Last week I went to the showing of the Teachers TV programme on the ten great books as voted by teachers. A.S. Neill's Summerhill came 9th and I had been asked to be interviewed by the programme. You can see it on their website. Afterwards I chatted to people from Teachers TV and wound them up about Summerhill - asking why no-one referenced Summerhill and similar schools, inferring that to do so would raise issues that questioned the frameworks and assumptions of present education debates.
This is one of the things that gets me angry, and indeed I wrote an opinion piece for TES, as usual I expect it not to be published. I write hurriedly and not well. But to justify to myself why I wrote it I paste it below and will forgo telling the story of how I and three students from Summerhill confronted the American UN delegate at the Special Session on the Child in New York, and the British delegation, and how we were detained for an hour by the police on entering the UN building...
Recently those centres of excellence in teaching ICT, the City Learning Centres, had a choice of two funding sources. I was talking to a director of a CLC in London. They told me that they had opted for the funding from the 14-19 sector rather than BECTA. Why? Partly because of the word innovation. They said that they went for the funding not linked to innovation. Not because they do not innovate, but because they wanted to continue good practice and learn from others.
There is a sense of a celebration and nurturing of innovation in education. There is a sense, even in the Building Schools for the Future, that there will be new processes and innovations in the design of schools. There are websites, organisations, consultations, and funding. Yet, like in the development of today's citizenship education, nothing is learnt from the past. We prefer to seek research and case studies from abroad or as limited success stories of the present. But, more importantly, we give respect and authority to modern proposed changes by claiming them as new, as innovative. This is important in changes proposed and discussed by government and their committees. Their innovations can be controlled, discussed and implemented within narrow boundaries of acceptable change.
Prof Bernard Crick in his writings about citizenship education made no reference to the great history of radical schools, like Summerhill, New Lanark and St Georges-in-the-East. These would raise issues of rights, of the role of children in controlling their education, of the importance of play, of restorative justice, of emotional learning, of co-operative schools, of democratic participation. Issues raised through an example from the beginning of the 1800's, a post-war inner city state school, and one that is still running after 87 years.
Hold on you will say, these are all part of the Government's education agenda. Yet each is compartmentalised, each is fitted into their own section of the innovation agenda, without threatening to question the values and assumptions of our schools. Innovation is the only way that this threat can be reduced, that we can appear to talk about practicalities and share best practice without exploring the foundations of what we are doing.
I was on a panel at the Institute of Education seminar for 14-19 delivery on Enterprise. I stated the argument that enterprise allowed a radical space for individual expression, decision-making and action. It was a space for children's rights. Afterwards the panelists who were all talking within the framework of innovation, curriculum and exams, told me that they actually agreed with me. One said that he had wanted to say exactly what I had said. Yet they had not.
At another seminar I was on a panel with Heath Monk, Deputy Schools Commissioner; Gary Sturgess, Executive Director, Serco Institute, and Rick Williams, CEO, New Model Schools Ltd discussing social enterprise and schools. I argued that Summerhill and St Georges were examples of social enterprise in schools. That the debate was not one of the privatising of schools but about the way they made decisions as communities or organisations. Using the language of business, the stakeholders, the children and staff, should have a say in the management of their schools. The report of this seminar actually names me as a participant and references Summerhill but totally edits out my argument.
Ed Balls, is promoting Co-operative Schools, he has written a forward for a book on the issue by the Co-op College and Co-op Party. Yet will they reference Summerhill and St Georges as co-operative schools, as schools in which decisions were or are made by children and adults together.
The case studies from the successful radical schools of the past have too long been ignored. We need our teachers and children to explore them and ask themselves what if..? We must not let innovation stifle our thoughts and plans for the future.
What motivated Jon East, the Head of Drama at Children's BBC, to make the recent drama 'Summerhill', was the need for our children to learn from such controversial and problematic schools.
"An awful lot of drama is set in schools - and yet each series only reinforces the dominant paradigm," he says. "What we're trying to say in this drama is that there could just be another way of doing things."
Teachers and their students can find out more by attending a free day conference on Co-operative Schools, with students and teachers from St Georges and Summerhill running workshops. It is to be held on Monday 25th February at the House of Commons from 10am and moves to London's City Hall at 1pm. Find out more by visiting www.citizenship-pieces.org.uk
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