While the teaching of politics has frequently been seen as an esoteric subject, in today’s world it’s increasingly important that children are taught to understand the frameworks that control their lives and how their society implements its choices. 
 
Many of today’s big stories are fundamentally driven by politics, whether it’s the election of Trump, the schism in the UK over BREXIT, the use of Facebook data to influence voters, or trying to uncover whether the poisonings in Salisbury were a Russian attack or a means to control Russian expats in the UK.
 
My teachers always told me to follow the money and the power – one of the questions we all need to ask is whose interests are being served. In a world where our data is exchanged for cash, and that data is used to influence the way in which we think, children need to be armed with the tools to ask the right questions.
 
As Professor David Runciman at Trinity Hall, author of How Democracy Ends says,  ‘today we’re seeing the failures of the democratic process in the rise of racist rhetoric in politics, the spread of conspiracy theories and the growing deep distrust of mainstream institutions.’  
He looks at lessons from history to explore how democracies fail but seems convinced that democracies that fail this century will fail in new ways, driven by the forces of technological progress – such as the rise of intelligent machines - and growing social divisions.
 
Populism is currently right wing but it could just as easily swing left as democracy itself is being pulled apart by digital technology. Democracy delivers two critical things: social benefits (such as prosperity and progress) and human dignity (the right to express oneself and be heard) Digital technology enhances these two things but separates them and thi sis the issue.
 
Given how technology has invaded so much of our lives, we need to introduce our children to new ways of interrogating what they’re told, the information bubbles in which they live and an understanding of how to think for themselves. The internet of things (IoT) is being rolled out everywhere but little thought seems to have gone into its impact on children. It’s not just a question of security and privacy in the devices they use, but also how technology will influence and shape their social, economic and political environment.
 
Everyone has their own biases and blind spots, whether it’s a developer unaware of how a new product or service might be exploited or an individual judging others for the way they think or behave. Runciman argues that while Facebook may be a service that connects people, it is subject to abuse. It appears to be a platform where no-one, inside or outside politics, understands how to manage the social impact or bring it under political control.
​
In the last couple of years the airwaves have been full of concern about the rise of populism, the dumbing down of debate. Perhaps what we should actually be focused on is how our political systems could be transformed to keep up with the dramatic changes that technology is driving within human society. It’s possible that technology itself might help to shore up democracy and find new ways to integrate informed decision making for social benefit – however this can’t, and won’t, happen on its own.

Society itself needs to understand more about political systems, about the history of why countries behave in certain ways under certain pressures. We need to understand more about human geography, cultural psychology and the ways in which we might respond to new technologies. That means that we need to learn more than history or geography, we need to teach politics, at least the frameworks and what they are intended to achieve.  

That education needs to start as soon as possible – why can’t KS1 and KS2 history include modern geopolitics instead of just the Vikings and the Egyptians? If we hope to create citizens that can manage the ever increasing rate of technological change and the impacts that this has on human behaviour, we’re going to have to look at education through a new lens. 

The original version of this article appeared in Education Today.

There has been a resurgence of interest in ways of helping children deal with mental health issues at school, and rightly so. For many the stresses and strains, whether educational, social or physical, can be overwhelming.  In many ways, we expect children to deal with these stresses as a matter of course, and don’t always support them in healthy mental development.
 
In the wider world there is a new awareness of mindfulness as a means of focusing on the positive. The latest incarnation is a recognition of the importance of resilience as a route to happiness, a step beyond what some see as the ego-based annexation of spiritual mindfulness.
 
Mindfulness pioneer Rick Hanson, has written a new book, “Resilient", about the need to develop “12 fundamental inner strengths’ if we are to become more robust. These include compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration and generosity. The list seems self-evidently helpful but how to develop such skills in a chaotic and ever-changing school environment?
 
What’s intriguing is this development in conjunction with the way the world is changing around us. We need to build a more resilient world to adapt to ecosystem change and we need to build a more resilient society to manage the changes coming forced by increasing automation and inequity, which are likely to challenge the business, working and living models we’re used to living within today.
 
A number of programmes have sprung up which focus on helping children develop their own resilience. What is usually meant by this is learning to work as a team and rely on others, and learning not to give up when something ‘doesn’t work’ or doesn’t go as planned. It’s about teaching problem -solving in a fun way to ensure that children learn that trial and error includes error.

That’s to be lauded, as are the practitioners who enable children to experience these approaches. What matters in the wider educational system, however, is the importance of embedding these values within the educational system every day. In many ways it is arguable that developing student’s skills and ability to respond positively to challenges and setbacks is a key goal of education.  That means it teaches that ‘error’ or being wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing, rather it’s a milestone on the road to learning something new. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” said Winston Churchill.

Building individual resilience, the belief that they can overcome, results in students being open to learning. Critique becomes no longer personal, but rather another part of the learning journey. The development of the idea that learning is a pursuit, it’s something to experience not be given, helps to develop motivation and reward effort. And when the self-help books are arguing that this is the way forward, it’s worth considering whether your school is encouraging children to learn in the most effective way, and whether scores and percentages of correct answers is giving the most helpful message.

This column first appeared in the April issue of Education Today.
 

As the information revolution continues there is increasing concern that the current approach to education is no longer fit for purpose. At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba warned that the knowledge-based (fact focused) approach to education was out of date, would “fail our kids’ who will never be able to compete with computers.

Ma recommends that children are taught skills such as independent thinking, values and team work. The challenge remains how such approaches can be deployed across the educational system without increasing the burden on teachers. Many teachers already feel underpaid and under-appreciated, so the addition of currently extra curricula approaches may seem onerous.

Perhaps what we need to see is a new approach to teaching today, less focused on drilling in the right answers and more on understanding the importance of questioning, flexibility of thought and collaboration. This moves the focus onto adapting and improving thinking and learning which is not just an important skill for pupils, but teachers as well. 

One of the things that Professor Alex Moore points out in his book The Good Teacher, is that it’s difficult to be specific about what makes a good teacher because that oversimplifies what are an incredibly complex mixture of issues and skills. And it’s this recognition of complexity as a good thing that we need to bring back to the forefront of education.

The issue of social media and digital literacy has dominated many recent discussions, with a focus on teaching children to manage their involvement in such environments. Isn’t it more important to teach children the more fundamental skill of assessing this information?  Giving pupils the ability to be comfortable with complexity, understand how to think about difficult questions and contextualise them, helps them deal better with the ‘real world’.

Such an approach also provides the framework on which children can build the ability to, if not control the environment around them, gain agency, resilience and social skills. This can build up children’s ability to work creatively and collaboratively, developing the intellectual humility to understand that no one needs to “be right”. Given the nature of the modern world, these are essential life skills.

Deborah Brentzman talks about teaching being a process of becoming and we need to see education as a sector where teachers and students are always in the process of becoming. And part of this is the recognition, for both teachers and students, that they are not working alone. Recognition of the negative impact of feeling isolated is growing for pupils but teachers need to build their networks as well.

Teachers are increasingly nervous about sharing concerns, with potential career opportunities and the possibly negative impact of sharing a problem with colleagues. Given the ‘messy complexity of the classroom’ perhaps it’s time that we looked at the ‘messy complexity’ of teaching and find ways to bring teachers together to explore and grow, away from the prescriptive nature of achieving standardised attainment tests for children.

Today’s educational culture is focused on outcomes rather than instilling a sense of wonder and opportunity, which can have a negative effect on pupils and teachers. We encourage teachers and pupils not to succumb to the apparent strictures of the current curriculum but to suffuse every lesson with discussion, teamwork, creativity and choice.
​
It’s famously been said that if you get used to conformity, your ability to think autonomously and relate to others will be seriously limited. Perhaps if we can find a way to use what’s messy, we can put collaboration, critical thinking and creativity back at the heart of education.
 

Engaging children with their education is an important part of the learning process but for many the constant pressure and focus on grades can create a barrier to learning, instilling a fear of failure rather than a love of learning.
 
While experienced and engaged learners may well enjoy school, there are many who feel that education is something being done to them, and don’t always get why it matters or what their role in the process should or could be. A sense of agency is critical for adults to be happy in their work lives, so why should it be any different for children? Making them feel as if they are part of this process, ensuring ongoing dialogue, should be an integral part of the educational system. One way in which this can be achieved is through the effective use of feedback.
 
Ruth Dann’s latest book, ‘Developing Feedback for Pupil Learning: Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Schools’ is a research based examination of how to address a pupil’s learning gap – the gap between the knowledge and skills they have today and what they need to do now and next – within the context of feedback. It explores what works, what doesn’t work, for whom and why.
 
Dann says that feedback is a communicative tool which teachers use to convey what has been achieved and what needs to be done next for learning to progress. It seeks to close a gap between learning (now) and learning (next). Often it is handled in a fairly technical way by teachers, who assume that pupils will understand the feedback messages in the way that the teachers intended. In reality this is often not the case.
 
In the UK, targets are given (sometimes with pupil input), and there seems to be a prevailing assumption that teachers can exactly frame what pupils will learn by stating  desired outcomes more clearly and more often. However, it is evident from the government’s own statistics that the performance of pupils in England has not improved in relation to other countries and certain groups of children repeatedly underperform. Part of the answer embedded in the recent government White Paper (2016) is to strive to find out the answer to ‘what works’.
 
Ruth Dann says, “Feedback can be seen as a two way process in which the teacher and learner can better  understand each other’s priorities and begin to negotiate ways to progress. To some extent it is relational rather than technical. Any feedback designed to shape learning must be acted upon by the learners and made their own.  It becomes personal and internal at the point of learning.  Therefore feedback, even if focused on curriculum content must be seen by pupils as having relevance and meaning for them.”
 
She argues that greater attention needs to be given in schools to helping pupils understand why aspects of their future learning is important. Dann suggests they need to envisage themselves as learners with new and increasing knowledge. Encouraging pupils to share their new learning with pupils in lower year groups can potentially have a role here. It can act as revision and consolidation for older pupils but can also provide younger pupils insight into the kind of learners they might wish to be.

In school settings there must be some way in which feedback can be regarded not as a fixed coded message for pupils to act on, but part of a relationship between teachers and learners which has meaning for both. How this might be achieved, relies on teachers and pupil s having trust between each other and the possibility for dialogue about teaching and learning within the school. If you’re interested in developing that process within your school, then this book is a great place to start.
 
If you or your school are interested in working with the Learn2Think Foundation on developing its Questioning Curriculum – a national curriculum based programme to encourage independent thinking, collaborative action and creative engagement – drop us a line at learn2thinkfoundation@gmail.com or call 07958 923 182.

This article first appeared in Education Today Magazine.