Musings – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

I wrote it on my hand

Just occasionally, a student will say something so extraordinary that I am stopped in my tracks. This week, it was when a child I have been working with in the run-up to her GCSE examinations told me that she had to resort to writing on her hand during a lesson.

I was hesitant to write this piece, for it means going over ground I have covered before; but in the spirit in which this blog was started, I remain committed to writing about what is on my mind at the time, and this week I am haunted by the fact that a student was unable to write down a question during her lesson.

More and more schools in the private sector have moved to a digital model, in which lessons are conducted using tablets or – most commonly – Chromebooks. I am deeply suspicious that this is a money-saving exercise, since schools can access the equipment at a considerable discount when buying in bulk, and anyone who has seen the average photocopying budget for a busy department will come to realise that the potential saving is considerable, once the initial investment is made. Printing booklets is expensive, and this fact seems to be outweighing the fact that they are effective learning tools.

The young people I work with are – as one might expect – reasonably tech savvy, but they are universally scathing about their school’s digital approach. Without exception, they report that the technology is clumsy, unreliable and not fit for purpose. They will even volunteer the fact that it is distracting and hampers learning by offering up temptations that would otherwise not be present. Students report a quite extraordinary litany of what they get up to on their laptops when they are meant to be on task during a lesson: at best, they may be doing homework for another subject; at worst, they will be playing games or accessing chat applications. All of them agree that they cannot discern what tangible positives the technology brings to their learning. Moreover, as I discussed at greater length back in January, they lack the skills and the maturity to manage their learning through digital platforms. Organising, managing and accessing large files and using screen-splitting to make this viable is genuinely beyond a significant number of students: frankly, it’s beyond a lot of adults.

So far, so predictable. The student I spoke to this week has been one of the many who have expressed frustration with her school’s digital approach and has found it difficult to access her notes and prior learning. There are constructions she has no recollection of ever been taught, which is not uncommon, but what is concerning is the fact that she cannot find a way to revisit her own notes on the topic. Had the school been using a well-organised printed booklet, this would have been effortless. Once again, the technology is working against her, which pretty much undermines everything that technology is meant to stand for; technology should be a facilitator and an enabler, not a barrier to learning.

I really struggle to comprehend why so many schools have switched to a digital model, despite the overwhelming evidence that handwriting is better for cognition. Handwriting engages a broader network of brain regions and motor skills compared to typing, potentially leading to better memory formation and learning. Typing is faster and more efficient when it comes to output, but it involves less active cognitive engagement and thus fewer opportunities for memory consolidation. Typing is fantastic for fast communication – it is not so for learning. Writing by hand forces the brain to engage in a more active, sensory-motor experience; the process activates the regions in the brain responsible for motor control, visual processing, and sensory input – a much broader range than is required for typing. Studies have shown that handwriting leads to more elaborate and widespread brain connectivity patterns than typing, suggesting that the act of writing by hand is thus more effective for encoding new information and forming memories. This is why, when I am learning something off by heart, I don’t do it (exclusively) on the computer.

But aside from all of this, let’s just think of the practicalities. I am a huge fan of technology and I do pretty much everything through it. I use a digital calendar, as I find it more effective and efficient than a traditional one. All my tutoring is online, so all the resources I use with students are presentable on screen. However, when I send them resources, these are almost always designed to be printed out and held in their hands. In addition, and here’s what is most relevant to my post today, I have a lined pad beside my laptop for notes. When a student asks me to send them something after the session, I jot that down on the notepad. When a student warns me that they will be able to make the next session, I jot that down on the notepad. It is simply more efficient and quicker to do this than to open a file and make a note in a corner of my digital resources. The notepad sits beside me at all times and I cross off each note as I implement it. The page beside me as I type has the following written down and crossed through (names have been changed):

Billy – noun table

Olivia – YouTube vid. on 10-markers

Niall – 2021 paper + Rome qus

This is exactly the kind of thing that a notepad is needed for – quick notes to self that will be implemented immediately and ticked off. There is no need for a permanent record, just a requirement for an immediate visual reminder to action something at the end of my run of sessions. None of this is rocket science, or so I thought.

Yesterday, when my student reported that she had some questions arising from her first lesson back in school, she admitted that she was struggling to remember them because she had not been able to write them down. Not only has her school moved so entirely over to Chromebooks that students appear not to have any kind of papers, notebooks or diaries to hand, but get this: her teacher seems aware of the fact that the Chromebooks are causing distraction during the lesson, so has banned students from accessing them during the lesson. This would be fine if the students were given an alternative route to note-taking, but that’s presumably against whole-school policy, so instead the students are left with nothing to write on. “So, I wrote it on my hand,” she said, “but then I couldn’t make it out and it got washed off later in the day.”

So, there we have it. What a stunning victory for technology over common sense. You have a child left unable to access her notes, unable to write down a question for their teacher or tutor (the fact that she wanted to save a question for one-to-one time rather than interrupting the flow of the lesson should surely be applauded) and a piece of technology which undermines learning to such an extent that the teacher is forced to discontinue its use in lessons without a suitable replacement. Three cheers for our ability to make the world just a little bit more bonkers than it needs to be.

Paralysed by Empathy

One of the overriding memories I have of INSET training in schools is how disempowered it made me feel. Much time was spent making us deeply aware of the unpromising and unsupportive backgrounds that some of our students hailed from. I remember being profoundly affected by being told that – for some children – their form tutor may be the first adult who has spoken to them that morning: their parent(s) may be out, or may not have surfaced from their bed. I never forgot that, but I also felt totally ill-equipped in how I should therefore handle such an interaction. Besides from bearing the depressing truth in mind, what was the best way for me to do my job? I was never entirely sure.

Safeguarding training is a cornerstone of educational practice. It is essential that all adults working with children are alert to the kinds of circumstances in which vulnerable young people may find themselves. Training should pull no punches about the nature, likelihood and shocking frequency of abuse and neglect. It is also crucial, however, that such training is empowering: that it makes the adults involved feel like they understand what they can and cannot do, and equips them with the skills and knowledge to take action when warranted. Otherwise, the training is nothing more than useless hand-wringing and serves no purpose for those at risk, who are the ones that matter. When it came to intervention or raising the alarm, I felt very well-prepared: I knew what the right channels were, I knew how to follow up and I felt able to act. What I did not feel so equipped to deal with was the daily reality of interacting with so many young people, whose background worked against them, whose circumstances were less than ideal. How was I supposed to handle them in the classroom? What strategies were most appropriate to provide the right environment for them? What could I actually do?

All teachers are painfully aware that a significant number of their students face undeniable challenges in their personal lives. These challenges are ongoing and cannot be magically resolved – certainly not by their classroom teachers. It is in the handling of such troubled and often challenging students that so many teachers find themselves bereft of the tools that they need to do their job. The training they are given – in my experience – does nothing to mitigate against this, indeed, in many cases, it makes the situation worse. If all training consists of is a relentless diatribe, detailing the awful circumstances in which some of our students are living, teachers can find themselves quite literally paralysed by empathy.

Empathy is one of the cornerstones of emotional intelligence. The ability to comprehend the feelings and experiences of others helps us to envisage what it’s like to walk in their shoes and pretty much defines humanity: theory of mind – the cognitive ability to understand that others have thoughts, feelings, and intentions that are different from our own – is one of the things that defines us as a species. Empathy allows us to understand and share the feelings of others, and it forms the bedrock of human interaction. But in the relationship between a teacher and student, unmitigated empathy can completely derail us. When adults find themselves overwhelmed by the thought of a child’s situation at home, it can hinder their ability to establish necessary boundaries and provide the education that such students desperately need and deserve.

When empathy becomes overwhelming, adults may find themselves hesitant to enforce rules, set limits, or assert appropriate authority. This phenomenon, when an adult is paralysed by empathy, arises from a deep and genuine concern about causing emotional distress or perceived harm to the child. While well-intentioned, such an over-empathetic approach deprives children of the boundaries they need. Authority does not have to imply dominance or control: authority is not authoritarianism, but rather the caring, conscious exercise of our responsibility to nurture and protect those in our care. Establishing clear boundaries in schools helps children to understand expectations, learn self-discipline, and develop resilience when managing their challenges. Children thrive in environments where there is a balance between empathy and appropriate boundaries, and those boundaries are even more important when they are lacking at home. In our bid to empathise with the most vulnerable students in our care, we unwittingly compound their neglect.

Empathy is crucial in understanding children’s emotions. It enables adults to respond sensitively and to offer support during times of distress. But our role as educators is to equip children with the skills and confidence to navigate the world autonomously, within safe parameters. Such empowerment begins with adults who confidently assert their authority when necessary, guiding children towards responsible decision-making, and fostering resilience in the face of challenges. Boundaries provide a framework, within which children can explore their world safely and confidently. They offer a sense of security and predictability, essential for emotional stability and growth. When adults prioritise empathy to the extent that boundaries become blurred or non-existent, children may struggle with understanding limits, managing impulses, or respecting others’ needs. The results of such a failure are there for everyone to see.

Adolescent ramblings

“As a father, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter hit home hard. We all need to be having these conversations more. I’ve backed Netflix’s plan to show the series for free in schools across the country, so as many young people as possible can see it.”

Keir Starmer, on X, March 31^st

There is so much that infuriates me about this tweet that I struggle to know where to start. But before I launch into my take from the standpoint of an ex-schoolteacher, let me speak simply as a voter. Where have all the statesmen gone? How do we find our country led by someone so easily swayed by the public response to a work of fiction, aired on a popular streaming channel? I suppose in the same way as we ended up with a leader who is currently overseeing the most significant change in UK human rights law for decades, simply because – and I quote – he “made a promise to Esther Rantzen.” The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is governing according to what celebrities want him to do and according to the public hand-wringing about a Netflix drama. We truly are through the looking glass.

I have always had my frustrations with our robotic PM, merely the latest in a long line of identikit ministers, who appear to have no idea what they believe in or what they stand for, but my frustration with Starmer’s comments this week stem from the consistent way in which schools are now held accountable for every ill in society. Rising knife crime? Get schools to deal with it. Burgeoning antisemitism? Get schools to address it. Just this morning, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called for “more male teachers, so British boys have role models.” This call comes, despite the fact that we have zero evidence that increasing the number of men working in a school has any net positive effect on the boys in their care. Anecdotally, I am happy to report the blindingly obvious observation that for every boy inspired and managed by the 6ft 7 PE teacher with the booming voice (and believe me, I have gone to such men for help when managing a certain kind of boy), there are likewise just as many boys who will relate to and be inspired by me, by their flamboyant male drama teacher, or their zany female art teacher. I wouldn’t have thought, in 2025, that one needs to point out that there is more than one type of boy.

“Schools can’t solve these problems alone, and responsibility starts at home with parents. But only one in four of the teachers in our schools are men. Just one in seven in nursery and primary. One in 33 in early years,” says our illustrious Ed Sec. See just how much heavy lifting the “but” is doing in that quote? Schools can’t do everything, BUT … let’s focus on them anyway. This is how education gets treated by the government – we are the punching bag for society’s frustrations and we must solve all its ills. The drama Adolescence raised questions about parenting, as well as the potential role played by the influences of social media in young people’s lives, but governments don’t want to talk about these things. It is an obvious fact that more of their voters are parents than teachers, so it’s much easier to blame the latter than the former for society’s problems. As for social media and the internet in general, the government has absolutely no idea what to do and they certainly don’t want to do the most obvious thing, which is to challenge individuals to take more responsibility for what their own children find themselves exposed to. What they may do, which is take the opportunity to bring in more laws to curb free speech online, I can’t even bear to think about.

No, let’s say the schools have to tackle it all. Let’s argue about whether or not phones should be banned in schools, rather than discuss the fact that it is the children’s parents who fund the very existence of these devices in the first place. Schools are not responsible for the fact that many – perhaps even most – children have unfettered access to the internet. That responsibility lies with the adults that purchase the device, hand it to their kids and pay the bill for its extensive usage. Schools have had this problem dumped upon them and trust me, they feel the fall-out. You wouldn’t believe how much time is wasted in schools while pastoral leaders investigate cases of bullying, harassment, sexting, indecent images and incitement to violence that take place through these children’s mobile devices on a daily basis. One of my earliest shows for Teachers’ Talk Radio explored the relationship that teenagers have with their smart phones: I interviewed Matt Crowley, lead DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) in the school in which I was working at the time. He talked about the serious safeguarding risks and the systemic damage to a child’s mental health, self-esteem and personal safety which can arise from the use of these devices – in school and beyond. None of this is news to teachers; we’ve been saying it for years.

To return to Starmer’s tweet, let’s focus on the absolutely ridiculous proposal that Adolescence, a Netflix drama, should be “shown in schools”. Unsurprisingly, the writers and producers of the show are delighted by all the fuss. I bet they can’t believe their luck. There are influential talk-show hosts out there, not only recommending the show, but berating politicians who have not watched it as “ignorant”, “uncaring” and “out of touch”. Apparently, it’s compulsory viewing and if you haven’t viewed it, you’re an officially Bad Person. But let’s actually think about the idea that this drama should be “shown in schools”, shall we? Firstly, shown to whom? The drama is rated 15, so schools would not be able to show it to any year group below Year 11, since some students in Year 10 will not turn 15 until after the end of the academic year. If Starmer thinks the drama is so significant and truly reflective of reality (he has twice accidentally referred to it as “a documentary”, which is actually terrifying), I would point out that the perpetrator of the crime in the drama is thirteen years old. Showing the drama to 16–18-year-olds would thus seem to be missing the point.

Furthermore, and this applies to the equally insane directive that schools are now somehow responsible for teaching children how to brush their teeth, what would Starmer like schools to remove from the curriculum in order to make time for this four-hour TV marathon? One assumes that he doesn’t want them taken out of maths, English and science, so perhaps he sees it as fitting within the PSHE programme. Does he know that most schools barely manage the advised one hour per week? That they seriously struggle to fit this in? What would he like us to remove from the curriculum in order to make way for a drama that at least half of the kids will already have seen at home? Sex education and consent? I would have thought that was pretty important to cover, given the content of the drama. Alcohol, smoking and illegal drugs? How about college applications and how to present yourself at interview? Financial literacy? Martin Lewis won’t be happy, and given Starmer’s terror of celebrities that will mean some more sleepless nights for him. What a dilemma, Keir! Isn’t leadership difficult?!

I struggle to respect a leader who is so beleaguered by the ebb and sway of public opinion and general feelz. This is a Prime Minister who has somehow found time in what one would have assumed is a busy week to meet with the writer and the producer of the Netflix drama to discuss it. I mean … what?! I would rather he got on with the business of government. If the man stands for anything then he needs to convince me that he cannot be pushed around by celebrities and current talking points. But it seems we have somehow grown so used to weak leadership that now we take it for granted.

Image by Reuters. Keir Starmer in Downing Street with Jack Thorne, writer of *Adolescence*

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.

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.