Re-humanising education: why we really need to care.
News broke this week of a school in Leicestershire causing consternation amongst its parental community by introducing a strict new set of school rules. Outrage abounded on social media – to a point that the school disconnected their Twitter account after the Headteacher involved was personally attacked by the tweeting world.
Many opponents voiced outrage at the rules, which seemed to call for children to assume an antiquated “be seen but not heard” status. Proposed regulations encouraged children to “not talk in the corridors, face the front at all times. only go to the bathroom when the bell rings and smile whenever passing someone in the corridor”. Whilst many of us may have experienced some of these draconian rules during our own school days, times have changed. Knowledge has expanded and our understanding about what promotes a healthy school environment has evolved drastically. We may argue that schools need rigour, structure, conformity and compliance, however the line is thin between supporting learning and dehumanising children and it appears, in this instance, that this line was definitely crossed.
This story caused consternation because people care.
We care what happens to our children in school. We care about the environments they’re learning within. We care about how they are treated, and we care on the deepest level about the need to support the emotional health and wellbeing of young people. However, as is often the case in the “us versus them” vortex of the Twitter world, outrage took over and care turned into attack. And what started as a vitriolic attacking of the rules soon spiralled into direct persecution of the headteacher (ironically with many tweeters chastising the school for dehumanising children whilst actively dehumanising the Headteacher).
Whilst these sort of school rules are clearly not supporting the diverse spectrum of children’s emotional needs, this school’s action is unfortunately a symptom of our broken education system. When we have school systems designed on a framework of conformity, competition and punishment, we will, unfortunately, keep seeing these extreme examples of control coming through. It is the system we need to scrutinise as much as it is these sorts of stories, as its illness is the cause of such ugly symptoms.
Behaviours amongst young people are in many instances becoming more challenging as more and more young people recognise the growing disconnections between education and ‘the real world’ and start opting out by displaying disruptive behaviours. Many schools will automatically respond with more extreme levels of punishment and control, simply because that is how the system has been designed. This is the negative feedback loop - born of an unhealthy education system built on factory-line behaviour patterns and the wish for uniformity and compliance.
Nurturing and nourishing our humanity was not a consideration when our schooling system was created, and our individual ‘humanness’ is in many ways a terrific inconvenience to the system. No matter how much we will it to be different, the foundations of our competitive education systems have not been designed to support the nurturing of us as individuals or the nourishment of emotional wellbeing, whether of students or teachers.
Change to any unhealthy system starts from within and how we teach is just as important as what we teach. As caretakers in this world, we educators and parents can challenge a system built on conformity and punishment by choosing to see the humans in front of us, not just point fingers at the symptoms and focus on the problems. This of course isn’t always easy: especially when faced with a class of 30+ “challenging” individuals. Yet behind every behaviour there is a story – a very human one. The classroom space can be shaped as an environment that welcomes the humanity of the children in our care, or opposingly can be one which punishes or disregards this. Unfortunately, when humanity comes second to the rules, nobody wins.
Last month saw the release of a powerful documentary – The Wisdom of Trauma – showcasing the work of Gabor Mate – childhood developmental expert - exploring the impact of childhood traumas on behaviour. Behind every behaviour is a story and behind every story is a belief. This is true for all of us, no matter who we are or what we’ve experienced growing up. The urgency of the need to be humanising ourselves is powerfully explored across his body of work and the deep research emerging into the impact of childhood traumas on our long-term emotional wellbeing is something more and more parents and educators are connecting with.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) shape the way many of us see ourselves and the world around us. They can – and do - shape our “beliefs” as it were. If we’re taught to shut down our humanness when we’re younger because it is messy, or inconvenient, or not conforming to the rules, this sets a story for us to shape our behaviours around as we grow in the world. Unfortunately, education systems have the potential to perpetuate childhood traumas when they start to lose sight of our humanity and focus instead on conformity, compliance, punishment.
Empathy is the foundation for developing healthy relationships and healthy learning environments, no matter the context we’re working in. Empathy is the first step towards understanding and connection on a human level - a way of allowing others around us to feel seen, to feel heard and to feel they matter (fundamental needs for all of us, but particularly prominent in young people).
As we “build back better” from Covid, and start focusing attention on wellbeing in schools, it is energising to see just how many educators out there are stepping beyond the old systems of conformity, compliance and competition and instead nurturing learning environments where the unique individuals (staff and students) matter fundamentally to the learning environment.
So as we all learn, grow and recalibrate in this space moving forward, let us share three ways to start rehumanising education which we can all start using today:
Greet each child as they enter your classroom.
Stand by the door as students enter and leave your classroom, and simply greet and acknowledge each individual. Doing this allows each child to be welcomed in as individuals (rather than be seen through a standard “Bonjour la classe” collective approach) and also allows you – the teacher – to pick up on any emotions coming into the room.
NB: There’s no need for you to ‘do anything’ with those emotions, you can simply acknowledge how the children are entering your learning space and respond accordingly.Start or end each lesson with a quick inside-out conversation:
Introducing opportunities for children to feel human and individual is – as all teachers know – a vital component of a healthy learning environment. Try to introduce as many opportunities for this as possible into your lessons.
One quick way is to invite students to share a two-minute “Inside out” conversation in your class, connecting with each other from who they are, rather than “what they’re good at”.Create a learning space where children feel welcome.
Try to keep in mind the timeless wisdom of Maya Angelou:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
No matter what we’re teaching, who we’re teaching, where or why we’re teaching, we all of us have the choice of “how” we teach. Creating an atmosphere where children feel safe, heard and welcome costs nothing and yet offers so very much.
So yes, let’s keep calling out the symptoms of our broken education system (as so many did on Twitter this weekend) but let’s do so with conscious care – starting by taking a step back to look at the bigger picture of why something might be happening (the story behind the behaviour) and responding in a way that welcomes the humanity into the heart of our response.
ThoughtBox is working both at school level and policy level to rehumanise education by putting wellbeing at the heart of teaching and learning. For us, wellbeing isn’t an addon - it’s a culture. Let’s talk.