Emma Williams – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Let me count the ways

How do we let young people down in 2025? Let me count the ways. Beyond our inexplicable willingness to allow them unfettered 24-hour access to the dark world of the internet, beyond our discomfort with and unwillingness to take the responsibility that lies with adults, to be in charge and to be the grown-ups in the room, beyond this lurks yet another way in which we can let them down. We can teach them an inflated sense of their own importance; we can let them believe that the world revolves around them and let them imagine that, when they reach adulthood, their employer will bend to their every whim. How do we do that? Let me give you an example.

It is not often that I read a post on LinkedIn, as it’s never an enriching experience. But imagine my horror when I happen upon someone who claims to be a fellow educationalist openly celebrating the news that a child is missing their lessons for no good reason other than the fact that it is their birthday. “Let’s normalise taking your birthday off without any further explanation or drama required,” she exclaimed. “Life’s too short not to!” She also celebrated “the beauty of flexi/online schooling,” showing at least some awareness of the fact that the average UK school would take a pretty dim view of any student – or their parents – citing a birthday as a reason to take a day off.

To be clear, it was apparent from her post that this person was talking about the kind of tutoring that is there to replace traditional schooling, not supplement it. As someone who works with students who attend mainstream school, I have had several occasions on which parents have cancelled their evening appointment with me due to birthday celebrations, and that is just as it should be: the child has already done a day’s schooling and it seems more than reasonable to reserve their evening time for birthday celebrations with family and/or friends. But this tutor was celebrating the fact that their student was missing an entire day’s worth of schooling, and even seemed to be implying that – in an ideal world – schools would be willing to accommodate such a decision. The responses were mainly positive, with several people – all of them no doubt making money out of the increasing trend of parents taking their children out of the traditional education system – applauding the sentiment. “Brilliant! Joy, wellbeing and belonging first, then education will flow and be valued” asserted one, a remarkable claim which I would love to see the data on. “All my students take their birthdays off, and I encourage it,” said another. “Absolutely brilliant,” said a third: “I too encourage my students to take their birthdays off!”

There were one or two of us speaking up for sanity, so all is not lost. One or two people commented that allowing students to take random days off is disruptive to both the teacher and the learner. I commented that allowing students to take time off in this way is surely setting them up for future disappointment in life. There are not many people in this world who are so blessed that they can pick and choose whether or not they go into work on a particular day. If at least part of education’s purpose is to prepare students for working life, then what kind of precedent are we setting by normalising the expectation of a day off on their birthday, rather than explaining to them that school is still there – birthday or not – and reassuring them that celebrations will be had when it is finished for the day?

There are innumerable jobs which do not allow for days off at your preferred time, including some quite noble careers. Teaching, for example, is well known as a profession in which you do get lots of time away from the chalkface, but the price you pay for the significant chunks of flexible free time undeniably allowed to you is that the times when you are tied to the chalkface are 100% dictated by your employer. It is quite remarkably difficult for classroom teachers to negotiate any time away from their classroom, for blindingly obvious reasons. I remember a wealthy friend once invited myself and my husband to Glyndebourne, in an ill-fated attempt to convert me to opera. “You’d have to take the afternoon off,” he said, airily. I snorted with mirth, for this was just one example of how someone in his wealth-bracket tends to presume that the world works for everybody else. It was almost worth me booking an appointment with the Headteacher, just to see the look on her face when I requested the afternoon off “to attend the opera.” Many of our young people will end up in jobs like mine, when time off at one’s own behest is simply not on the cards. Granted, many of them won’t. The point is: all jobs include “have-tos” (true even for my wealthy barrister friend), and young people need to learn this simple fact. Otherwise, we are letting them down.

Beyond the fact that school attendance teaches children about the “have-tos” in life, allowing time off at a child’s behest devalues education itself. Taking students out of school for random events should not be done lightly, for in doing so we are inevitably sending a message to a child that their schooling is not important to us. This then echoes down the line when it comes to their day-to-day studies, their preparation for examinations, their overall efforts to achieve academically. Why should it matter to them, if we are constantly undermining the message that it matters to us by taking them out of school?

My third and final objection to the idea of allowing and encouraging students to take time out of school for their birthday is perhaps a little controversial, so brace yourselves. Here goes. Quite simply, I think it is too self-indulgent. I am so depressed at how society seems to be shifting more and more towards an entirely individualistic mindset, one which prioritises the wants and needs of the individual over and above the needs of the community as a whole. While I would never object to the idea that one should be mindful of one’s own health and wellbeing, indeed I write often about my efforts to centre my own, the expectation of one’s right to do so has become so unquestionable that we are beginning to forget what binds us together as a community. In our relentless pursuit of independence and self-efficacy, I fear we may end up with a world full of egocentrics.

In the grand scheme of humanity, nobody’s birthday is actually that important, because nobody is the centre of the universe. We need to keep our special dates in perspective. They matter to us and – if we are lucky enough – to those who care about us. They do not – nor should they – impact upon the rest of the world. If that seems a little too nihilistic for your liking, then here’s another way of looking at it: if it’s their birthday, wouldn’t it be better for a child to go into school and celebrate by sharing the love with their classmates? Over the years, I have had several colleagues who liked to make a fuss on their birthday, so they brought in cakes and shared them with all of us. It was an absolutely lovely thing to do and everybody enjoyed it. And everyone wished them a happy birthday! So, if we believe that birthdays are so special and important, then why don’t we teach our children that their birthday is a chance to bring some joy to their usual routines and responsibilities, not an opportunity to evade them?

Celebrating failure

With exam season looming, most of my clients are concerned to achieve success and worried about failure. It is probably a sign of my aberrant nature, but this week my brain has gone on a loop of pondering the benefits of failure. While I would consider myself – broadly speaking – to be a successful person, I have experienced numerous failures in my life. Some of them, on reflection, have been the making of me. In this post, I plan to outline one of my failures in life and argue that it has turned out to be an outstandingly good thing in the long-run.

Before I begin, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that the failure I plan to discuss is my only failure, or even the biggest failure in my repertoire. I’ve had failures galore. I’ve also had successes galore. It is important, I believe, to be able to reflect upon and celebrate both. While celebrating failure might seem a strange thing to do, I believe that it is part of life’s rich and glorious tapestry. As Confucius famously said, our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Getting things wrong and learning how to deal with that inevitability is an essential life-skill. None of this will come as a revelation to anyone with an iota of sense and maturity, but what I want to reflect upon today is how failure – while it can be painful at the time – may turn out to have surprising and unpredictable benefits for us as an individual. So, here goes.

At the age of 18, I failed my driving test. When I tried again, I failed again. I knew I’d failed the second test at the point when the examiner said – with notable tension in his voice – “you need to be careful at this point, as you’re actually on the wrong side of the road.” The whole experience was humiliating and dismal. I was – to be frank – an absolute liability on the road. After a great deal of reflection, I decided that driving was not for me and gave up on the idea of ever trying again. I never wavered from this decision and it has been a life-limiting decision in all sorts of ways that both the drivers and the non-drivers among you will immediately understand.

With maturity and hindsight, in recent years I have become confident and secure enough to admit that this was a deep and profound personal failure on my part. It was a failure of courage on every level. I failed to persist, failed to try again and worst of all I failed to face up to the fact that some of my physical disabilities (a spinal condition and my eyesight) were getting in the way of my learning. Had I been able and willing to face up to this simple fact, I could have explored opportunities for adaptations: lots of disabled people drive! At that age, however, I was not willing to face up to the fact that I was, in fact, disabled. I wasn’t comfortable with the word or the very idea that I belonged in that category. So, I let it get the better of me. I gave up. So, why on earth might this profound personal failure be something to celebrate? Well, as it turns out, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that my inability to drive has quite literally saved my life.

There is ever-increasing and undeniable evidence that a sedentary lifestyle is rapidly becoming the biggest killer since the advent of cigarettes, and as someone who has eschewed all forms of sport and exercise for most of my life, I would have been at enormous risk of this silent killer. Yet, according to the data on my Smart watch, I am in the 95^th percentile for cardiovascular fitness. My V02 max, currently considered to be one of the best predictors of longevity that we have, is very high for my age group. My resting heart rate is excellent, as is my recovery time. And get this. I still don’t run and I still don’t play sport. Instead, I walk and I walk fast, a habit embedded because most of the time I have used the process of walking as my transport to get myself somewhere: to work, to meet someone, to get home and out of the cold. Walking fast is a habit, something I do daily, often multiple times a day. As I write this post, it is a lunchtime and I have already walked just over 5 kilometres, pushing my heart rate into the zone that counts for moderate to vigorous exercise. I plan to go out again before I start tutoring later today.

Because I cannot drive, walking is something that I will have to do for as long as I live – and that is a good thing. Walking is my superpower, and that superpower has arisen purely from the fact that I made the weak and potentially self-sabotaging decision to give up on the idea of driving.

So, there we have it. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?

An ordinary child

This week, I met a friend whom I have not seen for a while. She’s been pretty busy, having her second child, who arrived in December, and looking after her first daughter, who is now two and a half. In addition, she has a highly responsible job in a challenging school and (as I know from having worked alongside her) she has sky-high standards for herself, for her department and for the children she teaches.

It’s been a while since I spent any time with a child under three. According to my friend, the older child was having a significantly bad day, and there was some low-level wriggling, some occasional whingeing and one bout of crying. My friend was visibly mortified, stating that her child was “not normally like this,” while for my part, I was stunned at how advanced the child appeared to be for such a young age. She was so articulate that I genuinely struggled to believe how young she was. She could speak in full sentences and appeared to understand a genuinely remarkable range of vocabulary. It was only her size – which was, in fact, very small for her age – that kept reminding me that she was not even three years old.

It would be easy to assume that this child is some kind of prodigy, or at least that she is highly intelligent, way beyond her peers in ability: but who knows? Only time will tell. Some children (myself included) acquire language skills very quickly but then level off in terms of their academic attainment in line with their peers; my own experience teaches me that being labelled “remarkably bright” can actually be just as much of a lodestone around your neck as being labelled pejoratively, so I would always proceed with caution. In terms of her skills right now, I suspect (as does her mother) that this is simply a child who has not been given an iPad or similar device.

The use of iPads and similar tablet devices with very young children is now so embedded as the norm that, in the space of barely more than a decade, we have grown used to how toddlers are when they have access to them. Because most toddlers have access to them. A YouGov survey states that 85% of six-year olds have access to an iPad or similar device, and nearly half of them have their own personal device. An OfCom study from 2023 states that “Our tracking studies collect data in relation to children aged 3 or above. However, many children start their media journey at a younger age, including using devices. Childwise interviews parents of children aged up to 2 years old, and reports that children of this age may already be able to undertake certain activities using a touch screen, for example, 26% were able to open apps that they wanted to use and 22% were able to take photos with the device.” Ugh. “Their media journey” ?! The fact that this is reported with apparent celebration by OfCom makes me feel genuinely sick.

Sometimes, I cannot even bear to think about the consequences of digital exposure for this very young age group. As a secondary school teacher, I was always aware of the dangers awaiting the older students who spent time unsupervised online. But the impact upon the actual brain development for the very young has not been something that I have spent much time thinking about until recently; now I have reflected upon it, I genuinely tremble for the next generations of children. I have written before about my fears for young people who are permanently wired up to their devices and have shared my agreement with Jonathan Haidt’s findings in his work, The Anxious Generation, in which he argues that children have undergone what he calls a “great rewiring”. He blames the apparent surge in anxiety disorders on the ever-increasing amount of time that children spend on their phones and/or iPads and makes the case for a societal shift away from the expectation that children should be in contact with these devices from a very young age. I had taken on board the impact upon children’s mental health before but it was not until this week that it really hit me the extent to which these devices must be holding back our children’s basic brain and language development.

There is nothing worse than feeling like a pearl-clutching old fusspot, who blames the colour television for the behaviour of local youths. Yet I cannot help but question the wisdom of allowing our children to access a device that is so hell-bent on drawing them into themselves, on cutting them off from normal, day-to-day interactions with other children and with adults. Stories were emerging more than 10 years ago about toddlers becoming so addicted to the use of an iPad that it impeded their development; now, it seems, we just accept it as normal. I truly fear that we are sleepwalking into a crisis, with more and more children displaying apparent signs of neurodivergence, many cases of which may simply be the result of the fact that they have not received the constant stream of ordinary face-to-face human interactions that are required in order to develop their ability to articulate themselves and to socialise with others.

Just think how essential the smallest interactions are for tiny children if they are to develop their language skills, their social skills and their overall grasp of how to be a human. Now think about the fact that we are placing in their hands a device that is designed and built to distract and hold their attention, to divert their gaze and their conscious thought away from other humans and towards the screen. Now factor in the fact that some children find social interaction challenging anyway, that it takes a good deal of practice in their formative years to embed those essential skills. Is it little wonder that children are increasingly held back in these areas, to the extent that meeting one unimpeded by this new normal felt like meeting a savant?

The trouble with finding good reads on GoodReads

As an avid reader of fiction, I have a problem. It’s a wonderful problem to have, and illustrates the many and various ways in which the modern world can be truly wonderful. My problem is keeping track of what I’ve read.

Were I not to do so, I’d be in an infinite loop of doubt: “Have I read this?” The feeling can begin at any time: when I look at the cover of a book, read the blurb, hear the name of the author or – perhaps most discombobulating of all – when I’m part way through the book. You might think it shouldn’t matter, but there is a tiny part of me that is undeniably anxious about the number of books that there are in the world and the ever- diminishing time I have available to read them. Accidentally repeating the exercise with one of them sets off the same kind of first-world anxiety that lots of people experience when they realise that they’re not wearing their FitBit when they’re half way through their daily run. That voice in your head that says, this doesn’t count towards my target!

Before I discuss the thorny solution to my problem, I would just like to pause and celebrate the sheer joy that this “problem” exists. When I was a child, and perhaps even more of a booklover than I am now, I used to have a fantasy that I could close my eyes, open my palms and the perfect book for that moment would appear. Since the advent of digital technology exploded into the publishing world, this fantasy is now a concrete, daily reality. I can order a book and – milliseconds later – I can be reading it. The advent of the Kindle and similar devices, followed rapidly by the spectacular surge in the audiobook industry, has made books and their contents more accessible than ever. It enables reading on the go, reading while you’re working on mindless chores that would otherwise be soul-destroying and reading in an instant. It is not only accessible but increasingly affordable. As well as the remarkably affordable global phenomenon that is Amazon that shook the market to its core, there are millions of electronic books and audiobooks available through the library for free and I absolutely love it. I cannot stress enough how utterly glorious this literary digital revolution has been for me, especially as someone with ropey eyesight.

Right – back to whingeing.

To solve the problem I have, which – if you recall – is keeping track of what I’ve read, for many years I have turned to recording what I’ve read on a site called GoodReads. It is by far the biggest and most successful platform of its kind, and like all social media platforms it began as a wonderful idea. A community of booklovers, coming together online, on a platform that exploits all the modern benefits of social media but focuses entirely on books – recommendations, reviews, suggestions and comments. Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? What’s not to like? Well, like most social media platforms, there is unfortunately quite a lot not to like.

Since its launch in 2006, GoodReads has become increasingly dominated by a certain kind of reader. I hesitate to label them as belonging to a particular generation, as I’m not sure it’s that simple, but these readers are the ones who see everything that has ever been written as “problematic”. Ever in search of reasons to be offended, they trawl the corpus of modern and classic fiction, hunting for dissent from their tribal causes of righteousness and sniffing out any indication of a worldview that may jar with their own, even if that worldview is expressed by a fictional character.

It must be a truly exhausting existence, especially if you want to read anything written prior to the 21^st century, which can be a challenge for all of us who have been steeped in modern liberalism. A few years ago, I read Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell and found myself positively wincing at his choice of language. Similarly, it’s been an education to dip into some Agatha Christie and discover the casual classicism and a truly profound contempt for her own sex. This all jars with modern values and if you’re normally a reader of contemporary fiction it can come as quite a surprise. I would happily support a review of such books which said something like, “remember, this book was written around 80 years ago, so the attitudes and views expressed will not reflect 21^st century values”. That is all that needs to be said, a trigger warning for the ineluctably stupid who need it pointing out to them that people in the past didn’t necessarily think the same as we do. If you really want to blow their minds, try asking them what 22^nd century humans will think of their own prejudices; they won’t be able to think of any, because that’s how prejudice works: it’s only obvious when you look back at it.

You’re probably thinking I should give you a couple of examples of the GoodReads phenomenon. Okay. According to the good folk of GoodReads, a Young Adult novel that I enjoyed as a teenager is officially racist because it’s a fantasy novel about astral projection, which is the ability to remove your soul from your own body, and this is (apparently) cultural appropriation from the native Americans. Honest to God, there are people losing their minds over whether the supposed ability to teleport your soul around the world is racist. Some readers lay into the same novel being “sizeist” as well, and I have to say I have absolutely zero recollection of that in the novel. Similarly, there are hundreds of people claiming that Lionel Shriver (she of We Need to Talk About Kevin fame) can’t write, because her recent novel about tone-policing in society is just a little too close to the bone for them. “I feel like if you’re going to try and do Orwell in 2024, you have to try and write at least as well as Orwell” snipes one, whilst in the next beat admitting “I’m not much of a fan of Orwell.” That one genuinely made me hoot. Less so the one filled with expletives that describes Shriver as nothing more than “a well-off, educated white woman” – the ultimate modern-day insult.

I have searched for a better option and there does not appear to be one, so GoodReads is where I’m stuck. The algorithms are useful, in a way that they are not when it comes to other products available for purchase. If I’ve just bought a new dishwasher, then I’m not interested in suggestions for other dishwashers. However, if I’ve just enjoyed a rip-roaring thriller about zombies, I am more than open to suggestions for similar rip-roaring thrillers about zombies, so GoodReads has some value through its automated suggestions. As for the humans that populate the site, I shall endeavour to do my best to avoid their opinions and their tone-policing. I hate to say it, but for once I’d rather listen to the computer.

Hang in there, folks!

“Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.”

Peter Ustinov

This week, I have had a high volume of messages and phone calls from parents who are worried about their child’s progress. Witnessing your teenager navigate the pressures of impending exams can be a source of significant anxiety for parents and carers; balancing the desire to support them academically while managing your own concerns can be a delicate task, and never more so in this crucial period between Mock results and the final examinations, the proposed dates of which have just been announced. This year, both exam boards have elected to place all three of the Latin examinations prior to Half Term.

While all parents are anxious for their children to do well, the situation varies from client to client. Some have a child who is seemingly crippled by their own anxiety, struggling to study effectively because of the extreme pressure they put on themselves to succeed. Others report that their child is so laid back (or in denial) about the examination process that they’re doing little to nothing at all, blissfully convinced that the eleven weeks remaining between now and their first examination is an absolute eternity of time, during which they will – at some point – address what it is that they need to learn.

Parenting is like any relationship: it has a dynamic of its own and there are pressures from multiple angles. Every parent wants what’s best for their child and the anxiety stems from worrying whether we or they could be doing more. Yet parental anxiety can inadvertently influence a teenager’s stress levels and when parents exhibit high levels of concern, teens may internalise this stress, leading to increased pressure and potential performance issues. Recognising and managing our own anxiety is therefore crucial in fostering a calm and supportive atmosphere – but this is much easier said than done!

Children often mirror their parents’ emotional responses, so most psychologists advocate for modelling the kind of behaviour that you think your child would benefit from: demonstrating calmness and confidence can help your teen to adopt a similar mindset. This is not to say that you should not share your anxieties, indeed discussing your feelings openly, without projecting undue stress, can encourage your teen to share their concerns as well. Many parents I know find the car is a great place to encourage this kind of openness, because by necessity the discussion has to be had without eye contact; many people – especially teenagers – can find eye-contact really confronting when talking about difficult things, so opening up or encouraging your child to do so while your eyes are on the road can be useful. If you need to have a really difficult conversation, too difficult to be had while you’re driving, then doing so on a walk can have a similar effect: again, your gaze is facing forward and you’re walking side-by-side, which can dial down the intensity of what you’re saying and make it feel less threatening for both of you.

Many parents underestimate the amount of pressure that they are under while their child is preparing for exams, so it is important to focus on self-care when you can. Engaging in activities that reduce your own stress levels not only benefits you but also sets a positive example for your teen – remember, they learn from your role-modelling, so making time for yourself is not selfish: it is modelling for your child the best and healthiest way to handle their own stress, both now and in the future.

In terms of practical solutions when it comes to study, promoting efficient study techniques can reduce exam-related stress. Assist them in setting achievable goals for each study session to maintain motivation and a sense of accomplishment. Encourage evidence-informed methods such as summarising information, teaching you or someone else the material, or creating mind maps to enhance understanding and retention. Rather than reading and highlighting, encourage your child to read, set the book to one side and then try to summarise the information they have just read in their own words. This is by far the most effective aid to memory, as it forces the brain to reconstruct the information, which is essentially how memory works. Utilising past papers under timed conditions can build familiarity with exam formats and time management skills, so this is another essential tool in the process.

If you’re looking for detailed advice on how to go about studying effectively, I would highly recommend a book called The Psychology of Effective Studying by Dr. Paul Penn, who is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of East London. I interviewed him for Teachers Talk Radio a few years ago, and he is an absolute goldmine of evidence-based, practical advice. I would recommend the book for adults (it is aimed at undergraduates), but Paul also has a YouTube channel, which makes much of his advice really accessible for younger people. If you’re finding it difficult to persuade your teenager to try more effective methods of study, then Paul’s channel could be a great place to direct them towards.

Spurious pipelines

If you’re searching for a reason why so many of us have left the teaching profession in the last few years, then look no further than the ceaseless school-bashing that so many apparent professionals are willing to partake in.

I’d like to think that the situation is improving, but just this week we had a self-styled “training and strategy consultant” who claims to “help parents and professionals understand children with trauma” share the image below yet again and state as follows: “The power of this image is its simplicity. It makes us feel uncomfortable. And it should.” Yet another armchair philosopher, who has never taught in a UK school, willing to promote the lazy stereotype that schools are institutions of oppression. In response to the understandable pushback he received from some professional teachers, he commented “I am very happy for people to criticise this image and add to the discussion.” Ha! Yeah, right. People who promote this kind of facile commentary for clicks are not interested in discussion; they’re only interested in being patted on the back by the people who agree with them.

What’s most depressing is the number of people – many teachers included – that buy into this kind of nonsense. So many teaching professionals are so beleaguered by their circumstances, so ground down by the incessant white noise that tells us that the system is failing, they can’t even see when they’re being sold a self-defeating falsehood.

I have no intention of spending my time debunking the ludicrous premise here, that any school issuing basic level sanctions and – in extreme circumstances – exclusions, somehow sets a child on an inevitable path to crime. There have been plenty of well-informed challenges to this frankly mind-bogglingly stupid assumption, which fails to take into account the most obvious fact that correlation is not causation. How on earth can someone who claims to be an intelligent and empathetic professional fail to comprehend why it might indeed be the case that adults who commit crimes deemed worthy of imprisonment might have been children who found themselves in trouble at school? Can anyone honestly be that stupid? Are they so blind to the realities of human nature that they have to pretend that every teenager is a pure blank slate onto which The System somehow stamps an inescapably dark future? This is not to say that children who find themselves excluded from school are not troubled and should not be provided for. They are society’s responsibility and society’s problem. But so are the hundreds of other individuals in that school. Schools do not exclude lightly, indeed they go out of their way to avoid it. But if some recent, violent events have taught us anything, they surely have taught us the obvious fact that there are certain offences that warrant exclusion. Bringing a knife into school is just one of those offences.

I have written before about the fact that poor behaviour in schools was a significant part of what drove me out of the profession. In many ways, this is a simplistic way of looking at things. What truly drove me out was the presumption – in many schools and in much of society as a whole – that the poor behaviour was my responsibility and indeed my fault. Something I hear frequently from tutees are reports that their teacher “cannot control the class” and I never let it pass without challenge. “Why is it your teacher’s job to manage the way that you and your friends choose to behave?” I like to ask them. They tend to back-pedal vigorously, usually of course denying that they or their friends have anything to do with the poor behaviour being reported. But the truth is, this is what the kids genuinely think, this is what their parents think and this is what society thinks. Everyone believes that teachers should somehow, by dint of their vibrant personality and an indefatigable love for the traditional educational process, be able to manage and control the whims of the 30 individuals in front of them. If they can’t do that, it’s because they’re too uninspiring, too reticent, too reactive, not good enough at their job or they take their job too personally.

The truth is that the only way for schools to manage behaviour successfully is by setting their standards sky-high and expecting their staff, the students and their parents to be fully on board with the school’s ethos. That ethos must permeate every interaction and every conversation that takes place between every student and every member of staff. Such a culture is extremely hard work to create and there will be large numbers of people – professionals included – who will attempt to push back against it and defend a more individualised approach, in which each teacher is left to carve their own path. This individualised approach is how most schools are run and it doesn’t work. If you want to be sure of what behaviour is like in a school, find out how cover lessons go, most especially those supervised by a supply teacher. That’s the only way you’ll find out whether the school runs on a unified ethos or whether it runs on the force of personality and/or the years of brow-beaten experience chalked up by its staff. From the stories I hear from the classroom, we’ve got a long way to go.

Radical traditionalism

It is easy to forget, sometimes, how far we have come. In a social milieu that is changing so fast it makes your head spin, it can be tempting to hark back to simpler times, when teachers ruled the classroom and when students did as they were told. The trouble is, as a Professor of Greek once said to me, the good old days were never really that good. “In the good old days,” he mused, “with my background, I wouldn’t have been a Professor and a Head of Department. I’d have been ram-rodding the drains.”

One of the most frustrating things about politicians is they all seem to believe that they understand education. In fact, it’s not just politicians: it’s everyone. Everyone has been to school and so everyone can and does have a supposedly valid opinion on how schools should be run and how children should be taught. But as Katharine Birbalsingh observed this week, the “government team saying the Education Secretary doesn’t need lectures from successful school leaders because the Education Secretary went to school herself would be like the Health Secretary saying he doesn’t want to hear from doctors because he once went to hospital.”

Birbalsingh was frustrated by a recent (and extremely brief) audience that she and other extraordinary Headteachers had been given with the Education Secretary, who by all accounts was distinctly uninterested in finding out how a school with a socially disadvantaged intake such as Michaela’s can achieve results which rival those of Eton College. The Education Secretary was not in the least bit curious to explore how Michaela had reached such heights of attainment. I’d like to say that I find this extraordinary, unbelievable and shocking, but I don’t. Until people let go of their passionate political affiliations – and I find it highly unlikely that an elected Member of Parliament is capable of doing so – then education will continue to remain a bruised and punctured political football.

One of the most depressing things about modern times is how unwilling people seem to learn from the past. We have seen a plethora of radical experiments and we now have a wealth of evidence about which environments work best for the majority of students. With the opening up of academia and a terrific movement towards making the most useful discoveries in cognitive science accessible to the average classroom teacher, we also know a huge amount about how children learn and remember. Despite all of this, huge swathes of educationalists remain unshakably wedded to outmoded ideas. The infuriating thing is, they consider themselves to be the progressives, kicking against what they call “the traditional methods”. But surely, if you’re hanging on to so-called “progressive” ideas that were first mooted more than 50 years ago, then you’re anything but a radical. You’re a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.

I find it indescribably irksome that my stance on learning and education – which has changed radically over the years along with my own experience, with the reading I have done and with my willingness to change my mind – is labelled as “traditionalist”. If you want to know about “traditional” in its very worst sense then you could have sat through one of the Divinity lessons I was forced to attend at school. Oh yes. Divinity. Imagine that. The lessons were led by a Reverend and the man seemed determined to spread and perpetuate ignorance to the best of his deeply limited ability. He lived in a fantasy world, in which children were still drilled in their Bible studies at home, thoroughly steeped in an understanding of chapter and verse. Our so-called “lessons” consisted of him selecting a passage for one of us to read from the Bible, after which he would pontificate circuitously for the rest of the hour. The worst thing was, due to his unmitigated fantasy about our Bible knowledge, he offered no education as to the shape and structure of the Bible, he simply barked a reference followed by a name and waited for the girl to start reading. Any girl who found herself floundering to locate “Mark, chapter 15, verses 32-38” or whatever reference he had pronounced, was left to flounder. If she started reading from the wrong section he would simply shout “NOOOOOOO!” and wait for her to try again. On occasion, this happened multiple times until the girl managed to stumble upon the correct lines. I don’t think it even occurred to him that most children in the room wouldn’t even have understood what “chapter and verse” actually meant.

What indescribable apathy in the face of a golden opportunity. This man had no exam to prepare us for, no dull syllabus to force his hand. (The school, it may interest you to know, did not allow us to sit a GCSE in Religious Studies, because it objected to the fact that to do so would require studying “other religions”.) With such total freedom, the Reverend could have given us an immensely useful grounding in a text that has arguably shaped western values and western literature in more significant ways than any other written work in history. But no, he couldn’t be bothered. He was just waiting for retirement.

So, I smile to myself when I am reminded that I am supposedly in the “traditionalist” camp when it comes to education. Personally, I think that those of us in this camp should identify as something with a bit more of a rallying cry. How about “radical traditionalist”? A radical traditionalist believes that knowledge is not only important but the right of every child. A radical traditionalist takes on board the overwhelming body of evidence that direct instruction is more effective than discovery learning when working with novices. A radical traditionalist refuses to accept the soft bigotry of low expectations, the heinous and insulting prejudice that kids from ordinary backgrounds aren’t capable of academic rigour. I find it indescribably depressing how many people who consider themselves to be genuine liberals cheer on the pursuit of mediocrity for our most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of society, whilst patting themselves on the back for being progressive. Quite honestly, I don’t know how they sleep at night.

Revelations

One of the strangest things about humans is what they reveal about themselves. Never is this more apparent than at a school Consultation Evening, when the parents or guardians of a child sit opposite their child’s teachers to discuss their child’s progress or – at times – to reveal in glorious technicolour their warped sense of reality and chaotic lives to the person sitting opposite them.

Recently, The Huffington Post invited readers in the teaching profession to reveal the most remarkable things that parents have said to them over the years. “When teachers go into their profession, they do so with the expectation that they will have to deal with some student misbehaviour. … But when you speak with teachers about the behaviours that cause them the most distress, it’s not the students who are to blame, it’s their parents — some of whom seem to badly need a lesson in courtesy, respect and common sense.”

“I had a parent tell me that their child … was a genius and I just wasn’t smart enough to comprehend that” said one. “I had a parent tell me that they didn’t need to teach their child morals, as that is what school should be teaching them,” reported another. Over the years, I also experienced some quite remarkable condescension from some of the adults I had to deal with, although nothing quite this bad: “I once had a parent tell me, ‘I worked in daycare too, then I decided to get a career’,” reported one pre-school teacher with 17 years’ experience. This comment is particularly revealing of a fact that became apparent during the pandemic- how some people see schools as there to provide day care for their children, not an education.

Generally speaking, such people are so rare and so jaw-droppingly ridiculous that I have wiped the recollection of most such comments from my memory. The majority of parents are respectful and only too supportive of their child’s teachers. One memory I do maintain, however, is not of a child’s parents setting out to undermine me, but rather seeming to reveal such malfunction in their own lives that I have never forgotten it. This happened in my very first year of teaching, which is now 25 years ago, so I feel pretty safe telling the story. It was my very first Consultation Evening, one of hundreds that I would attend, and it remains the one I have never forgotten. It was also the time when I truly learnt the definition of passive-aggressive behaviour, or what in modern parlance is often referred to as gas-lighting.

The parents of this particular child were divorcing but were attending the Consultation Evening together with their child. There is nothing unusual about this and most manage to do so with only the faintest whiff of awkwardness in the air. I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of parents want the best for their children and that includes protecting them from the worst of the fall-out when it comes to a separation. These parents, however, appeared to be going through a particularly acrimonious separation and there had been some confusion (possibly confounded by at least one of the people involved) about to whom communications regarding their child’s progress should be sent. This was made clear to me the moment that the family sat down – the child deposited like a military buffer zone between the individuals at war – and informed me that this was the case. Not a great start.

Neither parent would look at or speak to the other parent, so it was close to impossible to have a normal conversation that would include their child in the process without extreme awkwardness. Nevertheless, I pressed on as best I could, taking the opportunity to explain how well their child had been doing recently (remarkably well, given the family situation in which they found themselves). Just as I was beginning to round up my report, I was interrupted by the child’s mother, who appeared agitated and unable to contain herself any longer.

“I wish to make one thing absolutely crystal clear,” she barked, pointing her finger at me. “I wish to clarify the fact that I have not – nor have I ever – been suffering from any kind of mental illness. There is nothing wrong with me!”

There was a long, mortifying pause.

“Um. Okay,” I said, unsure where this was going but very sure that I didn’t like it or have any idea of how to handle it.

“So whatever has been said about me – and I mean by anyone – is not true. I want it wiped from your records!”

Personally, I was unaware of anything on anyone’s record about mental health issues, and I was genuinely at a loss as to what to say. Now, with more experience, I realise that I should have said something like “you clearly have some concerns, so can I suggest that you speak to …” and pass the buck onto someone considerably higher up the pay grade than I was (which, at that time, was pretty much everybody; I suspect the assistant caretaker earned significantly more than I did). From my recollection, however, I was incapable of anything other than opening and closing my mouth like a dying fish.

“I hope I’ve made myself clear,” snapped the mother, at which point her soon-to-be-very-ex-husband piped up.

“As I was saying,” he remarked, smoothly, “I’m keen to be kept informed of any ways in which I can help with vocabulary learning. Do you have any particular suggestions?”

There was another silence, while I stared at him, then at his trembling wife. It was as if she had not spoken. She did not exist. Her presence was not merely irrelevant, it was a non-fact. He had not heard her, for she was not there.

He continued.

“Just keep me in the loop with regards to anything I can do to help in that department.”

So, that was my stark introduction to the psychological concept of passive aggressive behaviour. I could immediately begin to see where this woman’s apparent neurosis was coming from. When you have someone who quite literally acts as if you have been expunged from the universe, where do you go other than the path of frustration, protestation and rage? What choice do you have other than to act out? I tried to imagine a lifetime of being ignored, of being talked over, of being erased and expunged. I’m not sure I would have handled it with any more dignity or diplomacy than she was managing.

To this day I will never know the full truth behind what was going on in that family, but I do know that the acrimonious divorce took them down a path of heart-breaking consequences for their child. Since they were unable to agree on custody and access and since the child was old enough for the courts to take their individual preferences into account, the child was forced to testify in open court about which parent they would prefer to live with and why. Quite how a couple who once made vows to each other and chose to bring a child into this world can end up so horribly broken I struggle to imagine, but the consequences for all concerned were devastating. So, more than any ignorant insults hurled at me and the profession I represent over the years – and there have been a few – it is this early experience that I recall with genuine regret.