Dear reader,
This has been a tough week.
Even though … I had the privilege of watching a highly skilled, thoughtful, caring teacher help a student stretch their Thinking muscle by helping them move from a jokey, surface level response to a deeper, considered one. How did she do this? By inviting them to cue their Imaginative muscle and think associatively, and then being prepared to sit with the student in the discomfort as they slowly, surely, got in that zone.
I believe this kind of learning is incredibly valuable. I think it sets kids up for success. So does our curriculum, calling these kinds of muscles the Key Competencies. In business they’re often referred to as soft skills, although Seth Godin has an issue with this and argues in his book, The Song of Significance, they should be called real skills. Guy Claxton, and many others, call them dispositions, and argue their growth and development constitute the core that enables a person to flourish1. This is why I’m working with Guy to build his dispositional work into the the SMATA app so that it is easier for teachers to tune in to and respond to them.
Yet, here in NZ, we’re in a political environment where the party that looks like it will win the election actively dismiss this kind of learning as “vague, hard to measure, and impractical to report”. It’s time, they say, we tightened up and got back to proper learning by “teaching the basics brilliantly”.
And even though … I had the privilege of meeting with a group of learning support leaders and hearing their stories. I don’t know how they don’t scream at the moon each night. They’re facing escalating needs, both in terms of extremity and number, and tight, insufficient resourcing and support. They told me of how they’re managing within these constraints. They have to get clever with resource allocation, stretching dollars and people to near breaking point. They’re exploring way to address the developmental needs of these children with pedagogies like play and nurture-based approaches.
I believe in the pedagogy of play for kids of all ages because of how the learning rests on a bed of care, attentiveness, and relationships. I like how it connects with the developmental needs of kids. I also like how play is a natural bedfellow for the growth of dispositions. It’s the interplay of these that provide the solid foundation upon which kids become powerful learners.
Yet, play is derided by so many in power. What our children need is rigour and standards and a real focus on the basics; we can’t accept excuses, apparently. But why are the social and economic conditions that are harming our kids excused? Why are they doubled down on, incentivised even? No matter how much we may wish to believe the opposite, we cannot escape the fact that robbing kids of what they need to develop healthily harms them and diminishes their ability to learn.2
Gordon Neufeld sums those developmental needs into four categories.
The unconditional love of, and attachment to, one significant other who is there day-in, day-out.
The unconditional acceptance of who that child is and the encouragement and development of their unique strengths.
The opportunity to feel and express all emotions, including anger.
The ability to play freely, every day.
Just think of how hard it is for parents to meet those inescapable needs now because of the social and economic pressures around them. What’s the impact of them not being met, do you think, on their children? (I am not blaming parents here - you cannot blame a fish for swimming unnaturally in a poisoned sea).
As I listened to these learning support coordinators, I couldn’t help thinking about these developmental needs. I couldn’t help thinking about how for so many - too many - kids, their world is dominated by technology. I couldn’t help wondering about the impact of all that externally stimulated dopamine on their developing brains.3 I couldn’t help thinking about how all that technology shuts down attachment and free play.
Jonathan Haidt writes about the great experiment we’re running on childhood, which is the replacement of a play-based childhood with a screen-based one. Why are we accepting it? Why do parents react more strongly against play in schools than they do against technology?
As I listened to these learning support coordinators, and how they described the ways they had to use the time at the start of each day to create those nurturing, developmentally appropriate environments, I couldn’t help thinking about how making education all about the basics will rip the guts out of their ability to do that. I couldn’t help thinking about how a relentless focus on the basics will make many kids feel like who they are and their unique strengths aren’t accepted. I couldn’t help thinking about how there’s no room for emotion in this rigorous approach to education.
Yep — It’s been a tough week.
It’s been a week were I’ve begun to wonder whether someone with my beliefs and expertise has a place in the education world that’s coming. It’s been a week where I’ve started to wonder how I’ll be able to make a living when all the resources will be directed at things I don’t believe in and away from the things I do: dispositions, play, and attending to and meeting the developmental needs of a child.
Check out his learning power series for deep dives into the connection between theory and practice when it comes to dispositions in a classroom.
You can also come to the workshop Guy and me are running on this topic: Auckland, 13 November. Book here
I think we see echoes of this in the declining achievement rates of NZ kids. They start to dive in the early 2000s, which is when the housing market began to take off and thus housing became more insecure for the kids on the margins. The rates nose-dived when we last tried the ‘back to basics’ standards approach. Now we’ve got a much larger number of kids living in poverty, and much larger number on the margins of poverty, and so many more in poor and insecure housing situations AND we’re about to go back to basics.
Is there any research out there about this?
Tough post to read from the US, where many of us have hopes that folks in NZ (and parts of Australia, and parts of Canada, and and and) will continue grow new ideas about what it's like to center imagination and joy and wonder and awe and beauty and connection in your work with children. When that work is happening in public schools anywhere, it's a light for everyone fighting against anti-child movements at home. And yet.
Let's keep finding ways to capture, nurture, and highlight those experiences - even when (especially when?) they rise in contexts that are not entirely welcoming to them. So much depends on that!
I had a hui last night with a group of people from Taranaki outdoor pursuits and Education TOPEC, what i have seen in the last 3 years there has been a growth unlike any other in student engagement, staff growth , problem solving. What the meeting highlighted was that the future was about growing the strength of community connections, which may be somewhat more immune to the fluctuations of government and ministry whims. Outdoor education ...play based learning .. rite tonu.