'Do Quakers do revolutions?' Photo: lucidtech / flickr CC.
Education, values and change
Nick Tyldesley considers a book of essays written by Friends
The world of contemporary education is the focus of a new book written by a group of British Friends who share a concern for the future of education in Britain and view it from a distinctive, Quaker position. The book, Faith and Experience in Education: Essays from Quaker perspectives, edited by Don Rowe and Anne Watson, is a series of essays on values in education. It is written by a group of teachers and academics and reflects on how pedagogy, spirituality and Quaker testimonies can be seen as symbiotically connected. It is more a series of reflections than a practical manifesto for change. It is aimed at those with some background knowledge of the philosophy of education and who are interested in how values are taught. The authors are either Quakers or sympathetic to Quaker ideas.
Keir Mitchell’s ‘When school won’t do’ and Giles Barrow’s ‘Natality and Quaker education’ encapsulate the main arguments. Keir Mitchell is a primary school teacher who has got progressively disillusioned with the demands of SATs (national curriculum tests). He took the career gamble of working with home-schooled children and in a Forest School context. His philosophy is firmly rooted in Quaker faith & practice: listening respectfully to students, having the one rule – we love one another – being honest and admitting our mistakes. Outdoor education is deemed to be good.
Giles Barrow introduces the term ‘natality’ as a synonym for birth, becoming, renewal and new beginning, building on the work of Hannah Arendt, a pupil of Martin Heidegger’s. In her book The Human Condition Hannah Arendt writes about new birth (a neo-Christian frame of reference) as the only way human beings can have hope for the future, mirroring the Gospels in saying ‘s child has been born unto us’. Education is viewed, in this book, as being about working for change and betterment in peaceful coexistence with others. We need to learn to be creative and, in this regard, children set adults a splendid example. Education needs to be firmly rooted in contemplation and reflection and this comes from our experience of seeking the ‘Inner Light’ and that sense of oneness in a Meeting for Worship.
Unlocking potential
These essays criticise the notion of the teacher as a sole transmitter of knowledge. The teacher, rather, is there to assist in unlocking potential and encouraging curiosity. Unconditional love for children lies at the heart of relationships. Tim Small writes about ‘authentic enquiry’ in ‘Learning for emancipation’ and cites the example of a project in Greater Manchester based around a content-free exploration of ‘My World’, where pupils define the parameters. Pupils can diagnose their own learning needs through a spider chart that allows you to express positive and negative responses to such domains as hope, curiosity, belonging, sense making and collaboration.
Anne Watson uses maths as a case study to show that it can be taught around a child-centred approach to discussion, teamwork and problem solving and linked to other subjects across the curriculum. Whilst early Friends believed art, music and dancing to be dangerously papist, Janet Sturge argues that arts education should be central in schools. It helps develop a spatial visual intelligence, draws from the wonder of nature and assists in developing idiosyncratic visions.
There is nothing particularly original in these ideas. The idea of the ‘teacher as facilitator’ rather than expert has been around for the last fifty years and there are a number of innovators who have put such theories into practice: Montessori and Steiner schools, AS Neil lat Summerhill, and the Forest School Movement – to name but a few. No one is likely to disagree with the notions that schools should foster creative curiosity and that children should be happy. However, we do need to pose the question: is there something specifically Quaker in advocating a holistic approach to teaching and learning? This brings to the fore the uncomfortable issue of private Quaker schools. These pay some attention to fundamental Quaker values but also follow the national curriculum and they are schools where Quaker teachers and children are not in the majority.
These essays are not really manifestos for change and the current educational orthodoxy may easily dismiss them as being nice but too ethereal. There is no specific mention of how schools can respond more effectively to the needs of deprived children, threats from a material culture and the temptations of drugs. Yes, there is a need for a radical overhaul of our present pedagogic structure – but relying on a few enlightened private/free schools to implement the values expressed in this book is rather inadequate. Little is said about the impact of e-learning, global education, and the possible impact of Brexit on the curriculum. There is no discussion about the challenge of faith schools in terms of diversity and exclusivity.
Hard-pressed teachers – aware of Ofsted and a macho, data-driven culture – will still feel they have no choice but to work within the system as it is. Tinkering with personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, the odd personalised learning project, arguing for more space in the timetable for arts subjects in a world where core subjects rule supreme is not, I feel, going to change much. It will merely frustrate those teachers who want to take matters further.
Alliances and change
Do Quakers need to make bolder alliances with other campaigning groups and to engage in vigorous public debate? How do you challenge the ‘Michael Gove thinking’ still present in the Department of Education? Are nice books the best way? The subtext, I believe, behind these pages is: can an individual pedagogy ever be applied to a system and is the implication of this that only radical social change is the way forward?
Do Quakers do revolutions? We perhaps need to look more at the organisational and managerial dimension to curriculum change, rather than letting good ideas hang in mid-air, as they appear to do here. There does seem to be a lack of ‘Young Turks’ amongst the contributors. The impact of the book would seem, therefore, to be somewhat limited in getting these values into mainstream classrooms. Quaker study groups will find some nuggets for a discussion group, but that may just be a self-indulgent activity, with much wringing of hands about the wickedness of our current world. At least Quakers could do more than talk the talk and make their Quaker schools more Quakerly and perhaps set up free schools themselves. Perhaps this is too much to ask?
