How school pupils are indoctrinated in thinking about education.
(Published in LibEd journal, Summer 2014, online journal)
In the summer of 2014 there was a national conference on ‘Student Voice’ held in London to which schools (teachers and students) were invited. The idea was to explore ways for young people to have more of a voice in decisions in school. There has been a longstanding interest in this with a growing literature praising the value of giving students more of a voice.
I chair the Governing Body of Self Managed Learning (SML) College in Brighton. Given our role in providing a place where students manage their own learning it seemed useful for us to take part in the conference. Indeed we agreed to run a workshop, where we could show what we did and have an open discussion about our approach.
Now our approach is to go way beyond a voice for students. The latter are able to decide for themselves what and how to learn within a democratic learning community. So in order to introduce our approach I arranged for a group to attend and run this workshop. The group included four existing students aged 11 to 15 and one ex-student (aged 16) who had recently left to go to sixth form college.
At the start of the workshop I showed a 9 minute film about aspects of our work. Then I handed over to the ex-student (Sam) to chair a replica of our daily community meetings.
After the film there were lots of critical comments from the school students who came to the workshop. The first one was that if students could decide what to do they would just loaf around all day and do no work. This comment came after seeing a film clearly showing students in SML College learning a great deal. And on the film I was quoted as saying that in 14 years we have had no NEETs - that is all 16 year olds leaving had gone on to sixth form or further education college – except last year when two students set up their own business instead. No local school comes anywhere near our record.
After comments about our students not learning the group of students from SML College talked about what they did learn but this did not convince the critics. The latter preferred to work to their prejudiced assumptions rather than the evidence.
The next criticism from school students was that our students couldn’t get good grades at GCSE. This was after they had seen the film in which Sam had featured and which his mother had said that he had gained two A* grades in the January and was on track for six more in the summer. Sam was sitting there and confirmed that he indeed had gained 8 A* grades in total. Again the critics would not back down in the face of factual evidence.
Another attack from the school students was that not doing well in exams would lead to career failure. Getting a good job, they opined, depended on good exam passes. This was after viewing the film in which an ex student, Tim, had talked about his current work as a self-employed illustrator where his clients included New Scientist, Nike, Vodaphone and many other household names.
Tim came to us aged 14 after four years out of school and doubts about his future. We noticed that he was drawing a lot and encouraged him to develop a portfolio of work. Having done this he was interviewed by a local further education college and offered a place. They indicated that they ideally wanted some GCSE passes so in a year he worked at four and gained one C, two Ds and an E. However the college recognised that he had learned how to manage his own learning so was likely to flourish in their environment. This proved true as he gained the prize for the best student.
Tim went on to university taking a degree in illustrating. After leaving in 2010 he was awarded ‘Best New Blood’ in the National Design Awards and his work for Guys Hospital won the award for ‘Best Use of Visual Art in Healthcare’. But still the school students insisted that good GCSE passes were always essential for a good career.
Their insistence in the rightness of their views was mostly articulated in rather rude and insulting ways – in contrast to the polite and patient way our students responded.
What was fascinating was that out of about 30 people at the workshop there were only two teachers and one of these clearly took an interest in our work to the extent of wanting to spend time with me after the event to find out more about how to implement our approach in school. None of the school students attending seemed to have any interest in finding out more about what we did.
What was frightening was the extent to which school students have absorbed the untruths peddled by Government and by the education establishment. As a scientist by background I was stunned by the easy way in which these young people could ignore evidence and base their opinions on the misinformation that they had absorbed.
In the workshop one girl, obviously from a private school, commented, in an arrogant manner, that they had pretty much 100% A*-C passes at GCSE and things were therefore all right. She, and other critics, were articulate, confident and self-assured. They have been well-schooled but ill-educated. You could see that they could end up in powerful positions in society – politicians, media people etc – that is those sectors of society dominated by the products of elite educational institutions.
The Guardian newspaper reported a conference speaker who challenged his audience with the comment: “Any job that can be exhaustively defined – for instance in a job description or a manual of procedures – will eventually be subject to automation.” He asked his audience for examples of jobs that would not be affected by this – and most of the examples he was given he could easily refute.
The most interesting thing about this story is that the report appeared on August 22nd !979. The article pointed to the need for education to respond to this coming change. It’s not apparent that schools, colleges and university have responded to this over the last 40 years. As the article pointed out, fact-based curricula (as we have now in schools) merely pass on knowledge that is oriented to the past and sometimes the present. But, on its own, it doesn’t prepare young people for the future, where most people will have multiple careers and where the need is for the ability to continue to learn through life. Individuals have to take charge of their own learning. They have to self manage.
Nine years ago there were no apps. The word did not exist in the English language and no-one had predicted their use. Now there are over two million people world-wide working on apps. Those who knew how to take charge of their own learning were the first to capitalise on this opportunity – they were self managing learners .
This is the orientation of Self Managed Learning (SML) College. Around 40 young people aged 9-16 are learning to manage their own learning. SML College has no fixed curriculum, no imposed lessons – indeed no classrooms – and students plan their own timetables. In order to do this they are supported by a caring learning community that includes 9 adults, who are there to help them.
An experienced researcher has just completed an independent study of past students of the College. Here is one quote from the research report:
“Evidence suggests that for a significant number of students it was attendance at SML College which enabled them to get to a point where they were able to attend further education or sixth form college. In some cases this meant facilitating the development of the emotional and psychological wellbeing needed for further education; in others this meant support in achieving the necessary qualifications, in others it meant support preparing applications, for some it was a combination of such factors, and for a few it meant facilitating the identification of new interests which motivated young people to continue studying.”
“Interestingly, of the five students who had not continued to pursue further education, they are currently engaged in work they love, and two are operating at a level which far surpasses the norm for young people of their ages. One (aged 18) is head of tech for a research and development company, one (aged 19) is the production manager for an events management company which organises major UK festivals, one (aged 26) is playing in bands, running events and teaching music, and one (aged 22) is a pub supervisor, a job she does because it is fun. With the right attitude and support, further education is not necessary for an excellent work life.”
What the researcher also pointed out is that ex-students commented on how they felt better prepared for future work because they had learned to manage their own learning – and to make changes in direction as needed. This has meant students learning to be more self managing in their lives in general. Here are just two quotes from ex-students in the research report:
“I can say that everything I've done has been my own choice. And knowing that I have this freedom continues to inform my decisions and thus makes me very happy. I can't blame anyone else for these choices and I can't be 'sour' because things haven't worked out for me.”
“I think it was really important for me to be in charge of my learning. I need flexibility a lot of the time and that wasn't at all possible in mainstream school. I'm a lot more confident in myself to be independent now.”
Overall the College takes a simple stance on education. We find out about the person, who they are, what is important to them, what they need and so on. Then we can help them to learn to be able to lead a good life – in the present and in the future.
Dr Ian Cunningham
Chair of Governors, Self Managed Learning College
ian@smlcollege.org.uk
STRUCTURES FOR AUTONOMY – THE EXPERIENCE OF SELF MANAGED LEARNING COLLEGE
(Published in Education Revolution in the USA; 2010)
Too often there is confusion about the difference between structure and control when talking about freedom or autonomy for learners. I want to say something about these ideas and to give examples from our practice in using Self Managed Learning. My case is that we (adults) should support young people to grow up to be autonomous human beings who can lead a good life, as created by themselves (which includes moral, social and ecological dimensions). We need to provide structures for autonomy. And good structures reduce control.
The ideal of autonomy is espoused in the writings of many philosophers. Yet we know that educational practices can inhibit autonomous development (the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schooling). The structures of schooling such as classrooms, timetables and lessons imposed by adults, rules imposed by adults and institutional buildings inhibit autonomy. They control young people.
However there are other structures in human life. In fact it’s almost impossible to lead an unstructured life. We may have routines (structures) for starting the day – get up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, etc. Other structures might be around work routines – daily travel, answering emails, attending meetings and so on.
The Taoists have a good take on appropriate structures. They ask - what is the value of a glass? It’s an empty, rigid, transparent, resilient structure. Emptiness is important as we can then choose to put into the glass water, milk, beer or juice. If the glass is full of, say, cement, it would be of no use as we could not put any liquid in it. So emptiness leads to usefulness. But we also need the glass to be rigid to hold the liquid. If it was made of paper the structure would collapse and the liquid would run out – usefulness needs appropriate rigidity.
Transparency is useful because the learner and others can then see what is in the glass – important so that appropriate support and challenge can be offered to the learner. Finally resilience is important. Thin glass is more resilient than thick glass in coping with temperature change (if you remember your science) – so thinness is useful. Thick structures (with too much structure) are not robust and therefore are not capable of dealing with difference. We need the minimum structure to achieve our aims. Thick structures with too many constraints don’t cope well with difference. The value of our thin content-free structures is that we can use the same basic structures with 7 year olds and 70 year olds.
All these structural aspects feature in the way we approach assisting young people to develop as autonomous human beings who can lead a good life. And we view these structures as avoiding inappropriate controls. Structures that create bounded emptiness liberate young people: school structures control. So we should avoid control as much as possible while creating useful, liberating structures.
Self Managed Learning structures
Self Managed Learning College runs a series of programs in England as well as supporting other organizations in Canada, Finland, Israel and Sweden. I will mention here the South Downs Learning Centre in Brighton.
This project is for 12 students aged 11-16 who choose not to go to school. The program runs Monday to Friday within the hours of 9.00am to 1pm. When students join they initially encounter three structures.
Learning agreement. Students are assisted to create their own learning goals and direction in life. They are asked to address five questions, namely:
Where have I been – what has been my experience of life up to now?
Where am I now – what kind of person am I, what do I care about, what interests me, what am I good at, etc?
Where do I want to get to – what kind of life might I want to lead, what kind of work might I want to do, what goals for learning should I set myself now?
How will I get to where I want to be – how will I learn what I want to learn?
How will I know if I have arrived – how will I measure my progress and my development?
Learning group. A student joins a group with five others plus an adult (staff member) as the learning assistant. The group assists the person to create their learning agreement and to carry it out. Students can discuss anything they like in the group and ask for any help they need.
Community meeting. Each morning at 9am the community meets. At the start of the program this was to do things like agree rules and ways of working (which can get modified at any time at any community meeting). The meeting is chaired in rotation by members of the community – adults or students. The person who chairs also has to manage the close down at the end of the morning – that is, organize everyone to clear up. By rotating the chair we ensure that power does not accumulate to one person. Anyone can raise anything they like in the community meetings and most days they are quite short.
The working week.
After the Monday community meeting each learning group meets to think through what each student wants to put in their timetable for the week. So timetables exist and are another structuring device. However, unlike most schools, the students create their own individual timetables and the staff (learning assistants) timetables follow the students. The community re-convenes to agree resources (who is to use what room, which computers are to be booked to which students, and so on).
All timetables are copied so that each student has their own copy and one copy of each is posted up so that everyone can see what everyone else is doing. Staff timetables are also posted up. Most of the staff time is spent working one-to-one or with small self-selected groups. Students also organize visits and other activities away from the Centre.
On Friday each learning group meets to review the week. Students consider how their learning and activities have worked out. Often they haven’t stuck exactly to their timetables – sometimes for good reason, like wanting to spend more time on something. Sometimes it’s because they had problems and these can be discussed. Each student in a learning group has their own time to talk and to raise what they like. One of our roles as learning assistants is to make certain that everyone has a fair share of the group’s time.
In the Friday meeting each student has time to consider what they might want to do the same or differently next week. Most students vary their timetables from week to week as they change and develop. Also we encourage them to consider if they are on track with the learning goals that they have set for themselves. Naturally these goals might change and any learning agreement can be modified at any time. However the agreement is an agreement with the group so they need to come to the group to suggest any changes to their plans.
All these structures are designed give students as much freedom as possible. However we take the idea of community seriously and A S Neill’s distinction between freedom and license is important. To paraphrase Neill, ‘if you want to ride your bike and it doesn’t get in the way of others, that’s appropriate freedom; if you want to take someone else’s bike without their permission and ride it into people, that’s license and not appropriate’. Basically it is about having agreed rules that indicate what is permitted and what is not. And, like other learning communities, we sometimes have to deal with rule-breaking.
Conclusion
The structures I have mentioned are
Empty – learning agreements, community meetings, learning groups, timetables are all filled up with what students want
Rigid – they are fixed so students know where they stand
Transparent – timetables are on show for all to see; staff are transparent in their views
Resilient – the thin structures provide just enough support to learners without constraining them inappropriately.
The structures assist learners to manifest their autonomy-in-community. We become fully-functioning persons through relationships. So our model of autonomy-in-community is to avoid narrow individualism and instead to assist young people to use the community structures to further their relationships and their learning.
Dr Ian Cunningham is Visiting Professor in Organizational Capability at Middlesex University, England. He chairs the not-for-profit Centre for Self Managed Learning of which Self Managed Learning College is a part. He also chairs Strategic Developments International, a social enterprise involved in organizational change work. He can be contacted at ian@smlcollege.org.uk.
Young people - take charge of your own learning
Coco Kirkland joined Self Managed Learning (SML) College aged 13. She had been constantly in trouble in her mainstream school, because the teachers accused her of just doodling all the time. She is also diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Having been labelled naughty, just because she sees herself as a visual learner, she decided she didn’t want to stay in mainstream school.
In her first year at SML College, she did continue her doodling and cartoon drawing and other visual activities as well as chatting to fellow students. To anyone observing her, she seemed to be doing nothing else.
However, she was adjusting to her new environment where she could decide totally what and how she wanted to learn and age 15 she published her first graphic novel entitled ‘Project Immortality’. The company editor was shocked that a 15-year-old girl had produced work of such quality, and the book has been selling well ever since.
Coco did not just focus on writing her graphic novel. She became an expert on herpetology, for instance, and also decided to take a number of GCSE subjects. These were freely chosen by her and she decided to take two a year early. One of these was law, and as she said after passing it; “I made a comic about solicitors and barristers to help teach myself and to remember things.” She also commented that she has not seen ADHD and dyslexia as an advantage or disadvantage, just a different type of mental state. The College is renowned for taking a similar stance. All students are different and are respected for their differences.
Coco, like other students, spent her first week in college discovering more about herself and her ideas and directions in life that she was interested in. It is only then that we were able to help her to progress. For instance, having chosen law and we could then help her to think about ways in which she could learn this, given that we didn’t have a law tutor, (neither, of course, did her previous school, who could not have let her take law GCSE).
She started to learn from a book designed for law GCSE. I asked if she would like to meet a lawyer, to which she said yes, and so we arranged for a lawyer to spend the morning with her just having a dialogue about the nature of law and justice and other ideas that she wanted to explore. I also asked if she’d like to see the law in action which, again, she said yes. So we arranged for a trip to the local magistrates court and other students joined her on the trip. Note that she personally chose the goal that she wanted, namely to pass law GCSE. She also chose the mode of learning. If she had rejected either of my suggestions, they would not have happened.
This is the essence of the Self Managed Learning approach. We are unique in providing this mode of learning for young people.
As well as working on ideas about herself and her directions in life, in the first week she also joined a learning group with five other students and one of the staff team as the learning group adviser. The role of the adviser is basically to support students and to help the group work effectively. The learning group provides a secure base from which students can go out into the College and the wider world to conduct their learning. Another way in which students can make decisions is through the daily community meetings. These occur both at the beginning of the morning and also at lunchtime. We have 40 students and typically three or four staff on at any one time, and the community meeting is chaired in rotation by students (who are aged 9 to 17).
We talk about our College as a learning community because everyone is treated equally and is equally valued. We have no ranking of students and genuinely love having students who bring different perspectives to the College.
I recollect a girl who had come to us on the basis that she had major learning difficulties. She found even basic maths almost impossible, and her writing, while adequate, was not sufficient to pass an English exam. However, in our community she was brilliant within meetings because she was a clear moral compass. She was the one who would raise issues of morality and ethics and to challenge others in the community.
In our learning community the diversity that exists is of great value. For instance, a couple of our autistic girls have developed a very nice PowerPoint presentation on autism, which they use occasionally in our community meetings. This helps, especially new students, understand issues of autism and how those students on the autistic spectrum can be helped within the community, whilst at the same time being valued as individuals who bring something to the community.
What is appalling is that the organisational world is starting to get interested in neurodiversity and to value employees who may be on the autistic spectrum or may have dyslexia or dyspraxia, whilst schools clearly often take the opposite stance. Schools in England that are chasing exam results in academic subjects, as encouraged by the Government, end up valuing only those who can pass exams in academic subjects. We are clear that this is a misguided role for schools and that it’s our duty to recognise that the research shows that adult life satisfaction is best predicted through developing emotional well-being during the teenage years.
Dr Ian Cunningham, Chair of Governors, SML College, Fishersgate, Sussex.
2020
ian@smlcollege.org.uk
The problem of treating young people as children – the Caterpillar to Butterfly Fallacy.
[Published in Personalised Education journal, 2011.]
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult to get adults to treat the views of young people seriously. And because of this syndrome we have problems in convincing many adults to accept a truly personalised education that responds to what the young person wants and needs.
The Fallacy
One error is what I have labelled the Caterpillar to Butterfly Fallacy. To explain that I have to say a little about caterpillars and butterflies first.
When I was younger I would sometimes find myself in fusty museums. Some of these would have glass fronted cases containing displays of butterflies all neatly pinned down and labelled. The butterflies were beautiful but I could never gather up much enthusiasm for the idea of killing them in order to pin them in cases. However the people who did this were clearly impressed with the qualities of butterflies such that they wanted to collect them.
In all the places I visited I never saw a collection of caterpillars. Caterpillars are seen by many as a necessary nuisance (they eat stuff in your garden) but the transformation via the chrysalis phase means that the adult version of the caterpillar (the butterfly) is valued as beautiful and of specific worth.
It appears that many adults have a similar view of the transformation that is supposed to happen when moving to adulthood. The child (caterpillar) is a necessary nuisance that will eventually transform into a fully-functioning adult (butterfly) – and it is the latter that matters in society. One interesting phenomenon here is the use of language that separates out young people (children) from real persons (adults). Just as we recognise that caterpillars are a distinct phase and need treating differently to butterflies, so by labelling those under 18 as children and those over 18 as persons there is the basis for discrimination.
Somehow there is the assumption that there is a complete distinction between a person under 18 (not allowed to make decisions for themselves) and the over 18s who are free to decide things for themselves. By using a different label for a young person (child) there is the assumption that this phase of life (caterpillar phase) has to be treated differently from the phase of being real persons (butterflies). Children can then be assumed to be unable to make sensible decisions about what they need to learn since they are given a different label and put into a separate category from persons. Indeed I have often run into problems by talking about the 7-16 year olds that we work with as ‘young people’. Those in authority tend to think (and official documents can back this up) that ‘young person’ means someone aged, say, 18-25. You only become a person at 18 in this view of the world.
In an ideal world it would be great to banish the term ‘child’ as it plays into the Caterpillar to Butterfly Fallacy. The language allows for a faulty view of the world. Young people are not a separate category of humans yet they can be treated as such. I once worked with a Government department on encouraging the role of young people in policy making. I found that all their surveys of what people wanted excluded under 18 year olds. Not a single piece of market research asked the under 18s. They were assumed to be non-persons and therefore of no interest to policy makers. Yet young people clearly had views about what this department was engaged in – and to be fair to the senior civil servants involved they eventually recognised that they needed to make fundamental changes in their processes of consultation. However their starting point was clearly that ‘children’ did not count as persons and were therefore made invisible by senior people. It reminded me of the adult exhortation when I was younger that ‘children should be seen and not heard’ (used to keep us youngsters quiet when adults were around – yet under their control by being seen).
The Caterpillar to Butterfly Fallacy assumes a magic transformation that occurs when a child becomes an adult. However the analogy clearly breaks down as there is no chrysalis phase. There is no magic transformation that occurs at 18. Young people under 18 are autonomous human beings, whether adults like it or not.
The error of schooling
The classic error in schooling is to assume that what is taught equals what is learned. Based on the idea that children are less than properly human and in need of moulding to fit adult society, teaching is designed to pour in knowledge to make children fit to enter the adult world. In reality young people choose what they want to learn anyway. They actively ignore the subjects that they don’t like and make their own choices about what to pay attention to. If teaching worked every young person would get all A* results in GCSEs.
Conclusion
Those of us who work with young people need to take seriously the role of language and of assumptions about young people. We have to be active in challenging erroneous thinking by policy makers and the educational establishment otherwise we will not make progress in supporting the rights of young people.
The UNICEF report of 2010 on ‘child inequality’ in 24 OECD countries put the UK in the next to bottom group of countries – only beaten by three other countries for poor performance in addressing ‘child inequality’. This is indicative of attitudes in the UK to young people and it needs to change. The empty rhetoric of the educational establishment about ‘doing more for children’ (young people), but still wanting to control them, won’t do. It has to be tackled head-on.
Ian Cunningham, March 2011
www.smlcollege.org.uk
WHAT IS WORTH LEARNING IN SCHOOL?
(Published in ABC Magazine, Winter 2014)
There is currently a debate in educational circles about whether it is more important for children to learn facts or to learn skills. This either/or thinking – where it has to be one or the other – does not make sense to me. So it will be worth considering what is important to learn in education.
The first issue, then, is – is education aimed at learning about things (facts) or learning how to do things (skills). It is linked to ideas about the difference between education and training. A simple distinction is exemplified by the following;
You are a parent and your daughter comes home and says ‘We had sex education today at school’. You are likely, if you are a liberal modern parent, to be very approving of this. However if she comes home and says ‘We had sex training at school today’ your response is likely to be different. It is a crude way of distinguishing education and training. And some would argue therefore that just learning about things without learning how to do things is fine as employers will do the training.
But this cannot be the answer. If a child is to learn art or dance or drama or music or sports then it is about doing things. It is about skills. One problem is that such activity can get labelled as extra-curricular – meaning that it is not part of the proper curriculum – it is outside it and therefore of less value. We know, for instance, that what is assessed (via SATs) at the end of primary education is largely knowledge and fact-based featuring only English, maths and science. Nothing else counts in judging a child within this system.
A major problem seems to be the lack of joined-up thinking and action at a national level with the narrow thinking of the Department for Education not being linked to the work of other Government departments. For instance the Office of National Statistics is tasked with looking at well-being among young people and the worrying statistics about obesity are now well-known. However other factors are less well known. One example is that in 2012 suicide overtook traffic accidents as the major cause of death in 16-24 year olds in England and Wales. The Office of National Statistics comments that ‘Suicide rates can be used as an indicator of acute mental health problems’. Acute (and also less acute) mental health problems have clearly increased among children.
These wider problems should be recognised and addressed by schools.
Let’s take another example from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s statistics of June 2014.
“Total Creative Economy employment across the UK has increased from 2.4 million in 2011, to 2.6 million jobs in 2013, an 8.8 per cent increase. This increase compares with a 2.4 per cent increase in the total number of jobs in the wider UK economy over the same period.”
The relevance of this for education is that the creative economy is the major area of economic growth and of jobs. So it should be a priority of schools to support creative learning. But we have seen the opposite trend with artists, musicians and others complaining bitterly of the increasing neglect of this aspect of education.
And creativity is not just an issue in the apparently creative subjects. For instance successful scientists show how a creative approach to their work is crucial. An example of this can be found in studies of Nobel Prize winners going back to the 1920s. A psychologist called Terman selected thousands of high IQ young people for a major study in the USA. He hoped to identify successful people such as potential Nobel Prize winners. Interestingly none of his very carefully selected children made it to that level in adulthood. However two children he rejected did gain Nobel Prizes in science; they were the creative ones.
In suggesting the importance of creativity I am not arguing for neglecting other kinds of learning. Learning needs to be holistic and integrated. For instance if someone wants to be good at something they will learn facts and skills but they will also need the motivation to learn. The major research studies have been in areas such as music where 10,000 hours of good practice has been found to be necessary to be good at playing an instrument. This research has been replicated in other areas such as sport.
What can be missed from this is an exploration of why children might not undertake such practice. A couple of examples from our College might help here. We have had children come to us having been told that they are no good at music. Our approach is not to take such negative assessments at face value. One boy had tried the cello and been told to give up by his teacher as he had no aptitude for music. On coming to us we gave him the chance just to mess about with instruments like the guitar and then learn some basis chords as he showed interest. By the time he left us he had learned (to vary degrees) to play five instruments and is now doing a music degree.
Another example would be in the visual arts. Tim came to us aged 14 after four years out of school and doubts about his future. We noticed that he was drawing a lot and encouraged him to develop a portfolio of work. Having done this he gained a place at a local further education college. The college recognised that he had learned how to manage his own learning so was likely to flourish in their environment. This proved true as he gained the prize for the best student.
Tim went on to university taking a degree in illustrating. After leaving in 2010 he was awarded ‘Best New Blood’ in the National Design Awards and his work for Guys Hospital won the award for ‘Best Use of Visual Art in Healthcare’. His current work is as a self-employed illustrator where his clients included New Scientist, Nike, Vodaphone and many other household names.
My case, then, is that education needs to be about supporting children in the breadth of their learning. They need to learn to take charge of their own lives (as this is linked to good mental health) and to take their learning wherever it leads them. The division of school learning into subject compartments hinders real inclusive holistic learning and the fact/skills divide makes no sense at all.
Dr Ian Cunningham
Self Managed Learning College, Brighton
www.smlcollege.org.uk
September 2014
Why schooling is a major contributor to the crisis – and what can be done about it.
(Published in Lorimer, D. and Robinson, O. (2010) The New Renaissance, Floris Books, Edinburgh)
IAN CUNNINGHAM bio.
Ian Cunningham BSc, MA, PhD, FIoD, FRSA, Chartered FCIPD, FCMI is Visiting Professor at Middlesex University; chair of Strategic Developments International Ltd and chair of the Centre for Self Managed Learning. Previous positions have included Chief Executive of Roffey Park Institute; Senior Research Fellow in International Leadership at Ashridge Management College; Visiting Professor in Education Management in the Graduate School of Education, University of Utah; Visiting Fellow in Innovation in Education at the University of Sussex. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles and papers in areas such as education, learning, leadership, strategic management, organisational change and social change.
Introduction
In this essay I will use as my starting point the ‘Manifesto for Change’ elaborated by Robinson et al, 2009. Each of the nine points in this manifesto summarise exceedingly well the basis of the global crisis explored in their paper [SEE ENDNOTE].
Others have commented on a range of aspects of the socio-economic-ecological crisis affecting the planet - and all species on it. Here I will explore schooling and possible antidotes to the effects of current practices. Note that I am concerned about an alternative to current institutional schooling. Education is a broader concept, as is learning. Indeed one mistake official bodies make is to conflate learning and schooling as though they are synonyms for education.
All available research on learning shows that most of what we learn that is of value in our work, and lives in general, is outside school. The best summary of all the evidence suggests that, for instance, schooling in all its modes (and I will include here college, university and formal training courses) contributes at most 10-20% of what makes a good professional person effective. (See Burgoyne and Reynolds, 1997; Cunningham et al., 2004; Eraut, 1998; Eraut et al., 1998; McCall et al, 1988; Wenger, 1998.) Most of the useful learning that we gain comes from what tends to be dismissed (by officialdom) as informal learning, such as from peers, family, travel, reading, etc, etc. In our own research we have identified over 80 useful learning modes outside schooling. Some of these are summarised in Cunningham et al, 2004.
In what follows I will take just two examples of the nine ‘questionable assumptions’ challenged in the Manifesto for Change and make comments about their validity as applied to schooling. I will add some notes about alternatives that do work.
FIRST QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTION
‘Separation of the individual from the social nexus and from nature, and the corresponding affirmation of individualism, individual success and self-interest (by contrast with ideals of community, co-operation and social responsibility).’ (Robinson, et al., p.3)
We become ourselves through our relationship with others. We need to be in productive relationships with other human beings. Hence the notion of co-operation and community is central to how we develop. We know from the extensive researches of Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009; Marmot, 2004, and others that the greater the social distance within a society the greater are the problems of health, crime and psycho-social distress. An individualistic society where there are large differences in income and social status is bound to contribute to the social crises we face.
My argument is that schooling plays a major role in this and if we do not change the nature of current schooling practices there is no chance of addressing these social ills. As an example – in England seven year olds in school are assessed by what many educationalists recognise as a crude methodology. Parents eagerly discuss these ratings (SATs) and children quickly learn where they stand in the class. From then on children absorb the notion that some people are valued more than others and that if you have low SATs scores you are less likely to do well in school – and life.
A learning centre
We run a learning centre in Brighton for 11-16 year olds who have chosen not to be in school. The reasons for this choice vary – some have been home educated prior to joining us; some have been bullied in school; some have found the classroom an impossible environment; some have been rejected by school. In the latter category is Tina. She came to us at 14 having had a range of difficult experiences in local schools. One of the things we do is to ask new students about themselves. In Tina’s case one thing we asked was about what she was good at. She replied “Nothing” – and she meant it. It was not false humility; she really believed that she was useless at everything. The messages that she had gained throughout her schooling were that she had no abilities of any value.
In working with her she has come to recognise that she will never succeed with high-level academic qualifications. However she makes a real contribution to our learning community. She is prepared to ask the difficult questions; she has a strong moral sense; she has learned to challenge others appropriately (she didn’t when she first came to us); she has developed her dancing and dramatic skills and become a good singer. And so on. She has developed the capability to work with others and to work independently – and these are qualities that employers say many young people coming out of school lack.
The role of the learning community has been crucial in supporting Tina’s development. Within the community each person is allowed to develop their own voice and to pursue their own learning. However they have to work with others to achieve their own learning. For instance resources in the learning centre have to be shared and students and staff together work out how the resources are used. There is no formal imposed content curriculum – the students negotiate with adults and their peers what they want to do during a typical week. As an example students meet in small groups (a maximum of six students with one staff member) on a Monday morning to consider what they want to do in the coming week. Students are assisted to write their own timetables and to negotiate with adults and with peers on what they want to do.
Three of the girls play wind instruments and they have worked with Alison (a staff member) to form, with her, a wind quartet. Alison has arranged music for the quartet. All four need to agree when they will play together – and therefore agree with others in the community as to when they will have the music room. They also need to work together so that the quartet can create the lovely music that it produces.
This latter is a simple example of the need for students to be able to learn on their own (to be good on their own instruments) and to work together. Learning needs to balance the independent element and the interdependent element. The problem in schooling is that it encourages a different balance – that between dependence on others and counter-dependence (for example when a son says; “I am not influenced by my father – I just do the opposite of what he says”).
Schools tend to value the dependent learner – the one who is quiet in class, does what teacher tells them, doesn’t question the work that they are set, does all their homework on time – and so on. Some young people rebel (exhibit counter-dependent behaviour) – they mistake this for independence, when usually they are not actually doing things of value for themselves but merely getting into trouble.
Working with schools
We get asked to assist schools where they have students that they label as problems. The process we use both in schools and with young people out of school is Self Managed Learning. In this process the aim is to develop independence and inter-dependence – and in doing so help young people to be able to lead good lives. At the start we get the students to join a learning group of six students and one adult (as learning assistant). Once the group has agreed its rules for working and how it will operate we ask the students to answer five questions, namely:
Where have I been – what has been my experience of life up to now?
Where am I now – what kind of person am I, what do I care about, what interests me, what am I good at, etc?
Where do I want to get to – what kind of life might I want to lead, what kind of work might I want to do, what goals for learning should I set myself now?
How will I get to where I want to be – how will I learn what I want to learn?
How will I know if I have arrived – how will I measure my progress and my development?
In answering that first question we often unearth major reasons why particular individuals are having difficulty in school. For instance in a group of 14 year olds in a local school, Rochelle talked of her family experiences to date. Her parents split up when she was very young. Her mother had gained custody but her father had kidnapped the children at one point. The family feuding had culminated in the father smashing up the family home in the preceding week and beating up her sister. The school was getting annoyed with her because she was not doing her homework – but had no idea why there was a problem. For Rochelle doing her school work was not high on her agenda, given her home circumstances. And this story could be repeated a hundredfold in local schools – none of whom seem organized to understand the real problems that many of their student face.
One reason that Rochelle was in the Self Managed Learning programme was that her year head had identified that Rochelle was mixing with what the year head labelled ‘a bad crowd’. Rochelle had been reasonably successful (by the school’s standards) in her first two years in the school but had been perceived to go down hill as a result of the changes in her friendship group. Interestingly the year head was aware enough of the influence of a peer group but seemed unable to act on the issue.
We know from our research that the peer group is usually the greatest influence on young people, especially teenagers. Adults such as teachers and parents are generally less of an influence, even though they may not recognize this. Schools promote an individualistic culture where, for instance, learners helping each other with their assessed work is punished (as cheating). However this can be undermined as students create their own subcultures inside school - and these generally dominate in terms of the behaviour of students.
In Rochelle’s case the learning group (of six students) was able to discuss the ways in which each person might want to develop (using the five questions indicated above). This led on to considering what might be difficulties for each person in achieving their life goals. In Rochelle’s case she realised that she wanted to work towards a professional career (her interests led towards the law). One piece of work the students did was for each to write out what the school would say about them now and what they would like the school to say about them when they left at 16.
Rochelle summed up her current situation very well – citing, for example, her difficult behaviour and the bad influence of her new friends. In writing what she hoped the school would say about her in two years time she suggested that she would still occasionally be difficult but that her behaviour had improved and that she had changed her friendship group. The others in her learning group agreed that what she was looking to change was the right thing to do and they pledged to assist her.
This is an example of how we look to balance independent and inter-dependent learning. Each young person needs to be assisted to develop ideas about what life they want to lead and how they will achieve this. However the role of the group is crucial in being initially a test bed for these ideas and later both a support and a challenge for the person.
An example of this latter dimension is of the role of the group for 13 year-old John, who was in a learning group in another school. He had been having a difficult time and was in and out of exclusion from school. He committed to some significant life changes. One of these was to give up smoking. At the penultimate meeting of the group, Mike (another group member) started to sniff at John and alleged that he had been smoking. John denied this saying that he had just been with others who had been smoking. The group members decided to search John’s bag and his pockets to see if they could find any cigarettes. John agreed to this. Having failed to find any incriminating evidence they decided to accept John’s assertions.
This provides an example of how individuals may need support – and sometimes challenges to their behaviour. The rule we have is that you support the person while sometimes challenging what they do. The separation of who the person is from what they do is crucial. Because the group cared about John as a person they challenged suspected behavioural transgressions. In the process of challenging they demonstrated a significant level of support for him. And the overall role of the group demonstrated how it was important to develop a peer group that could act for good rather than ill.
Schooling
Schooling emphasizes a range of structures such as classrooms, an imposed content curriculum, an imposed timetable and imposed rules. While some schools attempt to leaven the influence of such structures, the general process is one which creates a context for promoting individualism and self-interested behaviour. A counter to this has been the growth of democratic schools in many countries. There is increased interest from parents in the UK in such approaches, though officialdom tends to frown on democratic schools, as evidenced by the Government’s attempt to close Summerhill School in Suffolk.
The argument made by many supporters of democratic schools is that they better prepare young people for playing an active role in democratic society, since young people have to learn to make a democratic community work effectively. Another reason for support for democratic schools is exemplified by the need to counteract the second of the questionable assumptions from the ‘Manifesto for Change’, namely:
‘The separation of knowledge specialism in science, philosophy and humanities, leading to the fragmentation of knowledge (as opposed to a more interdisciplinary, co-operative and integrated approach).’ (Robinson et al., p. 3)
Addressing this questionable assumption
I remember in my first degree in chemistry asking my professor of physical chemistry – ‘what actually is an electron?’. (My question was prompted by the complex maths that we were asked to grapple with while never actually dealing with the oddities thrown up by quantum theory). The professor pretty much told me to shut up as he indicated that my question was about philosophy (and therefore not legitimate in a chemistry lecture).
Later doing a masters degree in occupational psychology we had a lecture within which was given a purely psychological explanation of some recent research. I suggested an alternative explanation for the same data and was pretty much told to shut up as my explanation was sociological and therefore not legitimate. And I could go on with other examples of the separation problems in education. What is clear is that this fragmentation has serious consequences.
In schooling (including higher education) the separation of subjects means that learners are encouraged to think in fragmentary ways. This means that we may never solve ecological problems as young people are discouraged from thinking systemically and holistically. Schooling’s hidden curriculum is that learning has to be compartmentalised if you are to succeed academically. This learning has more impact than the actual subject learning as it is hidden from the learner. For the learner it is part of the way things are and is not therefore available for challenge.
Even where teachers recognise the problem they seem to feel powerless to act to change things. One headteacher said to me that he would ideally love to get rid of all his science teachers because of the way science was being taught in his school. Yet he could not realistically do it – even though he was the head.
Modes of learning
Ideally learning needs to start with what I have called the ‘P MODE’. P stands for:
PERSONS – we need to understand the person if we are to assist their learning. Each person is different and they have different needs.
PATTERNS – each person will have patterns of behaviour and of thinking
PROCESSES – each person has their own processes of working and living
PROBLEMS – one way of thinking of learning is as a solution to a problem. For example if you can’t speak French and you need to then you have a problem and the solution is to learn French. Or if you need to write well to progress in life and work then the solution is to learn to write well. And so on.
Note that in the latter example, problems come before solutions. In our approach, the P MODE comes before the S MODE
The S MODE stands for:
SOLUTIONS – to respond to the person and their problems there may be a need to look for solutions
SUBJECTS – subject knowledge may help to meet the ‘P’ needs
SKILLS – may be needed to progress
SPECIALISATIONS – may contribute
as may
SYSTEMS – such as IT systems.
Schooling too often starts with ‘S’ – young people have imposed on them Subject knowledge and Solutions to Problems that they have not yet formulated. Or the Solution distorts the way the Problem is addressed.
As a chemist, presented with the problem of mental health my training (schooling) would have oriented me to create a pill. Later, from working in the field of psychotherapy, my solution to the same problem would be to talk to the person. As far as I can gather chemists and psychotherapists don’t talk to each other yet they are dealing with the same problems. Schooling is predominantly in the ‘S Mode’ and distorts how we deal with the ‘P Mode’.
In our learning centre we try to avoid these issues. Tim came to us at aged 12 with a passion for the TV series Dr Who. Through this interest he started to write his own scripts for a Dr Who series. This also prompted an interest in visual representation and he worked on a Mac to develop videos and comics. He decided that he needed to know more of the science underpinning Dr Who and this led into serious explorations in a range of sciences. For instance he wanted to explore the reason for the Doctor’s altruism and that led to the two of us discussing philosophical issues around altruism as well as ideas from Darwinism, genetics and evolutionary psychology.
Tim started in the P Mode with his Personal interest and this linked to his own Patterns of thinking. One of his Problems was to write better scripts hence needing better scientific knowledge. He also developed his ability in English through his writing. Given the time-travel dimension of Dr Who he developed his historical knowledge (again so that he could write better scripts). The learning mode here is ‘P’ before ‘S’.
Two errors can occur in learning.
Firstly starting with ‘S’ before ‘P’ leads to motivational problems, as many young people find it difficult to see the relevance of learning subject knowledge abstracted from their needs to live and work in society. Also ‘S’ mode thinking creates anti-ecological and anti-systemic thinking.
The other error is for learners to start in ‘P’ and stay there. They do need assistance to see how to use what is available in the ‘S’ mode, hence a role for adults. However our role is first to understand the person before assisting them to make the link to the ‘S’ mode, such as via subject knowledge and skills.
The curriculum
The standard educational (schooling) model for thinking about the curriculum has become a list of subjects and skills to learn (‘S’ Mode). However the choice of content is a purely subjective one. There is no objective basis for the school curriculum – the content is created by adults who live in a different world from young people.
When adults say that they were young once and can therefore understand the needs of young people, Margaret Mead (see Howard, 1984) famously responded something along the following lines: “Yes you were young once but you have not been young in the world that young people are young in. You were young in another world totally different from that of today.” To add to that it is clear that adults are not in a strong position to predict the world that young people will inhabit when they are adults.
The alternative to a content/subject curriculum is a process curriculum. Here the emphasis is on a systemic, holistic model where, through the process of learning, young people are prepared to deal with whatever the future may hold. Sometimes this emphasis is labelled ‘learning to learn’ though I would argue that it is bigger than this. We talk of Self Managed Learning (see Cunningham et al, 2000, and www.selfmanagedlearning.org) as we emphasize the need for people to be self managing – though our model of self managing is one of balancing independent and inter-dependent thought and action.
An example of a real situation
The global financial crisis of 2008/9 is an interesting example of how the two questionable assumptions (individualism and knowledge fragmentation) have played out in a real situation. The best analysis of the roots of the crisis is in Tett, 2009. As a social anthropologist working as a journalist for the Financial Times she had access to the facts and an anthropological approach which exposed the lack of systemic thinking amongst the bankers and others who precipitated the crisis.
She commented:
‘…regulators, bankers, politicians, investors and journalists have all failed to employ truly holistic thought...a ‘silo’ mentality has come to rule inside banks…with shockingly little wider vision or oversight.’ (p. 298-299).
The dimension of self interest amongst the culprits (for example, excessive bonuses based on dubious criteria) has also been extensively explored. What is often missing from these analyses is the role of schooling in creating this mindset. If schooling rewards self-interested behaviour, and gives no credence to behaviour that has a social dimension, it is clear that this links to the way in which these and other organisational actors play out their roles.
The teams that created the toxic financial instruments not only did not connect to wider societal issues they did not connect to other operations within the banks. They betrayed the kind of arrogance exposed some time ago by Argyris (see, for example, Argyris, 1990). What he showed is that people who have been successful academically, such as via elite business schools, can develop a mindset where their mistakes are reframed as the mistakes of others. An example was his research on young management consultants who made inappropriate recommendations to clients and then blamed the clients when things went wrong.
Argyris’ demonstration of the need for double loop learning has largely fallen on deaf ears, as did Bateson’s earlier (1972) exposition of the value of second order learning. Schooling is committed to single loop/first order learning where the ability to step back and analyse one’s own learning, and the values and beliefs that underpin it, is discounted – and even discouraged.
People learn to think and work in silos. It is not an inborn feature of humans. Clark’s (2002) in-depth study provides ample evidence on this. Furthermore anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer bands comment on how such bands behave in a more ecological way (see, for example, Brody, 2001; Clastres, 1989; Gall, 2002; Gowdy, 1998; Lee and Daly, 2004). Hunter-gatherer people do not fragment the world as supposedly developed people do.
All humans lived in hunter-gatherer bands for over 90% of human history. It is therefore only relatively recently that we have moved away from this more holistic life-style. As evolutionary psychologists (for example Nicholson, 2002) argue, our brains and general make up are still what they describe as ‘stone age’. And in this mode we were able to keep our thinking connected to action. The abstract-thinking analysts in the banks disconnected their models from the reality of Mr and Mrs Smith and their sub-prime mortgage.
Indigenous peoples on islands in the way of the tsunami that hit South East Asia were able to survive because they could read the many signs from animal and bird behaviour that there was an on-coming disaster. They survived when others, such as tourists not used to holistic awareness, did not.
Conclusion
In this essay I have only taken the first two of the ‘questionable assumptions’ identified by Robinson et al, 2009. However other items on their list could also relate to issues in schooling. What I have wanted to demonstrate is that we have to address what goes on in formal institutional educational settings. If we fail to make changes in such settings then other worthy efforts may fail. Schooling has a significant impact on how people approach global crises and how they address them.
Endnote
The nine questionable assumptions have been spelled out by Robinson et al., 2009, as follows:
‘There is strong evidence that a fundamental paradigm has been a major contributor to the current impasse. Questionable assumptions underlying this paradigm are:
The separation of the individual from the social nexus and from nature, and the corresponding affirmation of individualism, individual success and self-interest (by contrast with the ideals of community, co-operation and social responsibility).
The separation of knowledge specialism in the sciences, philosophy and humanities, leading to the fragmentation of knowledge (as opposed to a more interdisciplinary, co-operative and integrated approach).
The adversarial separation of reason from feeling and practical living, leading to the belief that science is a process devoid of feeling and intuition (which cries out for a new approach to knowledge which takes account of the full range of human experience).
The prioritising of economic growth, material gain and quantitative profit as ultimate ends in themselves linked to a narrow model of laissez-faire capitalism (by contrast with an economics enlightened by a moral commitment to compassion and social justice).
The deterministic and reductionist view of living beings as machines leading to the view that consciousness is an illusion (by contrast with the recognition of the distinctive nature of life and mind and their central place in our world).
Nature and living beings as resources to be treated as objects for exploitation and consumption (rather than as a spiritual community of all beings).
Science as the only path to reality, and empirical evidence as the sole criterion of truth (by contrast with a more embracing epistemology which recognises that there are many paths to truth).
Matters of value, goodness, love, quality and beauty as merely subjective, and therefore subordinate to the physical sciences (rather than as embedded in the fabric of life and the cosmos).
Science and scientific evidence as requiring or implying a world devoid of spiritual depth and spiritual knowledge (by contrast with a science which is seen once again as a part of the perennial search for wisdom). (pp 3-4)
Bibliography
Argyris, C. (1990) Overcoming Organizational Defences. Facilitating organizational learning, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brody, H. (2001) The other side of Eden, Faber and Faber, London.
Burgoyne, J. and Reynolds, M. (eds.) (1997) Management Learning. Sage, London.
Clark, M. E. (2002) In search of human nature, Routledge, London.
Clastres, P. (1989) Society against the state, Zone Books, New York.
Cunningham, I., Bennett, B and Dawes, G. (eds.) (2000) Self Managed Learning in Action, Gower, Aldershot, Hants.
Cunningham, I., Dawes, G. and Bennett, B. (2004) Handbook of Work Based Learning, Gower, Aldershot, Hants.
Eraut, M. (1998) ‘Learning in the workplace’, Training Officer, Vol 34, No 6, July/August, pp172-4.
Eraut, M., Alderton, J., Cole, G. and Senker, P. (1998) Development of knowledge and skills in employment, Research Report No. 5, University of Sussex Institute of Education, Brighton.
Gall, S. (2002) The Bushmen of Southern Africa, Random House, London.
Gowdy, J (ed.) (1998) Limited wants, unlimited means, Island, Washington DC.
Howard, J. (1984) Margaret Mead: A Life, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Lee, R. B. and Daly, R. (eds.) (2004) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Marmot, M. (2004) Status syndrome, Bloomsbury, London.
McCall, M. W., Lombardo, M. M., and Morrison, A. M. (1988) The Lessons of Experience, Lexington Books, Lexington.
Nicholson, N. (2000) Managing the Human Animal, Texere, London.
Robinson, O., Clarke J., and Lorimer, D. (2009) ‘Crisis as Opportunity: Seizing the Moment for a New Renaissance’, Network Review, Summer, pp. 3-5.
Tett, G. (2009) Fool’s Gold, Little, Brown, London.
Wenger, E. Communities of Practice. (1998) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level, Allen Lane, London.
SUBMISSION TO THE EU SURVEY ON CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
We made the strong case that children should have increased rights including the right to choose their own education – as we provide in SML College
“Children should have the right to an education of their own choosing.
This is the most significant problem at present. For instance, many children do not find the state provision meets their needs. There is discrimination against working class, BAME, autistic, disabled children in many countries, for instance. In the UK children born in the summer do not have the same right to fair treatment in the exam system so at least 10,000 every year get worse results in public exams at age 16. This is an official Government figure from some years ago and the situation is worse now. Hence summer born children are less likely to go to university - as are working class, autistic and disabled children.
Bullying is endemic in most countries and the research evidence from the UK has shown that severe bullying in school means that the person is 2.72 times more likely to have psychosis in adult life and that at anyone one time almost 100,000 children are suffering post-traumatic stress due to bullying. Research has shown that schools can cause mental illness - for instance studies that show that day treatment in hospitals for child mental health reduces by around 50% during school holidays.
Home education is illegal in some EU countries e.g. Germany and Spain, and is under attack in others such as the UK. Yet research shows that such education outside school is very successful and there is no evidence that children are more likely to be e.g. known to social services than children in school.”
Ian Cunningham, Dec. 2020
Teaching Times - In This Revolutionary College Students Manage Their Own Learning
Introduction
In this article I want to explain how we work with young people, such that they can take charge of their own learning. As well as running a college on the Sussex coast, we have also been working in schools utilising the approach.
I will first, start by explaining how Self Managed Learning College works and then go on to cite one example of working in a school. The latter is based on an article written by a Deputy Principal of an 11 to 18 school in East Sussex. We have worked in eight schools with young people aged 7 to 16 and have had evaluations of all of these programmes. In some cases these have been by one of our two local universities in Brighton and in other cases it has been by the schools themselves.
Self Managed Learning (SML) College
SML College caters for 9 to 16-year-olds who are not in school. The students have chosen not to be in school for a wide variety of reasons. In some cases, because parents want to use a different approach to school and in other cases young people found school impossible, due to bullying, their autism or other factors producing increased stress and anxiety.
In the College students are supported within a learning community of 36 students and a number of adults so that they learn whatever they want in whatever ways they want and to meet whatever needs they personally identify. There are no classrooms, there is no imposed curriculum or dress code and students create their own timetables.
This is sometimes described as being less structured than school, but we rather see it as providing a different kind of structure. I will mention three particular structures that are central to our way of working.
Learning community
First, there is a learning community of all the young people and supporting adults. There is a community meeting every morning when students arrive. We sit around in a circle with everyone on equal terms. In order to ensure that equality the chairing occurs by rotation so it could be a nine-year-old or a 16-year-old chairing the meeting. The agenda is decided by students and staff and anyone can raise anything they want in the meeting. When students first arrive with us we spend a lot of time developing the community, for instance, the rules are created by the community collaboratively and policed by the community.
Learning agreement
The second structure is a document we call a learning agreement. This is a document produced by the student with support from their peers and from staff. In it they set out learning goals for themselves to assist them in organising their learning. Since every student is different each learning agreement is totally different, but it has a common structure of elucidating where the student is now and where they want get to in their life. Older students do mostly take public examinations, mainly GCSEs, but the choice of how many and what subjects is guided by the longer term goals that they are working towards. For instance, they take the GCSEs that will help them in the career options that they may have started to identify for themselves.
We have a specific methodology for achieving this and information on that and the rest of the approach can be found in Cunningham, 2020, and also on the College website.
Learning groups
Every student joins a learning group of six when they arrive in the College. These groups are divided by age as clearly the issues faced by nine-year-old are different from those faced by 16-year-olds. The latter have to consider qualifications and college entry, whereas the former can be more relaxed about those issues.
These learning groups meet for up to one hour per week and are supported by a member of the staff team who we call a learning group adviser. The role of the latter is to support the group to function effectively and to provide a link to other staff and to any learning resources the individual might need. The role of the learning group is to provide a place which is both supportive and challenging for its six members. Each student produces their learning agreement in through discussion with the rest of the group.
The group meets regularly to review how things are going. Typically once a student has created their learning agreement with their longer term goals, then each week they need to plan what they will do to achieve those. And each week there is a need to review how the previous week went. For students new to this way of working, they often find that they might have unrealistic plans for the week and they gradually learn what is feasible to achieve.
The learning group is there to help each person to pursue their own agenda and to support them in this. However, individuals in these groups work with whoever in the community they want to work with - so they may be involved in projects with students in different age groups. Also trips are planned by the community and are open to anyone in the community to go on them.
Research evaluations of the College
The most recent research study was carried out in 2019 on past students of the College by an independent researcher, Luke Freedman. Previous studies have been conducted by the University of Brighton.
In summary the evidence is hugely positive. In the small number of examples where ex-students were less positive there were no negative effects of attending the College. All this compares with research on school leavers, many of whom report significant long-term damage from attending school (see, for example, the damaging effects of bullying and of the negative impact on individuals careers through schooling). Here are the opening lines of Freedman’s report:
“SML College is an environment for learning which operates almost entirely counter to the prevailing logic of the educational mainstream. Its stated aim is simple: ‘Preparing young people for the tests of life not a life of tests.’ This study seeks to provide an answer to the question: Has Self Managed Learning College been successful in its aim?
The simple answer is yes. Evidence from survey responses and in-depth follow up
interviews demonstrates an overwhelming majority of successes defined by any measure. This is despite a student intake which contained a disproportionately high number of additional support needs, some of whom had been written off by mainstream education.
While it is impossible to know how students would have fared had they not attended the college, their responses demonstrate that in their view SML College almost always had a positive, and in some cases transformative, effect on their lives. This effect was most pronounced in students who arrived with profound psychological needs, but was present across the sample. What is it about SML College that made this possible?”
Freedman later comments:
“The hypothesis that it was often the negative experience of school that caused issues, rather than the other way around, is supported by interview data; of the students interviewed who suffered from depression and/or anxiety, all of them attributed the development of their mental health issues to their experiences in school. One explained, “… it was all of it from going to the school. Bullying was the biggest part. I was fine and happy at home.”
Further support for the idea that the experience of school was a significant cause of these issues is provided by the simple fact that young people and their families expected, or at the very least hoped, that leaving school and joining the SML College would help to address them. In many cases this expectation was proved correct.”
School programmes
People often say it’s all very well to use this approach in a small setting where everybody knows each other and where there is a caring community, but it would not be possible in a school. Hence we have shown how the approach works in schools and below I will quote from an article produced by Andrea Hazeldine, who was at the time Deputy Principal of Uckfield Community Technology College in East Sussex.
The one difference from SML College that is most obvious is that we are working within a large institution with its own rules. However, in agreeing to run a programme in a school, we are clear that the learning agreement and learning group will work in exactly the same way as occurs in SML College. However, because we are keen to transfer methodology into schools, we also ask the school to attach one their staff to our team who will be run the learning groups. Andrea’s article was published some years ago; however we have had similar evaluations since.
Andrea Hazeldine commented:
“We have had the support of a team from the University of Sussex and SML College, led by Professor Ian Cunningham, to support us in creating and running the groups.
Each learning group met for about two hours every three weeks during the spring and summer terms. We started with three groups of gifted and talented students in Year 10 (they are now Year 12) and followed the next year with groups from Years 8, 9 and 10. For these latter groups we identified students who would benefit from additional support. For instance, the Year 8 group was made up of boys who were in and out of short-term exclusions and who were identified as having behavioural issues in class.
Activities
Since the activities of each group are decided by the group they vary greatly. A Year 9 group last year, for example, had one student who wanted to be an author. The group invited in the children’s author, Jane Hissey, to question about how she became an author and what her work entailed. Although only one student was interested in a career in this area others in the group were able to support him by helping him come up with relevant questions.
As a result, others in the group learned from this experience about ways that they can explore options for themselves. For example, one girl in the Year 9 group aspired to be a netball coach. She had the support of the group to devise questions to ask her netball coach about how she got into coaching and what she needed to study at university.
These are examples of the group balancing independent learning with interdependent learning. Personalising cannot mean purely individualising. People have to work in real organisations with other people. This responds to employers’ complaints that many students coming out of education are poor at team working, self discipline and self motivation.
Hence as well as learning what they set out in their goals (content) they also learn from the process of learning even more important abilities. This is especially so when they are able to become more active learners through the process.
This was exemplified in the Year 8 group when, in an evaluation session with students and learning group advisers, senior colleagues in the College were intrigued as to why most of the Year 8 boys had markedly improved their behaviour. The learning group adviser commented that he had not asked them to change their behaviour. They set all their own goals and most of them had started to see a future for themselves that would require them to learn. For instance, a number were interested in becoming apprentices in motor vehicle maintenance, plumbing and electrical work. By visiting a further education college and a local garage they understood the need for NVQs and what this might demand of them in the short term. This meant that they decided for themselves to take relevant lessons more seriously.
The way the group worked also provided a forum for them to take collective responsibility for behavioural issues. For instance, this group, like all others, set its own ground rules. At the same meeting they came up with a ‘three strikes and you are out’ rule. One boy did collect three strikes for breaking the agreed ground rules. His peers agreed that he left – and he did (for that meeting). Members of the group were all on the daily behaviour report the College uses with identified students. At the first meeting they handed their report cards to the learning group advisers to mark. The learning group advisers insisted that they were not going to score them – this would be the collective decision of the group.
The examples of the student sent out and the report forms helped the group to see that they need to take collective responsibility and to learn teamwork and the ability to make judgements about each other. Initially this was a bit of a shock, but they quickly learned to work in this way and the number of report forms reduced over time.
Given that the peer group is the biggest influence on teenagers what we see in learning groups is the chance to mobilise the peer group for good rather than ill. We know that teachers and parents can tell teenagers not to smoke or take drugs and yet many do – through peer group influence. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend this does not happen. But what we can do is create positive environments so that peer group pressure works in positive ways. The Year 8 student who was sent out of the group was shocked at getting this feedback from his peers – it’s something he had never had before as normally teachers were the ones who sent him out of the class. In subsequent group meetings he was the one who most diligently policed the ‘three strikes and you are out’ rule.
Evaluation
The follow-up to the Self Managed Learning programme has shown the value of it. For instance, some of the students from the Year 10 groups produced a list highlighting the benefits of the use of the learning group as follows:
Thinking about our future;
Exploring further education;
Exploring career paths;
Learning from each other;
Developing our independence;
Taking more actions towards our future (not just thinking about it);
Having a regular meeting with students and the learning group advisers to get resources/contacts to help with present problems;
Thinking about our priorities/assets/strengths/weaknesses;
Teachers in Year 12 have commented that students from these learning groups have shown greater awareness of their future options and this had led to them being able to do their UCAS applications more effectively.”
Conclusion
In the above I hope that I have shown that the Self Managed Learning approach can have wide applicability. The biggest difficulty that we face is that adults need to learn to work in a different way to support the learning of young people.
Reference
Cunningham, I. (2020) Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm. Routledge.
For original article, please visit https://uspire.life/2020/09/20/good-news-education-student-wellbeing-sml-college-dr-ian-cunningham/
Student success skyrockets as old school values are updated.
When we look back on our education years, no matter what school or college we attended, it’s likely all of our days were dictated by timetables and lesson plans.
Fast-forward to 2020, and things are happening a little differently.
The way future generations learn is facing a major revamp, with plans to end the current and outdated system in order to help individuals reach their full potential.
And we don’t just mean learning about mental health or managing finances, but a college with no imposed curriculum and no standardised lessons.
This model already exists as Sussex’s Self-Managed Learning College [SML] with great success, whereby students choose their own studies and how they learn them.
They are also encouraged to only be present in the mornings, giving them time to enjoy their own activities later in the day.
The college – for ages nine to 17 – is now releasing a book to showcase how they have broken down the archaic structures of mainstream schooling to introduce ground-breaking changes, entitled Self-Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm.
Speaking about their objectives, college founder Dr Ian Cunningham said he believes education needs to evolve as the world (and consequently, the job market) does.
Dr Cunningham said: “All young people should have access to a 21st century educational approach, rather than the current schooling model, which has remained relatively unchanged since the Victorian era.
“Jobs for life no longer exist. We need to help young people to self-assess and not depend on judgment from others. This prepares them for a life of continuous, self-managed learning, rather than teaching them how to pass tests, because we can’t possibly predict what life after school will look like.”
The college, which boasts a 100% success rate of sending pupils onto full-time work, has established 57 different ways that young people can learn to suit their individual abilities.
Dr Cunningham continued: “Conventional schools say to students: ‘We have decided what we’re going to teach you, you have no say in this, nor in the social arrangements in the school. When the bell rings you must get up and go somewhere else to do something else that you have not chosen. You will eat your food when we say you can. You are not allowed to go to the toilet without permission.’
“Our approach to the curriculum is to try and understand the kind of life an individual wants to live and what might be appropriate within that. If university is a chosen pathway, then they will have to deal with the academic requirements.
“One of our students left the college at 16 having gained a range of good grades in the qualifications he took, mostly GCSEs. A year later he came back to address current students, saying: ‘I wish I hadn’t wasted a lot of my time getting good grades.’
“He had also created a portfolio of his creative work, which he shared online. From this, he was hired to work on blockchain development for a USA company.
“The company had no interest in his exam grades. They saw his work and were happy to hire him, even though he lives on another continent. He is now being asked to build up a team in England to provide support for blockchain development work in the USA.”
The cherry on the cake, the college currently reports zero bullying and claims children aren’t discriminated against as the model creates immeasurable life satisfaction.
Dr. Cunningham concluded: “The necessity of smaller schools has long been recognised in research, but it’s not just to enable a better learning environment – it’s also better for
the mental health of students.
“Research shows that the current education system adversely affects the mental health of many children, and yet nothing is being done to rectify that on a national level.
“Bullying is endemic in most schools – especially secondary schools – as most have more than the maximum 150 people required to function as learning communities.
“Young people who have experienced traumatic bullying at school are significantly more likely to suffer psychosis in adult life. Here, we ensure our students are happy, healthy and prepared for life. Any school system not delivering that is failing young people.”
