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.
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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.

The education sector is awash with new approaches to teaching, as well as ways to engage children with digital technologies and media.  One thing it doesn’t do very successfully however is map children’s education against the way brains develop and learn. As neuroscience gains more traction, it is becoming clear that our educational system may not be fit for purpose.
 
Sarah-Jane Blakemore, a professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, recently pointed out that it’s only in the last few years that we have learned much about adolescent brain development. This is leading a movement in which a new approach to education is being called for. Yet it’s not just adolescents who can benefit from a neuroscientific approach to education, it matters for younger children too.
 
One of the most important things to know from a neuroscientific perspective is that the brain is ‘plastic’ and so there is no such thing as normal or typical. While brain development is influenced by genetics and all brains have structural similarities, every single thought, emotion, behaviour and interaction changes the brain. As Jenni Newcombe, an experienced SENCo, teacher and curriculum designer with a masters in educational neuroscience, says, “Schools decide what’s typical, brains don’t.”
 
In discussion of the benefits and risks of separating children into ability streams, that’s worth remembering. Schools put limits and parameters around what needs to be learned at both extremes, and its usually too much or too little. Children learn at different speeds and in different ways. One of the great myths is that people have different learning styles and if they are taught the right way (such as aurally, visually, mechanically), they will learn better. The reality is that children may have learning preferences but, to a certain extent, it doesn’t really matter how content is delivered, it can be learned.
 
The real question then seems to be why are we teaching children content rather than teaching them how to learn. The Finnish education system, which is considered to be the best in the world, focuses on developing and applying skills across the curriculum rather than on learning content. In a world where much analytical work will soon be delivered by computers, isn’t it more important that we equip the next generation with the skills to learn new things in new ways?
 
Examinations are being introduced at ever earlier ages and while they are supposed to be ‘low stakes’ the amount of stress experienced by many children taking these tests is enormous. While the school may make clear that the tests will not affect the children’s future, that doesn’t prevent children’s concerns about competition, failure, letting down parents and all sorts of negative thinking. According to Newcombe, exams themselves fail because they measure the child’s value (they rate how ‘good’ they are) rather than assessing their skills and knowledge effectively. Instead, testing should only be used, at least until exiting school, to assess for further learning—to identify the gaps, ideally.
 
If the outcome of any test is expected to be a measure of the child, surely that’s a failure in our thinking. How can the factual recollection of content in an examination environment help any child in preparing for the new work and home paradigms of a digital society?
 
If they have the learning skills they can learn the content anywhere. In the brain activation is greater if children have done something they have learned from, not when they know something. As Newcombe says, “There is no benefit in the brain to knowing, the benefit comes from learning and the use of that learning in doing something new.”

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.
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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.