On EDUCATION & TEACHING
Pastel Drawing by Lewis Baumer Trust your teacher ..."	Drawing and collage by Clive Butler "... because teacher knows best!"

On Reasoning with Children From Book 2 of 'EMILE' - a Philosophical Romance - by Jean Jacques Rousseau ... 1760 'The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking themselves what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child, without considering what he is before he becomes a man.' "Reason with children" was Locke's chief maxim; it is in the height of fashion at present, and I hardly think it is justified by its resu1ts; those children who have been constantly reasoned with strike me as exceedingly silly. Of all man's faculties, reason, which is, so to speak, compounded of all the rest, is the last and choicest growth, and it is this you would use for the child's early training. To make a man reasonable is the coping stone of a good education, arid yet you profess to train a child through his reason! You begin at the wrong end, you make the end the means. If children understood reason they would not need education, but by talking to them from their earliest age in a language they do not understand you accustom them to be satisfied with words, to question all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers; you train them to be argumentative and rebellious; and whatever you think you gain from motives of reason, you really gain from greediness, fear, or vanity with which you are obliged to reinforce your reasoning. Most of the moral lessons which are and can be given to children may be reduced to this formula:         Master.      You must not do that.         Child.        Why not?         Master.      Because it is wrong.         Child.        Wrong! What is wrong?         Master.      What is forbidden you.         Child.        Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden?         Master.      You will be punished for disobedience.         Child.        I will do it when no one is looking.         Master.      We shall watch you.         Child.        I will hide.         Master.      We shall ask you what you were doing.         Child.        I shall tell a lie.         Master.      You must not tell lies.         Child.        Why must not I tell lies?         Master.      Because it is wrong, etc. That is the inevitable circle. Go beyond it, and the child will not understand you. What sort of use is there in such teaching? I should greatly like to know what you would substitute for this dialogue. It would have puzzled Locke himself. It is no part of a child's business to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason for a man's duties. Nature would have them children before they are men. If we try to invert this order we shall produce a forced fruit immature and flavourless, fruit which will be rotten before it is ripe; we shall have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its own ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to try and substitute our ways; and I should no more expect judgment in a ten-year-old child than I should expect him to be five feet high. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It is the curb of strength, and the child does not need the curb.

From: "Back to Basics" to "Education! Education! Education!" I regret that education is so much the centre of political rather than of academic debate. The school's role, and along with it the teacher's task, are now so much interfered with by government that, for both, motivation and job satisfaction have been smothered by regulation. It is derided as being the sentimental approach, lacking in rigour, but, for the teacher, the goal is no longer, as for Rousseau, to promote the interests and abilities of each child as an individual. Instead, it is to fulfil targets, to force-feed prescribed knowledge, to test at every opportunity, to react to a constant stream of directives, and to oversee the introduction of a stream of new initiatives. More time now seems to be devoted to recording progress than to achieving it. It is no longer possible to trust the teaching profession to deliver what they consider is best for their pupils. It is the government which knows best and it is the government which decrees constant testing, debilitating inspection, stringent cost and best-value controls. All political parties follow the same slogan-led programme, from 'Back to Basics' to 'Education! Education! Education!', and what is essentially a myth, the catchphrase of 'parental choice' has been and remains the shibboleth of successive governments. Certain essential controls are needed to ensure that schools are doing their job, but this should not require burdening schools and the teaching profession with more and yet more regulation. Unless more trust is placed in the judgement of the teaching profession to deliver a rounded education suited to pupils as individuals, education will remain the political football that it has become. But, Plus ca change ... The problem is not new ... as this extract from a book written in 1914 shows: The PURSUIT of KNOWLEDGE From 'The lighter Side of School Life' by Ian Hay. Published 1914 One of the most pathetic spectacles in the world is that of grown-up persons legislating for the young. Listening to these we are led to suspect that a certain section of the human race - the legislative section - must have been born into the world aged about forty, sublimely ignorant of the requirements, limitations, and point of view of infancy and adolescence. In what attitude does the ordinary educational expert approach educational problems? This question induces another. What is an educational expert? The answer is simple. Practically everybody ... Practically the only section of humanity to whom the title is denied are the people who have to teach. It is universally admitted by the experts - it is their sole point of agreement - that no schoolmaster is capable of forming a correct judgment of the educational needs of his charges. He is hidebound, "groovy"; he cannot break away from tradition. "What can you expect from a tripe-dresser," inquire the experts in chorus, "but a eulogy of the stereotyped method of dressing tripe?" So, ignoring the teacher, the experts lay their heads - one had almost said their loggerheads - together, and evolve terrific schemes of education. Each section sets about its task in characteristic fashion. The politician, with his natural acumen, gets down to essentials at once. "The electorate of this country," he says to himself, "do not care one farthing dip about Education as such. Now, how can we galvanise Education into a vote-catching machine?" ... So presently an Education Bill is introduced into the House of Commons ... So much for the experts. Their name is Legion, for they are many, and they speak with various and dissonant voices. But they have one thing in common. All their schemes of education are founded upon the same amazing fallacy - namely, that a British schoolboy is a person who desires to be instructed. That is the rock upon which they all split. That ... educational experts are all born grown-up. Let us clear our minds upon this point once and for all. In nine cases out of ten a master's task is not to bring light to the path an eager, groping disciple, but to drag a reluctant and refractory young animal up the slopes of Parnassus by the scruff of his neck. The schoolboy's point of view is perfectly reasonable and intelligible. "I am lazy and scatter brained," he says in effect. "I have not as yet developed the power of concentration, and have no love of knowledge for its own sake. Still, I have no rooted objection to education, as such, and I suppose I must learn something in order to earn a living. But I am much too busy, as a growing animal, to have any energy left for intellectual enterprise. It is the business of my teacher to teach me. To put the matter coarsely, he is paid for it. I shall not offer him effusive assistance in his labours, but if he succeeds in keeping me up to the collar against my will, I shall respect him for it. If he does not, I shall take full advantage of the circumstance." That is the immemorial attitude of the growing boy. When he stops growing, conscience and character begin to develop, and he works because he feels he ought to or because he has got into the habit of doing so, and not merely because he must. But until he reaches that age it is foolish to frame theories of education based upon the idea that a boy is a person anxious to be educated ... No,it is a mistake to imagine that the young of the human animal hungers and thirsts after knowledge. ... and some of my favourite cartoons on the subject of Education. Click on a thumbnail to view a larger version and read the caption.

Mummy !!!	Rude Little Tic !	Blocks to me!	Death Threat
School Uniform	Education Psychologist	School Dress	Hard Day At School

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