Author Archives: Leo Winkley

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About Leo Winkley

Headmaster of Shrewsbury School

Older People: thoughts on living longer

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One day a year, it’s international ‘older people’s day’.  An interesting – and presumably deliberate – choice of words to talk of ‘older people’, rather than ‘old people’ or ‘the elderly’. This turn of language prompts some questions about what we mean by ‘older’. What is ‘older’? Who are these ‘older people’?

Of course, we’re all ‘older’ – you and I are all older than we were yesterday. And we will keep being older all our lives – presumably until the point where we are simply ‘old’: the point when the relative becomes absolute.

Older People’s Day is about raising awareness of the issues related to ageing. It aims to be a day to ‘respond to the opportunities and challenges of population ageing in the 21st century and to promote the development of a society for all ages’. (OPD Website)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declares that: “Most developed world countries have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of ‘elderly’ or older person, but like many westernized concepts, this does not adapt well to the situation in Africa. While this definition is somewhat arbitrary, it is many times associated with the age at which one can begin to receive pension benefits. At the moment, there is no United Nations standard numerical criterion, but the UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population.

Although there are commonly used definitions of old age, there is no general agreement on the age at which a person becomes old. The common use of a calendar age to mark the threshold of old age assumes equivalence with biological age, yet at the same time, it is generally accepted that these two are not necessarily synonymous.”

In other words, the term ‘older’ is relative to where in the world we are born and where we live and the kind of life opportunities open to us.  These are the conditions of birth that drive our life expectancy.  WHO use 50 to mean ‘older’ in global terms.

Respect for one’s elders used to be a given in pretty much every culture. This may have brought with it some rather brutal or disparaging attitudes to the young. The Victorian approach to children being visible but inaudible (‘seen and not heard’), for example, indicated a clear age-based hierarchy. But, it also brought a healthy regard for those of mature years.  This is less so now. Arguably, the young and vigorous attract respect; the ‘older’ and less vital are often viewed as a burden; a problem; or just out of touch.

We have an increasingly top-heavy population. The ‘younger’ have a growing duty to carry the ‘older’. And this duty is increasing. How much carrying will our children and grandchildren have to do? How much tax and NI will we have to pay to support the NHS and state pensions? How long will you have to work before you can retire? Will the notion of retirement disappear altogether?

Living beyond 100 will become the norm in your children’s generation, according to projections from the ONS. Within two decades, the average (that’s the average) life expectancy of a new born girl in UK will be 97 years and 4 months. Baby boys born in 2037 should expect to live, on average, to the age of 94. By 2057, the average life expectancy for a female will be 100. Average. You could consider yourself unlucky not to reach 100. For boys, that mark will be reach in 2080, according to the ONS.

The key, though, is not just life expectancy but healthy life expectancy. That is, being ‘older’ and yet being independent, healthy, mobile etc. Not just being alive but being able to live. This is increasing at a lesser rate. In other words, the old will become more and more dependent on the young. For longer.

We might feel that, being ‘younger’, these issues are not relevant. Older People Day might prompt us to reach out more to the ‘older’ population. Or it might, out of pure self-interest, spark a realization that the decisions, policies and attitudes that we promote and allow in our youth, will come back to affect us in our old age. When it comes to getting older, we will reap what we sow. And the reaping season will be longer than the sowing season.

So, thinking about older people, and issues to do with ageing, is in all of our interest.

Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing – Prof Tanya Byron inspires and encourages St Peter’s York staff

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“Kids should understand their brains; they should understand their whole bodies”.

So said Professor Tanya Byron, consultant clinical psychologist, as she gave an interactive presentation to the teaching and support staff at St Peter’s School, 3-18, the week before the pupils returned for the new academic year.

Professor Byron is a well-known broadcaster and columnist specialising in children’s mental health.   It turns out that she has a soft spot for York, having studied as an undergraduate at York University. So, despite her crammed diary, we were lucky in tempting her up to St Peter’s for an afternoon to talk to our teaching and support staff.

Tanya combines expert knowledge with unstuffy directness and a winning ability to take the stigma out of some very complex mental health issues. Despite the serious nature of her subject, her explanations are gloriously free from clinical pomposity; she connects brilliantly with people and she is not afraid to make jokes – particularly at her own expense. A published author, whose expert opinion is sought on myriad facets of parenting, Professor Byron told her audience that her children have promised her they will write a book on her. The working title? “Great with other people’s kids; sh*t with her own”.

Yes, she’s a straight-talking Professor. Disarmingly honest, likely to call a spade a spade (this goes down well in Yorkshire), Professor Byron encouraged colleagues working across the age range, from Nursery to Sixth Form, to talk openly about mental health concerns. Her talk addressed the psychology behind a wide range of issues and she went on to share various ideas on how to begin to address anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders.

In her talk, Professor Byron described the children of 21st century Britain as “the most emotionally articulate generation of all” who are “better at asking for help” than any before. This is the good news – because the mental health issues they are facing are greater than ever before. “We need to understand the psychology of anxiety”, said Professor Byron, explaining that 75% of individual mental health issues will manifest when a person is between the ages of 14 and 23. She described the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) as being “in absolute crisis” and urged schools – particularly those with strong pastoral care such as independent boarding schools – to lead the way in preventing and managing mental health issues in the young.

In a balanced message, Professor Byron also warned against the “ridiculous over-protectiveness of our children” of which some parents are guilty, citing the effect that a risk-averse society has on children who “don’t know how to fail” and “lack emotional resilience”. She urged schools to encourage risk-taking (within sensible limits). “What child in their right mind is going to want to climb a tree that has been deemed safe?”, she quipped, and went on to celebrate the value of boredom – “It grows your imagination” – and the perils of over-praising children.

In just short of 90 minutes, Professor Byron gave us a “decatastrophised” but urgent message that the mental wellbeing of our children should be high up every school and every parent’s list of things to talk about – and that we need to get busy doing something about it.

Professor Tanya Byron spoke to 200 staff at St Peter's 3-18 on children's mental health

Professor Tanya Byron spoke to 200 staff at St Peter’s 3-18 on children’s mental health

Connecting for Happiness. Thoughts on International Happiness Day, the Eclipse and Comic Relief

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Connecting for Happiness

Yesterday the sun was obscured by the moon, the temperature dropped noticeably and the daylight turned to twilight at 9.34 in the morning of what was International Day of Happiness.  As a school, we were all out, with the help of York Astronomical Society, safely viewing and enjoying the passage of the moon in front of the sun.  It was a great communal event, and a wonderful thing to happen on a day of happiness that focused this year on connecting with others.

International Happiness Day came exactly a week on from Red Nose Day 2015, which we celebrated heartily at my school, St Peter’s 3-18, with our biennial fancy dress day.  Comic Relief is a wonderful cause: it fuels – as well as exemplifies – the sense of community that exists in a thriving school.  It is also a moment when the sense of internal community is completely in step with the community at large, indeed the national community.

Comic Relief is a great fund raiser and a great connector.  Whilst it is a day of laughter and legitimised silliness, its mission addresses squarely the fact that we live in a world where not everyone enjoys the same life chances; not everyone has the same opportunities to live happy lives.  Red Nose Day is also, founded on the simple and profound truth that laughter is part of our common humanity.  Laughter is a great connector.  And happiness is something that can be grown.  Sure, it doesn’t and can’t solve all the world’s problems.  But growing happiness actively and concertedly can help.

I spoke to the pupils about international Day of Happiness, suggesting that an awareness day doesn’t imply that everyone has to be happy that day; neither does it imply that happiness can be manufactured.  It doesn’t imply that every other day of the year is for unhappiness.  Rather, it’s a day to raise awareness that as individuals, with our good will and proper attention, can make a difference to the happiness of those around us, and therefore to our own.

The more cynically-minded may suspect such positivist occasions as being naïve and feeble – mere candles held out in the stormy night.  I would say simply that happiness is about action.  And action is what brings change.

As the Action For Happiness movement argues: “After years of happiness research, one thing has proved fundamental – the importance of our connections with other people.  Yet modern societies are built as if the opposite was true. We are surrounded by people, yet we feel genuinely connected to almost none of them. The effects are devastating.  Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking; and the epidemic of loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity. We could change this in a day if we all reached out and made at least one positive connection. The best place to start is with our own daily actions. Here are five simple but proven things that, according to Action For Happiness, we can all do to help create a happier and more connected world:

  1. Do something kind for others

What goes around comes around – and with kindness it really does. Research shows that being kind to others increases our  own levels of happiness as well as theirs. What’s more it has a knock-on effect – kindness is contagious, so it makes our communities nicer places to be.

  1. Volunteer your time, energy and skills

Whether it’s a one-off or something you do on a regular basis, volunteering is good all round. As well as making a positive contribution to the happiness of others, it’s a great way to meet people, get the most out of your local area and to increase your own happiness and wellbeing.

  1. Get to know your neighbours better

Getting to know the people who live nearby helps create a sense of belonging and shared identity in our local area. It also helps to strengthen connections and trust in our wider communities and contributes to a happier neighbourhood for everyone.

  1. Understand each other’s needs

Good communication is at the heart of happy relationships of all kinds. It’s about understanding others’ needs and having our needs heard. And it’s a skill that can be learned that will help deepen our connections with the people around us.

  1. Look for the good in those around you

It’s easy to take our nearest and dearest for granted. Constant criticism can be highly destructive, but we often fall into this trap, especially in established relationships. But if we take time to bring to mind what we value and appreciate about others, we can both get more enjoyment from our time together

Schools are in the lucky position of being close, day-to-day communities where you can see the immediate effect of actions, and where the words we use can change the way we behave.  Every day gives us a chance to grow happiness around us and inside ourselves.

@actionforhappiness @yorkastro

Play Attention: playfulness and absorption in learning and living.

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We must remember how to play.  So our Chaplain reminded us recently.  Total absorption in something fun – in play – is not only a good thing in itself, but play is also necessary for our well-being; play is refreshing and regenerative.

You sometimes hear people talking about ‘work-life balance’.  I have always felt this to be a rather negative & unhelpful polarisation: an unnecessary one.  The reason why I refer to school as “serious fun” is because, at best, our learning lives cater for the whole of our being.  We are not always serious, we are not always at play.  Each activity has the potentiality for the full richness of human emotions.

‘Work-life balance’ implies that the two are mutually exclusive.  Similarly, the saying that you should ‘work to live’ rather than ‘live to work’, makes the same category mistake.  Life, fun, work – surely, they should all be the same thing.  In other words, if you view life and work as part of the same whole thing, and you value play as part of work and life, there is now balance.  You are not creating a tension of opposites, but rather a forward-moving dynamic.  You are absorbed in the enjoyment of living and learning.  Forget work-life balance: live life to the full and aim to enjoy something about everything.

As children, we grow up playing and yet, gradually, the time given over to play slips away; bit by bit, the imaginative play gives way to increasingly formalised and regularised modes of play, for example, through individual and team sport.  Interesting that in many independent schools we talk about our sporting programme as ‘Games’.

I certainly don’t see a contradiction in the phrase ‘serious fun’.  At heart, all learning, all activity, should have a sense of play about it.  Certainly, some occasions and situations demand a sombre formality: Remembrance Sunday is not a moment for play.  But, most settings, even the serious, can benefit from the perspective and relief that comes from moments of playfulness.

Is there a difference between good play and bad play?  If so, what is it about good play that makes it good.  I’d like to suggest that good play is refreshing in some way.  Although it takes energy, it should also be generative.  If you play properly, it is enriching for all involved.  Play properly, I remember saying to a cousin who had stopped trying in a tennis match.  In order to give play true meaning and value, we have to take it seriously.

The Chaplain ruled activities such as computer-gaming as lower or lesser forms of play.  My instant response was to nod inwardly.  Hours of mindless semi-comatose button-pressing does not seem energising or enriching.  But when I see my son on Minecraft creative, I can see that it is a valuable mode of play.  Like most things, there is a law of diminishing returns – the longer you play on the same activity, without variation, the less playful it gets.  At the heart of play, then, is invention, imagination, creativity. And that is why play can, and indeed should, be part of learning.  Play isn’t something that can only happen in our free time; it can happen in more structured time, through our co-curricular activities, of course – this is want we might call formalised play; and it needs to happen in our learning.

Now, let’s be clear.  I’m not saying that the classroom or the lab are the same as the playground or our back gardens.  We all need to adopt a formal persona in the classroom.  We are working in a group, and group behaviour, led by an expert – ie a teacher – needs to follow formal patterns.  But, good teaching and learning allows space for the spirit of creativity and intellectual play.  All academic subjects have room for invention, for the absorption of play.

Over the holidays I read a book by Paul Dolan, a professor at LSE and government wellbeing advisor, called “Happiness By Design”.  Dolan’s central idea is that we are happy if and when we have a good mix of two key ingredients in life: pleasure and purpose.  Pleasure linked to purpose is the optimal source of happiness.  And much of our happiness and joy, or misery and anxiety, depends on what we choose to pay attention to.

“The “science of happiness” […]  is full of bizarre and contradictory findings. Parents report that parenting makes life much more meaningful, yet seem to experience no more pleasure than non-parents; more money doesn’t lead [automatically] to more happiness […]. One problem, he [Dolan] argues, is that psychologists simply try to find out which “inputs” – income, work, marital status, age, religiosity and so on – are correlated with the “output” of happiness. But in fact happiness also depends on how we allocate attention to those things. Imagine two biscuit factories, one run well, the other incompetently: they might have identical inputs (sugar, flour, labour, electricity) yet produce very different quantities of biscuits, depending on their production processes. The same goes for manufacturing happiness. Attention, Dolan writes, “acts as a production process that converts stimuli into happiness”. Attention is a scarce resource: give it to one thing, and by definition you can’t give it to something else. If you’re not as happy as you could be, “you must be misallocating your attention“.

“Even if it isn’t easy, Dolan makes a persuasive case that happiness might really be simple. His book is a powerful reminder not to get caught up in overthinking things, but to focus instead on maximising what actually delivers joy. [Dolan’s conclusion is that we should] “Listen more to your real feelings of happiness than to your reflections on how happy you think you are or ought to be.” Oliver Burkemann, Guardian.

This, to me at least, suggests that part of the key to deep happiness is in applying our attention actively and positive.  The Buddhists would call this ‘right mindfulness’, which is part of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path.  Whatever our activity, whether ‘work’ or ‘play’, it is full commitment and absorption that gives the activity real value.  It is the things to which we choose to give our full attention, are the things that will give us the truest rewards of happiness and purpose.  By this reckoning, we should pay attention to the things that give us purpose and pleasure; we should focus our attention on the pleasurable aspects inherent in all the tasks we are obliged to do.  And we must learn playfully and play seriously.  And, whatever we are doing, we should pay attention.

Of Hope and Despair – reflections on darkness and light in the news. HM Address.

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Of Hope and Despair

At the opening of a new calendar year, I often find myself thinking about the word ‘hope’. Hope is, of course, one of our seven school values depicted in the stained glass of the new window in Chapel. A New Year seems, by its very nature, to trigger a new release of hope and expectation. And yet, as we followed the various global news stories in the final days of 2014, it was difficult to find evidence that the world is a place of hope and progress. Rather, it seemed to me, in large measure to be a place of despair and profound ignorance; darkness rather than light.

This year Boxing Day marked the 10th anniversary of one of the modern world’s worst natural disasters. The Sixth Formers amongst you, and certainly the adults here, will remember the Boxing Day tsunami – a giant wave that swept across the Indian ocean, killing 230,000 people. I remember Boxing Day 2004 as a grim day – even if you were thousands of miles away from the natural disaster. I remember a sense of hollowness; a huge question in my mind about how the previous day we could be cosily in our families, in churches, celebrating the hope embodied in the birth of Jesus, and the next day wake up to a tidal wave of suffering and loss; of the very opposite of hope – deep, dark despair.

Amongst those who died was a pupil who had just left the school at which I was teaching at the time. One individual loss amongst all those tens of thousands: his disappearance devastated his family and swept through the school like an after-shock, as pupils, staff and parents re-gathered after the Christmas holidays. Again, this event came at the cusp of a new year in the western world. It was hard to see hope; still less, to detect the agency of a divine power shining light into the future. The brute force of 70 foot waves swept away lives and left a wake of destruction and despair. Particularly in the face of such indiscriminate and merciless forces of nature, the human light seems very feeble.

This Christmas holiday, on 16th December, the world reeled in shock at the brutal massacre of 132 schoolchildren and 16 of their teachers in the Army School in Peshawar, Pakistan. In this appalling and calculated attack, the deadliest terrorist act in Pakistan’s history, the Pakistani Taliban deliberately targeted the children of army officers; these innocents died in their classrooms, with their teachers, in what must have been panic and abject fear. Surely, no ideology, religion or political cause can justify these killings. It is impossible to condone such an act of pure moral evil inflicted by man on his fellow man and difficult to see the light of anything good coming from it.

And yesterday morning, three masked gunmen walked into the offices of a well-known French satirical magazine and shot the Editor, several cartoonists, a caretaker, a visitor, a police body-guard who was protecting the editor and a policeman involved in the fire-fight as the killers made their escape. This taking of life was calculated, deliberate and meant to send a message: a message in the name of some deeply twisted and politicised interpretation of religious duty. Once again, moderate Islam, a religion that loves peace, has been hijacked and debased to serve political ends and to sow fear and terror.

The wrongs of the world – and there are surely many – cannot be righted by callous blood-letting acts like this? They are acts of terror that strike not just at the individuals involved, and all who love and care for them, but also at the values of a free and caring society. How can we have hope for humans when this is what they can do?

It may or may not be easier to accept the fact of suffering caused by natural events; that the blind power of nature is capable of sweeping all in its path. We may point to the huge compassion and human togetherness that is often shown in the wake of disaster. The remarkable story, for example, of the 11 and 13 year old western children who were orphaned by the Tsunami who now, 10 years later, run a charity for orphans in one of the areas struck by the tidal wave. We may also be able to accept that the price for all the freedoms and technological advantages we enjoy is that accidents and failures can happen: that plans can crash; that new year’s parties in China can end in tragedy and loss of life; that damaged people do damage to others. We may take comfort and see hope in the global sense of outrage at the Peshawar massacre and look for political progress to come from this appalling loss. We may gain some optimism and sense of dignity from the huge turnout on the streets of Paris last night; the show of solidarity and determination to defend and stand tall in the face of terror, to defend liberty and freedom of expression as the French people define them.

But when you lump all this suffering together; when you read all these accounts of sorrow and loss, it is hard not to feel hope ebbing away; to sense the darkness overcoming the light. Indeed, there are times when a sincere hope for a fairer, kinder, gentler world seems to be no more than a comforting and wilful self-delusion.

Theologically speaking, there is, in fact, much that can be offered to reconcile belief in a loving Goodness in the world with the evident evil that we humans do, and the suffering that nature and accident can cause. This is the stuff of a philosophy course and we don’t have time for that now. Irrespective of religious questions, of which there are many, this is a profound human challenge. We could characterise it in terms of a struggle within us as individual human beings; we could characterise it in terms of the struggle in human-kind itself: the struggle between hope and despair.

I suggest today, in the shadow of the dark events I have mentioned, never mind all the others we could mention in our own experience, that we are presented with something that is, at its simplest level, a pragmatic choice between two options. A binary choice between hope. Or despair. This choice amounts to a profound and recurring test of our character. Our own experiences and the evidence of what we see going on around us will inspire, or challenge our hope. Events, disappointments, losses, failures will call us toward despair. Some, sadly, do indeed reach a state of despair. They reach a blank place where there is no hope. Despair is an option.

The other option is hope.    Sometimes I think we get the wrong idea about the word hope.  It’s a word that devalues in its daily use: that it is about crossed fingers; a passive state of anticipation.  At a deeper level, hope is a universal human phenomenon. People hope for peace in time of war; food in time of famine; justice in time of oppression. Hope generates energy and sustains people through difficult times. For some people, hope is so strong that it inspires self-sacrifice to turn hope into reality.  True hope grows in the face of adversity. Because it springs from a trust, religious or otherwise, that the world will become a better place.  For Christians, of course, this hope is based on a deep trust.  A trust that can withstand all the evidence that threatens to undermine it.  For Christians, hope is not always spontaneous or easy. There is work to be done. As well as trusting God, believers have to develop qualities of steadfastness in our own character.  As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans: ‘We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.’  (Romans 5:3-4)

Remarkably, it does seem that however much life throws at human beings, hope is a core, perhaps even irreducible, part of our human nature. Hope springs from character. It responds to stern challenges and is strengthened in the furnace of adversity. Like a cork in a bottle, hope keeps on bubbling up. However low it goes, it only seems to know one way: upwards.

Tristram Hunt is mostly wrong

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The Shadow Education secretary has finally emerged from the shadows and released the most depressingly predictable salvo against the independent education sector. Once again we hear the language of combat (“class war”) and the trench-lines are drawn by the very politicians who should be creating a climate of positive engagement. Is this sort of old-style blunderbuss polemic really the best way to ‘force’ independent schools to engage in partnership? Is Mr Hunt aware of the fact that almost all private schools are already working hard on partnerships, resource-sharing and constructive cross-sector dialogue?

As Mr Hunt is privately educated himself it cannot be the politics of envy. Rather, he has ill-advisedly adopted the politics of the battlefield. His belligerent rhetoric is no more than ill-informed propaganda aimed at breeding mistrust. How can partnerships thrive in such an angry climate is cultivated from the top? We will never ensure the best possible provision for 100% of our children if our politicians keep firing missiles at those 7% in fee-paying schools.

He’s right to care about partnerships. We care about partnerships in York. The DfE has just awarded us £20,000 to develop a Maths Primary Partnership. This builds on the huge and growing success of the York ISSP @YorkISSP which has been running and thriving since 2007. He seems to have overlooked the good that is going on; and missed the opportunity to change the tone of the conversation across the sectors. What a shame he felt he had to go into such an ominous and sabre-rattling mode.

Mr Hunt should return to the shadows, get himself better informed and come into the light of day with something positive and new to say. Back to the shadows.

Practice

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I passed my driving test in the summer of 1989. At the second attempt. It was a great day, banishing memories of the first time round, and the disappointment of failure at this liberating rite of passage.
My first attempt at the driving test met with unqualified failure (in every sense). It came at the end of a five day residential ‘crash’ course (unfortunate term) in North Wales. This entailed five days of intensive driving practice with a fellow learner and a world weary driving instructor called Dave. We pootled along the sea-front and down the quiet roads of Llandudno and Rhyll , negotiating the gentle traffic and sedate one-way system with fellow drivers whose average age was closer to 100 than 17. The week ended with a driving test on the Friday afternoon. My mother had found the driving school, whose advertising literature promised a 100% pass rate for 17 year old drivers. I was 17: and I was about to ruin their stats.
After five days driving experience four nights of driving talk, I failed the test on several key faults. Undue hesitation. Speeding in a 30 mile an hour limit. Failing to check my mirror before performing a manoeuvre. Stalling at a junction. It was a tragedy of motoring errors. I was a menace on the roads, most of all because the course had given me a false sense of confidence. Luckily – for other road users – I fell apart under test conditions and failed. And with this failure, I reluctantly entered the Hall of Fame of the Llandudno School of Motoring. I was the first 17 year old to fail.

Ten months later, I took my test again. And passed. This time round I was successful – and my efforts met with success because of three important reasons. One – I had practised over a longer period with a focus on becoming a decent driver, rather than getting through the test. Secondly, I had more varied, and more genuine road experience. Thirdly, I was wearing my lucky trainers. And my lucky pants.

It also happened that the driving test examiner was studying an Open University degree in the same subject that I was about to study at University and he had a cat called Leo. There was a sense of alignment. This is often the case with our successes. Things click into place: if you’ve put in the hours.
I’m lucky that I have a very short commute to work. On foot. This means that I don’t drive as much as some people do but I calculate that I must have racked up 150, 000 miles of driving since 1989. I have miles of driving experience. I’ve put in lots of practice. And yet, strangely, I am not a world-class driver. In fact, I’m a much worse driver than I was about 12 months after passing my test. Why?

The reason is this. I have developed bad habits; I’m crossing my hands when steering; driving with one hand; checking my mirror insufficiently often. I’ve forgotten aspects of the highway code. And, crucially, I am not striving to improve. I am simply carrying out a series of automatic actions, performed from muscle memory. My mind is not focused on the multiple task of driving. It is on other things: I’m thinking about work, day-dreaming or talking or, if travelling with my children, swivelling my head around to issue reprimands and unenforceable threats. In terms of driving, I am on autopilot. This is particular the case when on a familiar route. Miles can pass and suddenly you think – ‘I can’t remember anything from the last 10 minutes of driving’.

In his book, ‘Bounce’, Matthew Syed explores the difference between practice that demands deep concentration and application. The activities and occupations in which we truly grow are those which stretch us, demand more each time. The path to mastery is one with no clear end – there is not such thing as the perfect round of golf, piece of art, musical performance. Even finite tasks with finite answers can be performed more elegantly or more quickly: if we’re motivated by challenge.

Syed offers a simple example. Unscramble these anagrams:

FAHTER
HERFAT

FOOTBLAL
LBOFTOAL

DCOTOR
RTOCOD

OUTCOEM
ECMUTOO

TEACHRE
EERTACH

You’ll quickly have seen that the pairs of words are the same, but the second is more difficult. The letters are more scrambled and mixed.

“Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become” Ericsson. What this implies is that it is not just the quantity of the practice, but also the quality of the practice and the challenge it exposes us to.
This applies to our academic work as much as it does any other activity in life. Working hard does not mean working smart. This crucial difference is one that we, as teachers, need to help you fully to understand, so that you can make the most of your studies.

The map and the territory: avoiding educational Sat Nav

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In my car we have a battered old map from 2006.  I really should get a new one.  Friends have suggested I should get a Sat Nav. 

I refuse to as a matter of principle.  Why? What’s wrong with a Sat Nav? I did ask myself that recently when I was lost in south London trying to find a house to collect a piece of furniture I’d bought on e-bay.  But, I do prefer to read a map.  Indeed, I wouldn’t set off on a journey without one.  Handy though the Sat Nav would have been on that particular trip; and indeed convenient though they are, I don’t like the idea of being told what to do by a disembodied voice, however silken and beguiling its simulated female tones. I prefer to think for myself. even if that means the journey is less certain for it. 

I think that when you’re on a journey, when you’re driving, you should be alive to everything around you; sure, you need guides, you need people to point you in the right direction if you take a wrong turn; you should benefit from the experience of those who travelled the route before.  But, not to think for yourself about where you’re going, and how exactly you are getting there; that seems to me to be sleep-walking through life.

My famous name-sake, the Russian author, playwright and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, led an interesting life, often rejecting the obvious path, ending his life living extremely humbly and spurning his aristocratic inheritance.  Famous for his novels, such as Ware and Peace and Anna Karenina, he also wrote a lot of essays and philosophical reflections. One such was this: he wrote that “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”.  He elaborates that “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.”

 I wonder whether the appeal of Sat Nav technology is tied up with our desire for the fastest routes through things; with a lack of patience; with laziness.  Please understand me – I’m not having a go at technology – progress is good; technology empowers and liberates people.  This is good.  But, my question is whether the quickest route is always the best.  And whether sometimes it is better to make choices for yourself rather than accept the wisdom programmed into a computer. 

Indeed, there are some hilarious – and also rather disturbing stories – about the extent to which people will hand over their free will to their Sat Nav, trusting them despite all the evidence of their senses. I love the true story about the group of bank workers on a Christmas shopping beano to France who were taken to the wrong country after a sat nav blunder diverted their coach seven hours off course.  The office outing was scheduled for the French city of Lille; they were diverted 98 miles away to a village of the same name across the border in Belgium.

Staying with Belgians (nothing personal against them of course), a Belgian truck driver blamed his electronic way-finder after leaving a £20k trail of destruction in his wake in Wadebridge, Cornwall.  Directed by his sat nav into an unsuitable cul-de-sac, the hapless trucker put his foot down in a panic, ending his turning manoeuvre by ploughing over a mini roundabout, getting a car trapped under his lorry, and destroying five more vehicles.

And what about the story of the cab driver taking Earl Spencer’s daughter Katya to a Chelsea football match ended up 146 miles off course in Yorkshire after  the driver’s sat nav directed him to the tiny village of Stamford Bridge.  They missed the Blues’ 2-1 victory over rivals Arsenal.  Good thing too (as an Arsenal fan).

Clearly, it’s not the fault of the machines, but the mindlessness of their users.

Schools shouldn’t give their pupils a Sat Nav; we mustn’t allow our youngsters to slumber brainlessly as they are led by educational GPS. The learning journey is about discovery – the map and the territory;  it should be enlivening; it should not always be comfortable; it should challenge us.  Certainly, we do not want to be paralysed by fear of the unknown; we want to feel secure and at ease – and we all need occasional reassurance that we are on the right path.  But, there are many ways to get to where you’re going.  Our job, as teachers, is to provide maps to guideour youngsters over the ancient ways; the job of the pupils is to read the maps for themselves.

Reading for Pleasure – received wisdom & common sense backed up by evidence in new IoE report

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In a week that saw the announcement of arguably the highest quality Booker prize short-list for a good while, the results of a major piece of research into the effect of reading for pleasure were published today [11 September 2013]. The key finding is that regular access to books between the age of 10 and 16 actively boosts pupils’ vocabulary and spelling skills and, the report argues, reading even enhances their performance in maths.

The educational visionary and genius Dr Seuss, and his trusty Cat in the Hat, were onto this a while back. The Cat says:

I can read in red. I can read in blue.
I can read in pickle color too.
I can read in bed, and in purple, and in brown.
I can read in a circle and upside down.

I can read with my left eye.
I can read with my right.
I can read Mississippi with my eyes shut tight.

There are so many things you can learn about, but
You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.
The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Dr Seuss: ‘I can read with my eyes shut’

Graeme Paton, Education Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, reported: ‘In the first study of its kind, researchers found that children who receive bedtime stories from their parents as infants perform better than those who go without. But it emerged that reading for pleasure during secondary school had the biggest effect, with books judged to be more important to children’s development at an older age than the influence of their parents.
The study by academics at the Institute of Education […] found that reading had the strongest effect on vocabulary development but the impact on maths and spelling was “still significant”. The findings come amid continuing concerns that too many children are shunning books in favour of iPads, games consoles and television.

Research earlier this year found the relative difficulty of books read by pupils “declined steadily” as pupils got older, with large numbers of children ditching them altogether in secondary school.  Dr Alice Sullivan, co-author of […the] research, said: “There are concerns that young people’s reading for pleasure has declined. There could be various reasons for this, including more time spent in organised activities, more homework, and of course more time spent online. However, new technologies, such as e-readers, can offer easy access to books and newspapers and it is important that government policies support and encourage children’s reading, particularly in their teenage years.”

Researchers analysed the behaviour of around 6,000 children as part of a long-term study that tracks the lives of thousands of people born in 1970. It looked at how often they read during childhood and then compared reading habits to test results in maths, vocabulary and spelling at various stages. Children who were read to regularly by parents at the age of five performed better in all three tests at 16 than those who were left without a bedtime story. But it emerged that the greatest effect was felt between the age of 10 and 16. Children who read books regularly at 10 and more than once a week at 16 gained higher results in all three tests at the end of secondary education.

Reading was found to be more important for children’s cognitive development at secondary school than the influence of their parents. The combined effect of regular reading, visits to the library and ready access to newspapers at 16 was four times greater than the advantage children gained from having a well-educated parent with a university degree […]. Dr Sullivan added: “It may seem surprising that reading for pleasure would help to improve children’s maths scores. But it is likely that strong reading ability will enable children to absorb and understand new information and affect their attainment in all subjects.”’ * DT, 11.9.13

This long-range study backs up what common sense tells us. Indeed, one comment posted on the Telegraph website suggested that the findings of the report are about as surprising as the headline: “Shock news – water is wet”. If it’s that obvious that reading is good for you, why is it newsworthy? And why am I going on about it again? Well, the most important truths bear repeating. People who read are, quite simply, better educated. What we read reveals something about our character and personality. That we read, tells other people about how we value learning itself.

I shall read to my 4 year old daughter this evening. Winnie the Witch is her current favourite. I shall read to her not because I want her to do well at school, although that would be nice, of course. I shall read to her because it is a pleasure. Tonight I think we’ll give Winnie the Witch a break – and go with a bit of Dr Seuss.

No excuses

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What’s the worst excuse you’ve ever used? The worst excuse for being late, or not having done something you were supposed to do, or for missing an activity. Sometimes, like white lies, excuses are used to avoid hurting feelings or to maintain good relations. You decline a party invitation saying that you have a prior engagement. Do you really?

One of the great theatres for the performance of excuses is the reasons employees give for taking the day off work. The following are genuine examples – not, I hasten to add, given by staff at my school, but taken from an employment website:

‘My dog is having a nervous breakdown; I forgot I’d been hired for the job; my toe is stuck in the tap; a bird bit me; I was upset after watching ‘The Hunger Games’; I locked myself inside my house and I can’t get out; I can’t find my car; I’m stressed out and if I come to work I’m likely to punch someone.’

This kind of excuse-making is funny on one level. Some may indeed be true, but excuse-making ends up debasing the trust between people and, often, insults the intelligence of the person on the other end of the excuse. George Washington, the first US president said: “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one”. It is far better to tell the truth and face the consequences, than it is to damage trust.

The second kind of excuse is what psychologists call ‘rationalization’: this is when the individual deals with emotional conflict and external stresses by through the elaboration of reassuring, self-serving and incorrect explanations. In other words, you deceive yourself; inventing a more comfortable illusion, in order to avoid facing the truth. We may do this when we find things tasks difficult and want to give up. When we fail, we may look for things outside ourselves to ‘soften the blow’ – these excuses are simple self-deception. And they prevent us from developing and facing up fully to our challenges.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their act”. Rationalizations – excuses – prevent us from dealing with the mistakes and wrongs we have done, both on an individual or collective level. Think about some of the justifications for acts of aggression and war.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre explored the idea of self-deception. He wrote: “For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.” Whatever ones views of Sartre’s atheistic existentialism, these words have the ring of truth: we are judged by our acts – what we do, rather than being judged on the quality of the excuses we offer for the things we didn’t do.

In a book on leadership and self-deception, philosopher and business consultant C Terry Warner looks at sport as another theatre for excuse-making. “Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it’s right at the beginning) when the loser decides he’s going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he’s done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he’s been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn’t in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.”

The spirit of good-sportsmanship is vital: playing fair and 100% committed to the final whistle and looking to learn rather than make excuses. Similarly, in our work, we must not seek to deceive ourselves or others. Honest effort and honest reflection are keys to improvement. Florence Nightingale, that epitome of honest good work and courage, said: “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse”.

May this be a year of ‘no excuses’: let’s try to embrace our challenges, face and learn from our failures, and get stronger by doing so.