Yeah found a new alternative school...

From an article in the TES magazine this month I discovered the Acorn school in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire: a Steiner inspired independent school whose pupils are admitted to university (according to the head anyway) with no exams under their belts at all. This is one of the things I personally believe could be a tipping point if their ever was to be a move towards a freer more democratic education: if universities were to begin to accept pupils without exam qualifications from a number of schools then people would be forced to sit up and take notice. Especially pupils who are most closely exposed to the unfairness of formal examinations. Acorn School.

King Alfred's School

Tah-dah! My first success in my mission to seek out each and every 'slightly different' school in the UK. I had never heard of this place before but it sounds AMAZING! Its not necessarily that outrageously different from anywhere else- it just sounds sensible. Here is how they describe themselves:

"KAS continues to stand out from the prevailing educational environment as a school that achieves academic success without excessive pressure and social success through the development of relationships and responsibility rather than external discipline. Co-education, mixed ability, all ages and non-denomination are some essential and enduring characteristics. Informality is typified by the use of first names, the absence of uniform and as few rules as can be managed within a community. Above all, it is a school that is genuinely loved by students, parents and staff alike."

I find it interesting that they describe themselves repeatedly as both secular and non-denominational.

Democratic Education International Seminar

Thanks to Kim for this
01 Jul 09 - 08 Jul 09
Transnational Perspectives on Democratic Education: an intensive international seminar and taught course

Institute of Education, University of London

In association with University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Melbourne; International Centre for Education for Democratic Citizenship

This intensive programme aimed at educators combines keynote lectures by world renowned academics; active workshops involving the keynotes and a programme of visits. It is offered as an accredited master’s module and will also be of interest to doctoral students and those seeking a one-off refreshing short course.

Confirmed speakers include: Michael Apple, Diana Hess, Gloria Ladson-Billings from Madison; Johanna Wyn and Julie McLeod from Melbourne; Michael Fielding, David Gillborn, Ann Phoenix, Hugh Starkey from London.

Activities and workshops include: seminar hosted by Parliamentary Education Service; visit to schools implementing human rights and citizenship education; whole school human rights education with UNICEF UK and Amnesty International; using multicultural resources of Museum of London; new media and democratic participation.

Participants will join an online pre-sessional forum hosted on a specially developed website and moderated by course faculty.

The aims of this programme are:

? To explore transnational perspectives on democratic education by drawing on experience and scholarship from three national contexts.

? To provide opportunities for in depth engagement both with leading scholars acting as faculty and with students from other universities.

? To engage with institutions and cultural artefacts in the host city that have relevance to struggles for democracy and education.

The themes addressed are:

What is democracy? Why study democratic education, and why now? Tensions and challenges in democratic agendas in different national and transnational agenda; lack of conceptual clarity?

What is citizenship? Changing forms and challenges (national, cosmopolitan, citizenship across difference)

What is democratic education? Deliberation and talk as forms of democratic ed. Deliberative traditions. What skills do educators need? Curriculum and professional resources

Diversity and inclusion: policies and responses in different national settings

Civil Rights, Human Rights and the law: campaigning for justice

Student voice and youth participation in a digital age. New forms and sites of democratic participation. In what ways are young people engaging?

Places are limited, so to register interest and obtain further details please contact: Ruth Shewan

06 Jul 09 - 10 Jul 09
Teacher Training at Parliament

Houses of Parliament > event website

Accommodation from the 5th July.

Focus: This week-long residential is funded to include travel and accommodation (if needed) for delegates to stay in London and attend a series of talk, workshops, seminars and observations on the work and role of Parliament. Designed to give a thorough working knowledge to develop the delegates own professional knowledge in this area, there are also opportunities for you to work with other colleagues to develop educational resources for use within the classroom.

For more information visit the website or contact

Claire O'Neill

Children Last

One morning, whilst listening to the head of a rather large school where I was training to be a teacher, I realised something. Children have become something of an inconvenience to a school like this. Once up and running this school, and all state schools I have ever seen, is a self-perpetuating entity whose primary function is its own survival. This is a natural process which affects all institutions, companies, government bodies. It is sadly true even of most charities- pretty soon their own survival is paramount over their original mission.
The head's little morning speech was about Ofsted or behaviour or something, the content was not significant, and it was all about jobs and financial security for the school. Financial security is for the school what survival is for the organism. It is its primary and overriding drive. Second to survival of the school is its 'health'. This is measured in the number of jobs it can sustain and is demonstrated by the head's repeated requests for teachers to conform in order to keep their own jobs. Teachers are therefore second to the school itself. In order for the teachers to keep their jobs, and the school to remain healthy, it must constantly strive to attract children. As children rarely choose their own school themselves essentially this translates to attracting parents. The head of this school was well aware of this. Thirdly then the school's function is to attract parents. As the government, along with large numbers of pressure groups including the vastly rich exam boards, has almost succeeded in persuading parents that success in examinations is the only thing their child needs out of 12 years of schooling they are willing to select a school based on examination results and league tables (actually I am not so sure this is entirely the case but it is how the school sees it and that is what matters). To return ot our analogy the great beast of the institution known as 'school' therefore sees exam results as the bait to lure in its prey. Examination results are therefore the third prority of school after the school's own pertuity and the teacher's jobs, and parents are fourth as they are lured in using exam results.
Fifthly, and finally, we come to the children. Once at the school it is essential that as many children as possible get 5 A*-C grades in order to rebait the trap. Therefore one must coach them through their examinations. This takes up all of your 11, half of year 10 and nearly 1/4 of all lessons during the previous 3 years as they are required to sit an end of unit test which takes 1-2 lessons every 6-8 lessons. (I shall return to the moster of testing later). If there is any time left we might be able to squeeze in some education but don't hold your breath.

'...since men who feel hate and fear also admire these emotions and wish to perpetuate them, although this admiration and wish will probably be unconscious...An education designed to eliminate fear is by no means difficult to create. It is only necessary to treat a child with kindness, put him into an environment where initiate is possible without disastrous results and to save him from contact with adults who have irrational terrors...A child must not be subject to severe punishments, or threats, or to grave and excessive reproof.'
-Bertrand Russell.

This may provide part of the answer to the question: 'Why, when everyone leaves school knowing exactly whats crap about it and exactly how to make it better, do they immediately forget as soon as they become 'adults' and become its biggest advocates?'

The answer is that an education filled with fear and hate will make you respect fear and hate and wish to inflict it on others, ideally ones who can't do anything about it because they are legally obliged to sit their and let you.

Uniform

Today was a non-uniform day at my second placement, the school where I am training to be a secondary science teacher. It is the second non-uniform day I have been to as a trainee teacher and both times I nearly skipped with joy as I went my way about the school. I can't help but feel elated by seeing children looking the way they are supposed to, the way they choose to. I love seeing them in all their finery. They are not wearing 'gang colours' or picking on each other for not being able to afford the latest fashions. The statements you will find on the websites of 99% of the schools in this country peddle some awful drivel about 'community cohesion', 'sense of belonging' and 'equality' none of which interest kids of that age half as much as exploring their individuality and expressing their own forms of identity through dress. There are a thousand subtle messages written into the self-selected dress codes of 14 year olds which the governors of the schools they are forced to attend will never even recognise let alone allow to thrive and survive.
Anyway, this is the first in a series of posts which will attempt to build up a picture of the school I would start right now if I could. The first rule, chronologically speaking not hierarchically, is no uniform.

Infinite Tolerance vs Zero Tolerance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/11/right-way-to-raise-children

Interesting article about whether 'tough love' or 'infinite love' is the best way to get through to inner city school drop outs. Some interesting comparisons to non-coercive education can be made.

The one statement that stands out to me and seems to sum up why the problems in education are constantly perpetuated is this:

'...I began to wonder why, having survived a disciplinarian childhood that had made them so angry, they thought the solution lay in recreating it.' (talking about Ray Lewis' militaristic method of educating violent young black kids).

Teresa Dodgson's story

Until Leo got so unhappy with school that we had to take radical action, I had not thought much about democratic or alternative types of education. I felt sorry for families who were home-educating, thinking the children would miss out on making friends and having to be with other people. My experiences with Leo have forced me to think otherwise.

We won't know until Leo is 50 - if ever - if we took the right decision but for the moment we're living with a 17 year old who's passionate about learning and deeply into a 'creative flow' of drawing intricate pictures - with the 'learning' fuelling his pictures. He also pays his way by working in our home card factory and babysitting.

Two years ago, however, we were living with a very different child. Leo was dragging himself to school and smoking dope on the way home each day, and sometimes on the way to school. He was angry and very unhappy, but I kept saying, 'look, only one more year to go, then you can leave school - just hang on in there!' He had won student of the year in year 8 (£200 to donate to a charity of his choice). I didn't want to let the school down, as much as anything. but since year 8, Leo had been asking if he could be home educated (he'd heard of it when they read 'Skellig'). It wasn't an option at that point as both my husband and I were out working in school hours.

One day, just before Easter when Leo was in Year 10, however, he took drastic action and broke through the fire-door at the school to escape twice in one day - caught on CCTV footage each time - and was chased by a teacher or the deputy head and brought back to the school where they phoned us and said Leo would have to be in 'the bungalow' for a week (onsite unit for children with behavioural difficulties/punishment block). He stayed there for 4 days and the teacher there told me all he wanted to do was work on his drawings and that Leo was 'a very pleasant chap but just incredibly lazy' because he didn't seem keen to do his schoolwork.

To cut a long story short* (detail below), we did some research and came to an arrangement with the school called 'flexi-schooling'. Leo stayed on the school's roll but revised for his GCSE's from home. We dropped art and graphics as he loved doing his own artwork and it seemed pointless to say 'stop doing that and do a pastiche of Georgia O'Keefe's flowers...' John spent a considerable amount of time trying to shovel Maths into Leo - the one subject he had always struggled with, but the rest of the time Leo would read round the history or RS for a week, or two or three, at a time, (instead of 50 minute sessions for each subject) getting really interested in them again. He got so passionate about the RS that he read lots of books on all the religions.

And he felt at peace at home. One day, a couple of schoolfriends (the only friends he'd really liked were in the year above him at school) rang to say they were in the area and could they come and see him. He said 'sorry, I'm in the middle of screenprinting a poster - not now...' He'd found the environment of school mostly so unconducive to learning that he'd kept running away from it, so it was interesting to see him being so involved in what he was doing that he didn't want to break off from it.

Were his GCSE results a success? Not really. He got an A in History and Bs in the two Englishes and Science. So, 4 passes. He got an A* in one RS paper but bombed in the other - we hadn't had the books for that one - giving him an overall E, and he got a D in Maths. I'd talked to the Head of Year at parent's evening in year 11, though, saying 'sorry, Mr S, I don't think Leo's going to get all those As or A*s, but he is so much happier' and Mr S put my mind at rest, saying 'that's so much more important! He can always do these later if he really wants or needs them!'

So, to sum up, I don't know if home education or flexi-schooling is for everyone, but in our experience of 5 children, it has suited the 4th of them so much better than school if you look at 'education' being at all about being excited by learning. Leo is with friends at the moment which I'm pleased about because he now really thinks about whether he wants to go out or not. More often on a Saturday night, he's on the sofa reading a book on Gnosticism or doing another page of his unfolding graphic story or writing another chapter on his 'study of comparitive religions'. I have to encourage him to go off and see friends as he's discovered a peace within himself that pulls him strongly in the direction of the Hermitic life - something I'm frightened of for him, as his mother.


*At the end of the 4 days John and I went for a meeting with the Head of Year and Deputy Head and I asked if Leo could stay in the Bungalow permanently as he'd prefer to be just with a handful of other children. They said that wasn't possible as it was for short-term only, and that their only option would be behavioural units in Tower Hamlets which they didn't think would be in Leo's best interests. It was at that point that I said 'could he work from home?' as I worked from home by that point, and my husband was a part-time lecturer, based at home too from May 'til October. The school weren't keen at first: the Head of Year said 'the Head wouldn't be keen to lose an A student'.

The first day back in 'normal' school, Leo didn't turn up for registration, though - he'd gone off with friends. I had a huge row with him that night saying 'maybe you want this Home Education Lark, but none of our family have ever done this - it's not something we know anything about - what makes you so special?!' Leo started crying at that point and said 'I'm not special but I just really really really HATE school!!' At that point I typed 'home education' into google and stormed off to bed, saying 'research the options - it's over to you!' The first thing the web site Leo found confirmed that it's the legal right for anyone to educate their children at home.

John Holt and Milicent Shinn

Have started reading How Children Learn. It is essential reading. Check out this quote:

“[Education is] the game of trying to find out how the world works...I’m afraid this is not what most people understand by the word “education”. They understand it as being made to go to a place called school, and there being made to learn something they don’t much want to learn, under the threat that bad things will be done to them if they don’t. Needless to say, most people don’t much like this game, and stop playing as soon as they can.”

He himself quotes Milicent Shinn the first woman to receive a doctorate from the University of California in 1898. She documented the day by day development of her neice and had it published in a psychology journal.
Here she talks about research in children's psychology but to me it eerily mirrors our education system today:

“There is one question I have been asked a thousand times about baby biography: “Doesn’t it do the children some harm? Doesn’t it make them nervous? Doesn’t it make them self-conscious?” At first this seemed to me an odd misapprehension- as if people supposed observing children meant doing something to them. But I have no doubt it could be so foolishly managed as to harm the child. There are thousands of parents who tell anecdotes about their children before their faces every day, and if the parent turns child student [or educational researcher] it is hard to say what he may not do in the way of dissecting a child’s mind openly, questioning the little one about himself, and experimenting with his thoughts and feelings. But such observing is as worthless scientifically as it is bad for the child: the whole value of an observation is gone as soon as the phenomena observed lose simplicity and spontaneity. It should be unnecessary to say that no competent observer tampers with the child in any way...” -Millicent Shinn

Bill Ayers in the TES

Check out ex-Weathermen 'terrorist' Bill Ayers' great article on 'Democracy and Education' at:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6010583

There is also his blog http://billayers.org/

The Experiences of Venetia Giles

I hope she doesn't mind, but a conversation with Venetia Giles I had recently threw two new schools into my searchlight.

The first is the one she attended- Atlantic College. It's very international, but extraordinarily expensive to attend as well (she said £34,000pa). However a reasonable proportion of pupils are paid for by bursaries from companies. She was paid for by Travis Perkins the builders' merchant!

The other one was the Edinburgh Steiner School which she visited and said was wonderful. It is apparently very different from the Staverton one which is interesting as I had kind of assumed they were all quite similar. Both are worth a visit for anyone who hasn't experienced such a thing before. I will try to get in contact with Venetia and get her comments.

Democracy and Education

As it was the starting point for me I shall start with the school I attended: Sands School.

Sands is one of three democratic schools in the coutry. The other two being Park School in Dartington and Summerhill School in Suffolk. By democratic we mean the rules of the school are selected and voted on and amended by either the whole school itself (direct democracy) or by elected representatives (indirect democracy). All three schools mentioned run the former system. If I have missed any schools out it is due to ignorance.

When you tell someone that Sands is a 'democratic school' the two words are so alien to each other in their minds that they literally cannot image what you mean. I then tell them that it is exactly what it says it is: a school run by all the members of the school who each have an equal vote on all issues.

More details about Sands school are available from the school itself (they are very approachable) and this isn't the place for an essay on it.
I encourage you to visit the school (all are made very welcome) and to find out more about it if you have ever considered contemporary education in the UK and thought: 'Is this it?'