Category Archives: UK

school, teaching, UK

Do people have a right to education?

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On the BBC news website is an article reviewing the British educational scene 2000-2009. At the top is a photo of a banner which reads in part “everyone has a right to education“. This idea seems to have entered common consciousness: it is now almost part of what I would call the dominant ideology. Where did this idea come from? Is it correct?

Ayn Rand wrote an instructive essay on this subject, Man’s Rights. It is an appendix to her book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. In it she points out that, to say someone has a right TO something implies that someone else has the duty or obligation to provide it.

She begins by defining “rights”:

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights… the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

When this definition is not clearly understood (it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object), then statements like that on the banner in the photo are inevitable.

Rand points out that, if someone has a right to something, that means someone, somewhere has to provide it. “Have to” means whether they want to or not, i.e. they will be coerced. However, have to contradicts the basic human right, the freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice.

She further points out that the basic human rights are not granted by governments or monarchs; they arise from the fact that man is a rational being. She then concludes that to force someone to provide a good or service for someone else is therefore to deprive that person of their basic rights, and therefore cannot be morally justified.

“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged)

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force….

Jobs, food, clothing, recreation(!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.

Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy.

Whether you agree with Rand’s libertarianism or not is immaterial. In any discussion of rights, whether of the “moral” kind which Rand refers to, or the “economic” rights of FDR, it is important to have a clear grasp of the concepts involved. (It’s well worth reading the whole essay.)

(It is a mistake to think of Ayn Rand as representative of libertarian thinking: many present-day libertarians disagree with Rand on some points. To read two articles by someone who disagrees, click the links below to the articles by Stephen Kinsella.)

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Britain, classroom management, education, educational philosophy, Japan, society, UK

Is it ok for teachers to use corporal punishment? Discuss.

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Schoolboy receiving bare bottom birching, from...
Image via Wikipedia

I left the following comment on a blog entry about corporal punishment in (UK) schools (I’ve reposted it here so that I can add stuff and edit the writing).

A succinct summary, with rebuttals, of the various arguments against corporal punishment. The non-aggression axiom provides a principled argument to the responses which blog-author OldAndrew lists as being often made against corporal punishment:
1) that it is wrong in principle to harm students: it is legitimate to use force in retaliation or in self-defence (I would take “retaliation” to include the notion of punishment);
2) the pacifist objection: corporal punishment is wrong because it is violence: see 1);
3) that corporal punishment didn’t work: the notion that “force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use” supports OldAndrew’s point that Punishment serves not to eliminate sin but to increase justice by inflicting a penalty on those who deserve it.

In addition, the non-aggression axiom would free teachers to use physical force in self-defence and/or in retaliation, i.e. punishment, an autonomy that seems to me sorely needed (and not just in schools, I might add): even acts of self-defence are likely to see a teacher end up in court and fired.

Some will no doubt argue that this would open the flood gates to abuse of the sanction. OldAndrew has already replied to this argument. I would only add that, if parents disagree with the school’s policies they should be free to not send their children there.

Photo by BaboMike on Flickr
Photo by BaboMike on Flickr

In Japanese public high schools, corporal punishment is allowed, though there is quite a lot of debate about this. Corporal punishment is traditionally the responsibility of the P.E. teachers. They are usually big and tough, accustomed to physical contact and not so easily intimidated by hulking high-schooling boys. I’ve seen such teachers cuff students around the head, either with their bare hands or with clipboards. Other punishment is usually being made to kneel in seiza (see photo), sometimes with arms held aloft for long periods; or push ups, or laps around the sports ground. I think straps, canes, etc., are banned.The only book in English that I have read that discusses punishment in Japanese schools in any detail is The Japanese High School by Shoko Yoneyama. She discusses it in the context of bullying and other violence in schools. She mentions some of the spartan school rules, such as no dyed hair, length of hair (for boys and girls) specified down to the millimetre, colour and size of bags, etc., and punishment for being late. Almost all Japanese schools have a heavy main gate that slides on wheels and looks  like this:

Photo by Junicci on Flickr

Teachers stand by the gate and greet students in the morning, and then close the gate when the bell rings. As you can imagine, there’s sometimes a rush of students squeezing in at the last minute before the gate closes completely. In one infamous incident, an overzealous, careless teacher squashed a girl to death, pinning her between the gate and the wall.

Elementary school gate, Japan
Photo by ykanazawa 1999 on Flickr

The incident was national news, and Yoneyama mentions it in her book as an example of violence from adults to students that, in her opinion, is part of a pattern of violence and power-plays that is then played out by students on other students in bullying. Yoneyama points out that in many cases of bullying, a group of bullies (the lone bully is hardly found in collectivist Japan!) picks on someone for “standing out” in some way, such as having a bag that is not quite the regulation colour, or hair not quite the regulation length. Yoneyama’s point was that children bully others in exactly the same ways that they are “bullied” by the adults in school.

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classroom management, education, educational philosophy, teaching, UK

Needs

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Source: Fraser Institute
Image via Wikipedia

Here is a comment I posted to a discussion about Needs, a blog post at Scenes from the Battleground. I suggest you read the original Needs article first. It will hopefully make the following more intelligible.

Update: I have edited this slightly (tho it is still too long and wordy) after reflecting on a comment left by OldAndrew.

**************************

A most interesting and provocative post, with lots of frank-bordering-on-the-plain-rude responses in the comments. I shall try to enter into the spirit of things.

In your original article, you fail to make several, crucial, distinctions; which omissions weaken your argument, whereas inclusion would strengthen it.

1) You fail to distinguish personal needs from social ones; i.e. personal, private needs (such as for food, sleep, sex, etc) which are and should be met by the individual him/herself, on the one hand, and needs which can and should be met by others, e.g. the educational institutions, on the other.
You write, we have the problem of identifying what counts as a need and in particular which needs educational institutions have an obligation to meet. It is indeed difficult, so all the more reason to bear in mind the distinction between personal and non-personal needs. Failure to keep, or perhaps make, this distinction leads you to set up straw men, such as Are we really obliged to make all students happy and psychologically healthy? (“We” here presumably meaning schoolteachers.) Who is suggesting you are so obliged? However, students are people and need to be happy and psychologically healthy. It does not necessarily follow that schoolteachers are responsible for meeting this need. Presumably, you have heard people make this assertion. They are wrong, and need to have their faulty logic pointed out to them (but please see also the point below about the hierarchy of needs).

2) You fail to distinguish between needs and wants: (quoting P.S. Wilson) a young bully, for example, from his point of view may ‘need’ to find victims. Plainly this is a ‘need’ which, though identifiable, should not be met.
This is not a need. A bully may want to find victims, but a want is not a need. Although I am quoting Wilson, not you, nowhere in your post do you make this rather crucial distinction. That omission weakens your argument – “needs” implies some kind of obligation or necessity for someone to do something about it – because your opponents’ argument (that if something is a need, that implies a moral duty to meet it) is seriously weakened once this distinction is made plain.

3) I have discussed the three main explanations given as to why children are blameless for their behaviour.
The three you list are, in my experience, given as explanations for behaviour. An explanation for behaviour is not the same as an excuse for bad behaviour, nor is it a reason not to blame or not to punish. Folks who use these explanations as reasons why children (or adults) should not be blamed or punished for bad behaviour, are failing to make this crucial distinction and guilty of sloppy thinking. An explanation for behaviour (bad or not) does not imply blamelessness; the one does not logically follow from the other.
It seems to be a common human need to explain behaviour. This is not the same thing as explaining away behaviour. Why don’t you point out this distinction to your opponents and detractors? It would seriously weaken their argument, and strengthen yours.

4) You fail to show you are aware of the significance of Maslow’s Theory, A Hierarchy of Needs (the key word is “hierarchy”, it’s right there in the title; that’s a hint. Maslow (as I recall) stated that basic needs must be met first, before higher needs can be attended to. Your apparent ignorance of this key fact, combined with your failure to make the above 3 distinctions, leads you to make the hilarious statement, “Maslow has helpfully included sex as a basic need, a fact forgotten by those who would quote him in an educational context, as the obvious implication would involve turning schools into brothels.” Who is implying this? Only you! Only someone who fails to distinguish between private, personal needs (e.g., sex), and social ones, i.e. needs that should be met by, e.g., an educational institution, could make such a suggestion. Only someone who fails to distinguish clearly that a need does not imply a moral duty to fulfill it, could make such a ludicrous suggestion. In addition, only someone who fails to appreciate the significance of “hierarchy” in “hierarchy of needs”, and someone who fails to distinguish between an explanation for behaviour and an excuse for behaviour, could make such a statement. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is relevant to teachers, I would suggest, because they have the problem of identifying what counts as a need and in particular which needs educational institutions have an obligation to meet.

if it is not possible to identify what needs we should be meeting then we can’t possibly declare that needs haven’t been met. Identifying needs that an educational institution should meet is greatly helped by distinguishing between needs and wants, between personal, private needs and others, and between basic versus higher needs.

Finally, students are people and have emotional needs which must be met. One such need is for attention. For a baby, attention or lack of it means the difference between life and death, because a baby cannot feed itself. Some children learn that a sure-fire way to get attention is to do something naughty. This puts the adult, who is aware of this, in a dilemma when considering how to deal with the bad behaviour: paying attention to the behaviour merely re-inforces it, yet not paying attention to it may encourage the behaviour, a) because the student thinks they can get away with it, and b) because the person’s need for attention is still unsatisfied.

The knowledge that emotional needs are basic needs, and it can be useful to bear in mind that one key emotional need, particularly with young children (but not limited to them)  is attention. It helps satisfy the teacher’s/parent’s/adult’s need for explanation for behaviour. Explanation for behaviour is useful when deciding how to respond. But it does not excuse bad behaviour. (Did I already mention that?)

Now imagine we accepted the belief that meeting this need was not, a moral duty, or an act of charity, but a method of treating the underlying cause of poor behaviour. We would cease looking for the most famished child to feed first and start feeding the worst behaved.
A very good point. And your final paragraph is particularly powerful.

For the record, I agree with OldAndrew. People who fail to distinguish between needs and wants, who bundle human behaviour up into all-encompassing “needs”, then further simply assume (without justification or explanation) that some or all of these “needs” must be met (“because they’re needs!”) by the educational institution generally and by teachers in particular – such people are using sloppy thinking, faulty logic, and they should be exposed without mercy and as soon as possible, because their ideology is seriously damaging.

I don’t live in the UK so I have no idea how dominant the ideology is which OldAndrew is arguing against. Judging from his blog, it sounds like he (and a handful of other crazies) are the only dissenters. Is there a big debate going on about this? Or is he, in fact, a minority of one?

Suggested further reading: Go For It! by Dr. Irene Kassorla;
How To Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk, by Faber & Mazlish;
anything by Dr. Haim Ginott

By the way, I usually vet the related articles listed below by Zemanta. Not all of them are relevant, and of those that are, not all are interesting or well written. This one is particularly interesting.

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education, future, politics, UK

The end of school as we know it? Or will it be just more of the same?

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This caught my eye:

Knowsley Council in Merseyside, has abolished the use of the word school to describe secondary education in the borough. It is taking the dramatic step of closing all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009. As part of a £150m government-backed rebuilding programme, they will reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres.

Originally in the British newspaper, the Independent, I found it on the Wales-Wide Web.
Go read Graham Attwell’s blog entry, especially the comments and the links in them.

Here’s one:

When you read the material supporting the ‘Knowsley Experiment’, it really is the proverbial Curate’s Egg. There’s some progressive educational theories, spin, Blairite ‘newspeak’, consultants’ verbal diarrhoea, paying homage to Microsoft and the downright dangerous.

and it’s downhill from there, and well-argued (and not very complimentary to American education, either).

Of course, if the testing and “benchmarks” (there, that shows how with-it I am, doesn’t it?) are all still in place and unquestioned, then…

If you watch the beginning of this 45-minute video I blogged about previously, you’ll hear Cambridge University lecturer, Dominic Wyse, tell how

since 1988 and the National Curriculum, politicians have exerted greater and greater control.

Will this tendency suddenly change or lessen? What do you think, boys and girls?

Britain, education, educational philosophy, pedagogy, reading, teaching-method, UK

Phonics or… creativity?

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I just re-discovered teachers.tv, a British website (and actual TV programme?) that hosts a host of information about teachers and teaching in British schools. Obviously most of the content is going to be of more interest to people who actually live and teach in Britain, than to people who don’t (like me), but I enjoyed this 45-minute video by children’s author Michael Rosen from the programme School Matters on the subject of phonics and the teaching of reading. Apparently, phonics is now the British government’s official teaching-to-read method. Michael Rosen, though, is in the “whole word” camp. He visits a number of schools and interviews different people, teachers and researchers and people in government. It’s a very well made video. Rosen’s purpose is to examine whether phonics and testing stifles children’s (and teacher’s) creativity.

I don’t think the whole-word argument is convincingly made in this video, and certainly the question of whether it really is an either-or argument goes begging through the entire 45 minutes. Equally unasked is the question of why the government needs to decide on a single approach at all, and then mandate that for the whole country.

Here’s the video blurb:

Author Michael Rosen questions whether the current political enthusiasm for synthetic phonics, designated literacy hours, and league tables is turning off young readers.

Rosen examines the evidence for claims that these devices have led to higher literacy standards, and finds it wanting. Unlike many critics, he suggests ways of encouraging reading, and he’s not afraid of advocating poetry, often one of the most difficult and frightening tasks facing both teachers and their classes.

In his journey to discovering ways of improving literacy Rosen hears from heads, literacy experts, teachers and academics and even Jim Rose; the man whom he holds principally responsible for the imposition of synthetic phonics throughout the land.