The Whole Child Learns to Feel
So, not content with our current level of credulity and vacuity and inability to think or judge or question or analyze or reflect, with, not to put too fine a point on it, our score on the stupidity meter, some parents are going to considerable trouble to do better – so that in a few short years no one at all will any longer be able to see what’s wrong with The World According to Bob Jones University Press ‘textbooks’.
Reporter Suein Hwang interviewed white parents who are pulling their kids out of elite public high schools, schools known for sending graduates to the nation’s top colleges. They are doing this, writes Hwang, because the schools are too academically rigorous, too narrowly focused on such subjects as math and science. Too Asian…White parents are putting their kids into private schools or moving to areas where the public schools are whiter, less Asian and less demanding. Where sports and music also are emphasized, and educators value, as one parent put it, ‘the whole child.’
Yes – the whole child. One not all warped and distorted and tipped over on one side by excessive book-thumbing. One not all nerdy and squinty and pencil-necked because of too much reading and not enough tv-watching. One not all defiant and rebellious like that horrible Mark Twain or all presumptuous and disrespectful of authority like that (pencil-necked) Emily Dickinson. We want our kids to be normal, by god – we want them to be ignorant and gullible and thoughtless and inarticulate like that nice fella in the White House. We want them to be ordinary, and humble, and modest, and average, so they can run for president when the time comes.
I sent that link (which Eric Berman sent to me) to Allen and he sent me this one in reply.
According to the Government, parents increasingly can no longer be trusted to teach qualities such as self-worth, restraint, friendliness, empathy and resilience to their children, so schools must assume the burden…Dinah Morley, the deputy director of the Young Minds charity, agrees. “Schools can no longer see themselves as just a place for learning,” she said. “They have to do the nurturing that so many kids are missing out on.”
Note that ‘just a place for learning’. Interesting, isn’t it. As if it were kind of small-minded and parochial of schools to think of themselves as ‘just’ – mere, only – places for learning. As if they really ought to pull their socks up and realize that they have better things to do, because learning is such a trivial, fussy, silly, time-wasting activity.
Actually that is exactly what a lot of people think. I once heard a teacher of my (very short-lived) acquaintance say that schools aren’t just for teaching ‘information,’ as she chose to call it, but at least as much for teaching social skills. The hell they are, I wanted to tell her, rather loudly and impolitely, but I didn’t. (Because I’m no slouch in the social skills department myself, unless I’m in a bad mood or feeling slightly irritable.) But I took note of her opinion, and began that very day to plot the resistance.
The guidance demonstrates the extent to which “emotional intelligence”, a term coined in 1995 by American psychologists to describe the ability to perceive, access and regulate emotions, is regarded by the Government as education orthodoxy. Education inspectors at Ofsted now routinely monitor schools and nurseries for how well they promote pupils’ emotional and social development.
You know…even apart from the ‘no thank you I’d rather be doing something else’ aspect, it just sounds so – revolting. So intrusive, so get away from me, so who do you think you are. It sounds almost Christian in its intrusiveness. The bastards are closing in on us – the Zeal-of-the-land-busy types from one direction and the brow-moppers and hand-holders from the other. We’re going to have Pat Robertson shouting damnation in one ear and some creepy empathist whispering damply in the other. It’s hell on earth, I tell you!
Not every one is convinced, however. Teachers complain that they are not paid to be psychologists, academics are worried that subject content is losing out to indefinable “skills”, while traditionalists think the responsibility lies with parents.
Ya think? Ya think teachers aren’t shrinks, and time spent on bedwetting won’t be spent on reading, and maybe parents should be doing the touchy-feely stuff?
“It is one thing to be sensitive to some students’ lack of confidence, or to refer individuals to a support service. It is another when students must fill in questionnaires about emotions and self-esteem and review these with classmates and teachers. Not only is it intrusive, but it elevates emotional needs as a concern and sidetracks teachers.”
Exactly. Never mind the whole child, never mind emotional literacy – stick with the kind of literacy that people need in a world full of graduates of Bob Jones U.
Unfortunately, to insist teachers focus solely on the subject matter is Utopian. There seem to be more children with social and emotional development problems, and teachers can’t ignore those problems. I hear it said that teachers often have to be social workers, by default, and they cannot get to the learning if they don’t have children’s emotions and behavior under control first.
Great point about making teachers into therapists with one regulation, while forbidding them to touch a child with another. Thankfully, my kids’ teachers give hugs and pats on the shoulder. But the contradictory rules and expectations make teaching a damn near impossible job.
The most prestigious high school in this city is a private school. But the ethos there (mostly determined by the parents) seems to value kids’ getting perfect grades and being admitted to good colleges, rather than learning and being held to a real standard. I don’t think they could pay ME to send my children there.
For one thing, Dave, civilized values are not the same things as emotions. The article discussed the teaching of emotional literacy, not civility. Yes, of course they are connected, but that doesn’t make them identical or interchangeable. And for another thing, if teachers have to teach civility, when do they get to teach other things?
I didn’t say I wanted to be Miss Manners – I don’t in the least. And in any case, I said manners and politeness are good things; it hardly follows that I think they should be on the school curriculum.
“Unfortunately, to insist teachers focus solely on the subject matter is Utopian.”
Then again, to think that teachers can somehow magically do everything is at least as Utopian.
“Actually that is exactly what a lot of people think. I once heard a teacher of my (very short-lived) acquaintance say that schools aren’t just for teaching ‘information,’ as she chose to call it, but at least as much for teaching social skills”
As a first-year high school teacher, I might be inclined to agree with your acquaintance – depending on what what meant by this statement. If he/she meant to say that schools should focus at least as much on teaching social norms, “values” and manners as teaching content, I have to disagree. But perhaps he/she meant something else? Maybe that teachers often find that they HAVE to teach their students some social skills before any content can even be absorbed? If so, I agree.
Many students, especially freshman, come to class with little or no idea of how to behave in a classroom. They shout other students down, talk without raising their hand, and generally treat their teachers as if they were waiters at Red Lobster. I’ve been finding that a large part of my job is tied up in teaching them how to even be a student so that they and their classmates can actually learn something on any given day. Unless and until they learn these skills, no other learning of any kind can occur.
Now some of these skills correlate with the kind of things people sometimes mean by “social skills” – things like empathy and respect and the like. The difference is in the priorities….I see the social skills as a pre-requisite for learning the real content, and not really as an end in itself.
Phil
Yeah – she meant as an end in itself, and she didn’t mean social skills in the sense of how to act in the classroom, but in the sense of (this is a mantra, especially in education circles) ‘learning to get along with all different kinds of people.’ What used to be called ‘attitude adjustment’ – which used to be called by people who were suspicious of it, ‘conformity.’
[Sigh] Now I sound like Rush Limbaugh or something. It’s not that I think people shouldn’t have decent attitudes – but that teaching them isn’t the school’s job. It’s the mission creep thing. Schools have other things they have to teach.
In the US at least, I think the public schools are crucial for teaching citizenship and tolerance and stuff. It’s one reason home-schooling and many private school settings bother me — I don’t think a child should study among a hand-picked group of people, I think they should be in a cross-section of people (from their town, at least).
But you’d hope that would happen as part of the normal course of things, and not be a separate item on the teacher’s to-do list. And when I posted last, I was thinking of the fact that without basic civility in the classroom, no learning can happen.
“And when I posted last, I was thinking of the fact that without basic civility in the classroom, no learning can happen.”
Sure. No argument. But the teachers shouldn’t have to teach it. (I know, sometimes – often – they have to, perforce. But that shouldn’t be treated as okay and normal and acceptable and just part of the job. The more it is, the less they can do anything else.)
Well, alas, short of ‘manners squads’ bursting into people’s homes and reprimanding discourtesy [or hanging the most offensive practitioners from the nearest lamppost], what is to be done?
What teachers shouldn’t have to do is deal with what they do have to deal with, which is basically a broken cultural frame — children don’t know how to learn, or even how to interact civilly, in a great many cases, and society outside the school devotes itself to perpetuating that ignorance. So teachers do have to deal with it, or quit.
If education is to take place, that frame has to be reconstructed in the school, piece by laborious piece. Alas, alack and alarm clock, would that it were not so, but it is. All the shoulding in the world isn’t going to change that.
Notwithstanding, the examples you pointed to have their own excesses, and I for one was more struck by the obvious racial tone of the US piece, but you came out of it on a riff about ‘teachers should just teach their subject’, which just won’t work. The obedience of a class of 30 children is not there to be commanded any more, o woe, o woe…
“what is to be done?”
Well I don’t know. But one thing not to be done, surely, is just to accept the situation as a given, and assume that it’s up to teachers to raise the children they teach from scratch.
“So teachers do have to deal with it, or quit.”
I know. But that’s just it – they do quit. Or they stay, but are too overwhelmed to do a very good job. Or they stay and remain dedicated, but they simply don’t have enough time to do more than crowd control.
Yes, the racial tone is also interesting. The whole ‘too Asian’ thing is absolutely fascinating. You’re right, I did select one aspect to talk about. Both interest me, but I grabbed that one.
My point is not so much that ‘teachers should just teach their subject’ as that the rest of the world shouldn’t expect them to do everything else in addition. My point is that they ought to be able to just teach their subject. I don’t have a magic wand to make that happen, but I do think it’s what teaching should be for. The ‘whole child’ should be the parents’ job.
Besides the racial overtone, there’s an attitude that education is a consumer good. If my child can’t make straight A’s at this school, then there’s something wrong with the school.
This story is only worth reporting because of the racial aspect. Otherwise “different parents choose different schools for their children” is a complete non-story. I wonder how much of this is just the usual racial self-segregation that seems to go on wherever a mixed neighboorhood has a choice of schools, and reflects the fact that although housing and workplaces are mixed, people’s social circles are much less integrated. It seems from the article, anyway, that parents are choosing a liberal arts education (involving Twain, Dickinson et al) over a science dominated one which is surely a legitimate choice?
Ophelia – I think your dismissal of the idea that schools should be interested in developing the whole child is wrong. Are you seriously saying that parents should just send their children to the academic sausage factory with the highest test scores? That they should not go visit the school
and consider how well the school’s ethos, size, style, facilities etc.. suits their child’s temperment and interests? Are you seriously saying that
teachers shouldn’t pay attention to a child’s interests, passions, concerns, social skills, problems and personality if they are not directly related to the syllabus? If that is the case I am not sure what you see as the role of schools
– surely all children could learn from a
stack of CD-Roms and books delivered at the beginning of each year, with a lab or workshop session once in a while for practical skills.
Preferring liberal arts to math and science is legitimate. But the article doesn’t mention a lack of liberal arts, it mentions a lack of SPORTS. I’d put a less charitable spin on this than you do, Maya.
Housing is the least integrated thing, overall. The rule of thumb in the US is the quality of public school you get is related to how expensive a house you can afford. San Jose/Cupertino is the most inflated real estate market in America. If affluent white families in Silicon Valley have complaints about the public schools, something doesn’t compute.
“Otherwise “different parents choose different schools for their children” is a complete non-story.”
Why? Why is that a non-story? Why isn’t it at least potentially an interesting and important story? Surely it depends, doesn’t it? If parents choose ‘different’ schools where their daughters learn how to dress Barbie dolls all day while their sons learn academic subjects, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
“Are you seriously saying that parents should just send their children to the academic sausage factory with the highest test scores?”
No. Why would I be saying that? I didn’t say a word about test scores. But I do think – and I maintain that this is not self-evidently an eccentric view – that schools are (or rather should be) for education. Not socialization, not character-formation, not babysitting, but education.
“surely all children could learn from a
stack of CD-Roms and books delivered at the beginning of each year, with a lab or workshop session once in a while for practical skills.”
Well, yes. Or, better, in a perfect world, from intensive teaching in tiny groups for only about four hours a day, and all the rest of the time would be free for play (with all the attendant socialization and character-formation and athletic skill-creation) and recreational reading and the like. I think schools are a massively inefficient way to deliver education. But that’s not because that’s the only way they can create ‘the whole child’ – it’s because it’s cheaper.
Dix –
Here’s the original article: http://seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jhubert/whiteflight.html
It does talk about liberal arts. But that was left out of the Miami Herald comment piece – I guess to make it sound more alarming.
OB –
Sure it would be interesting if children are being sent to barbie-dressing school. But that isn’t what is happening here, is it. This piece isn’t saying that these children are getting a sub-standard education that will leave them illiterate.
It is like the comments published everyday (in the UK) from Melanie Phillips and the rest of the Daily Mail crowd which pick on some little story from a school somewhere, interesting in its own right and meaningful in some way certainly. Then they exagerate it, criticise the strawman they’ve created and conclude that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
I know you didn’t mention test scores, but I read ‘elite high school’ and ‘sending graduates to the nations top colleges’ etc.. to read ‘get the highest test scores’ maybe I am wrong. But the point I was making was that it is OK and legitimate for parents to to take other factors as well as academic excellence into account when they are choosing a school for their child – that you can only know which is the best school for your child by considering the ‘whole child’.
If I went to a parents evening and said to the teacher “my child seems unhappy about going to school at the momment” and the teacher said “well, that’s none of my business I am just here to teach.His emotional welfare is up to you” I would pull him out of that school pronto. I suspect you would to.
Ophelia –
Have a look at the original article – it talks about parents choosing schools with a less competitive atmosphere and that focus on liberal arts rather than sciences. It says these are schools with slightly lower test scores (i.e. probably still much higher than average, but not exactly bog-standard). I just don’t think it is a tale of anti-intellectual dumbing down but one about racial (dis)integration. I think your righteous anger is misplaced (just this once).
When you advocate a policy position like schools should stick to teaching and nevermind the whole child, I think you have to subject it to a reality test of what would this mean in practise, for individual teachers, parents and students. To go back to my son’s class (this is primary school..); the teacher takes time in her working day to keep track amongst 30 kids of who is friends with who, who is in danger of being bullied or left out, who feels scared, who is overtired, who is troubled. I suspect she keeps notes on this. I expect it is part of her job description. It is not something that just happens because she is a nice person. So when you say schools should just stick to teaching and leave the whole child to the parents you are saying all this is a waste of her time. You ARE saying something about ‘what to say to Kiki’s mother’.
Your Oxbridge tutorial model for education sounds lovely in some respects, although I am not sure how it would work for primary school kids. I sounds fine for those kids whose parents have the time, money and inclination to ferry them around to friends houses, drama, sports, music, arts programmes, debating, model UN and all the rest of it in the afternoon and whose houses are rich with space, art materials, books etc… What about the kids who would spend the time released by such efficient education learning to recite the Koran, looking after their siblings, trailing round the shops, hanging about on the estate, watching TV or just doing time in daycare?
Maya
Well, Maya, I was commenting on the secondary article, not the original – which may be unfair, but that’s what I was commenting on. (I was also, in a way, commenting on a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell on a similar subject, that I want to talk about explicitly rather than on deep background – sometime. But I didn’t say that, so it’s not really part of the comment.)
Of course the intensive education (not Oxbridge tutorial: that’s just snide – playing the ‘anti-elitism’ card) model wouldn’t work as things are. That’s why I said ‘in a perfect world’. Surely that’s obvious?
Ophelia –
When you say ‘Nevermind the whole child’ I take you to mean there is no place in teaching for teachers to take into account children’s personalities, emotions, passions and interests. Is this really what you mean?
When you say ‘in a perfect world, children would learn from intensive teaching in tiny groups for only about four hours a day..’ I take it you mean in a perfect world where you are the secretary of state for education but which in other respects is fairly similar to this world, not in a perfect world where everyone is rich and every child has a stay-at-home parent.
Maya
Maya,
No, that is not what I mean. In either case. I don’t think it is teachers’ job to teach the children emotional literacy – which is what I said; that is not the same as saying teachers should ignore children’s existing emotions.
And by a perfect world, I certainly don’t mean one in which I’m powerful and everything else remains the same! That is one hell of a peculiar thing to take me to mean.
OK, thanks for the clarification. I guess I took you too literally – in your original comment piece you seemed to be condemning a much wider range of things – parents allowing factors other than academic excellence to influence their choice of school, teachers for spending time and energy on anything other than teaching their subject, Ofsted for judging schools whether schools promote children’s social and emotional development.
I don’t really get the distinction between responding to children’s existing emotions and “teaching emotional literacy” though. This is exactly how parents (who aren’t shrinks either) do help their children develop social skills and learn to deal with their emotions – by listening, responding, demonstrating appropriate behaviour and useful strategies. It is something they can do better if they have the skills and time to do it and the same is true for teachers.
Yes, I am sure that some of the guidance from the DFEE is goofy. But considering that until not that long ago the cutting edge of character building at the elite end of british education involved plenty of rugby, cold showers, copious beatings, an institionalised system of bullying and a good dollop of religion, it may take some time to get it right.
Well – but teachers can’t and probably (in general, allowing for exceptions, etc) shouldn’t do as thorough a job of emotional work as parents do. I mean, ick – children don’t want non-parents playing mommy at them. It’s intrusive, it’s presumptuous, it’s out of place, it’s weird. Which is not to say they shouldn’t do any, but it is to say they shouldn’t try to duplicate what parents do. Not that they have time (or, mostly, inclination) in any case.
But, yeah, I take your point. I certainly don’t think that teachers should ignore a student’s obvious misery or fear or rage. But I do think there are limits to what they can and should do.
I’ve come to this conversation late, but I find it interesting given my new position as a high school English teacher. (I taught at the university level for many years before leaving academe for other pursuits, and now this is my first entry into the high school arena.)
I’ve been in a 9th-grade classroom for just six weeks. In that time, I’ve had three students taken out of class in handcuffs (drug dealers), three 14-year-old girls drop out because they’ve had babies, and there have been 15 fights, including the one I had to break up between rival lesbian gang members.
And I’m supposed to be teaching them how to read poetry and Shakespeare. The gulf between expectation and reality is so vast that it should come as no surprise that our school has a 28% faculty turnover rate each year.