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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
With forewords by Professor Tanya Byron and Octavius Black, Educating Ruby: What Our Children Really Need To Learn is a powerful call to action by acclaimed thought-leaders Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas. It is for everyone who cares about education in an uncertain world and explains how teachers, parents and grandparents can cultivate confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship in children, at the same time as helping them to do well in public examinations. Educating Ruby shows, unequivocally, that schools can get the right results in the right way, so that the Rubys of tomorrow will emerge from their time at school able to talk with honest pleasure and reflective optimism about their schooling. Featuring the views of schoolchildren, parents, educators and employers and drawing on Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas' years of experience in education, including their work with Building Learning Power and the Expansive Education Network, this powerful new book is sure to provoke thinking and debate. Just as Willy Russell's Educating Rita helped us rethink university, the authors of Educating Ruby invite fresh scrutiny of our schools.
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Praise for Educating Ruby
It was a teacher that changed my life; not because he taught me my times tables but because he helped me rebuild my confidence through my parents’ divorce. I am Ruby, you are Ruby, we are all Ruby. Thank you Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas for breaking us out of the battery farm.
Richard Gerver, author of Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today
Good schools have always focused on ‘results plus’, helping children achieve their potential in examinations and at the same time developing confident and creative individuals who are keen to do their very best. Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas are absolutely right to remind us of the need for more expansive approaches. Educating Ruby is a timely reminder of how increasingly important it is not to focus on just part of what matters at school.
Brian Lightman, General Secretary, ASCL
It is essential that schools educate the whole child. I strongly support the line of argument made by Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton that schools are about so much more than examination results. Educating Ruby is essential reading for everyone who cares about the future of education in our country.
Tony Little, Head Master, Eton College
The UK school system is in urgent need of reform. EducatingRuby teems with practical, evidence-based, inspiring ideas for teaching and learning, that will brighten the lives of over-tested students, stressed-out teachers and concerned parents. And when politicians are finally ready to be pointed in the right direction, it’s just the book for them too.
Sue Palmer, literacy specialist and author of Toxic Childhood
A powerful, heartfelt and expert analysis of what’s going wrong in the education of our children and how to put it right.
Sir Ken Robinson
Examination grades are important, but they are only half the story of education. Parents send their children to schools like my own because they know we build the kinds of character and roundedness that this book puts its finger on. It’s what all schools everywhere should be doing. Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas speak for schoolchildren and their parents everywhere.
Sir Anthony Seldon, Master, Wellington College
The need for a knowledge-rich curriculum is beyond dispute but this provocative book should make all teachers and school leaders think deeply about what is taught and how. A broad range of ideas encompassing deep scholarship, character building and creativity are set out with passion and clarity including practical suggestions for schools and parents. It’s going to wind some people up – but that’s a good thing.
Tom Sherrington, Head Teacher, Highbury Grove School
The schools of tomorrow are here today – but are too few and far between. We won’t get the speed and scale of change without real political will which is currently lacking. Educating Ruby is a brave attempt to mobilise parent power to get that change to happen. I really hope it succeeds!
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, RSA
Most people believe schools should do their bit to help children become ‘rounded individuals’ as well as developing their intellectual strength. The obsession with measuring our schools through testing their pupils means that too many children are on a relentless treadmill which is self-defeating. Ruby and her friends need an education with all its richness, with teachers who bring learning alive and supported by parents who play their full part. It is not too complicated and Educating Ruby explains why the system needs to change and what everyone can do about it.
Mick Waters, Professor of Education, Wolverhampton University
What would schools look like if they taught children what they really need to know? Could we ever have schools like that? Educating Ruby is thoughtful, provocative and optimistic. As ever, Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas are wise and experienced voices on the cutting edge of education. All teachers and parents should read this book – they’d learn lots, and enjoy it!
Hilary Wilce, author of Backbone: How to Build the Character Your Child Needs to Succeed
Educating Ruby is a must read book for all stakeholders in education. Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas show how we can have happy, positive young people with skills, attitudes and ‘habits of mind’; who are knowledgeable and capable of passing examinations.
Sue Williamson, Chief Executive, SSAT
Whether you agree or disagree with Educating Ruby, you’ll certainly be engaged, stimulated and challenged.
Robert Wilne, founding Head Master, London Academy of Excellence
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
Kayla Cohen, Bryan Harrison, Tom Middlehurst and Hilary Mackay Martin.
All those who spoke to us so openly about their own or their child’s experiences of school.
The many head teachers and teachers with whom we are lucky to work, who are already putting these kinds of ideas into practice.
Our gurus: Professors Art Costa, David Perkins, Howard Gardner, Tanya Byron and Carol Dweck.
And our families: Henrietta, Jude, Tom, Bryony and Peter.
Contents
Foreword by Professor Tanya Byron
I struggled at school. It was a highly academic girls’ school, and its hot-house atmosphere didn’t suit me. At one teachers’ meeting, my parents and I were told, “Tanya will never be a high-flyer.”
Jo Malone, the multi-millionaire businesswoman and fragrance queen, was told by a teacher that she was lazy (Jo is dyslexic) and “would never make anything of her life”. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and thousands of others were written off by their teachers – because their way of learning didn’t fit that of the school.
As a clinical psychologist working in child and adolescent mental health, I often meet children and young people who are struggling at school to such a degree that it has severely compromised their mental health and daily functioning. There are thousands of children today who are showing increasing rates of depression and anxiety disorders, struggling to hold on to a positive sense of self-worth. Some literally give up. And their parents are at their wits’ end wondering what to do for the best.
While the mental health of our young is a complex, multifaceted issue driven by biological, psychological and social factors, I believe that the current education system is out of date and out of step with the learning needs and habits of young people. Some 50% of all adult mental health problems start at the age of 14, a time of life when the prefrontal cortex undergoes huge changes in function, when risk-taking is a developmental imperative on the road to individuation, and when puberty adds sexual, social and identity challenges. Children who struggle are not lazy, stupid or babyish; they just don’t fit with this antiquated system.
School should foster a love of learning and enquiry, a thirst to discover and uncover, a sense of fun and creativity, whether learning about the past or developing ideas for the future. Yet many academics, like myself, who work in the fields of child development, education and mental health are increasingly concerned. We are deeply worried that our young people are being force-fed, over-tested and misunderstood, and are suffering as a result. They are taught to pass exams but not necessarily taught to think in their own unique way and on their own terms.
Our digitally literate and highly curious young people sit in classrooms where learning is delivered in ways that do not connect with the ways they think, learn and create. Furthermore, children from disadvantaged backgrounds, those with learning difficulties, or simply idiosyncratic learning styles, are never going to leave school feeling successful and empowered to carry on learning and thinking for themselves. This is not ‘trendy sentiment’, as some would have us believe, but a matter of hard fact. Those of us who have raised these concerns have been called ‘The Blob’ by policy-makers and politicians, and the hostility that exists between them and teachers is at an all-time high.
Recent surveys by employers and higher education institutions in the UK have clearly shown that students are not well-prepared for the transition from secondary education to higher education and/or employment. Children and young people are being educated to become reliable employees, when what we need are creative thinkers and problem-solvers.
The CBI’s First Steps report describes British schools as grim exam factories where “while average performance rises gently, too many are left behind”. It describes the education system as “too much of a conveyor belt – it moves children along at a certain pace, but does not deal well with individual needs … [This] means we fail to properly stretch the able, while results for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly troubling.” Their report says that there should be a major focus on cultivating the skills young people need in life.
So what are these skills?
Professors Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas are world-renowned academics who have dedicated their professional lives to answering this question. Their Building Learning Power programme is about helping young people to become more confident and sophisticated learners, both in school and out. Schools around the world – from Poland to Patagonia, from Manchester to Melbourne – are using these smart, practical ideas to give children the knowledge and the confidence they need to learn and thrive in the exciting and turbulent waters of the 21st century.
Guy and Bill have shown that it is perfectly possible for schools to systematically cultivate the habits of mind that enable young people to face all kinds of difficulty and uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively. Students who are more confident of their own learning ability learn faster and learn better. They also do better in their tests and external examinations, and they are easier and more satisfying to teach.
It’s not either/or – either good grades or life skills. We have to go beyond the weary old Punch and Judy battle between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’. Children and young people who are helped to become more confident and powerful learners are happier, more adventurous and take greater pleasure in reading – and they do better on the tests.
To thrive in the 21st century, it is not enough to leave school with a clutch of examination certificates. Students need to have learned how to be tenacious and resourceful, imaginative and logical, self-disciplined and self-aware, collaborative and inquisitive. Bill and Guy’s earlier book, Expansive Education: Teaching Learners for the Real World, gives dozens of examples of schools around the world that are already achieving this holy grail of education.
We need a radical rethink of our school systems to help our children get ready for the challenges and opportunities they will face. Without this equipment, many will flounder and become unhappy. But we can’t wait for the politicians and policy-makers – they will always do too little, too late. Teachers and parents have to help each other to regenerate what goes on in schools via an alliance and a quiet revolution.
This book provides a rallying call for that vital alliance, and a manifesto for the evolution that has to come. Please read it, join the alliance and give copies to your friends.
Professor Tanya Byron, Consultant in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Professor in the Public Understanding of Science
Foreword by Octavius Black
I have a 4-year-old daughter. She is the smartest, sweetest, most delightful girl in the world ever. Honestly, she really is. Her mother and I are in no doubt. However, as important as what we think of our daughter today is what we want for her in the future.
In less than 20 years, the smartphone will have gone from being an exotic luxury to being the prized possession of 80% of the world’s population. It will transform whole industries, wealth distribution and ways of life. As I write, the livelihood of iconic London taxi drivers is being put in jeopardy by the Uber app, which may in turn be transformed in a few years by the widespread adoption of driverless cars.
We hope that our daughter will live for another 90 years. Much of the knowledge she acquires at school is likely to be redundant by the time she starts her first job. Far more important to her working life will be the ability to read the runes and respond healthily to whatever challenges come her way. If she is curious, open minded and has grit she is far more likely to achieve the career objectives she sets herself than merely securing an A* in French. Education needs to instil a love of learning and the confidence to adapt and grow.
But work is only one small part of what will determine the quality of her life. Will she form healthy, romantic relationships? Will she suffer from mood disorder (the most susceptible group of children are teenage girls in social groups one and two, which will include her)? How will she respond to rejection and exclusion when, inevitably, she experiences them?
Our nation’s leaders are responsible for building a workforce with the skills to secure good jobs and maintain the prosperity of our nation. As a citizen, I expect nothing less. But, as a parent, what matters most to me is that my daughter feels good about who she is, come what may: that she is psychologically healthy and robust. The primary duty for this falls with us, her parents. The science shows emphatically that how we talk with, respond to, set boundaries for and play alongside our children has the greatest impact on their emotional and psychological well-being. This is a responsibility we can all embrace.
But we also need to know that our schools are playing their part. That’s difficult. Heads may not see it as their responsibility to build character, and may not know how. Harried teachers are likely to focus on exam results and Ofsted inspections. To help my daughter develop the traits she will need, schools need ideas, support and a bit of pressure. If we want to give our daughters and sons the best chance in life we need to work with their schools’ governors, teachers and heads.
Professors Claxton and Lucas have given us this invaluable guide as to how to help, based not just on what we should do but also brimming with practical tools, techniques and examples on how to do it. As a parent, I’m immensely grateful. Once you have read this book, I suspect you will be too.
Octavius Black, Co-founder and CEO of the Mind Gym and Parent Gym
Chapter 1
Causes for concern
I didn’t understand what school was for. A lot of the teachers thought I was thick. I remember the head teacher saying I’d never make anything of myself in front of the whole school. My ability to learn in school had been pretty much crushed out of me quite young. I still feel scared when I hear that word, ‘thick’.
Jack Dee, comedian
What we want for our children
We talk to lots of people about schools – teachers, parents, children and many others – and we think we have a shrewd idea about what is on people’s minds. So here is what we are assuming about you, our readers. We know that you want the best for your children – your own and the ones you may teach. We think that means, roughly, that you want them to be happy, to lead lives that are rich and fulfilling, to grow up to be kind and loving partners and loyal friends, and to be free from poverty and fear. We assume this means having a job that is satisfying and makes a decent living. We guess you don’t want your children to be as rich as Croesus if that brings with it being miserable, greedy or anxious.
We also suspect that you did not decide to have a child so that they could contribute to the economic prosperity of the country and become ‘productive members of a world-class workforce’. We don’t imagine that you think about your son or daughter, or the children you teach, as if they were pawns in a national economic policy or in a sociological quest for equity or upward mobility. (We reckon that you know people, as we do, who have real doubts about the idea that the more you make and spend the happier you will be, and who may even have down-sized in order to live in a way that feels more worthwhile or morally satisfying. There are plenty of happy plumbers with good degrees these days.)
And we assume that you would like your child’s school to support you in those general aims. The aims of school do have to be general because we just can’t know what kind of work and lifestyle will ‘deliver’ that quality of life for any individual. Children’s lives will take many twists and turns, as yours and ours have, and whether they turn out to be accountants in Auckland, teachers in Namibia or shepherdesses in Yorkshire, we will want them to have the same general qualities of cheerfulness, kindness, open-mindedness and fulfilment, won’t we? (Please insert your own favourite words to describe those deepest wishes for your children here.)
We suspect that you might still be touched, as we are, by these words on children from Khalil Gibran’s book The Prophet (much quoted though they may be):
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, But seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.1
If your household is full of ‘digital natives’, doing all kinds of wonderful and scary things on social and digital media – or you have ever watched a TV show called Outnumbered – you will be in no doubt that “their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow”! A mutual friend of ours was telling us, just the other day, about a conversation with his granddaughter, Edie, who is 12. She was doing something with her mobile phone and Martin asked her what it was. She showed him the app she had discovered for learning Japanese, which she had decided she would teach herself. Often in bed at night she would be listening and practising quietly, under the bedclothes. Her parents hadn’t a clue what she was up to – she had not felt the need to tell them – and her teachers, earnestly trying to get her to write small essays on ‘the functions of the computer mouse’, certainly had no idea. Will Edie be working in the Tokyo branch of Ernst & Young in 15 years’ time? Who knows.
We make the assumption that you are doing your best to help your children get ready for whatever comes along, both at home and at school, and preferably both together. If you have children of your own at school, we assume you would like the school to be your partner in this crucial enterprise. And if you are a teacher, we assume that you take immense pride in the amazing job you have: helping to launch the lives of hundreds of children in the best way you know how. We are all angling the launch pad, so to speak, so that – whatever they are going to be – they get the best possible send-off. Whether you are helping little ones learn how to tell the time and ‘play nicely’, or bright 17-year-olds to grapple with A level English or the International Baccalaureate’s theory of knowledge module, we’ll assume you don’t want to take your eye off that fundamental intention of getting them ready for life. What could possibly be a more fulfilling way of earning a living?
All is not well
However, we are also going to imagine that you, like us, have some serious misgivings about what is actually happening in schools. In the boxes scattered throughout the next few pages, and later in the book, there are some stories and quotations from children, their parents and teachers. We’ve put them there to see if you share some of the same feelings and experiences. The schools and the people we talked to are all real but, in most cases, we’ve changed or removed their names to protect their anonymity.
I’d loved my primary school, but at St Bede’s Comprehensive School I felt depressed and scared, like a wild animal in a cage. I felt empty inside. I was ill once for two weeks, I felt wiped out and tired; but mentally I felt happy because of not being at school. When I returned, however, after just one day I came home and felt restless, confused, my mind couldn’t focus on one thing at a time. I felt unsettled and one tiny thing would make me flip into tears.
If ever the teacher was challenged by a pupil about what they said, the pupil would get told off. I got told off for telling the teacher that a boy was teasing me by saying he liked to kill animals, when we were on the subject of animal cruelty. She said to me, “Now that was a stupid thing to say wasn’t it?” – what I’d said, not the boy. I looked at her – why in the world would that be stupid? I raised my hand again. I wanted to say something that sounded strong. But when she said, “Have you got something sensible to say now?” I felt the gaze of all my classmates on my back, and I lost my nerve as tears filled my eyes and clogged my throat. “No,” I said.
I felt resentful but couldn’t bring myself to become a rebel. So I became quiet and my normal self was glazed over by someone different – who I didn’t like. There was no room at St Bede’s for someone different like me. And I felt myself turning into some fashion freak like everyone else. I hated it because keeping my feelings to myself is very hard. Because normally they’re very strong. I was always hiding myself while I battled through the day.
I had to let my feelings out, but I couldn’t wait to tell mum at the end of the day, so I turned to my friend Leanne who was good at talking about sensitive subjects. When I did she would always try to help me fix them – until one day she said, “Look, Annie, I know you’re not enjoying it, but I am and I don’t really want to talk about it because it’s not positive.” Then I had no one to talk to.
That was another thing about St Bede’s. You were told to “Stop being childish”, but we were children so we had to be childish! We weren’t allowed to run about at break-time. This was one of the things I found utterly stupid. There was a boy in my class that was always bouncing in his seat and shouting out because of this. He had never been like that before [at primary school].
Annie, Year 7 student, St Bede’s Comprehensive School
What are your concerns about the schooling you are providing (if you are a teacher) or your child is getting (if you are a parent)? Of course, many children thrive in school, if they are lucky enough to find one that suits them. They retain their cheerfulness and gentleness, enjoy maths and English, find a sport and a musical instrument they love to play and practice, and are helped to discover and explore the interests and aptitudes that may grow into the basis of a degree and a career. (Though even conspicuous successes like Tom, on page 8, can have their misgivings.)
But many don’t. A lot of parents and teachers see their ‘bright’ children becoming anxiously fixated on grades and losing the adventurous, enquiring spirit they had when they were small. They study because ‘it is going to be on the test’, not because it is interesting or useful. Or adults see their ‘less able’ children (we’ll query this kind of terminology later on) becoming ashamed of their constant inability to do what is required, and so becoming either actively resistant to school or passive and invisible. Both ends of the achievement spectrum can experience a curious but intense mixture of stress and boredom. The obsession with grades and test scores turns some children into conservative and docile ‘winners’ at the examination game. Many muddle by in the middle, willing to play a game they don’t fully understand.
And some children grow into defeated ‘losers’. Yet these losers (like the talented Jack Dee) are not inherently stupid or lazy. Research shows that they have the potential for highly intelligent and determined problem-solving in real-life settings, but some of them, tragically, have had the learning stuffing knocked out of them by their experience at school, and as a result they are less happy, less creative and less successful than they could be. That is not giving them the best, and it is not nurturing the talent and the grit that would help them to be happy people and thoughtful citizens. Many people’s concerns about school centre on the validity of the examination system, and on the effect that the focus on tests and exams had on them or is having on their children.
For many young people the stressful nature of school is compounded by the sheer pointlessness of much of what they are expected to learn. It is a rare parent (or teacher) who is able to come up with a convincing reason why every 15-year-old needs to know the difference between metamorphic and igneous rocks or to explain the subplots in Othello. Parents often find themselves trapped in a conflict between sympathising with their children about the apparent irrelevance of much of the curriculum and still trying to make them study it. Certainly up to GCSE there is a fear that, if children don’t do their best to knuckle down and ‘get the grades’, their life choices will be forever narrowed and blighted. And, under the present antiquated system, they are quite right to be concerned. The horns of this particular dilemma are sharp and painful.
Teachers may have other quandaries – for example, wanting to impart to their students their own love of reading and literature, and knowing, from bitter experience, that the effect on many 15-year-olds of having to study The Tempest or Jane Eyre is exactly the opposite. Not everyone is brave (or foolish) enough to be the charismatic, rebellious Robin Williams character (John Keating) from Dead Poets Society, or Hector (Richard Griffiths) from The History Boys. Politicians who blithely tinker with the set books rarely spend longer in a school than it takes for the photo opportunity to be secured, so have no conception of the damage and distress their doctrinaire beliefs and prejudices may be causing. Many teachers are caught between the rock of their own values and passions and the hard place of examination requirements.
My school gave me a great education really. I gained good GCSEs and A levels. I was always involved in the school plays and drama competitions, winning several times. I took part in a host of extra-curricular activities and, as head boy, I had opportunities to speak publically on local, national and international platforms. Yet when I arrived at Oxford, I found myself shying away from the drama societies, the debates and even whole-hearted participation in my course – things that I would have loved and done naturally at school. What was missing? Why did my outlook change so drastically?
I think it was because, as a ‘gifted’ student, I was constantly protected from risk. Academic learning came naturally to me, so I never experienced real difficulty and was allowed to glide happily and successfully through school. Although excellent in many ways, my education allowed me – almost encouraged me – to develop an aversion to risk and failure. To this day I still cannot ride a bike. As a child I tried once – I fell off, it hurt – and I didn’t see the point of getting on again. I still stubbornly refuse to learn about car maintenance and electrics, and anything else I see as outside my realms of understanding. How different my life might have been if my school (as many now do) had deliberately nurtured an appetite for adventure and a tolerance for error!
Of course, young people need knowledge: no one is arguing against that. But they need more – they need the habits of mind that will allow them to become adaptive, responsive and caring people. And, as educators, I now see that we have the power to help them with this – or to hinder them completely.
Tom Middlehurst, head of research at SSAT (The Schools Network)
For Tom there is a real feeling of having been rendered conservative and brittle by his, apparently successful, education. It was the same for Bill who went to Oxford to study English literature, where he discovered he had been taught how to outwit the A level examiner rather than to work his way into a difficult novel or poem and then articulate his own opinions.
