term: Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated 'The First Seating Plan' (1495-8).
'The First Seating Plan' (1495-8) by Leonardo da Vinci
In this painting, we can see the teacher surrounded by his pupils as they react to the seating plan that the teacher has placed them in. As da Vinci leads our eyes across the painting, we can see many students arguing that they don't want to sit next to their designated partner, while others are still trying to work out where they actually sit from the simple diagram projected onto the whiteboard. But most striking is the teacher's expression, which we can see in the detail below. His face simply says, "If getting them to sit in a seat is this hard, how on Earth am I going to teach them quadratic equations?"
Detail, 'The First Seating Plan' (1495-8) by Leonardo da Vinci
French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau also worked on this theme of the first seating plan in his 1718 work, 'Get in! We're sat together!' (below), which focuses on the moment that a group of pupils show enthusiasm for the teacher's random seating plan by hugging and dancing with each other. Of course, the moment that pupils show excitement at such serendipity is also the moment that the teacher's heart sinks and they realise that they've really cocked up the seating plan by placing these pupils where they are obviously going to easily distract one another. She'll give them a chance, but she's pretty sure that the seating plan will have to be redone tomorrow.
'Get in! We're sat together!' (1718) by Jean-Antoine Watteau
One of my favourite physical pieces of autumn term art is Tony Cragg's sculpture, 'All of the water bottles you've lost this term' (1998).
'All of the water bottles you've lost this term' (1998) by Tony Cragg
In this piece, you can see the sheer volume of water bottles that a single teacher has brought into school during the autumn term, only to leave them somewhere and never get them back. You'll notice plenty of common plastic mineral water bottles, as well as a number of flasks and fancy designer receptacles, including the expensive one that the teacher bought at the end of the summer holidays as a gift to themselves for the new term. They lost that one during inset on the first day back. The artist said of this piece, "If you think that the oceans are full of unwanted and left-behind plastic bottles, you should see school staffrooms."
Whilst Cragg deals with the subject of drink, many artists turn their attention to teachers' food during the autumn term. It is often striking in schools how little time it takes for cake to become a common sight in the staffroom, as teachers begin to ramp up their sugar intake in order to survive the autumn term. Below we can see Chris Killip's 1977 photograph, 'Teachers queuing outside the cake shop, two weeks into term'.
'Teachers queuing outside the cake shop, two weeks into term' (1977) by Chris Killip
Killip's piece is an important piece of photojournalism, capturing the sugary reality of this first term.
But whilst cake becomes a common in the mise en scène of the staffroom, there's alway someone who, with good intentions, brings fruit in for colleagues. This has, of course, famously been portrayed by Sir John Everett Millais in his 1849 painting, 'Fruit? Are you ****ing joking mate?', as seen below.
'Fruit? Are you ****ing joking mate?' (1849) by Sir John Everett Millais
Critics have heaped praised on this painting, as it captures the well-meaning teacher bring a bowl of oranges into the staffroom, only to enrage her colleague, who was expecting, at the very least, a family pack of Kit Kats to see him and his colleagues through the morning.
As the term progresses, teachers often face their heaviest marking load of the year, as baseline assessments and data drops build up and mock exam period is swiftly upon them. This creates a seemingly endless pile of marking.
'When will this mock exam marking end?' (c1760-70) by Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough's late 18th century work, 'When will this mock exam marking end?' expertly captures the mood of teachers at this time. Note the heavy reams of paper, as well as the wistful look on the teacher's face has he remembers the days when he could spend time with his family. Viewers are drawn to the small square of light in the top right hand corner, symbolising the fragments of hope that keep teachers going throughout this time.
On the subject of light, J.M.W. Turner's masterpiece of chiaroscuro (below) addresses the dominating feature of the autumn term: its perpetual darkness.
'Hello Darkness, My Old Friend' (1809) by Joseph Mallord William Turner
'Hello Darkness, My Old Friend' (1890) depicts a teacher planning their lessons and marking books as the ubiquitous darkness of autumn term creeps in all around them. The lack of light plays heavy on the teacher's mental state as their hand quivers near their face. Turner deliberately leaves any indicators of time out of the painting, suggesting that this could be 8 o'clock in the morning, 4pm, or midnight. Let's face it, they were probably sat there at all three times.
As the term goes on, the darkness and workload take their toll on a teacher's energy. You will all recognise Millais' famous painting depicting this subject below.
'Bath, not shower' (1851-2) by Sir John Everett Millais
During the latter part of the term, teachers find they no longer have the energy to stand in the shower at the end of the day. In 'Bath, not shower' (1851-2), Millais shows us the teacher reverting to lying in a bath out of necessity, complete with Lush bath bomb, a weary look, and – in this extreme case – all her clothes on. It's fine though – all her colleagues will be so tired that they won't notice that she's wearing the same dress for two days running, this time with added creases and still dripping dry. "You smell nice," they might say.
Late in the term, the weather begins to turn and we get our first cold snap. Tired and in need of any extra time they can get to catch up with marking or sleep, teachers often see the possibility of a glimpse of respite in this cold weather.
'Praying for Snow' (1888) by Alphonse Legros
Alphonse Legros' 'Praying for Snow' (1888) shows the moment when teachers desperately wish for a day to catch up contemplate the educational opportunities a day of snow will bring to the children they teach.
As Christmas approaches, there is an air of excitement in the school. Departments will often celebrate the season by organising a Secret Santa gift-giving amongst themselves. David Hockney's painting below depicts the moment of the exchanging of gifts.
'Oh good – a book about teaching' (1977) by David Hockney
In 'Oh good – a book about teaching', the artist shows us the faux gratitude shown by the teacher (on the right) receiving the gift, as he receives a book that is guaranteed to mean that he has to think about work throughout the Christmas holidays too. The teacher on the left seems satisfied that she bought him this instead of the Borat-style mankini she originally thought about getting him. Clearly, he would have preferred the mankini.
The final week of lessons approach and teachers and pupils alike can see the end in sight.
'Can we have a fun lesson?' (1851) by Richard Redgrave
In the above painting, Richard Redgrave's 'Can we have a fun lesson?' (1851), we can see the teacher responding angrily to the question that he has been asked 14 times already this week. There are still two days to go.
'Can we watch a DVD?' (c.1850) by Frederic George Stephens
On the final day of term, the question becomes even more deploring. Frederic George Stephens' 'Can we watch a DVD?' shows a pupil begging to be allowed to watch the first half of a film before going to their next lesson to ask their next teacher if they can watch the first half of a completely different film, and so on for the rest of the day. It is arguable that such a day would actually have an educational benefit: it will serve as a good introduction to postmodernism and will ably prepare pupils to read James Joyce or Italo Calvino in the future. In Stephens' painting, we can see the teacher wrestling over the decision to teach her planned lesson, watch an educational documentary or just give in completely and stick Elf on.
Once term is finished, teachers can really get into the seasonal festivities with their friends and family. Tom Hunter's 'Get the Party Started' (2009) shows a teacher, back home after the long autumn term, really throwing themselves into all of the festive fun and cheer.
'Get the Party Started' (2009) by Tom Hunter
That's it for this look at the art of the autumn term throughout history. I hope you've enjoyed it. See you next time!
Alphonse LegrosChris KillipDavid HockneyFrederic George StephensJ.M.W. TurnerJean-Antoine WatteauLeonardo da VinciRichard RedgraveSir John Everett MillaisThomas GainsboroughTom HunterTony Cragg
Oblique National Strategies cards
August 31, 2018 jamestheo	1 Comment
Back in 1974, the musical innovator Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt produced a deck of 113 cards called 'Oblique Strategies'. On each card was an instruction or guidance to encourage a musician or artist to be able to laterally think their way through a creative block. When faced with the pressure of producing, they would often find that this very pressure would steer them away from productive ways of thinking, so they created the cards to jog their mind back towards these more, well, oblique ways of thinking. Here's Eno discussing them in 1980:
"The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you're in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that's going to yield the best results. Of course, that often isn't the case – it's just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, 'Don't forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,' or 'Don't forget you could adopt *that* attitude.'"
The cards were famously used by Eno and David Bowie on the latter's Berlin trilogy of albums – Low, "Heroes" and Lodger, and have been used by a number of artists since –bands such as R.E.M. and Coldplay, for instance. You can see examples of some of the cards below:
It's recently come to my attention that similar cards were produced by the National Strategies team back in the early noughties: whilst plenty of their resources were of good quality, they sometimes suffered creative blocks when coming up with initiatives and materials for schools, so they produced their own set of Oblique National Strategies cards to help them get through these blocks. And what's more, I've managed to get hold of some of these cards. Rumour has it that these are still used by some agencies, organisations and MATs. I've attached some of the cards below so that you can use them if you have any creative block in policy making. Just click on a card at random and follow the strategy written on it.
National Strategiesoblique strategies
Over the past few years, I have been exploring the art history of teaching on this blog, sharing some of my favourite pieces of artwork across various topics within education. You can view my past blogs on these topics here:
In this blog, I will be exploring another area that has proved a rich vein for artists throughout time: the inset day. Let's take a look at how this topic has been approached by artists through the years.
'I don't have to teach tomorrow… I might as well finish the bottle tonight' (1969) by Patrick Caulfield
One of my favourite modern pieces is Patrick Caulfield's 1969 classic 'I don't have to teach tomorrow… I might as well finish the bottle tonight', which depicts the preparation teachers might go through the evening before an inset day. Other works around this theme include Pauline Boty's 'So What if This Film Starts at 10pm? I've Got Inset Tomorrow' (1963) and Andy Warhol's 'Lie-in!' (1967).
This kind of preparation continues into the next morning, as teachers take the opportunity of staff inset to dress casually for the day. The work below is a diptych by August Sander in 1929, titled 'Inset day outfits'.
'Inset day outfits No. 1' (1929) by August Sander
These contrasting photographs are beautifully observed, the artist depicting both P.E. staff and classroom teachers from the school's faculty. Sander plays with the assumptions of the layperson here – they might assume that the P.E. staff are on the left and the classroom teacher is on the right. Of course, as those in schools all know, inset day is the one day of the year where all the male classroom teachers wear shorts and the P.E. staff wear long trousers – both experiencing a sense of liberation that they crave every other day of the year.
Once the inset day begins, teachers might have the option to sit in groups of their choice, or they might face the prospect of being made to work in groups that have been selected for them.
'This is the Group We Have Been Put In and We Are Really Happy About That' (1989) by Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth's 1989 photograph 'This is the Group We Have Been Put In and We Are Really Happy About That', shows an enthusiastic group of teachers really getting stuck in to working with the group into which they have been selected. This piece invites the viewer to really look at the faces of each of the group members to see their deep joy.
Once work begins within the group, staff will need to feed back their discussions and ideas on the subject matter of the training.
'Write Your Ideas on a Post-it® and Stick Them it the Wall' (1976-7) by Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly's 1976-7 print 'Write Your Ideas on a Post-it® and Stick Them it the Wall' depicts the staple method of feedback used at all inset. The artist deliberately leaves the sticky notes blank, allowing the viewer to imagine their own feedback as they experience the painting. Critics note is that the central Post-it® note is black, and thus any writing on this note will be illegible to the reader: is the artist suggesting that your feedback won't actually be read? Or is he suggesting that your true thoughts are hidden? What other interpretations might we make of this?
It may be that the inset training requires teachers to be creative in their feedback. Below are two examples portraying a common method of creative feedback from the past, in which teachers have been given some random objects to arrange in a way that represents their response to the subject matter. In Jean Tinguely's 1970 sculpture 'My Pedagogy', the artist depicts a teacher who has been asked to present what pedagogy means to them. In this piece, there is a description alongside it that reads: "Pedagogy is a series of tools that are in balance but are also simultaneously in a state of chaos". Below that, Bruce Lacey's 'This is What Teaching Means to Me' (1966) also shows how easy it is for a teacher to put some random junk together and then come up with a post-hoc rationalisation that it represents something profound when asked. The description alongside this piece reads: "I dunno, summink about support and helping hands and that?"
"My Pedagogy' (1970) by Jean Tinguely
'This is What Teaching Means to Me' (1966) by Bruce Lacey
An inset day may also require staff to get up out of their seat and do something interactive as it is often assumed by the trainer that teachers are all extroverts who wish to make public displays of themselves at all times. Liu Bolin's work 'Please, Please Don't Make Me Do This' (2018) portrays the a teacher in the moment they literally attempt to blend into the background so that they don't have to get involved in something that makes them uncomfortable. If you look very carefully at the piece, you can actually see the teacher in the centre, hiding in plain sight from the trainer, who has just asked him to sing and clap along to a song, or make some form of physical contact with the person next to him, or perhaps even something as upsetting as standing up for a moment.
'Please, Please Don't Make Me Do This' (2018) by Liu Bolin
Below we can see Eric Gill's representation of the holy grail of inset: having an external speaker come in to present to the staff. You can see the reverence from the staff as they hang on every word of this guru, who they've followed on social media for ages and have finally got the chance to hear speak in person. Critics have noted how the teacher depicted at the far end of the second row has a slightly dipped head, reflecting their disappointment at the revelation that the guru's social media profile picture is infinitely more flattering than they appear in person and was probably taken five years ago, before the mounting sleepless nights and all-you-can-eat buffet breakfasts in Travelodges started to show.
'External Speaker' (1918) by Eric Gill
One of my favourite pieces is Linder's photomontage piece from 1976, 'Oh good – that Ken Robinson video again', a punk-era work that asks the viewer to think deeply about the media content we consume in schools.
'Oh good – that Ken Robinson video again' (1976) by Linder
During inset day there is often a free lunch put on for staff in the canteen at a set time of the day. Below, we can see Lady Butler's 1881 painting, 'The Charge of the Lunch Brigade', which depicts the moment that one department decides to make their way to the canteen a bit earlier than the designated lunchtime in order to get served first, only to realise all of the other departments have done exactly the same thing. We can see the Head of Humanities, out in front in the centre of the painting, shouting "It's fish and chips!" as he nears the canteen and gets his first glimpse of the food. Meanwhile, those behind try to hustle towards the front whilst simultaneously trying to maintain polite relations with their colleagues in other departments.
'The Charge of the Lunch Brigade' (1881) by Lady Butler
A legend often repeated with regards to staff training is that of inset bingo, a game in which staff members have individual bingo cards full of common buzzwords in education that they are supposed to mark off from their card if they are mentioned by the speaker. Perhaps the most famous painting of all time, below, is Leonardo da Vinci's 'Lotto di cazzate' (Italian: "buzzword bingo"), which deals with the moment someone at the table has a winning card. Critics have often debated the sitter's enigmatic smile and the reasons behind it, but art historians have recently uncovered diaries from da Vinci that tell us that "the teacher in question has just won the game of inset bingo and is trying to hide her delight and, at the same time, maintain a professional demeanour in front of the speaker and her line manager – this conflict results in her enigmatic smile, a seemingly insignificant feature of the painting which I'm pretty sure critics won't pay much attention to in the years to come".
'Lotto di cazzate' (1503-06) by Leonardo da Vinci
I hope you have enjoyed this little voyage through some of the artists who have depicted inset day throughout history. Until next time!
August SanderBruce LaceyEllsworth KellyEric GillinsetJean TinguelyLady ButlerLeonardo da VinciLinderLiu BolinPatrick CaulfieldThomas Struth