Paces

Hanif Kureishi can't skip .... but he is an artist of his own life #CondEd

Here's an article I think most of us in Conductive Education will understand. Unfortunately, it's in yesterday's Sunday Times Magazine section, behind Rupert's paywall: Think and You'll Miss It by writer Hanif Kureishi.

He begins with an amusing admission that, having recently tried, he cannot skip with a rope; his 13-year old son, on the other hand, to whom he handed the rope, "did the whole thing backwards, singing a Beatles song".

Which leads him shortly to:

"My son who can skip and sing, found it difficult for a long time, to read and write at the level of others his age. At primary school he was castigated, even insulted and punished for his inability. After the experts were called in, he was investigated and berated some more, and finally labelled dyslexic and dyspraxic.

"There is, at least, some relief in diagnosis. One is not alone, joining a community of others who have, it appears, a similar condition. But can the inability to do a particular thing be described as a "condition" at all. Would the fact that I can't do the tango, read music or speak Russian be considered a "condition"? Is it a failure of my development? Am I ill?"

He then considers that he was "not much impressed by the imagination and curiosity of the experts" who used an "awkward, objectifying language" and quickly began to talk "fashionably, about brains and chemicals", observing that "Biological determinism is one of psychology's ugliest evasions, removing the poetic human from any issue." ... "What I'm talking about here, I believe, is the attempted standardisation of a human being, and of a notion of achievement that is limited, prescriptive and bullying".

I doubt I can do justice to the main part of his article, but here goes. An 18-year old known to Kureishi, mentioned having been given Ritalin to help him focus, "his mind, he said, kept going off in numerous directions". Rejecting Kureishi's suggestions for alternative causes, the young man, says Kureishi asked himi if "given the choice, I wouldn't prefer to focus at will". This leads Kureishi to consider his own teenage years when "I wanted to be good at things, but, like the Ritalin boy, I fell badly behind at school, finding myself not only unable to learn but at the bottom of my class".

He then goes on to make a powerful case for the value of distraction, provided that the individual be able to "distinguish between creative and destructive distractions by the sort of taste they leave ... and this can only work if he is, as much as possible, in good communication with himself - if he is, as it were, on his own side, caring for himself imaginatively, an artist of his own life."

"There might be more to our distractions than we realised we knew. We might need to be irresponsible. But to follow a distraction requires independence and disobedience; there will be anxiety in not finishing something, in looking away, or in not looking where others prefer you."

It's a challenging thought.

----------------------------

All the italics here are mine.

 

What is the purpose of schools? asked Anthony Seddon

What is the purpose of schools?

Writing in the Sunday Times (£pay site) a couple of weeks ago (“Think Tank: New Ideas for the 21^st Century”), Anthony Seddon, Master of Wellington College, approved much that Michael Gove has done as Education Secretary, whilst suggesting “If he has a blind spot, however, it is his lack of a vision for the purpose of schools”.

“Gove has let exam passes become the all-important validator of the worth of a school .... Exams, are, of course essential. They allow us to measure the progress of students and school performance. But they are not the whole purpose of schools. The objective that Gove needs to prioritise now is character building.”

Seddon sets out his case by calling on: David Levin, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Programme, (who realised … “those who possessed character strengths such as resilience and tenacity” were succeeding at university, not necessarily those who had been the top students at their schools); Angela Duckworth, (“a psychologist who showed that self-control could be a more reliable predictor of students’ university success than IQ”) and Martin Seligman (“a pioneer of ‘positive psychology’, who had identified no fewer than 24 character strengths that could be developed in schools”).  With Dominic Randolph, Head of New York private school, Riverdale, David Levin reduced Seligman’s 24 character strengths to 7 “which they made the cornerstones of their respective school’s programmes”:

• self-control
• grit
• zest
• social intelligence
• optimism
• gratitude
• curiosity

Noting “Independent schools, as we all know, major on the development of character”, Seddon points to examples of state schools that are “showing the way”: King Solomon Academy primary school in northwest London; West Kidlington primary school in Oxfordshire; and Kings Langley secondary school in Hertfordshire.

So what is the purpose of schools? Of the purpose of schooling? Or, for that matter, the purpose of Education?

When I read this, I wanted to ask a couple of questions:

What is the purpose of parents?

What of upbringing? Is it even meaningful to talk of the purpose of upbringing?

 

 

 

 

 

Children do not have motor disorders only in school term-time

The other day, I was reflecting on the possibilities 'Flexi-schools' offer for year-round conductive education.

Today, I have been reading of the possibilities open to Free Schools. ( The Daily Telegraph reports a speech by Education Secretary Michael Gove to the Policy Exchange.)

The Free School Norwich for instance, plans to open six days a week for 51 weeks of the year, which will integrating high-quality education and child care all year-round. Freedom to set their own staff pay and conditions, means that they are able to change the school day to fit their requirements. This means working parents will be able to make full use of the affordable extended school provision, which will be available on the school premises for six days each week, 51 weeks of the year.''

The West London Free School expects pupils to stay in school, or at music and drama clubs until 5pm between Monday and Friday. Mossbourne Academy, which was opened under the last Labour Government, already operates a longer school day and opens at weekends.

Do I need to spell out the possibilities for conductive education in such models?

Concocting a recipe for a new approach to conductive upbringing and schooling from four ingredients

The 4 Ingredients:

• Cyber-CE
• Flexischooling
• Family-centred education
• Free schools.

I have long puzzled about how conductive upbringing, which is necessarily child-and-family centred 365 days a year, might creatively be integrated with conductive schooling with its institutional structures and limitations – whilst having some hope at least of a sustainable business model.  Three fortuitous bits of reading and a current obsession - the 4 ingredients - can perhaps be shaken or stirred together to make something wholly new. Crazy? No problem. Have a read and see what you think.  

Ingredient 1: Cyber CE

Thanks to Andrew Sutton on Facebook, I was alerted to “Cyber Experiment in Conductive Education” an online paper by László Szögeczki.

The paper reported an experiment in "response to an issue often raised by outsiders, interested clients and other professionals as to whether distance Conductive Education could be executed". In summary, "an international 'pilot' was successfully undertaken between a USA based conductor in New York and disabled children, professionals and assistants at a CE centre near Chorley, Lancashire in the UK".

László and his colleagues are not alone. Susie Mallett has for some time been advertising distance CE services on her blog. Earlier this year, prompted by reading that there are 35 Virtual Charter Schools, I myself mused whether a Virtual Conductive Education School might be possible.  Ben Foulger, for one, expressed some interest. But there it rested.

Ingredient 2: Flexischooling

Follow me somewhere else, quite different: have you ever heard of Flexischooling? No? Neither had I until I was introduced to “Ed Yourself”, the website of Fiona Nicholson’s Home Education Consultancy, which covers “key areas of elective home education practice and policy in England”.  You’ll find Flexischooling, fascinatingly enough, under the “Special Needs” tab.

“In a flexi-schooling arrangement children are registered as pupils at the school and attend part-time, but spend other parts of the week being educated off-site by their parents. This arrangement is a matter for the head teacher, rather than the local authority, to negotiate with parents. The child will be required to follow the National Curriculum whilst at school but not whilst he or she is being educated at home.

The school register can be marked Code B for approved educational activity which must be of an educational nature and must be supervised by a person authorised by the proprietor or head teacher. More information on flexischool can be found in the Government Guidance on Pupil Registration Regulations page 22  and in the Government's Home Education Guidelines 

Ingredient 3: Family-scale education

Now just one more step: like many people, I have reservations about ‘faith schools’, so when I ask you to take a look at the website of the proposed Sheffield Christian Free School  it is not their “distinctively biblical approach to knowledge and learning” that attracted my attention.  Firstly, it was the following statement, a “Core Value”:

“We have been developing family-scale education for almost 25 years. We found that as families join together and pool their enthusiasm, expertise and ideas they can produce a stimulating and versatile curriculum for their children. For this model to be effective the numbers of families needs to be limited. Every family needs to be involved and feel that their contribution is valued. The school needs to actively seek participation from parents and equip them as they take responsibility for their children’s education.”  

The second feature that drew my attention was how the school was to be organised – on multipe small sites, responding to parental demand:

“The Sheffield Christian Free School will have all the advantages of being a large institution but, with each site having less than 100 pupils from between 40 – 50 families, it will be able to  offer the highest standards of pastoral care and academic support.” 

 Ingredient 4: Free Schools

The fourth ingredient is the potential funding that setting up a Special Free School brings for innovation in pedagogy, curriculum and parent choice, about which I shall say no more here.

Now for a trial bake.

The result may not be immediately palatable perhaps but we can adjust the ingredients later. How does this appeal to you:

A school, a Special Free School; made up of 5, 10, 20 sites dispersed around a city, a region, or the whole of the UK, maybe; for groups of, say, 20, 30, 50 families and children; attending all year round, part-time on a flexischool basis;  and part-time at home with CE delivered at a distance by a conductor based elsewhere. The whole dish funded by the DfE as a Virtual Free School.

Well? Or rather, "Why not?"

Me? I'm just a bit busy right now. But after that?

And you?

Life long learning. Life long play (with thanks to @MaxMckeown) #CondEd

I especially liked the opening of this blog posting "Life long learning. Life long play" from Max Mckeown (@MaxMckeown on Twitter). The whole post is worth a read.

There’s an entrepreneurial art, the ability to see, and the guts to grab opportunities. Like all art, people have different aptitudes, like all art, people can learn. Learning the entrepreneurial art, requires the confidence to bet on yourself. And that confidence can be learned through practice and praise.

If society wants more entrepreneurial growth, then perhaps education should emphasis practice and praise. Instead of stopping the free play at five years old, free play should be encouraged throughout education. Throughout life.

Instead of school sharing out limited opportunities, education can be a way of creating unlimited opportunities. In this way, school stops being an incantation of the possible, and starts being an exhortation to the impossible. Each day, each child can choose to stay within neat, ruthless orthodoxy or decide to explore messy, forgiving unorthodoxy.

If our schools reflected the very best of us, they would be neighborhoods, communities, places of adventure and imagination. School has to do far more than let our children know where they rank on a four point scale.

A fanciful thought, maybe, but does "the confidence to bet on yourself", as Max puts it, sound just a little like what conductive upbringing and pedagogy is all about? Or what Mike Chitty calls "becoming"? Or Dr Hari writing about 'enhancing the quality of intention to achieve'?

Mind you, I remember Helen Pemberton (a conductor who worked with us at Paces a while back) once stressing to me that we do not emphasise enough the importance of play. Anyone for the early years foundation curriculum?

---------------------------

@ and # are used on twitter as special signs.