If You Read One Book This Year...

Book Review: The Narcissism Epidemic

Why do young people post ever-increasingly risqué pictures of themselves on social networking sites? Why have New York law firms had to hire ‘Praise Consultants’? (Yes, really). Why are young people behaving as if success is their entitlement? Why do people expect an intellectual sugar-rush from education, rather than the solid meal it takes a long time to digest?

If you have ever wanted to know the answers to any of these questions – and even if you haven’t – The Narcissism Epidemic is the book for you. Written by two American Professors of Psychology, it is a forensic examination of the way in which American culture has taken a wrong turn, giving rise to entitlement, a chronic lack of fulfilment, breakdown in social capital and in communities, and relationship breakdown rates which are depressing.

However, the book, as a whole, is not depressing. Although the authors do not (despite trying) conclude that a natural cycle will restore a sense of balance, they do come up with some suggestions for limiting the spread of the epidemic. But note that before they do this, they do demonstrate that the epidemic really is turning into a pandemic, and they chart the rise of narcissism even in societies with best religious or cultural defences against it.

The book does give some helpful pointers in the closing chapters. Those in educational leadership should read it. Avoid any sense that children are special or unique specimens – it is our similarities which psychologically reduce conflict. Avoid self admiration at all costs – humility, and belonging to groups, is much healthier. Avoid celebrity culture – especially the sort of vacuous fame-for-fame’s-sake that typifies reality TV. Avoid using the internet for self-promotion, for example by blogging for attention (I’ll think about that one!). And avoid debt – which lends itself to a worldview in which we all deserve the luxuries we can’t afford (‘...yet...’ we tell ourselves), on a personal level, and on a national level.

Instead, give, save, push oneself, regard others as being equally capable, expect success only as the result of hard work.  If that sounds old-fashioned, it might just be because you heard it from your parents – the so-called Silent Generation – the biggest effect on whom was the Great Depression, with the consequent expectation that life would be hard. This, of course, is the very opposite of entitlement. We could be undergoing just the economic process most likely to help.

Oh, and finally – if you are reading this because you are a concerned parent: don’t make your child the centre of the family; don’t obsess about parenting; don’t spend your free time trying to give your child the very, very, very best start in life. Because all this, of course, makes children think they are entitled to that kind of attention, and advantage, for the rest of their lives. And that is narcissism...

The Narcissism Epidemic, by Twenge and Campbell, published by SimonandSchuster.com $15.99. Worth every cent.

On AmazonUK,  it’s £9.50: http://is.gd/dq4pPw

Developing Resilience

I vividly remember being given charge of a team to take around an assault course when I was in Y12 at school. The first challenge was a small lake over which ran a taut wire. The team had a pulley block, ropes and a log and we were to take the team over on it. Unfortunately in our hurry, my team ended up with all the equipment and all but two of us over the lake, and two team members left behind. Forty or so pupils were observing, laughing, and I was solely in charge. It was a painful lesson in leadership.

I took a moment. There seemed to be three alternatives: misery – weeping or feeling sorry for myself; walking out of the problem; or thinking and acting around the problem. Thankfully, I chose the last of these.

Each time we make a choice, we create a pathway through our brain – repeated pathways create habits. This was a clear, memorable choice: difficulty could have elicited self-pity, avoidance (giving up) or strategy and action. Almost every month since, I have faced another ‘assault-course’ moment in my life – some difficulty which has brought the same three choices, and each time I have chosen the last, it has become more of a habit. On many occasions, I have seen the fresh crisis as a repeat of the assault-course experience, and replayed the choices available on that occasion, looking for the equivalents in the present.

Of course, I haven’t always chosen the last of the choices above, but the occasions when I have given up, or ducked out of difficulties are not the sort of thing I plan to write about in public. I am nevertheless convinced that our reactions to these events become habits more quickly than we realise – and start to form an intrinsic part of what we take to be character.

I was recently told that there is no word in one European language for ‘challenge’, only ‘difficulty’. There are many cultural aspects to language, and perhaps the English word challenge encapsulates a cultural determination to use difficult events to sharpen our capabilities, to grow as people. But all people face the same three opportunities when they face challenges or difficulties.

And so, in an assembly today, I invited our pupils to consider whether they had faced difficulties, or challenges, during this term. Which of the three responses, I asked them, had they employed this term? Self-pity, avoidance, or thoughtful action? Which of these three responses was being ‘inked in’ as their habitual response this term?

As Disraeli is reputed to have said: “There is no teacher like adversity”. Challenge, and the right response, develops resilience.

In Defence of Nick Clegg

So, Nick Clegg is a hypocrite, according to the British press (for one example, see http://is.gd/kq5EbR). Or, is he?

I think it is reasonable to assume that Mr and Mrs Clegg have different views on many things. For a start Mrs Clegg is a Catholic; Mr Clegg is the first mainstream political party leader to declare himself an atheist. I am guessing when England play Spain at football there is some good-natured marital rivalry about the result. (Mrs Clegg would not be well advised to change her allegiance on this particular matter). And so it seems to me quite possibly that the parents disagree on the appropriate direction of education for their children.

Of course, it might have been possible for the children’s father to demand that, as the children’s father, he has a patriarchal right to have the casting vote, and therefore he could have demanded that he had his own way. But we know that this didn’t happen. Is it reasonable to assume that it didn’t happen because Mr Clegg secretly wanted to send his children to the London Oratory. No. Assumptions about motives are not reasonable. And this news story is based entirely on assumptions about his motives.

And that, of course, is where this news story runs smack into another one, involving Lord Rennard. The LibDem media machine could have come out and said that the Cleggs disagreed, but Mr deferred to Mrs, because actually he doesn’t believe in a patriarchal society. The fact that they haven’t doesn’t make it less likely: it just suggests that some conversations between a husband and wife might actually be private.

My guess is that there was a protracted debate about the children’s schooling in the Clegg household, and Mr Clegg lost the debate. This doesn’t even suggest, given his wife’s profession, that he is a bad debater. It suggests that he knows that a family runs best when no member of it stands on their principles to the exclusion of everyone else’s view. I suspect he’s deeply uncomfortable about the school-destination of his child, and I suspect he is taking the hits for this because he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to be broadcasting private, familial discussions and decision-making. I suspect that Mr Clegg’s respect for women starts with respect for his wife’s views, and a willingness to defer to them sometimes.

And although I don’t normally come out on his side, I applaud him in this case.

Celebrating World Book Day

So, how to celebrate World Book Day? How about – for the simple fun of it – selecting one book published in each decade since 1880. (Why 1880? It got harder before that to know which decade a book was published in). The list below is not intended to be the best book in each decade – much too controversial – but just a spontaneous choice off my bookshelves. It’s necessarily eclectic, and I realise it could be contentious, but here goes anyway:

1880s: It’s tight, but The Woodlanders (1887) [Thomas Hardy] gets my vote. Actually I prefer it to Tess.

1890s: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) [Hardy again]

1900s: The Hound of the Baskervilles () [Conan Doyle] – Conan Doyle had to get in there somewhere.

1910s: Mr Standfast (1919) [John Buchan] is my favourite of the Richard Hannay series, and I have always thought these to be classics of the time.

1920s: A Passage to India (1924 [EM Forster])  – mysterious and charming: a beguiling book even when I read it as a 17 year old.

1930s: The General Theory (1936) [JM Keynes] – so good that as an undergraduate economist, I went out to buy it because I wanted to own it. Well written, revolutionary, brilliant.

1940s: 19 Stories (1947) [Graham Greene] The best set of short stories I have ever read – later published as 21 stories, but that would put it in competition with the next decade.

1950s: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1950) [CS Lewis]. A rich decade for books – this choice prevented my choosing a John Wyndham, which was painful, but what a classic.

1960s: Dead Cert (1962) [Dick Francis]. Ok, so it’s not a classic, but picked for the contribution to railway journey reading that he made: clever plotting, gripping and interesting.

1970s: The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (1979) [Douglas Adams]. So different at the time that it was intoxicating – a marvellous book.

1980s: The Remains of The Day (1989) [Kazuo Ishiguro]. Marvellously evocative!

1990s: Possession (1990) [AS Byatt]. A huge work of fiction – the greatest suspension of disbelief: I simply couldn’t believe all that poetry was part of the fiction.

2000s: Bleachers (2004) [John Grisham]. A novella which is so much better than Grisham’s reputation.

2010s: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) [Kahneman]. Guaranteed to change the way you see the world – brilliantly light, wonderfully profound.

Book Review - Bad Education

‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’. Is this the proverb that inspired Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in the Guardian? (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience and http://www.badscience.net/ ). That column, the book and the blog of the same name inspired the writers of Bad Education (edited by Philip Adey and Justin Dillon, published by McGraw-Hill) to provide a survey of what research studies actually say about education debates.

And the result is excellent. I hope other readers experience some blushing moments when they see that some of the myths debunked are theories that they have explained patiently to parents or colleagues (as I did, and have); myths which are exposed either as merely urban myths, or (no better?) as mistaken conclusions of too little evidence in the early evolution of the understanding of some areas of education.

The authors, mindful of their task, are careful to distinguish between the conclusions they can draw, and areas of mystery. There are some calls for more careful research, too. But the conclusions of Dylan Willam – the PISA studies suggest that teaching is slightly less good in independent schools on average than in state schools (p12), despite attainment being much higher in private schools – is an early indication that there are some surprises to come.

While the authors fall very occasionally victim to political correctness – the chapter on grouping by ability by Ed Baines suggests that, since it is disadvantageous for the least able it should be avoided, with no interest in any kind of Pareto optimality – the result as a book is hugely satisfying. Nowhere was this more apparent for me than the debunking of some modern variations of phrenology evident in some educational theory – particularly appeals to left brain/right brain stereotyping.

The last chapter of all is on dyslexia, and although a balanced, evidence-based approach is sought, the conclusions are highly controversial. It is hard to believe that the reason for leaving this topic until the end is anything other than the fear that, were it first, the book would appear to be living up to its title in a more literal sense to that intended.

On balance, I urge educators – Headteachers, curriculum directors and others – to read the book. For those short of time, I would recommend starting with chapters 12-14, which I found most stimulating. The book is a worthy project, and if that sounds as if I think it was better in conception and in realisation, then I have not communicated as well as the book does.

It’s bold, thought-provoking, instructive and – thanks to the word limits on the chapters that some authors lightly chide the editor for – surprisingly readable. Although even the paperback is over £20, it is worth it. I advise against the Kindle edition – you’ll want to lend it to others when you’ve read it!

What IS Half Term For?

Half term is a mysterious thing: all schools have one, yet I have never heard anyone explain what it is for. In such circumstances, it is more than likely that misconceptions have grown up, and even that half term is one of those accidents of history that we would use differently if we invented it now, if indeed we would do so at all.

There seem to me – and this is a personal view, after all – that there are three things that half term is definitely for, and three things which half term is sometimes seen to be, implicitly or explicitly, which it is not.

First, half term is a part of the rhythm of learning: activity followed by reflection. Schools embed into their routines the essential nature of improving cognition by term times and holidays. We could, after all, have 48 weeks of 4 days of school each year; it might even be easier for parents to organise childcare that way. The remaining weeks – two at Christmas and two in the summer, would, if such a pattern were adopted, be like the factory shutdown periods that provide the only holidays for many (still). The activity of term followed by the reflection of the holidays, however, builds in to the cycle of learning cognition, followed by metacognition. While this pair of activities is vital, and this is widely known, the structuring and highlighting of metacognitive opportunities (the reason why Oxford and Cambridge have such long holidays) is an opportunity most schools simply allow to pass by.

Secondly, half term is a chance the settling and sorting of memories and skills. It is a chance for mental pruning to take place, for a fresh start to come more often and for a student to lay down their failures and have a sense of perspective renewed as they return to school.

Thirdly, half term provides a brief interlude in the hurly-burly of term time busyness for students to extend or enrich studies with self directed work. Every child should make sure that, during a half term, they:

•  read a book;
• read a newspaper;
• listen to a whole news bulletin;
• spend half an hour thinking about one of their school topics – not doing anything, but thinking.

Half term is NOT, on the other hand, a period of time in which pupils can complete huge quantities of homework – it is not there primarily as a rest time for teachers, but for pupils. (It is the self-directed bit of self-directed work which is valuable). It is not appropriate, in my view, to set more than two evenings’ worth of homework during a week's half term. Nor is half term the right time for pupils to be doing coursework, or even preparatory reading – that makes it term time, and it isn’t. It's a rest.

Half term is not a chance for parents to whisk their children half a dozen time zones around the world, arriving back as their children return to school, with their minds still so jet-lagged they don’t know whether it’s time for breakfast or tea. When children return to school more tired than they left it, half term hasn’t fulfilled its role as rest.

Half term is not an interlude in which parents should feel bound to organise their own educational boot camp, with tutors, worthy visits to worthy museums, and a relentless programme of structured activity. Half term is a rest!

Society has some strange ideas – for some reason it is necessary to organise the Prime Minister’s job so that the incumbent has so little opportunity for rest, that (s)he ages about 5 years for every year they spend in the role. Some people seem to think that uninterrupted activity 24/7 is the best preparation for making the most important decisions. I beg to differ. 

Rest is undervalued in many quarters – yet it is a precious part of life, and it is time to reclaim it, starting in schools. Perhaps we would have a culture slightly less obsessed with the superficial if we started to teach young people the value both of activity, and of reflection, which requires time to rest from the activity.

And, in teaching it, we might learn something about it too.

Good Riddance EBC! But It Was Never the Real Issue.

The news that the EBacc is not, after all, going to replace GCSEs in 2015 has been greeted with, it seems, joy unconfined in schools. Nevertheless, its retreat does not mean that the EBacc, or ideas just as bad, will not re-emerge, because the essential misconceptions that underlie the reform of educational qualifications remain.

The obsession with qualifications is frustrating: good qualifications do not, per se, lead to good teaching. Poor, or mediocre, teachers can teach to the test however sophisticated the test is. At the same time inspirational teaching will usually lead to high performances in tests or exams, whether they are good tests or bad tests. The confusion over this in the UK public debate is unhelpful: the quality of exams and the quality of teaching are separate issues, and the Government, and the educational sector, need separate action plans to address them.

To take the issue of qualifications first: the crisis in the UK’s examining industry is not primarily to do with specifications (formerly known as syllabus), nor even to do with the timing and nature of the exams. The crisis is that the threat of litigation has made UK exams mechanical in the way marks are awarded, and mechanistic in the way that exams are marked, remarked, appealed and improved. An over-mechanistic structure simply doesn’t address the needs of students, who – in the end – are the customers of the exam boards.

The reform of qualifications needs to focus less therefore on which subjects are taken, when exams are taken and what the structure of the exams industry is, and more on the way in which the industry seeks to deliver ‘quality assurance’ to the customer. (It is a moot point whether the exams industry or the retail banking sector currently underdelivers most to its customers!).

In schools, the heart of the problem is not the qualifications pupils take – it is teaching. Many schools give reasons for changing qualifications which amount to the unsubstantiated assertion that the change will improve teaching, which is nonsense. What improves teaching is showing teachers how to teach better, not giving them a different set of subject content to bore pupils with, or a different test to obsess over in their lessons. Most teachers have a year of intensive  training at the beginning of their career, and then fractured and spasmodic development thereafter. Fifteen years into a forty year career, teachers have little idea how the educational research has moved on – what has been shown by highly effective studies to be worth pursuing and where, just as importantly, what seemed to be clever ideas have been demonstrated to be little more than headline grabbing fads.

That’s why, in the school in which I work, we have employed a professional teaching coach to work one to one with any teacher who wants to improve their practice. Our coach observes lessons, makes suggestions, having listened to what teachers want to improve, and seeks to help them develop. The overall cost to the salaries budget is modest, the extent to which it helps significant. It has also led to teachers sharing the improvements, and in some cases innovations, with their colleagues. A revolution is slowly taking place. Teachers’ ‘inset’ is actually delivering real benefits week by week in the classroom throughout the school year.

We are doing our bit; now it’s the turn of Mr Gove, and Ofqual, to do theirs. Reform of the qualifications industry is overdue. The EBC was not the answer; process reform is needed.