A hat tip this week to Dr Christopher Hudson for this LinkedIn post and also to my dear friend Tracey Ezard for pointing me towards it.
The key message of this blog is that you should never forget that your school is part of a nation. Even more so, that your school is building the people of that nation. Your right, which is probably much more a responsibility, to push back on draconian and outdated approaches to student behaviour challenges is more important that you think.
The UK has spent at least a decade following the advice of unqualified pundits and pollies who’ve sneered at relevant social psychology and rigorous brain science in preference for peddling a more populist agenda.
It’s been an easy sell. All that’s required is to popularise the idea that kids, especially challenged kids, are inherently awful. Then you can proselytise the idea that they need less tolerance (and support for their schools) than they need a good boot up the backside.
And hey presto, you’ve got a willing media cheerleading the notion that “Kids are out of control and these woke teachers are to blame.”
The UK result of falling for that claptrap is an entire system suspending and excluding hundreds of thousands more young people than ever before. These kids become adults who view their schools as enemies for casting them out. And then they have kids too.
When this policy-driven phenomenon is exaggerated further for males, for kids with disabilities and for poor kids it could be argued that we’re all complicit in an education system becoming increasingly cruel to the kids who need us the most.
I’m not OK with that.
I’ll be thinking this week about what my work at Real Schools, is really for. Are we a tool for every Australian kid getting a push in the direction of a better future, which should surely be the simple aim of any nation’s education system?
And is that tool sharp enough? Is it being used effectively to cut through the populist bullshit that threatens to send us down the UK’s path if we don’t speak loudly about how such agendas harm kids and blame teachers?
That might be worth a chat and a think in your staffroom too.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. You need (and deserve) a model to address student behaviour that reflects your reality and matches your purpose. In my free webinar on the Truth about Student Behaviour, we’ll look at the research and find out what the gurus and know-it-alls aren’t telling you about this critical challenge, and together, we’ll develop a plan.
The Truth about Student Behaviour Webinar
Tuesday 3 September 2024
4.00pm AEST
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