Category: Traditionalists

#leftytrad – a contradiction in terms?

I’ve recently come across Adam Boxer’s blog post on being a ‘lefty’ in politics and a ‘trad’ in teaching. He complains that there is a “consistent and widespread conflation of traditional education with right wing politics” – a conflation that is not warranted. Indeed, Boxer stresses that he is a traditional teacher precisely because he is left-wing:

I believe that everyone, regardless of their background, should be able to access society at any level. I believe that a highly effective way to achieve that is by transmitting the cultural goods of society; its finest discourse and mores. I also believe that our cultural and intellectual goods are the right of all citizens, whatever their backgrounds.

Boxer goes on to claim that politics and teaching methods are not related. His left-wing views, he argues, have not changed since employing progressive approaches as a lefty NQT. However, he has come to the realisation that the best way to educate for social equality – i.e. “level the field and to pass on society’s goods” – is to teach as a traditionalist. The assertion that traditional teaching methods and left-wing views are compatible deserves scrutiny.

Boxer’s use of progressive and then traditional methods reminds me of the most advanced left-wing government in history. The Russian Revolution unleashed a period of  unparalleled experimentation and creativity, promoting progressive education in an attempt to raise the cultural level of the population. It was a time of hope in the capacity of humans to improve themselves and build a better society. The aim of education was to inculcate a sense of agency in students so they could play an active role in the new developments. That all changed with the rise of Stalin. He viewed education as a means of achieving popular compliance for his brutal five-year plans. To achieve that compliance he returned schools to the traditional methods of the repressive Tsarist regime.

Both the revolutionaries of the new Soviet state and the bureaucrats of Stalin’s regime would have considered themselves left-wing. However, they had different aims for education. The progressives wanted to harness the creative agency of the population to participate in building a new society; the traditionalists wanted to force the population to submit to hardship and misery. The label ‘left-wing’ is, therefore, misleading. It is the aim of education that is at the heart of the debate between progressives and traditionalists.

Let’s turn then to Boxer’s aim. Maybe it is acceptable for traditional teaching to reinforce messages of compliance, teacher authority and student passivity if ‘disadvantaged’ students from ‘poorer’ backgrounds gain, as Boxer puts it, access to society at any level.

To achieve that access, Boxer argues that teachers have to transmit the finest cultural goods of society. The problem with this formulation is that it requires the ‘disadvantaged’ to deny their own culture because, as Marx and Engels said in The German Ideology, ‘finest’ is defined by the rulers of society:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

In calling for the assimilation of all children into the dominant culture, Boxer is, in reality, advocating the abandonment of any alternative culture. Working class children must disregard their forebears’ history of struggle; migrants must disavow their parents’ cultural heritage. This makes Boxer’s prescription wholly undemocratic. 

Not only can we say that traditionalist teaching methods force students to comply, but we can also say that traditionalists aim for compliance with the dominant culture of the rich and powerful. In my view, the traditionalists’ approach and aim are the antithesis of what the left should stand for. 

Progressive educators engage with students’ experiences and cultures as well as teaching students about the “intellectual goods” of the dominant culture. Such an approach is left-wing because it aims for a society in which the ‘disadvantaged’ have agency and in which all cultures are acknowledged and valued.

Prejudice upon disdain: a new low for traditionalists

There’s nothing new about the traditionalists’ disdain for progressive ideas on social media. They attempt to shame anyone who questions the traditional model, ganging up on progressive teachers without feeling the need to justify their moribund ideas. Developing a mob mentality is a good way for them to feel safe in numbers.

However, this recent tweet from Tom Bennett (adviser to the UK government) reached a new low point. Continue reading “Prejudice upon disdain: a new low for traditionalists”

Why do progressive educators deny being progressive?

Progressive educators face regular attacks on social media. Comments are often aggressive and malicious, with traditionalists playing to the mob mentality of their followers by jeering at progressive ideas. This blog has documented the caricatures with which traditionalists hope to score cheap points in on-line ‘debate’. We expect nothing less. Traditionalists can only be defensive about regurgitating their sterile, discredited and moribund prescriptions for education.

What is more puzzling is the way progressives respond to the attacks by denying they are progressive. In an exchange on twitter, a seeming progressive (who uses the handle @imagineinquiry) rejected the term. He was answering a traditionalist’s question that contained, we note, a typical personal provocation.

The argument runs as follows: The traditionalists have taken over and defined the term ‘progressive’. They construct a straw man out of it for their own purposes. Consequently, the term has been debased and serves now only as a term of abuse. If we associate ourselves with the term, we are accepting, and even condoning, their definition.

In the current educational climate in the UK, it is true that there are risks to calling yourself ‘progressive’. This blog continues to remain anonymous because standing against the reactionary government and, in particular, the arch-traditionalist Schools Minister can be dangerous. A former Secretary of State for Education, for example, criticised the resources a history teacher had posted on-line. Progressive teachers, as state employees, might come under pressure to moderate their views (at least in the classroom and on public blogs) and educational consultants face losing contracts with state schools. In such circumstances, the easiest approach is to fold and deny being progressive.

However, denial means accepting defeat in the long-running debate about educational ideas. That the debate has endured for over 120 years – since Dewey began to define modern progressivism in the 1890s – is testament to the ground-breaking work of progressive educationalists (such as those to which this blog is dedicated). Just because there is currently a noisy minority of traditionalists emboldened by government patronage does not mean we should deny our heritage.

Rather than dissociate ourselves from the rich tradition of progressivism, we should be studying our roots and re-evaluating our mission. We should appraise what ‘progressive’ has meant in different times and build upon that understanding to develop a conception of the term relevant for our context. Strengthened by our knowledge of the genesis of progressive ideas in education, we can enter contemporary discussions by proudly declaring ourselves to be PROGRESSIVE.

Back to front: the problem of research for classroom teachers

Over recent years teachers have been coming under increasing pressure to incorporate research findings in their classroom practice. The Schools Minister takes every opportunity to promote the research of his favourite academics who draw on cognitive science and advocate direct instruction. A slew of simplistic manuals and blogs written by his acolytes purport to help overworked teachers digest the ‘evidence’ in bite sizes.

However, in this rush to popularise the traditionalists’ focus on curriculum content and teacher talk, the teaching profession is in danger of approaching educational research and the aims of education back to front.

The traditionalists are very good at presenting research as neutral (or, maybe, they are just naive). Findings are considered unimpeachable, particularly if they are derived from randomised controlled trials, and are seen as providing a ready-made prescription for effective teaching. Teachers are encouraged to become ever-more knowledgeable in their subject, use prescriptive lesson formats and implement zero-tolerance behaviour approaches.

Such a disingenuous approach ignores any question about the aims of education. Before realising it, the teacher’s aim has become to make students comply – comply by ‘tracking’ the teacher while she is disseminating knowledge, comply by following the teacher’s script for the lesson and comply by following draconian rules. Research acts as a Trojan horse for the very unpleasant aim of forced compliance.

Of course, this is consistent with our reactionary government’s own aim for education. Ministers want us to educate a servile population that questions neither the huge differences in wealth distribution nor the daily social injustices faced by the ‘disadvantaged’ of our society. This is a difficult message to sell because a majority of teachers enter the profession with ideals of equality and democracy. Hence, government ministers rely on others (most of whom have left the classroom) to push traditionalist practices wrapped up as research.

In letting research (or, at least, a kind of bastardised set of findings stripped of all nuance and context) determine our aims, teachers have got research and aims back to front. We should set out our aims and then seek the research that offers the best way to achieve them. Beware the aim of forced compliance masquerading as ‘research-based evidence’.