http://www.philbeadle.com Education teacher, journalist, author and teacher /images/phil-beadle.jpg http://www.philbeadle.com http://www.philbeadle.com/A-Caring-Profession-On-Sheep-and-Wolves/73/ There is a certain kind of person who might be termed lsquo;high conflictrsquo; Irsquo;m not going to say the real name of their condition their disorder out loud but if you know you know Because of something that happened to them as a child they are unable to cope with feelings of shame they project their own behaviour problems onto others and are capable of substantial cruelty Once you become fully aware of this condition once you have properly researched it you notice how prevalent it is in people Ultimately there are sheep and there are wolves The soppy old sheep expect everyone to be like them but not everyone is a sheep and because the sheep live in a fluffy world where they expect everyone to be as nice as them they have absolutely no idea how very many wolves there are And there are a lot of damaged people; there are lots and lots and lots of wolves They are everywhere hiding in plain sight pretending that they are not wolves and if you are a sheep they can do you an enormou... blog 2024-07-26 07:36:15 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Where-Should-Education-Go-Now/72/ In lsquo;The Brothers Karamazovrsquo; one of the characters tells the story of the little onion In it a nasty old woman with no redeeming characteristics at all dies and is descending into hell She has a guardian angel and the angel searches its memory for something anything that might save this meanest of all humans from the flames In desperation she finds something At one point in life the mean old woman had given a beggar a very small onion The angel reaches down and holds the onion out to her The woman grasps the onion and she is saved from hell Primo Levi describes this story as ldquo;revoltingrdquo;1 I started this book determined to find a middle way one in which the achievements of the last decade could be kept and its aberrations swept away but in the process of writing it it became apparent that certain recent practices in terms of the way that human children are educated may well be abhorrent but they are not aberrations The system is infested with totalitarian abuse and ... blog 2024-07-23 03:07:22 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/The-Destruction-of-Teacher-Autonomy/71/ ldquo;Teachers too have their language policed and managed through the use of lsquo;question flow chartsrsquo;: tightly structured classroom scripts and procedures for how to respond to lsquo;errorsrsquo; and lsquo;misconceptionsrsquo; which are designed to enforce standardised pedagogiesrdquo;1nbsp;Ian Cushing Irsquo;ve recently been mentoring a young teacher not called Peregrine Carmichael he chose this name himself Peregrine is in his second year of teaching is a wonderful personality and wonders whether he has what it takes to be a good teacher He has all the moral qualities required is quite a serious intellect and inhabits the realm of joy easily and without artifice He has everything a class full of children might want him to havenbsp; The pedagogic structures at the school were quite restrained as wersquo;d had two poor Ofstedrsquo;s the first of which felt entirely undeserved I wasnrsquo;t around for the second and the head teacher wanted a rising tide to lift all the bo... blog 2024-07-22 12:26:00 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Garreth-Southgate/70/ Irsquo;ve been advising Garreth and the head guys at the FA for a number of years now I wasnrsquo;t allowed to talk about it and have always been completely respectful of this But that time has passed The time I was brought in to talk to senior members of the set up before the U21 Euros has passed The time I was brought in to talk to all the age-area coaches has passed The time I deliberately set up the groupings so that Garreth and I would have time to briefly chat about metacognition has passed It was a defining privilege In January I took the England coaches through a three-hour session on behaviour at Wembley on how one to manifests empathy and why empathy is so deeply important and the following happened Irsquo;d been invited to the afternoon session I felt like a bit of a spare part made my apologies to my mate Lee and left after an enjoyable lunch with lovely people As I was leaving Garreth said ldquo;thanksrdquo; I trudged off happy that my invoice to the FA having wor... blog 2024-07-17 09:45:12 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Michaela-and-Charter-Schools/69/ Let us say that the thing that appears to differentiate Michaela from some of the previous iterations of charter schools in the glossy videos and puff pieces on social media and countless articles in the press is that the children appear to be happy and the collective expressions of human misery do not appear to be coming out from the schoolrsquo;s alumni though it may be that since non-compliance will result in punishment the compliance shown by these children is neutral that they have become apathetic as a ldquo;necessary mechanism of self-defencerdquo;1nbsp;and they are suffering from the emotional death of the hostility of suffocation; also theyrsquo;ve only had a few cohorts go through the whole school experience at the time of writing: theyrsquo;re all still children But there is substantial evidence of some of the techniques that caused the expressions of human misery in the USA are used in the school and it is not impossible that a collective sob might be heard at some point do... blog 2024-07-17 07:00:26 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/On-039Battle-Hymn-of-the-Tiger-Teachers039/68/ ldquo;No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distanced from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models among the oppressorsrdquo; Paulo Freire1 And here we are It was inevitable that we would have to land here at some point I had no wish to I take no joy in this at all I have absolutely nothing personal whatsoever against the teachers at this school wish them and their students well and congratulate them on their wonderful academic results While Michaela Community School welcomes visitors when one is potentially seen as a lsquo;detractorrsquo; though I donrsquo;t recall ever made public mention of the school itself till now entrance is not worth attempting to obtain though Irsquo;m not without friends who have eyes ears and notebooks But there is plenty of video one can watch as the head teacher clearly enjoys a substantial public profile and should you so wish you can waste hours of your life watching countless interview... blog 2024-07-16 08:26:31 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/039No-Excuses-Discipline-Changes-Lives039/67/ Draconianismnbsp;hiding behind anbsp;mask of rhetorical logic is found in its fullest form in Jonathan Porterrsquo;s lsquo;No Excuses Discipline Changes Livesrsquo; Porter is undoubtedly a very clever man: he has an MA in theology from Cambridge and is at the time of writing deputy head academic at Radley College the fees for which are a couple of grand south of fifty thousand quid a year His essay in the follow-up book lsquo;The Power of Culturersquo; is evidence of a serious intellect: the work of an opponent you could learn from and might enjoy grappling with He spent I think seven years at Michaela Free School and during its earlynbsp;incarnation wrote the lsquo;No Excusesrsquo; essay It is a clever piece of work intellectually a great deal more sophisticated than thenbsp;usualnbsp;unwanted patronising advice from people with little experience of teaching or of having ever been to a state school At the time of publication Porter whose writing contains all the awkward structural dev... blog 2024-07-14 07:16:00 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/The-Characteristics-of-a-Cult/66/ Robertnbsp;Lifton in his book lsquo;Losing Reality: On Cults Cultism and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotryrsquo; lists the characteristics of a cult There are eight: Milieu control Mystical manipulation The demand for purity The cult of confession The lsquo;sacred sciencersquo; Loading the language Doctrine over person The dispensing of existence nbsp; 1 Milieu Control A cult leader or guru seeks to havenbsp;completenbsp;control of their environment They have a version of megalomania over the smallest and most dismal globes Among the things the cult leader seeks control over is how cult members interface with the world outside of the cult: what gets out of the cult expression is controlled but this is presented as free speech and what information gets in In totalitarian environments the leader seeks total control over the information that gets into the cult The guru seeks to own the thoughts of the people under his or her influence; they seek a ldqu... blog 2024-07-10 09:24:38 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Zero-Tolerance-in-the-United-Kingdom-2/65/ In the late 1990searly 2000s the language of zero tolerance started to appear in British education We were told to have ldquo;zero tolerance for low-level behaviourrdquo; I wrote a satire of the concept in the educational free-sheetnbsp;SecEd debating whether the low level was as it appeared to be a spatial concept and that teachers were to be intolerant of any movement a child made below the desk It also looked at tolerance itself to see whether it might have been somewhat unfairly maligned So what then is tolerance Tolerance is an abstract noun It means among other things ldquo;respect for the beliefs and ideas of other peoplerdquo;1nbsp;One might conclude from this definition that the zero-tolerance brigade have very little tolerance for the idea of tolerance itself It also means ldquo;the ability or willingness tonbsp;toleratenbsp;the existence of opinions or behaviour that onenbsp;dislikesnbsp;ornbsp;disagreesnbsp;withrdquo;2nbsp;So it is to allow the existence of other opinion... blog 2024-07-09 10:13:21 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Zero-Tolerance-in-the-United-Kingdom/64/ ldquo;Men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly however tending rather to camouflage it ndash; sometimes unconsciously ndash; by presenting themselves as defenders of freedomrdquo;1nbsp;Paulo Freire ldquo;Provocateurs oppressors all those who in some way injure others are guilty not only of the evil they commit but also of the perversion into which they lead the spirit of the offendedrdquo;2nbsp;Primo Levi Ted Wragg used to say that every school thinks it has a real and significant behaviour problem; few of them do To give you an anecdotal insight into this I spent two summers about a decade ago as the guest of an elite private school in Sydney Knox Grammar There I formed a life-long friendship with Glenn McLachlan whorsquo;d earned his stripes in some of Londonrsquo;s tougher schools In the second summer my role was to teach English and to observe and support other teachers Knox Grammar is a rarefied environment and even the briefest look at their alumni will revea... blog 2024-07-08 10:54:12 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/The-Crisis-at-Uncommon/63/ Ultimately Uncommon Schools an American charter school network for whom Doug Lemov was a director which was always one of the main exponents of the zero-tolerance way of managing behaviour was forced into something of a climb-down the size of which you might not anticipate from President Julia Jacksonrsquo;s acknowledgement in an open letter that there might be something of an issue in the networknbsp; Jackson post the killing of George Floyd wrote of the intentions in setting up the charter school network and that they were to battle racism to work for social justice She then made positive affirmations of the power of love within educational institutions and an acknowledgement that students need to feel safe to learn properly and well1nbsp;She acknowledged being in receipt of certain feedback and that she had been humbled by as that feedback did not match up to the original intentions of the networknbsp; In a section titled lsquo;Listening Leads to Changersquo; Jackson outlined ... blog 2024-07-07 12:02:49 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/STAR/62/ Perhaps in partial acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding SLANT perhaps in conceding that some minor errors had been committed in order to hide the systemic issues with the pedagogic regime hersquo;d helped found Lemov coined a new acronym ndash; STAR: sit up track the teacher appreciate your classmatesrsquo; ideas rephrase the words of the person who spoke so they know you were listening So the command to nod at all times initially seems to have disappeared and the idea of appreciating other peoplersquo;s ideas seems sweet but we are still in the realms of the moronic inferno; we are still enforcing complete control over the way in which children sit; we are still controlling the studentsrsquo; gazes; and the final command is again a Pavlovian instruction from a theorist who fails to understand the organic nature of classroom interactions1 What is the point of a compulsory instruction as to exactly how to respond to your classmates This is not how authentic communication... blog 2024-07-06 20:49:16 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/STAR/61/ Perhaps in partial acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding SLANT perhaps in conceding that some minor errors had been committed in order to hide the systemic issues with the pedagogic regime hersquo;d helped found Lemov coined a new acronym ndash; STAR: sit up track the teacher appreciate your classmatesrsquo; ideas rephrase the words of the person who spoke so they know you were listening So the command to nod at all times initially seems to have disappeared and the idea of appreciating other peoplersquo;s ideas seems sweet but we are still in the realms of the moronic inferno; we are still enforcing complete control over the way in which children sit; we are still controlling the studentsrsquo; gazes; and the final command is again a Pavlovian instruction from a theorist who fails to understand the organic nature of classroom interactions1 What is the point of a compulsory instruction as to exactly how to respond to your classmates This is not how authentic communication... blog 2024-07-06 20:37:16 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/SLANT/60/ SLANT is an instruction given to students either at the beginning of lessons or during transitions It is an acronym for the following set of instructions: sit up listen ask and answer nod track the teacher It was originated in the charter chain KIPP Knowledge is Power1nbsp;Schoolsnbsp; Let us first speak of the rationale behind it It reduces five instructions to just the one and is therefore lsquo;efficientrsquo; It has maximum efficiency Maximum efficiency is displayed when we SLANT The efficiency of this technique is total2nbsp;The instruction was displayed in pretty well every one of the videos of lsquo;Teach Like a Championrsquo; that I sat through so the students who clearly would have picked up what it meant through repetition could be reminded of what it means should they have had a complete memory meltdown and found themselves in any doubt The issue with it is that some of the instructions are pointless some seem bordering on abusive and some are both Sit up ndash; W... blog 2024-07-06 09:48:08 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/On-Right-Wing-Consultants-the-Totalitarian-Movement-and-Trad-Versus-Prog/59/ ldquo;Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brotherrsquo;s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye How can you say to your brother lsquo;Let me take the speck out of your eyersquo; when all the time there is a plank in your own eyersquo; You hypocrite first take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brotherrsquo;s eyerdquo; Jesus Christ1 ldquo;Yoursquo;re a trollrdquo; ldquo;No yoursquo;re a trollrdquo; ldquo;No you arerdquo; ldquo;That proves yoursquo;re a trollrdquo;nbsp; The contribution to the sum-total of human knowledge of many interactions on Twitter2 People have made sometimes lucrative careers out of finding ways of obtaining Twitter followers and this has problematised areas of educational policy Whereas in the past governments would take soundings from senior academics or head teachers with superb records ndash; experts in short with superb histories of achievement people you might ... blog 2024-07-05 08:10:59 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Critical-Analysis-of-the-Pacing-Section-of-Teach-Like-a-Champion/58/ There is a pattern in the book where when the writer is properly aware of what he is communicating to his audience hersquo;s capable of some relatively high-order thinking This chapter starts inordinately well but towards the end unconsciously reveals things about the approach which shows that the human aspect of teaching humans has not been properly considered This is why people have questioned his level of teaching experience There are things he doesnrsquo;t get that itrsquo;s genuinely important that a teacher gets The beginning of the chapter contains a sophisticated discussion of the notion of pace in lessons possibly the best this has ever been done Lemov understands its complexities and its complications and it is a shame that these understandings are not remotely evident in most of the videos His section on lsquo;Changing Activity Typesrsquo; is so good and so original that I will refer to it again and his nuanced understanding of the nature of and the rationale behind trans... blog 2024-07-04 15:11:10 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/The-Planning-Section-of-Teach-Like-a-Champion/57/ There is little to disagree with in this section though I note that the mildly horrendous lsquo;Do nowrsquo; imperative hailed yet again from the ever-expanding list of imperatives in lsquo;Teach Like a Championrsquo; The other imperatives in this section are lsquo;name the stepsrsquo; and lsquo;control the gamersquo; ndash; the techniques are fine; the language is unconscious of its own implications Lemov bases his lessons around an lsquo;I dowe doyou dorsquo;1nbsp;structure which is logical enough I suppose and there are some genuinely good bits in this section: the acknowledgement that a decent teacher will often deviate from their lesson plan the observation that what goes most wrong with starter activities aside from going to the bother of actually doing them: theyrsquo;re a total waste of lesson time ndash; get to the point teacher is the teacher spending too long on them He understands the importance and usefulness of mnemonics and is correct that students need to be actively t... blog 2024-07-03 13:57:38 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/TLAC-Planning-and-Ethics/56/ The planning section of the book is competent if a little mechanical though there is little in it that might lead to controversy There is an unintended reveal in it when covering learning objectives in that Irsquo;ve always felt that they perform more of a management function than anything else: we are advised to have them on public display in the same place every lesson no bad piece of advice so that visitors to the classroom ldquo;peers and administratorsrdquo; can see what yoursquo;re teaching1nbsp;Learning objectives are for management to check on teachers Students see little value in them Neither do teachers who know much about the form He diverts into classroom organisation in the planning section and acknowledges there are differing philosophies He rejects the depth of thought that exists around having tables in groups and despite what I may have written in a book published thirteen years ago you have your desks however you want them as far as Irsquo;m concerned; I prefer min... blog 2024-06-15 10:20:51 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/The-History-of-Zero-Tolerance-/55/ If you are not entirely aware of the history of zero tolerance like many elements of policy over the last decade-and-a-bit it was imported from the USA In New Jersey in 1973 the Safe and Clean Neighbourhoods Act led to an article on thenbsp;Atlantic Monthlynbsp;entitled lsquo;Broken Windows: The Police and Neighbourhood Safetyrsquo; in which the authors studied the increase of police officers being put on the beat in tough areas of Newark and despite the fact that there was no statistical or factual proof that it had worked as increased use of foot patrol hadnbsp;no impact whatsoevernbsp;on crime rates the authors concluded that itnbsp;hadnbsp;been effective in making communities feel safer There was no evidence to inform this conclusion Their central metaphor was a conclusion that ldquo;police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired all the rest of the windows will soon be brokenrdquo;1nbsp;To say that this analogy is esoteric is to under... blog 2024-06-06 13:47:01 GMT http://www.philbeadle.com/Totalitarian-Behaviour-Management/54/ WarmStrict The mask that zero tolerance wears to convince itself it is its own antithesis is the label lsquo;warmstrictrsquo; which is a lsquo;techniquersquo; in lsquo;Teach Like a Championrsquo; or its more brutish correlative lsquo;tough loversquo; Now Irsquo;m all for warmth and alive to the importance of strictness1nbsp;but this semi-oxymoron goes under the misapprehension that it is worthy of respect when it is arguably the delusion the dominator has that allows them to continue in the act of domination Children do need warmth and they do need boundaries; sometimes the thing that they might need is for the institution to be a little intractable But the fetishisation of strictness is not something that a teacher with any gift would bother with because it is an unintelligent response to the delicacies of educating children; it can lead to decisions that are not based on the professional judgement of the teacher but on an unforgiving application of a set of intractable laws that d... blog 2024-06-03 16:32:05 GMT