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Sinking Outside the Box
According to those who frequently organise courses for teachers
on managing change, there is always someone in your school who is
holding everything back. This person, and the folklore has it that
they are white, middle-aged and grumpy, maintains that they have
lived through more changes than his or her hearers have had hot
dinners and none of these changes have worked. The message is that
their pessimism is what is holding back your school in particular
and the whole of education in general. Rid yourself of these individuals
and the willingness to embrace change will be altered forthwith.
But suppose your teachers come from a different, younger generation
and there’s still some resistance, what then? Who is getting in
the way of ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘pushing open the envelope’ and
‘thinking outside the box’? Could it be that these teachers have
joined others in education who have become distinctly guarded about
those people who have recourse to such phrases in the first place?
If nothing else, teachers are experienced in the way human nature
can manifest itself; many will know children in their classes who
become overly enthusiastic about something; who can’t understand
why others aren’t similarly enthused to the exclusion of all other
interests but whose passion quickly wanes only to be re-lit by yet
another enthusiasm. Many children acquire considerable knowledge
in this way and confined to that age-group, and DIY hobbyists, there
is little harm done.
In adults who have responsibility for educational planning this
enthusiasm for the new, the novel and the different is only too
often translated as ‘forward thinking’ but recognised by teachers
for the shallow, transient innovation it so often turns out to be.
The impression given is that it is only the new and latest idea
that is worth pursuing. Somehow it seems more attractive and exciting
than asking questions of the past. Not for nothing has the government
set up an ‘innovations’ unit within education, albeit there still
seems to be a distinct fuzziness about its aim and definition. Change
per se is what is going to get us out of the next problem
so why not set up a unit devoted to it?
Education seems to have a disturbing collective amnesia, even for
the recent past, so there were some wry smiles recently at OFSTED’s
new enthusiasm for topic work in primary schools (Times Educational
Supplement, October 4, 2002) After years of seemingly endless
new and ill thought-out initiatives it has appeared there might
actually be some merit in examining previous practice after all.
This is only a small and isolated example however. It will probably
be a considerable time before first and middle schools are re-invented
for instance. They are an example of change that was brought about
by the insights of experienced teachers and educationists who recognised
that change was required to meet the needs of children. Now it seems
that the needs of politicians and the business world are those that
have to be met. Significantly, ‘thinking outside the box’ and ‘blue
sky thinking’ etc. were first used in financial and business management
circles.
As it happens teachers are not averse to change that directly benefits
all their pupils and often welcome it, in contrast to change that
is imposed, for example, just to raise SATs scores or boost league
table positions. Annoyingly for the government it is a distinction
they find easy to make. Imaginative initiatives that meet the needs
of ordinary people can often be successful as Michael Young so often
demonstrated. He did indeed think ‘outside the box’ but his fundamental
principles were not the same as those who presently advocate this
approach as a cure-all. The future of comprehensive education is
currently being subjected to this practice in a way that could and
is endangering its very existence and perhaps there is a black cloud
in the blue-sky thinking that wouldn’t mind too much about its demise
either. Re-labelling and re-organising schools so that it’s hard
to tell what it is your child is attending e.g. an academy, a specialist
school, a high school, a city technology college etc. etc. is one
way of dismantling the structure in the minds of the public. It
could also mean that like topic work, a former practice might be
reintroduced. Only this time a discredited one, that of secondary
modern schools. The ordinary comprehensive will become the neighbourhood
secondary modern ‘sink’ school. It could be a neat trick – after
all, except in a few areas, there will be few parents who know or
remember anything about them. ‘Outside the box’ might well be where
a significant number of pupils will be finding themselves in a not-so-distant
future. And sinking fast.
Annabelle Dixon
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