Ejjercayshun: the thots of Charles Sharpe,(aged 74)

    I have adapted this admittedly polemic article from something I wrote many years ago but the changes which have occurred in the education of our children in these last weeks must have given children, parents and teachers cause to consider how we help children learn. The hiatus may give us time to think if we could, or should, explore other avenues to promote learning. Here I am taking an opportunity to reveal my prejudice. 

    There is a predominant assumption in western society about the proper way to give our youngsters an education, that is : in formal groups in a classroom with a nominated teacher who has professional training. Yet I don’t know of - and I may be missing something - any universal biological or physiological law which demands that children must be educated by this method or indeed if they should be formally educated at all. 

    A politically radical of way of looking at this might be to say that schooling as we know it developed from powerful families among the primeval horde deciding that if their offspring were to sustain or build upon the dynasty’s potency and wealth they must learn a thing or two about how to be on the right side of their own kind of God and how to count and defend their money as well as all the other things which flow from that. It was inevitable that this kind of education became more focussed on protecting the wealth and power of “clan rich.” This was achieved by organising and developing learning in groups called schools, which, in the interest of gaining more control of the children were eventually broken up into smaller groups called classes. This exclusive system also kept the little rascals out of their parents’ hair. From this a curriculum grew which kept everyone in place and led those, not sufficiently privileged to attend school and learn, to lag far behind, usually in penury and poverty. These are characteristics evident in the schooling we have in the United Kingdom now.

Those in accord with the idea that education developed in the way I’ve described may also agree that schools are institutions which are used to protect the status quo and the vast majority of our youngsters are  educated to look after and sustain the needs of the powerful. Even when eventually, “education for all” was deemed by the powers that be, a not too dangerous path to follow, the schools the rich kids went to were different from the schools the poor kids attended. Over centuries, occasionally those of a socialist leaning have cried out and railed against these matters but nothing much changes and even if they do things soon fall back into their old place. 

Accepting that schools, if nothing else, can play 
an important a role in the social development of 
children I have reluctantly - and shamefully some may say - I have come to an accommodation with this "education" system that defends the current economic and political state of affairs. It is a powerful juggernaut,  difficult to stop, but I can never accept that it is based on a valid ethical philosophy of education. I can’t say for definite which of any - education at school, education in the family home or indeed no education at all - is the superior but I  have a personal view about how children learn best.

I trained as a teacher in the early 1960s when teacher training was influenced by educationalists such as the Forfar born Scottish educationalist A.S.Neill who suggested that if parents get the emotional upbringing right then intellectual development and learning will follow naturally. Neill also suggested that children learn best and become more imaginative and creative if they are helped to learn through their own natural curiosity and their own discoveries and not by having a narrow taught curriculum foisted upon them. The trouble with children educated in the AS Neill way  at Summerhill School is that they become inquisitive, they question things – particularly the status quo – and though society might have time for a few oddballs doing this, it can't tolerate the majority questioning things like the distribution of power and wealth. This is why teachers trained in the 1960s were labelled permissive and have been condemned, certainly in England, as being solely responsible for damned near destroying the education system and thank goodness that Mrs Thatcher came along and saved the nation from the fate people like me had in store for it.

A.S. Neill at Summerhill

     As I said, I haven't reached the stage where I think I've got a definite position on where and by whom children should be educated, but you will have guessed I do believe children learn better from a stable emotional base and okay, I'll admit – at the risk of being condemned for envy and not understanding just who it is that has created the quality of life I apparently enjoy – that I think children develop best not only when they are helped to learn through their own discoveries but also by being given a great deal of responsibility in choosing their own learning path.

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Two quotes from A.S. Neill

Kids weren’t designed to sit on their arses for 6 hours a day.

If someone from Summerhill became prime minister I would be deeply disappointed. I would feel we had failed.

In later correspondence with Neill’s daughter Zoë Neill Readhead. the current Principal of Summerhill, wrote saying Neill also used a different version of the quote. He replaced “Prime Minister” with “teacher.”  (I mention this along with apologies to my wife, my daughter, my daughter in law and my many friends who are teachers. I hope they know what I'm getting at).

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Wider reading

Freire, P (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed   New York : Herder and Herder

Neill, A.S. (1962) Summerhill   London :   Gollancz