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June 2007

29 June 2007

The future task of schooling

Lots of things I want to write in my blog but another 65 hour week has frustrated me. So just a quick note on the speech I gave to the Training and Development Agency for Schools yesterday.

I am trying to link some of my ideas about pro-social behaviour and how we create the citizens of the future with questions about the future of teaching.

As always my aim is to make up for a lack of expertise with a willingness to be provocative (given the number of RSA Fellows with educational expertise this is probably a big mistake).

In essence the argument is:

1. The future task of schooling must be about building children's capabilities (as we do with the RSA Opening Minds curriculum).

This means developing children who, as well as the basics, have attributes like self-confidence, the ability to solve problems and show initiative, team working and communication.

Above all the aim of schooling is that every child leaves school with the desire and the ability to continue learning throughout life.

2. For this to happen, personalised learning as we understand it now is only stage one.

The advent of good pupil data enabling teachers, parents and pupils to agree individual learning plans and objectives is a major step forward. But we need a much bigger cultural change if schools are genuinely to be able to meet the specific needs and capacities of every child as a whole child.

Given the demands made by today's schools and today's kids, it is a massive ask for teachers to see and treat every child as an individual with their own strengths, weaknesses and potential, and to ask them to focus not just on controlling and pouring knowledge into children but to develop them as rounded citizens.

Of course, some will say such demands can only reasonably be made if we lift burdens in others areas (the recent debate about the effects of external testing come to mind).

3. Real personalised learning will make new and stretching demands on individual teachers and on heads in managing staff.

The way teachers work now and the way we think about teaching as a career is not generally adequate to the task.

We need a new model of 'sustainable teaching' to enable the transformative change needed in schooling.

4. Key aspects of sustainable teaching should be the 'connected teacher'.

This means teachers must have experience of the world before entering the profession (we should ban anyone from going straight from school, to college, to school) and must refresh themselves throughout their careers with activities outside teaching and breaks from the classroom.

5. It also means the 'supported teacher'.

Psychotherapists, counsellors and coaches all recognise that they too need counselling if they are to do their jobs properly and not burn out.

As well as in service training every teacher needs one-to-one and small group support so they can download the demands, the excitements, the pressures and anxieties of their role, and be encouraged and challenged by their peers - to be nurtured and cared for both as individuals and professionals.

Too many teachers get burnt out and spend the latter days of their careers waiting for their pension (and too often demoralising those around them).

Those who leave teaching after a few years are often those who set out as the most ambitious and committed; they simply can't handle it when their idealism comes face to face with school reality.

If we are going to demand more of teachers we must recognise the psychological wear and tear of their jobs.

6. And it means recognising the importance of teachers as a team.

In unsuccessful schools the staff room often acts as the focus for negativity, with those who have lost enthusiasm being the loudest voices.

Many heads understand this and build strong teams at every level. But despite how crucial it is to success, people management in large schools is not, generally, as systematic, professional or ambitious as in other similar sized organisations.

7. The TDA has done a good job of raising the status of teachers and addressing what appeared, a few years ago, to be a looming recruitment crisis.

We should see this achievement as simply the solid starting point from which we can enable teachers to be the drivers of school transformation.

Posted by Matthew Taylor

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22 June 2007

Bad jokes and authenticity

When is a Thursday not a Thursday?

When it's a Wednesday.

This week's RSA Thursday was a day early so we could hear from Jeffrey Weeks speaking about his book: The World We Have Won. The book explores the consequences of the remarkable liberalisation of sexual mores in Britain over the last half century.

Jeffrey's talk was chaired by Peter Tatchell.

Having taken on the Church of England and Robert Mugabe, Peter, most recently took his life in his hands in Moscow where he faced homophobic thugs seeking to stop a Gay Pride march.

Introducing Peter as a figure widely praised for his principled stance and courage, I found myself thinking about someone who always stood at the opposite end of the cultural spectrum - Bernard Manning.

How is it, I wondered, that these two people have gone from being seen as dangerous extremists to (using Jeffrey's description of Peter) 'national treasures'?

The reasons for Peter's progress are clear. He won the argument.

Values of equality before the law and respect for sexual difference, which were branded 'loony left' a generation ago, are now found in the speeches of Conservative politicians and the editorials of right wing newspapers. And we have come to admire Peter for his courage in the face of bigotry and oppression. His taking on of Mugabe even at the expense of being badly beaten up was a pivotal moment.

In Manning's case it is more complicated.

The praise of his comedic skills by some progressive comedians and commentators altered perceptions. As did a closer understanding of him as a person.

From a social perspective, the easy explanation for his part-rehabilitation is the reverse of Tatchell - he lost the argument. His brand of little Englander racism is almost like a form of nostalgia.

Like Les Dawson's jokes about his wife and mother-in-law, the real subject of Manning's humour was, arguably, not those he seemed to abuse, but himself. The gap between the myth of male, working class, white potency and the reality of being trapped and left behind as the world moves on.

But perhaps the most important reason we have come closer to these very different people is that they never changed.

In a world where politicians, celebrities and corporations bend constantly and bewilderingly to the wind of fashion and public opinion, we grow to admire those who stick to their guns whether they are on the zeitgeist's In or Out list.

Tatchell still lives in a council flat and in fifty years time he will be bashing bigots with his zimmer frame.

Manning plied his trade to half empty rooms and never took up the open offer to recant and join the mainstream.

That we have learnt not to fear Manning or Tatchell and that even those who abhor their opinions grudgingly admit their consistency reminds us, first how society has changed rapidly and mainly for the better, and second how much in such a world of change we yearn for authenticity.

Thanks for the comments on my last post:

Durham group - thanks for the offer I'll pass it on. Hope to see you at our big launch if not before.

Richard - what a nice e-mail. Your 'worthiness' for Fellowship is amply displayed by the generosity of your words.

Simon - I agree. It sometimes feels the media the politicians and the public are trapped in an embrace of democratic death. We need to move from a government centric to a citizen centric model of change so politics is about 'us and us' not 'us and them'.

Peter - I agree. We talk about 'the social aspiration gap' between the world we say we want to live in the world we will create through our current thinking and behaviour. Closing the gap should be a core purpose for the RSA.

Chris - good point. One way to close the gap (see above) is to find new ways of engaging citizens in decision making. We have tried a few ideas but have not found a breakthrough yet. Devolving power is part of it, and Web 2.0 offers new tools to create the right opportunities. But we need action on many fronts to form a more participative democracy.

Ray - nice point. A small case in point - I read a Standard ad yesterday that said 'Dando killer to go free'. But if he goes free doesn't that mean we don't know whether he is the killer?

Posted by Matthew Taylor

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13 June 2007

The job of policy makers...

I try to avoid political current affairs commentary on my blog - it is not as if there is a shortage of it. But I can't resist commenting on my old Boss's speech about the media.

I think it is brave - partly because he recognises the impact of New Labour's spin machine but more so because any criticism of the media is bound to be met with fury by the media.

I agree with almost everything Tony Blair says, but I think he misses one important point.

He says that the big shifts that have made the relationship with politics worse are to do with the impact on the media of technology and the market, more specifically the emergence of real-time news, the explosion of new TV, radio and internet channels and the consequent fragmentation of the market.

This is true but the problem is not just to do with the media and the political classes, it is also to do with the nature of modern society.

When I went to work in Downing Street, I hoped to find out which of the classic views of the state that I had grown up with would prove to be true.

Would it be the Marxian view that the state in a capitalist society ends up serving the interests of the ruling class, or the new right view that a combination of public choice and producer capture means the state will see every challenge as an opportunity to extend its own size and power?

Or the liberal pluralist view of the state as holding the ring while competing interests in society battle it out for supremacy?

Rarely a day passed without compelling evidence for all three views. And I noticed something else, not just politicians trying to reconcile interests in different groups but also confronting conflicting interests within the same people.

This is nothing new; voters have long expressed a simultaneous preference for lower taxes and better resourced public services. But, as the world has become more complex and as we have become less deferential, the need for us to acknowledge the tensions between our interests and desires has arguably become more acute.

In more and more areas it can feel like people demand incompatible outcomes: cheap flights and action against climate change; affordable housing and protecting every inch of countryside; low inflation and enough service workers but a crack down on immigration; less centralisation of power and guarantees of uniform service standards; tough action against security threats and the extension of human rights.

It is the job of policy makers and politicians to find ways through these dichotomies but this can only be done if citizens are posing problems which they are willing to see solved.

It is in this more challenging context that the destructive relationship described by Blair becomes so much more damaging.

The media help people deny that these are real dilemmas and that their resolution is as much a matter of our own behaviour as it is of the skills of politicians.

Instead the media has become a disorganised conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self-righteous rage.

At a time when new challenges in our world and our lives mean politicians and citizens need a richer relationship than ever before the nature of the modern media help to ensure that it is more impoverished.

This is why a grown up discussion with the media and the development of new, more balanced and discursive online forums is an important part of a pro-social strategy.

Posted by Matthew Taylor

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08 June 2007

Times a thousand

I'm rushed off my feet so I apologise for this shorter than usual entry. I will try and get another post up early next week hopefully.

Thanks to Amy and Karl for their gracious comments about last week's post.

The lack of triumphalism from (most) Derby fans means I already hope they stay up next season.

It's been another exciting week at the RSA with highlights including an excellent lecture by Amitai Etzioni on Monday, a fantastic two day conference on India at the end of the week and a really exciting new list of Fellows which arrived in my inbox today.

But my own highlight was a trip to Durham to meet the Regional Committee and activists of North East RSA.

I have to admit the group endeared themselves to me first by being enthusiastic about my talk. It turns out that my vision of the RSA Fellowship as a network of activists working to further our shared values through local, professional, issue-based initiatives is exactly what many in the region have already started doing.

For example, the group that meets every month in Durham has persuaded local doctors that their new health centre should be an eco-building. More than that, they took the doctor off for a day to meet experts in sustainable building so he could see exactly how to do it.

The group has lots of other ideas but they need support – and that's exactly where the broader Fellowship comes in.

I will say more in due course of our big ideas for a new more active, engaged, connected Fellowship but imagine what they are doing in Durham times a thousand and you'll get some idea.

Posted by Matthew Taylor

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