Political education in schools is imperative and must become a priority

Head of Politics William Bridges reflects on the importance of political education in schools and how best to engage pupils in political discussion both in the classroom and at home… 

British politics. Is it broken?

If it’s not yet broken, it’s certainly creaking under immense pressure. So how do we solve it? How do we repair the division and return to the ‘normal’ British politics of the past (if that’s possible or even desirable)?

The answer is, perhaps, to quote Blair: “education, education, education.”

We’ve all done it. We’ve all got to the ballot with the intention to vote, only to get there, and not really know who to vote for. Some of us haven’t even made it to the polling station for the same reason. Many people only engage in politics through voting and there is the problem: if we don’t even know who to vote for, how can we even begin to solve the deep-seated ills that face British politics?

Who’s who? Who stands for what? What difference does my vote even make? These are some of the most frequently asked questions at the beginning of the A3 (lower sixth) Politics course. But they are also the same questions that are asked by D or C (Year 9 or 10) pupils in PSRE, in conversations in tutorials and by colleagues in the Common Room.

Pupils at Bryanston are enthused, engaged and willing to participate in politics if given the opportunity. The numbers of pupils studying Politics at A level continue to grow year on year; we have a thriving Model United Nations and Debating Society. New initiatives in D activities, The Cabinet (Bryanston’s first Politics magazine) and UK Parliament Week all give pupils more opportunities to participate in politics now than ever before.

As vital as this is, we must go further. In this increasingly volatile and dangerous world, where democracy appears to be under genuine threat, it’s the duty of all of us – teachers, parents and guardians – to be able to uphold the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law and tolerance. The real question is this: how can we be expected to uphold this if our own political education is poor or even non-existent?

I was recently lucky enough to spend three days in Parliament with 70 teachers taking part in UK Parliament’s Teachers’ Institute. Since its launch in 2006, the Teachers’ Institute has trained more than 800 teachers from across the UK, giving us a detailed understanding of the work of the House of Commons and Lords. Those selected to attend Teachers’ Institute go on to become UK Parliament Teacher Ambassadors for Parliament's Education and Engagement Service and train their students and colleagues about the role of the UK Parliament.

And this is where we can start to repair and rebuild our politics – in the classroom. We can’t just expect young people to respect democracy. We can’t just expect them to understand the rule of law. We can’t just expect them to accept parliamentary democracy as the form of government that works for them if they don’t know what it is or how it works.

How can you begin to fix a car that’s misfiring if you don’t even know what a spark plug is? You can’t - you have to learn what the spark plug is, what it does, and how to change it if it’s dead. More than that, you also have to learn that a misfiring car can be caused by more than a faulty spark plug. There isn’t just one answer to one problem.

The Teachers’ Institute taught us the importance of political education as a tool to help heal the divide in politics, and the importance of working with colleagues across a range of schools in order to achieve this.

But it isn’t just in the classroom where we can begin to fix these problems. Engaging pupils in discussion at home, probing their thoughts on the news and asking their opinions about the goings on in our country and across the world is as important.

Discussion lays a foundation stone of engagement that will later become participation. And if Brexit has told us anything, it is that young people have the potential to be a very powerful force in British politics. They may, in fact, even hold the solutions to release the pressure on the political system.

The power of questions

This week our Chaplain, the Reverend Canon Andrew Haviland, emphasises the importance of ensuring our young people are confident to continue questioning and searching for answers.

If you watched the Royal Wedding last weekend, you will have heard Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon about the power of love and how, if we could harness the power of love like we have harnessed the power of fire, the world could be transformed for the better.

His sermon had a significant impact not only because of what he said, but also how he said it. Nobody was expecting to have such a charismatic preacher in the genteel and formal surroundings of St George’s Chapel at Windsor. It looked as if some members of the congregation were not expecting to be challenged and entertained at the same time and it was totally apparent that Bishop Curry enjoys not only preaching, but also engaging with his congregation.

In recent weeks Bryanston has hosted two confirmation services where pupils and adults have stood up and decided that now is the time to say ‘yes’ to the message of the Christian faith. Both services, Anglican and Roman Catholic, were ones of real joy and happiness and celebrated the power of love that Bishop Curry spoke about at the Royal Wedding. The two bishops, the Bishop of Sherborne and the Bishop of Plymouth, were marvellous with the candidates both before and during the service. The church was packed with people supporting them, and the music department once again did an amazing job in providing stunning choirs to lead the service.

Confirmation for these people, and for some of us here in the Bryanston community, is a time to celebrate and also to reflect. Those who had expressed an interest in being confirmed attended a series of confirmation preparation sessions. This was a time to meet in small supportive groups, in a relaxed setting with some hot chocolate and heaps of biscuits, which made it very different to a normal academic lesson.

But, like any good academic lesson, the purpose of these sessions was to educate not indoctrinate. What we tried to do was empower the young people to not be content with trite or simple responses to the big questions of life. The purpose was to help them to continue questioning and searching for answers. We examined the life and effect of Jesus and how his life has inspired people. We also critically explored how Christians have got the message wrong and made massive errors in life. In my experience, religion goes wrong when some think they have all the answers and think that their way is the only way.

Ensuring people are confident to question is vital and it is something that Bryanston aims to foster in all its young people. It is at the heart of our pastoral, academic, creative and spiritual curriculum and demonstrated through Bryanston’s Guiding Principles. The week after half term Bryanston is hosting its second Education Summit with the theme: “Where Next for Schools? Moving Education Up to the Next Level.” It should be a super event, empowering teachers and those interested in education to question and reflect on best practice.

The power to question, like harnessing the power of fire and the power of love empowering those around us to continue to question, has the potential to transform the world for the better.

Perfection Paralysis

This week Sarah Thomas considers why we shouldn't let a focus on perfection prevent us from doing our best.

I’ve been thinking recently about perfection. I think it’s true to say that I have, from my earliest years, known that whilst I would like everything to be neat and tidy and practically perfect in every respect (Mary Poppins being something of a role model of mine, closely followed by the wonderful Joan Hickson as Miss Marple), you can’t, in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, always get what you want. Indeed perfection can be paralysing.

It worries me that the notion of perfection is so prevalent in the media and elsewhere that it can be all too much for our children. Please don’t misinterpret me, I am absolutely clear that we should all aim to do our best. I’m rather thinking of the pursuit of perfect cleverness, perfect appearance, perfect lives. But it’s hard to do your best if you feel from the very start that there’s no way you can be as good as some seemingly perfect peer; or if you know that, despite your best efforts, you are unlikely to achieve as highly as your teachers or parents would like you to. And it’s hard too being the seemingly perfect one. That’s what I mean about perfection having a paralysing effect.

It’s why at Bryanston we focus so much upon how each pupil does according to their abilities and interests and efforts, as opposed to how they compare to others, either in or outside the school. In this age of league tables, where it seems everything, even the uncomparable, must be compared, ours is a radical approach. But the value we add by the sixth form in terms of both academic and other outcomes is something of which I am very proud, as I am of the achievements of Old Bryanstonians and the contributions they make to the wider world. I very much hope, for a multiplicity of reasons, no Bryanstonian thinks that the world owes them a living. And that they all go on to lead happy, fulfilled and contributive lives.

The way to deal with all this focus on perfection and the fear of helplessness in the face of it is, in my view, to remember your Voltaire (“le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”) and aim not for the perfect, but the good. This approach has a profound effect upon your sense of self-esteem: if you know what you are doing is your best, and that it is recognised as such rather than belittled, you are likely to feel much better about yourself. It allows you also to divest yourself of the feeling of desperation or helplessness that can creep in, often from consulting social media or the popular press about the world at large.

We live, perhaps sadly but certainly bracingly, in interesting times. I think our job as educators is to recognise and react to the changing world, ensuring pupils leave ready to embrace the new opportunities that will open up (so, for instance, we are strengthening our computer science provision with a new high-level appointment from September 2018), but also maintaining the framework which has proven its worth over generations, in terms of teaching pupils how to learn and, as it happens, how to be positive.

At Bryanston, I see this philosophy in action every day, through our remarkable tutorial system. I see it also in the approach of our Director of Sport and the exciting new developments he has introduced, so that all can enjoy sport both in and beyond school. I see it in the exceptional music and drama (and if you didn’t see My Fair Lady, I am very sorry for you, as you missed an enormous treat: I saw it twice!). I see it on every occasion that we place our trust in our pupils to rise to the challenges that face them. I am enormously proud, for instance, of our First XV Captain, Ellis B (P, A2), who has shaped a team which lost more than they would have wished before half term into one which was unbeaten this side of half term until, agonisingly, their very last game. Because of that experience, the boys now form a fully committed team with a sense of common purpose and individual drive. And Ellis is to be congratulated for his major part in that and also for his very recent selection to the U18 Wales squad. I am proud too of how the whole school rose this term to the challenge of raising our annual amount of £1,000 per house (which would mean a school total of £12,000), to support our long-standing school link with charities in Nepal. The total currently stands at £17,000 and rising. And I was beyond proud to hear of how our money raised for the fantastic David Nott Foundation (the charity chosen by last year’s A2 in spring 2017) has been helping fund training courses for surgeons around the world and has specifically helped in Bangladesh, supporting doctors treating the Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing, often with cruel injuries, from ethnic violence in Myanmar.

This year’s Heads of School, Harry G and Lotte T, are now planning for the A2 Charity Weekend for next term. They’ll be in touch with pupils, staff and parents early next term and they are eager to make sure they lead another successful and contributive charity event in February. They also, incidentally, provide me with some of the best conversations of my week and are outstanding role models to the school.

It’s a privilege running a school like Bryanston. My main role is to ensure that all pupils can leave here ready for this world of ours, whatever shape it will take, and knowing that doing your best, in the classroom or outside it, is always good enough and can sometimes be absolutely brilliant. And that’s the way to stay sane, avoid perfection paralysis and enjoy life with all its ups and downs. Have a super Christmas and all best wishes for 2018.

Bryanston: a thinking school

In this week’s blog, our Deputy Head Academic, David James, takes a look at a new introduction to 'D Activities' and how it is encouraging pupils to think not only about what they learn, but also how they learn.

'D Activities' is an established part of Bryanston’s identity. Every Monday our youngest pupils engage with a range of courses that extend them beyond the (sometimes rather restricting) confines of the taught curriculum. We are now trialling a new critical thinking course called Insight (written by Ian Warwick, CEO of London Gifted and Talented) for a selection of pupils. We are asking our D pupils to look at complex areas, including identity, migration, and poverty, but through various lenses, such as education, celebrity and ambition.

At a very fundamental level we are asking them to think about how they learn, and how to reflect on not only what they are learning, but how they are learning. When you think about it, schools are very good at telling pupils what they should be learning and why, but are less interested in asking them about how they learn. This is surprising because, according to reliable evidence, developing metacognitive skills, such as reflection, planning, and self-regulation is relatively cheap for a school, and has a high impact on pupil progress.

We recently asked a selection of our D pupils a number of questions to probe areas of their understanding and educational experience that are not always discussed. These questions included:

• How do you know if you have made progress in a subject? 
• What attitudes in pupils and teachers promote learning? 
• What attitudes in pupils and teachers have a negative impact on learning? 
• What qualities should an outstanding teacher have? 

It is interesting to ask if our pupils are able to be truly objective about a school system that they have been involved in since they were very young. Can they imagine something different from the model they are currently in? An obvious example of this is their view of ascertaining how they know if they have made progress in a subject. For a number of pupils the only way progress can be measured is through testing them regularly. Of course, testing is an essential tool, but is it the only one available to a school? Perhaps instead of discussing whether or not to test, we should ask ourselves how we should test, and with what regularity. One of our pupils in their reply sensibly pointed out that testing has flaws, and principal among those is the ability to retrieve information at a set time, and under particular conditions: such things affect outcomes.

All those Ds who answered the questions felt that for pupils to get the most out of their studies they need to have a ‘positive’ attitude to studying, arrive to class ready to learn, and be ready to listen. Such attitudes are, for our pupils, essential if they are to deepen their learning. But the conditions within that classroom are also vital: poor behaviour that distracts others is universally frowned on by every pupil who wrote on the factors which have a negative impact on learning. Given that there is a consensus view of disruptive behaviour (even of the low-level variety), and an awareness of how negative an impact it has on their own progress, it is perhaps surprising that in schools around the world pupils tolerate something so unacceptable on every level.

There is also a consensus view on what qualities a teacher should exhibit to promote learning, and of course these directly link to our pupils’ views of what makes for an outstanding teacher. Responses to this question at times seemed a little daunting for any teacher to read: they ranged from possessing a great deal of patience, an ability to explain complex ideas in a straightforward (but not dumbed-down) way, kindness, being interesting, having authority and real expertise in the subject being taught, and, interestingly, for one of the D pupils asked, a willingness to look beyond examinations.

Of course, asking pupils to think about such matters is in itself interesting, but this is only a sample. However, I would guess that they are typical of their peers. Perhaps surprisingly, given the ubiquity of technology in their lives, they at no point question the role of the teacher: the internet is, for our 13-year-olds, unlikely to replace teachers (which is a relief for teachers, and a view backed up by research). Perhaps this view is a direct result of their own experiences so far: they have always had a teacher physically involved in their learning, but it does confirm what we know (but need to occasionally hear from pupils): namely, that learning is a human activity that relies on, at times, transactions that cannot be measured or researched.

Insight is part of a conversation we want to develop with our pupils: we want to listen to them, to learn from them about their own learning. In time we would hope to instigate research, and to see it influence and shape our own approaches to teaching and learning. Education stops being transformative when it travels in one direction only. For teachers to remain engaged in their own profession they have to continue to learn, from each other, from experts involved in pedagogy, and from the pupils they teach. In that way we make thinking, and learning, more visible, more understood, and for more than just the classroom.

The thinks you can think

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try”. 

Dr Seuss

Creativity is something you have to work at in a school because, according to a great many successfully active creative thinkers and doers, schools and the very process of growing up are pretty good at beating out the spark rather than fostering its subtle flames. Picasso famously observed that every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up. I think all parents would instinctively agree with what he says in terms of watching their own children’s self-confidence about expression when in primary school and how things change with the self-consciousness of adolescence.

It’s also a big ask to tell a child or adolescent “Be creative!” What does that even mean? Where do you start? I think it’s important therefore to build creative thinking and the opportunity for creative doing into all aspects of a school curriculum, wherever and whenever you can. I don’t pretend that this is always easy (being creative about the gerundive of obligation can defeat you on a damp Friday afternoon) but I do think it’s the critical aim of all teaching and learning. Open wide the windows and let in the air. To quote Vinegar Joe’s certainly very creative use of the gerundive of obligation, non illigitimis carborundum.

The advantages of retaining the childhood spark of creativity into self-conscious adolescence and then professional adulthood are, in my view, too obvious for words. I don’t see that these need rehearsing or defending (but if you do, look at anything Ken Robinson or Bill Gates say). The bit that I think matters and does need asserting loud and clear is that after a decade or more of measuring the pig (through league tables of schools, through examination and assessment change, et cetera…) we should have learned how arid and useless that activity is in terms of creating well-rounded, happy, successful, creative, contributive young men and women. And frankly I don’t think education has any other purpose than producing just that.

Time to stop treating children as widgets, figures, statistics. By all means ensure all children receive an equal opportunity to enrich their lives through learning. It’s about time we did. But define education as an active, creative, two-way engagement, not as some dead hand of what must be learned. Stop encouraging only a focus on core curriculum; stop telling children what they can’t do, what they are no good at.

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try”……

People, not things

Another summer term has drawn to a close and another successful Speech Day has allowed us to send off with love and every best wish both departing staff and 150 or so departing A2s. It’s always a time of nostalgia (how can you forget those 18 year-olds as their 13-year-old selves, bright eyed, bushy tailed and very nervous, five short years ago?). But mostly this time of year is a time of looking forward, we hope not too sentimentally, to the great things ahead of them in life. It’s what makes this job of mine the best in the world.

Speech Day allows me to see these young men and women ready to move on and ready to achieve still more. It allows me too to say to them my final words as their Head. This year I spoke of David Foster Wallace, Ken Robinson and Gillian Lynne. The theme, as mine so often is, was about what really matters in life.

There can’t be anyone on the planet who has children in a school who hasn’t listened to Ken Robinson’s TED Talk. But those of you who don’t know David Foster Wallace’s This is Water might like to add it to your own summer reading list. It’s short because it’s a commencement speech (a graduation speech, I think, in British English) and it’s a really good read. He talks about the absolute necessity of knowing what it is that matters to you. Of never ignoring the blazingly obvious. Of looking after your inner self so that you can be a social and happy self too. I recommend it to you in the warmest terms. Here’s its opening, to whet your appetite:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

It’s important in life that we work out what we really need and what it is that really matters. It won’t be the size of your house or how much you earn that makes you happy. It will be how you feel about yourself and how you then interrelate with others. As David Foster Wallace puts it, “In the twenty years since my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand … that the liberal arts cliché about ‘teaching you to think’ was actually shorthand for a very deep and important truth. ‘Learning to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

For me, how I keep that control is by reminding myself of an old friend’s wonderfully simple, rather hippy mantra, “People, not things”. By reading and immersing myself, whenever I can, in an internal imaginative landscape. By spending time with my husband and daughters. By walking the dogs and finding time for quiet reflection.

The A2s, as they leave this wonderful garden, will go on to play their part in the world. We hope very much that they will take Bryanston with them. As part of them. Take with them the memories of their friends, their teachers, their (best in the world) Chaplain. We very much hope that they have learned to enjoy learning, of course; but more than that, that they have learned the importance of friendship, of shared experiences, of their own emotional and spiritual well-being. That they have real goals, not fake, hollow goals. That they know how to love life. That they put people before things.

I am about to sign off for a little while and head off for a summer holiday. I’m taking a pile of books up a long lane in Devon (with no internet connection, I hope), re-establishing my link with quiet, and having fun with family and friends too. I wish you all a wonderful and fun-filled summer too. See you all back refreshed in September.

Intelligent Life: David Foster Wallace, in his own words
Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Huffington Post: People, not things, bring happiness, study shows

Unchanging truths

It’s almost the end of term and the time of year when I reflect upon rather a lot of reports. This year I may be writing slightly fewer owing to being called for jury service. I shall be doing all I possibly can and Pete Simpson, Director of Studies, will this time potentially be writing some on my behalf. Some question the need for me to be writing these individual reports each term when there are so many other demands at this time, but I enjoy the idea that I can get to know, at varying levels, all 670 pupils in the school and the reports are one way of doing that in a small and unobtrusive way.

It’s important when dealing with the daily expectations of a school in my role as Head that I do not, in dealing with the detail, lose a sense of the bigger picture. This emphasis on the bigger picture is something I talk about to the school in assembly pretty regularly over the course of the second half of this term. I do this mostly in terms of encouraging an attitude of looking out from Bryanston, and of raising pleasing sums of money for charitable work, which we have supported for well over ten years now in Nepal and India.

The bigger picture is also important in terms of our giving pupils the right sort of access to facts and encouraging the use of critical faculties upon the understanding of key world issues, whether extremism or Ebola. Pete Simpson’s memorable assembly recently also prompted us to think of homelessness and as a school we organised a frugal lunch that day to raise funds for Centrepoint. It’s so important that we think about these big ideas and issues. As Bertrand Russell put it, to keep us on our toes, “Most people would rather die than think, and most people do.”

Last week I spoke to the school about what matters, about what remains (when you are on old lady like me) of what you learned in school. Poems come unprompted into my head at the most unlikely times, from ‘Macavity, the Mystery Cat’ (I was about nine when I learned that) to William Johnson Cory’s translation of ‘They told me, Heracleitus…’ (I came across this when I was about 15). And then there are all those impenetrable things I learned in maths (x = -b + or – the square root of b squared - 4ac, all divided by 2a). These things never quite leave you. They just ricochet around one’s memory without our even realising.

William Johnson Cory, the translator of my remembered poem, also said interesting things about education. Here are some of his thoughts on the matter below:

“At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness. Above all, you go to a great school for self-knowledge.”

I think I almost entirely agree. School should certainly teach you how to think. The stuff you remember, what remains, can be odd and seemingly unconnected. But it’s the process of learning how to think, of how to ask and start to answer difficult questions, how to not just settle for pure blarney, and how to be fulfilled in life that matters. And however many changes to syllabus, to forms of examination, to marking, to assessment, nothing will change these basic unchanging truths of life.