Reading Ages

More from yesterday's Guardian.
The main headline was "12m workers have reading age of children." This turned out to mean that plenty of them could read perfectly adequately, having the reading age of 11-year-olds. It would have sounded quite different if the headline has read "50% of children have reading age of adults," but it would have been just as true.
Behind the Guardian headline there is an implication that there is such a thing as an adult reading age, which everybody should attain. Reading ages are based on the average reading ability of children of different ages, so by definition half of the eleven-year-olds must be below the eleven-year-old level, and if anyone has worked out an adult reading age, half the adults should be below it. There is no point in comparing different groups.

Academic Freedom

In yesterday's Guardian Boris Johnson quoted with approval a definition of academic freedom which feels more like a definition of academic dictatorship: "the freedom to decide on academic grounds who should teach, what they should teach, how it should be taught and whom to admit." In Johnson's academic freedom the only person to be free is a single figure at the top of the hierarchy.
The resolution passed at the end of the Berlin IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) included this sentence: "Young people have the right to decide individually how, when, what, where and with whom they learn." Remove the word "young" and replace the word "learn" with "study" and you find the essence of real academic freedom, not just in schools but in the world in general.

News from Scotland

I have just read about a Scottish project called "Keeping Promises". For the whole of the month of November, Kathleen Marshall, the children's commissioner for Scotland, has been consulting all the children in Scotland to find out what issues concern them most. Every school in Scotland has been given voting cards, and young people have been encouraged to voice their opinions on line, by text, freephone or email or by filling out the cards.
It sounds excellent. What bothers me is that I only read about it in Education Revolution, an American magazine. Has it been mentioned in the English press at all? And if not, why not?

Truanting and exclusion

The new ideas about stopping truanting and disruptive behaviour in schools are brilliant. You catch the truants and send them back to school, so they can be excluded for their disruptive behaviour.
Who are more troublesome to society, children who have been excluded or children who are playing truant? How do you tell the difference? Who create more of a problem for their parents? Willl any of them go back to school in a receptive and productive frame of mind? What on earth is gained by all this?

Asking the right questions

I have been helping Anna Leatherdale, the director of the Phoenix Education Trust, with the preparation of a newsletter, and have been struck by the following paragraph:

"Throughout the last year I have talked with a wide range of people including pupils, students, teachers, headteachers and policy makers about the importance of including the views of children and young people during the development of new educational policies. All of them have agreed that really listening to the voice of children and young people is an essential part of what education should be about. So why does there still seem to still be such a large divide between what children and young people want in terms of their education and what the system usually provides?"

She discovered part of the answer at the Phoenix/ESSA conference last February, where school students' votes were taken on a number of issues. A question on random drugs testing found 86% in favour, but when a later question offered various alternative methods of drugs prevention, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of effective drugs education. Random testing received a meagre 2%. The first question had led these young people, aged between 11 and 18, into giving an answer which was not what they really wanted.

I was reminded of a friend who came, long ago, to help me with my small children one evening, and overcame their reluctance to go to bed by offering them a choice: "Do you want to clean your teeth before you have your bath, or afterwards?" It worked perfectly.

As Anna says, "While we increasingly see schools, local authorities and government bodies being eager to gain students’ views and opinions on a wide range of issues, all too seldom do the choices offered to the respondents include the options that they would really prefer."

Dorothy Nolte died on November 6th last year, and there was an obituary of almost a full column in the Guardian on January 5th. Who on earth was Dorothy Nolte, to deserve such appreciation? She was the author of the poem called Children learn what they live, that begins: "If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. / If children live with hostility, they learn to fight." It has been printed literally millions of times, not only in magazines and books but also in advertisements, in framed mini-posters and even "with the author's heart and flower design . . . in a hand cut, beveled mat (please specify soft green, mauve, or natural), ready for an 11x14 frame."

It seems extraordinary that this poem can be so popular, when it expresses ideas that the majority of parents, teachers and politicians, to judge by their reactions to any form of democratic or libertarian education, seem to regard as sentimental rubbish. It is as if they have been asked, "Is adult authority the most important element of education?" and have answered yes without ever considering any alternatives.

Just to remind you, or in case you have never come across it, here is the whole thing:


Children Learn What They Live
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

Perhaps schools like Summerhill and Sands might be better appreciated if it was understood how closely they follow the implications of this poem.

Gerard Mathot, the founder of Seliba Sa Boithutu in Lesotho, where students come when they want to learn what they want in the way they want, and decide for themselves when they have learnt enough, has another explanation of the general reluctance to find out children's true opinions. In an article that is to be published in the next set to be posted on the Lib Ed web site, he says:

"Popular schooling only started in the 18th and 19th century at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Industry needed skilled and obedient workers, who would do their jobs well and cause no trouble. Either through the State or directly the owners of the industries would pay for the schools (so providing free schooling), decide their curricula and set up examination bodies to decide whether the students had learned enough to be employed. But the schools also had to instil discipline and obedience, for if they did not, school leavers might bring about disturbances in the workplace later. That is why in schools insubordination is still often punished more severely than failure to learn."

When the town council of Porsgrumm, in Norway, decided to incorporate children on all its committees, it was the committee for education that was the most reluctant to do so; children were only invited to join when the success of the scheme had been demonstrated.

Children learn what they live is likewise popular everywhere except in the world of education. It seems as if educators are frightened of children.