Last Sunday, I was honoured to have been invited onto BBC One to appear on Sunday Morning Live to take part in a live debate, alongside Dr Emily Setty and Martin Seager, on the topic of whether Boys Should Receive Lessons in Toxic Masculinity.
I’m writing this short blogpost to reiterate arguments I made on the day, to address arguments I failed to make on the day due to a lack of time, and to provide a response to arguments made by Seager on which I disagreed.
Before I start, you should know that, as I understood it, Seager’s argument was that lessons in toxic masculinity were damaging to young people, for two main reasons: Firstly, the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ is harmful in that it teaches boys that they – by virtue of the fact that they are male – are inherently toxic, and secondly, the fact that the majority of men are good, means that any discussions of toxic masculinity are totally unworthwhile anyway.
Here’s what I think:
The phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ is not harmful
It’s only fair to Seager to mention that Setty – whom I hugely admire, and have learnt lots from – also believed that the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ could alienate young boys.
I disagree. In fact, I would go as far as to say that such an assumption does a huge disservice to boys and in fact merely plays up to gender stereotypes that suggest boys struggle to recognise, appreciate and understand the nuance of complex material, a belief which I believe is a large factor in boys’ continued educational underperformance.
I once said, inexplicably, ‘If you show a teenage boy a poodle, he don’t’ go away thinking that all dogs have perms.’ In the same way,he doesn’t see toxic masculinity and walk away full of self-loathing and bitterness. It is my experience – as someone who speaks to hundreds of adolescent boys every month about the topic of toxic masculinity – when boys understand that the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ is not the same as ‘all masculinity is toxic’, they are willing to listen and learn about something which will, if it hasn’t already, certainly make a damned good effort to grab a hold of them at some point in their male lives.
A boy who attended one of my recent toxic masculinity workshops had this to say:
The session took a realistic view of what to do and [Matt] talked directly about the reality of trying to do the right thing. He managed to tell us what they’re doing is wrong, without being righteous.
Crediting boys with a little bit of intelligence goes a long way. Anybody who assumes that a simple mention of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ immediately sets boys up for a lifetime of self-loathing and resentment isn’t crediting boys with the intelligence they possess.
The phrase toxic masculinity is really useful
I’d also argue that, if anything, the phrase toxic masculinity is actually very useful. Language makes abstract ideas concrete and without it the world would be chaos. Imagine if we didn’t have a word for ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘jealousy’ or ‘joy’. Where would we be? Just as these phrases help us better understand the good and bad parts of ourselves and the society in which we live, so too does the phrase ‘toxic masculinity.’ The moment we mention a distinct brand of masculinity that is harmful to ourselves and others, we automatically acknowledge that there are greater, more desirable, alternatives that we can strive for. Toxic Masculinity is the springboard that allows us to reach a place where we can view tender masculinities.
You’re really giving lessons too much credit
If you think a few lessons asking boys to discuss, reflect upon, and engage with the topic of toxic masculinity is going to lead to all boys seeing themselves as toxic individuals, then I’m afraid you’re going to be very disappointed. Learning does not work like a hypodermic syringe. After all, in my role as an English teacher, every day I ask kids to discuss, reflect upon and engage with the topic of English Literature. Does every one of those kids finish their time with me as a bonafide expert in Macbeth, Gothic fiction, or 20th Century poetry? Course they don’t.
Lessons in toxic masculinity just make sense
The Citizenship curriculum states that schools must provide students with the knowledge and skills to ‘explore political and social issues critically.’ If you’re somebody who believes that masculinity is not a political or social issue, you need to talk to more women. Actually, scrap that. You need to listen to more women.
I think I’ve said my piece, but before I do, I just want to address two arguments of Seager’s that I wasn’t able to address on the day, mainly because I didn’t want to seem like a twat who talks and talks without listening to anybody else.
Before I address Seager’s argument I want to first state two things, very clearly:
Martin Seager was a genial and friendly man off-camera, who very clearly stated to me and Emily that he was not interested in heated argument, but honest debate and education.
This was a first time on Live TV for all of us, and making a compelling, water-tight, impenetrable argument is a very difficult thing to do in those circumstances.
Seager Argument #1: The majority of people who die in war and at work are men
Whilst this might be true, I don’t view it as a suitable argument for not giving lessons in toxic masculinity. In fact, isn’t it toxic expectations of male violence, and toxic pressures on men to provide and protect – either through organised military combat or overworking – that lead to disproportionate male suicides and higher levels of cardiac arrest.
Seagler’s Argument #2: Boys and girls commit sexual harassment equally.
Whilst Seager was unable to point to a specific study, Seager did mention that there is evidence to suggest boys and girls commit sexual harassment equally in schools. I’ve never come across this evidence, nor can I find it. What I have found is this report from Ofsted which correctly acknowledges that girls are disproportionately affected by sexual violence and harassment. The report cites evidence that states that 90% of child rape victims are females and that nearly a third of all girls have been the victims of sexual harassment in schools: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges
What follows is an early draft of a chapter I wrote for a writing project that never got off the ground. There are problems with the chapter: it tries too hard to be about boys when in actual fact, the issues discussed affect boys and girls, men and women; some of the research upon which it is founded is now over 30 years old; there can be a tendency to conflate accent, dialect and swearing…However, some may find it interesting. So here it is:
WHAT’S THE ISSUE?
In 2019, girls outperformed boys in the SATs reading, writing, and spelling, punctuation and grammar tests. Although I’m loth to ever indulge gender-based competition, it has to be said that ‘outperformed’ is a verb that doesn’t quite do justice to just how far girls surpassed the boys in these tests. ‘Thrashed’ might be more apt. Because, although 69% of boys reached expected standard in reading, 78% of girls did the same thing. And the figure of 73% for boys who reached expected standard in the spelling, punctuation and grammar test was eclipsed by the a whopping 83% for girls. And, in the teacher-assessed writing test, the percentage of boys who reached expected standard was 13 percentage points lower than the 85% of girls who reached expected standard. Funny that.
The subject of boys’ literacy has always been hight up the list on the national educational agenda. In 2012, The Boys Reading Commission acknowledged that:
The issue is deep-seated. Test results consistently show this is a long-term and international trend. Boys’ attitudes towards reading and writing, the amount of time they spend reading and their achievement in literacy are all poorer than those of girls.
Proper talk
In 2014, David Didau wrote that ‘the ability to write well depends on our ability to speak well’. It is this widely-held belief, amongst educators, policy advisors, and politicians, that underpins the stipulation in the current Teachers’ Standards that teachers must:
Demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of Standard English, whatever the teacher’s specialist subject.
In his classic book, Accent, Dialect and the School, linguist Peter Trudgill defines Standard English as, ‘the dialect used by most speakers who would consider themselves to be ‘educated’…it is the form of English normally taught to foreign learners; and, in many important respects, it is the language of British Schools. Standard English is often conflated with Received Pronunciation (RP), the standard form of British English pronunciation, based on educated speech in southern England, and sometimes referred to as the ‘Queen’s English’.
As Dr Jessica Mason, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University who specialises in linguistics and education, explained to me:
The term ‘Standard English’ is pervasive in education documents, from curriculums, to tests, to policies; many teacher training courses even ask your referees whether you can communicate in ‘Standard English’ when you apply to join the profession.
This pervasiveness may explain the results of a Twitter poll of mainly teachers in which 78% of participants answered ‘yes,’ when asked, ‘Should students speak in Standard English in the classroom?’ Clearly, teachers value Standard English.
Non-Standard English
There is a problem with Standard English. As Dr Mason told me, ‘“Standard” implicitly positions that dialect of English as normal and therefore all other forms as abnormal, unusual or less typical.’ This ‘abnormal’ language is referred to as ‘non-standard’ English and is so called because it deviates from the grammar, pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary ‘rules’ of standard English. A non-standard speaker might use colloquialisms, slang terms, and swear words to express themselves; they may pronounce ‘Thursday’ as ‘Fursday’ and ‘butter’ as ‘bu-er’; they may even add letters to words to make new ones, such as the plural ‘yous’ employed by the stars of ITV’s The Only Way is Essex.
In the world of education, this type of language is not just abnormal in the sense that it’s unusual; it’s abnormal in the sense that it’s ‘not right.’ This is observed in newspaper headlines about schools banning the use of non-standard forms like ‘coz’ (because), ‘innit’ (I agree) and ‘bare’ (‘lots of’), in order to improve students speech, and in interchanges such as the one below, taken from a Year 5 and 6 lesson in which students were asked to come up with a word to sum up the emotion in a short film they have just watched, and where the teacher chooses to focus on the ‘incorrect’ way the student has expressed his answer, and not on the answer itself:
Mr Robbins: put your hand up if you think he looks sad
(Around 9 pupils raise their hands. After 5 seconds Freddy joins in)
Mr Robbins: Freddy why do you think he looks sad
what makes him look sad
Freddy: because he’s-
he ain’t got a smile on his face
Mr Robbins: ain’t got a smile on [his face
Asha: [((laughs))
Freddy: he (.) has (.) not got a smile on his face
Mr Robbins: okay
On the 25th July, 2018, Rob Ward, an English teacher and writer, tweeted the following:
When I was nine, a well-spoken lady used to come to school to read with us. I hated her cos she was ‘posh’ and her accent made me feel stupid. Even at that age I consciously tried to show I wasn’t like her. I ended up getting into trouble cos I insisted I needed the ‘khazi’.
Rob’s words echo those of Danny, quoted in Dianne Reay’s Miseducation:
Some teachers are a bit snobby, sort of. And some teachers act as if the child is stupid. Because they’ve got a posh accent. Like they talk without ‘innits’ and ‘mans’, like they talk proper English. And they say, “That isn’t the way you talk” – like putting you down. Like I think telling you a different way is sort of good, but I think the way they do it isn’t good because they correct you and make you look stupid.
I can relate to Rob and Danny’s use of colloquialisms, dialect and accent to assert an identity, as well as the scorn they experienced as a result. In an article for Teach Secondary, I explained how the gangster films of the early 2000s influenced the way my friends and I spoke as teenagers:
For us, the ‘geezer’ was perfectly embodied in the characters played by the likes of Ray Winstone, and Danny Dyer, and also in the gangsters of Guy Ritchie films like Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Geezer culture was a culture of laddishness (with all the usual abhorrent misogynist trappings), but it was imbued – or so we thought at the time – with a roguish charm of the cockney variety. People like Ray Winstone – and yes, Danny Dyer – were gods to us. We wanted to be just like them: Jack-the-lads that got away with it. Tough, cheeky, and charming.
A penchant for violence, drugs, alcohol and criminality was beyond our delicate sensibilities, but there was one thing the geezer possessed, that we too could incorporate into our very being. That thing was language: the language of glottal stops, dropped aitches, rhyming slang and swearing. The lads and I started saying things like ‘score’ instead of ‘twenty’, ‘blower’ instead of ‘phone’, and ‘brassic’ instead of ‘skint’.
When I began my teacher training at a school in an upper-middle class suburb of Guildford in 2012, I made a decision to keep the ‘mockney’ twang (don’t worry – I ditched most of the rhyming slang) which by this point in my life, however contrived it was to begin with, was now ‘me’. I wanted to keep ‘the twang’ because I value authenticity and I thought then- and know now- that students value authenticity in a teacher above everything else. Over the eight years or so that I’ve been teaching since I made that decision, a significant number of fellow professionals have commented negatively, or mockingly, on the way that I speak: I’ve had feedback in lesson observations asking me to ‘tone the cockney down a bit’; I’ve had teachers ask me why I’m so determined to sound stupid all the time; I’ve even had people perform, to my face, insulting imitations of how I might deliver a lesson, Danny Dyer style, to a class.
I’m now highly tuned to the way middle-class teachers mock or criticise speech that isn’t like their own. This can be observed in numerous guises, whether it be in the direct reprimanding of a student for perceivably ‘incorrect’ use of the word ‘ain’t,’ or in the cringe-inducing Ali-G style impressions that some teachers seem to enjoy so much, of students who dare to declare affection for a friend in class by referring to them as ‘bruv’ or ‘mate’ or ‘fam’.
Back in 1975, Peter Trudgill found that non-standard forms of English are most likely to be used by people-specifically males– from working class backgrounds. In one study, Trudgill found that whilst the Upper Middle Class pronounce 88% of their aitches, the Lower Working Class pronounced only 7%. Similar patterns were also found for other non-standard forms such as glottal stops and double negative usage. Trudgill also notes that males are more likely to use non-standard forms than females because, ‘Working Class speech in [Western] culture has desirable connotations for male speakers.’ Robert Lawson develops this point when he says that men use non-standard forms in order to:
…perform a particular form of masculine identity which draws on the association of non-standard variants with working-class speakers and by extension, stereotypical working-class characteristics such as toughness, physical strength, courage, and so on.
Although Trudgill’s work is over thirty years old, his findings still ring true. Julia Snell has observed that children from a school in a ‘lower working-class’ area of Teesside were more likely to use non-standard forms of spoken English than those in a ‘lower middle-class’ school, whilst another study has found that despite changes in gender attitudes, men are still twice as likely to swear as women. The same study also notes that ‘the general pattern of uses of fuck is that people who have received less education say fuck more frequently.’
The high value attributed to the use of ‘standard English’ in education, and the concurrent view of non-standard English as deficient, should be of particular concern when one considers that the very people who use non-standard English most often are those performing least well in education: working class boys. It may be that working class boys underperform in exams because they simply can’t speak-and therefore write- in Standard English (for an excellent dismantling of this argument please refer to Trudgill), but, bearing in mind the research from Tammy Campbell that shows teachers’ stereotype negatively against working class boys, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the contemptuous attitudes of many teachers towards the non-standard English employed by working class boys is what’s causing these boys’ negative attitudes towards education and teachers-as with Rob and Danny, above- which then leads to their lower academic performance. As Professor Julia Snell notes, ‘ If low value is accorded to working-class speech in the classroom, some pupils may become less confident in oral expression and thus reluctant to contribute to whole class discussion.’ It goes without saying classroom discussion is a hugely important part of the learning process. It could well be that in stifling working class students’ speech- in reprimanding every single ‘ain’t, ‘writ’ and ‘yous’- teachers are also stifling their learning.
So we are presented with two problems: Firstly, we have the silencing of students -most likely working class, most likely male- who use non-standard forms of spoken English. The example of Freddy is not an isolated example. As Snell points out, teacher corrections of non-standard forms are an integrated part of our education system and working class boys like Freddy, ‘may become alienated from educational opportunities and [are] thus more likely than those who have had a more positive educational experience to take up the same positions that their parents hold in the social hierarchy.’ Secondly there is a risk that schools’ and teachers’ condescending attitudes towards non-standard forms of spoken English are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement for the kids -most likely working class, most likely male-who use it. When the Teachers Standards stipulate that we have to teach a dialect that is least used by the most underperforming cohort in the system, we have an issue.
So what can we do? Certainly, we can’t give up on Standard English. The fact is, many professions ascribe high prestige to this dialect, and what we want for our kids is options. But we do need to challenge the idea that spoken Standard English should be the language of the classroom at all times. In situations where students are asked to discuss something, or when students are called upon in questioning, pupils, should be ‘encouraged to respond, question, challenge, and elaborate their thinking using the language they feel most comfortable’ with so long as a) it isn’t language directly intended to cause offence to another person or b) it isn’t language directly used to obscure meaning and exclude others from understanding. The fact is, speaking in a language that is not your own requires some significant cognitive effort, which can impede thought processes. Surely, depth of thought expressed in non-standard spoken English is better than shallow thought expressed in Standard English.
It is imperative that school leaders commit time during whole-school CPD allocation to educating staff on standard and non-standard English, in an attempt to dismantle any negative stereotypes teachers make about working class boys based on how they speak. The reality is that many non-standard forms of English contain some highly complex and inventive thought processes and is by no means an indicator of sub-standard intellect. I would also urge schools to make time in the timetable-perhaps in the English curriculum, perhaps in form time- for students to undergo a programme of spoken language study as early as possible. Because, if we give students the meta-language-and the opportunity- to think about and discuss the way they speak, it stands to reason that they’ll be better able to use language appropriately to navigate the world around them. Many students are unable to switch effortlessly between standard and non-standard forms of English in appropriate contexts, because they haven’t been taught how and when to do so. Pre-Gove, programmes of study on spoken language were a requirement of the GCSE English language course. Therefore, it is probably the case that there is a teacher in your school, right now, who can help to design and implement a programme, right now.
Finally, to the teachers at the chalk face, in the classroom, it’s simple: When a student answers a question, base your immediate and initial response on what has been said, rather than how it has been said. Remember, that students use non-standard forms for a number of reasons: to assert the identity teachers are constantly telling them they need to assert; to bring them familiarity and comfort in an educational setting to which they feel a sense of alienation; to form relationships; to be close to Mum and Dad. Be sensitive to this fact. It’s fine to ask a student to rephrase an answer in standard-English later, but be clear with them as to why you’re asking for this. And certainly don’t make them feel as though their response or contribution to discussion was any less valid as a result of not using Standard English. Because it ain’t.
In this post, my former colleague and present friend, Jasmine Mulligan, Head of English at King’s College Guildford,writes eloquently about how live modelling helped the department to achieve the best English results the school has ever seen.
The first time I came to Kings, Matt, who was Head of Department, at the time was at the front of his room trying to get a discount from a watch company. He was typing, narrating his process as he wrote, and kids were helping at intervals, with interjections like “why don’t you try…?” or “what about…?” pinging back and forth. Matt was responding accordingly. I later learned this was called live modelling.
In our department we work on the basis that ‘live modelling’ is always preferable to turning up with a pre-made model. Live modelling is about being vulnerable, placing value on the process of crafting, and making overt the mysterious beauty of writing.
On an everyday basis, live modelling means turning up to the blank page and narrating how you fill it. In a classroom, that’s you up front, writing or typing in full sight of everyone in the room, tackling whatever task in live-time. The aim is to crack open the processes we, as successful writers, go through every time we construct a piece so that students can see what the great quality work they hope to achieve looks like under construction.
The way you narrate this experience of writing is what makes the process so worthwhile for students. Outwardly sharing your thinking process by making comments like “I’m thinking about changing this word because…” or “I might change the first sentence because…” helps students understand the way a piece of writing comes together. The kids will offer you support, too, by offering suggestions or alternative vocabulary. They might even scold you for your “clunky” opening argument that just “doesn’t show you off to your best” (yep, direct quotation).
The key difference is you’re not banging out a pre-rehearsed slice of your best work so you feel good about yourself. You’re cracking yourself open and offering a bloody chunk of the inner workings of your mind so your kids know this stuff isn’t magic. It is craft. It is effort. It will take time to get right.
But this is not the only way we model. At Kings, we open ourselves to our students by modelling the value we place on learning, academic rigour and friendship, too.
In our department we have actively placed value and emphasis on the modelling of academic talk. It is well-known that Matt will pause lessons to discuss aspects of the text the class are reading with the other adults in the room, and we are all prone to poking our heads into one another’s rooms to chat about texts we love while students are present. Students learn the sound of an academic conversation and mimic that in their own contributions, meaning they can analyse and question more effectively. We parade academia in order to show students constantly that we – and others outside of the immediate department – love literature, and they begin to see that they could love it too.
Reading aloud is a way of modelling, too. Open the doors of our English classrooms and you will see that most of the reading comes from the teachers, rather than the students. This is perhaps controversial, but as teachers we read with confidence, clarity, cadence and nuance. Students cannot hear the beauty of language if they’re caught up in the five syllables of whatever word they’re trying to pull together. More importantly, they often can’t work out what’s actually going on. By modelling competent yet passionate reading, we help our students hear the beauty of the text they’re studying and improve their comprehension of the stories we hope to immerse them in.
Less tangibly measurable, but of great value, is the atmosphere of friendship and fun our English department has cultivated. We are notorious for debating too loudly, teasing, giggling in the corridors and guffawing in the staffroom. We are kind to each other too, so when of us feels a little off the kids see the others work harder for that person. Inevitably, these friendships spill out into the sphere of our students, and our little block at the back of the school has become a warm and loving place to be. Other departments this year have commented on the “buzz” around English. It is a buzz that comes from love, and it has made students enjoy being in our world. This, inevitably, leads to greater academic success.
At The Festival of Education last summer, I saw Jon Hutchinson present at a panel debate on the topic of a diverse curriculum. Something he said resonated with me. He said that ‘University should be a fail-safe.’ Of course, things get said, and things get taken out of context, so I contacted Jon for clarity and asked him what he meant:
“University isn’t the right option for everyone, but it shouldn’t be a false choice in which you have neither the tacit knowledge nor the academic qualifications to go. What students really need to understand is a) what university will involve b) get the grades needed to go and c) still be able to choose a different route should they wish. And a different route is fine. The ideas that it’s either university of you’ve failed the game of life is not fine.”
I like what Jon had to say, but the phrase, ‘University as a fail-safe,’ is something I wanted to make a mantra. It seemed wonderfully liberating; I felt, at the time, that if all teachers and school leaders came to see university as something to simply fall back on, it might totally change the educational experience and outcomes of those students who often get left behind because of the relentless focus on university attendance as a measure of success.
I wanted to know more. Someone put me in touch with Johnny Rich (@JohnnySRich), Chief Executive of Push talks. I asked Johnny quite simply: ‘What do you think about the idea that schools should see University as a fail-safe. His response was one of the most illuminating things I’ve ever read on the topic of university, social-class and academic vs vocational study. With Johnny’s permission, I include his essay here in full. And I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t think I agree with the idea of university as a ‘failsafe’, although I’m still not sure I understand what you intend by the word. So I’m going to use your line: ‘Aim for whatever you want to do, and if you don’t get it, well, at least you can go to University.’ That assumes that whatever you want to do won’t be best achieved by going to uni. Obviously, uni is NOT the best route for everything or everyone, but for the vast majority of the best paid and most secure jobs, it is – if not a prerequisite – at least a head start.
The evidence is pretty clear: on average, uni helps everyone regardless of background, earn more in life and have other benefits such as health and happiness. It doesn’t eliminate the social advantages some were born with, but it does narrow the gap a bit. For many student with disadvantage higher education is not only transformative, it is the only thing that could ever have provided them with that transformation. On average, uni would be the right thing to do, if you are able and so minded.
However, the sticking point there is ‘on average’. There are some people for whom it won’t suit them or further their aspirations. I never try to persuade people to go to uni, but I do try to outline the advantages (and disadvantages) so they can make an informed choice for themselves. You need to consider the individual. As you have said, all guidance should be ‘Person first’. Or, more to the point, the person should consider their individual needs for themselves.
Rather than ‘aim for what you want to do’, I tend to think about ‘what do you want to BE’. For all of us, the answer to that is that we want to be happy. What happiness means to each of us and what will bring it is different (and changes over time), but it might involve earning a lot (however much ‘a lot’ might be); it might be fame, security, a work:life balance, a family, power, a sense of doing something worthwhile etc. Each of us has a set of rewards we want in life and each career has the potential to deliver a different set of rewards. Finding a career that delivers the set you want is half the journey.
The other half is to be able to offer to that career the skillset that the employer will want. Just as each career offers a different reward set, each one demands a different skillset. If you don’t have the suitable skillset, the job might be a good match for you, but you’re not a good match for it.
It’s worth unpacking what that skillset actually is. It’s not just skills, but broad ‘employability’. Employability comprises the following in no particular order:
(1) Skills:
(a) Hard skills, ie job specific skills, such as welding if you want to be a welder;
(b) Soft skills, ie transferable skills, such as communication, team work or numeracy, which are all useful in any job, albeit to varying degrees.
2) Knowledge, some of which is specific to the job (eg. a surgeon’s understanding of anatomy), but much of which is of the broader nature that you’ve written about (although to some extent, this comes up in (4) below)
(3) Character, which comprises attitude, behaviours and personality (and includes important traits like grit, resilience and a growth mindset, but also determination, politeness and amiability).
(4) Social capital, or how society perceives your intrinsic value (based on class, age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, height, accent, use of the right fork, etc). This is the often unwelcome component of employability because it explains why a person might get to be Prime Minister with a record of being repeatedly sacked when anyone from a disadvantaged background wouldn’t have been given a second chance. We cannot ignore it though, if only to recognise that in order to make it matter less, you need to ensure you have all the other components in spades. There are also things that one can do to build social capital – most importantly, the wider knowledge that you have written about is key to this and not in a bad way.
Although these four components comprise ‘employability’, actually we are talking about something far broader than merely producing career fodder. We’re talking about creating rounded people: someone with a full complement of the four components is well equipped for making a life, not just a living.
What role does university play in any of this? It’s easy to see that disadvantaged students might start out with even more limited employability than more affluent students. University explicitly sets out to build knowledge and often hard skills too. It also builds soft skills, although it tends to do this implicitly. It also builds social capital through exposure to a wider cross-section of society, establishing networks and broadening horizons. It might also build character, but it is arguable whether it does so better than the ‘university of life’. In any case, disadvantaged students tend to have a lower propensity to take advantage of the character-building opportunities (such as extra-curricular activities) that uni might offer. This is often down to money, circumstances and habits formed in school.
When you look at it like this, you can see how uni builds employability into a quality some researchers have called ‘graduateness’, which is clearly prized by employers.
So, should uni be a failsafe or a first option? As I said, it has to be down to the individual and the gap between their skillset and that required by the career that might fulfil their reward set. Critical to this is the questions of ‘if not uni, then what?’ Around 50% of school-leavers do not go to university. Most go into jobs (usually just ‘jobs’, rather than ‘careers’). A few go into apprenticeships, training or other non-higher education. Too many become NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). There’s not a sufficiently good other pathway (there absolutely should be!) and, unless there is a better option, university must surely look attractive to anyone with the grades and willingness to spend longer in education.
Degree apprenticeships are a decent option, but they are few and far between, fairly limited in the choice of jobs, and subject to many of the same prejudices against the disadvantaged that exist at any level of employment.
I haven’t touched on the fact that uni is an expensive option. It is and I believe the student/graduate’s contribution to the cost is disproportionate. (In fact, a think tank recently publishing a paper I wrote proposing an alternative.) That said, uni is pretty much free at the point of entry and you only pay when you earn a decent wage. In that sense, cost should not be seen as a barrier, although it might be seen as an impediment.
In this blog post, another member of the Kings College (Guildford) English department explains one of the factors in this year’s amazing GCSE results. This time, we’re talking about teaching hard stuff.
Consistency and high expectations and two things that are consistently expected of just about anybody who works in a school. But is this necessarily true of the type of work we expect the kids to do? I’ve been teaching for 17 years with 4 of those in SLT and I’ll openly admit that it has been something that I am guilty of. A classic case of ‘Oh these kids won’t be able to do that, they’ll find it too hard and will give up!’ Thankfully over the past 2 and a half years, since stepping down from SLT and going back into the classroom, this egregious error has been well and truly removed from my practice.
I’ve only taught English for two years and this was due to my aforementioned move from SLT back to a classroom practitioner. I was asked to take on a ‘challenging’ group and try and get them to engage in English and achieve a modicum of ‘success’ (whatever that looks like!) – this was a group who were used to a low bar and consequently believed that this was all they could do.
As @Mulligan already highlighted in a previous blog the KS3 curriculum has been developed to push the students right from the word go. Focusing on learning key terminology and themes and mastering them before they get to Year 10. When discussing how a total English novice should approach his group, the same principle applied – consistently make it hard, consistently make it challenging and consistently expect the students to give their best. As someone who had used the ‘can’t do it’ excuse in the past in his own specialist subject I was bloody nervous. Turns out I shouldn’t have been.
By focusing on teaching hard concepts and content this ‘challenging’ group became more and more motivated. The focus on literacy and learning 4 words a week saw the students desperate to use a newly learnt word in their work. Students who previously would use the word ‘nice’ as their go to adjective used ‘diaphonous’ to describe a dress or ‘mellifluous’ to describe a sound. They wanted to know the difference between omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotence and they wanted to use them in their work.
This was also reflected in their approach to key texts. Yes, my group found Macbeth hard but they all wanted to produce great answers and had the vast majority knew the main plot points Act by Act. An Inspector Call was no different – the discussions we had based around class bias and has Britain really changed were amazing. A Christmas Carol saw us looking at the similarities between Scrooge and the Birlings.
By teaching ‘hard stuff’ and acknowledging it was hard the vast majority of students wanted to prove to everybody that they could do English. And do it well.
The result of pushing and teaching difficult stuff? 41% of the students gained a grade 4 or higher. From a group where 8% were predicted to achieve it (which shows the value of predicting anything!) And a teacher with radically changed perceptions on what can be achieved – if you make it hard enough!
Two months after I joined Kings College (Guildford) in September 2016, Ofsted came in and judged the school to be ‘Inadequate’. It wasn’t long before the school (43% PP, largely white working class) was voted by one local, very widely read, newspaper, ‘The Worst School in Surrey’, and a national tabloid published our name on a list of the worst schools in England. By December 2018 the school became one of the first schools in England to jump two Ofsted ratings, from ‘Inadequate’ to ‘Good’ in such a short space of time. That August, English results in the school had risen from 43% to 53%. A year later, in August 2019, the English department- a rag-tag group of five, made up of two specialists, two non-specialists, and a trainee, found out that they had helped students secure the best results the English department had ever had, with 76% of students achieving a pass in either Lit or Lang and 53% achieving a good pass (5+). This achievement, combined with other departments’ sterling efforts meant that this year, 3 years after being declared the worst school in Surrey, Kings College secured it’s best ever GCSE results.
On results day, despite me moaning about teachers doing this in the past,I couldn’t help but show off about the English department’s achievements. 43 to 76% in just two years. I know there will be people reading this right now, saying that it’s remiss for us, as teachers, to take any credit for the results achieved by our students. If you think this, you are wrong. Of course students are hugely responsible for their success- and failure. But to deny or ignore teacher’s impact would be folly. After all, a class doesn’t get a 100% pass rate if the teacher doesn’t teach them what they’re meant to learn.
In this series of blogs, I’m going to do my best to explain, with the help of my colleagues at Kings, to explain how we helped the students to do what they did. As Head of Department, I recognise 6 factors (listed in no particular order):
Prioritising KS3 over KS4
A supportive headteacher
Teaching hard stuff
Making curriculum the thing
Great teaching
Relentless Modelling.
The first part of this series is written by English Teacher extraordinaire, @MissJMulligan and looks at the way greater focus on KS3 leads to greater success at KS4.
1. Prioritising KS3 over KS4
Our Key Stage Three curriculum is relentlessly challenging. We teach each core text over a term, with other key areas woven in. The texts are highly challenging not only in content, but in the discussions their themes provoke. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ ‘The Speckled Band’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ all feature in Year 8, and The Iliad is Year 7’s first introduction to English at Kings. In year 9 kids read either Frankenstein (yes- the full, unabridged version) or The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Shakespeare, too, features highly, with ‘The Tempest’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ all studied during the three year course.
Grammar, Vocabulary, Creative Writing, Poetry, Rhetoric and Non-Fiction are all interspersed with these literary works. This is coupled with the use of Direct Instruction; the overt teaching of four words a week designed to give students a better general vocabulary.
Knowledge is power. Power breeds confidence. Teachers in our department have two or three core literary concepts/terms only that students must understand by the end of each text or topic. This has two advantages, but the first is that students build up thorough knowledge of core literary terms and their usage. A typical Year 7, for example, will be able to explain and identify simile, metaphor, verse, prose and soliloquy by Christmas.
Students are empowered by this knowledge. They communicate with big brothers about why “solitary as an oyster” is a simile and not a metaphor. They explain with nonchalance to guardians why verse indicates higher status than prose. They question the ordering of classical rhetoric and move the refutation wheretheyfancy, because they speak with authority.
Put simply – they know they know stuff.
The second advantage of this knowledge-rich curriculum is that, without warning, feeling powerful starts feeling fun. Competence breeds a thirst for further competence and as confidence improves, students seek more for themselves.
This curiosity filters upwards. By GCSE, students have already grappled with key terms and texts others may first encounter only partway through Year 10 and have the confidence to articulate what they feel and know about a text. They believe in their teachers and value their knowledge, and understand that sometimes, you need to just listen. They fear pen-to-paper less, because they have the words to show themselves.
But there’s a secret here. The best thing about KS3 in our school is that I love teaching it. I love that once I spent a month of our creative writing lessons slow-writing a short story with a class because the kids wanted to, and that’s OK with the boss. I love that I willnever againdrag an eleven-year-old through a GCSE language paper as if that’s somehow useful. I love that when others cover my classes, they’re pulled up for misspelling learned vocabulary.
We give our students voices of their own so they do not shy away from challenge. By the time they reach GCSE, they have the words – and the love – they need to succeed.
It was joyous, for me, to behold the Adonis that looked back at me from the mirror, all smooth chinned and liberated lip. “This will make me feel better,” I thought. I care a lot about what other people think of my appearance (*Yes- I know I need to love myself but it’s difficult when you’re a 33 year old man with a head like a pachycephalosaurus, and ears resembling the handles of a certain domestic football trophy) and so, a few compliments about my new, more chiselled, less scruffy appearance would do nicely to help get me through the tiring last few days of term.
Nobody said a thing.
Now, I’m sure the people I work with ain’t horrible bastards; it wasn’t necessarily that they noticed my freedom from fuzz and just chose not to say anything. Rather, they just failed to realise an essential truth; that everything I do should be a huge deal for them.
Apparently, my egocentric tendencies aren’t that unusual. The Spotlight Effect, a term coined by psychologists Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky in their paper, The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment: An Egocentric Bias in Estimates of the Salience of One’s Own Actions and Appearance (2000), refers to the way in which, ‘people tend to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it really does.’ Basically, our whole experience of the world is framed through our own perspective and experiences. So, we naturally assume that other people see the world as we do: through our lens. Because of this, we tend to overestimate the extent to which people notice changes in our appearance, our mishaps, and our accomplishments.
Gilovich and his colleagues asked participants to wear a t-shirt with someone’s face on it, and enter a room with other students in it. Once the participants left the room, they were asked how many people they thought had noticed or could remember the face on the t-shirt. Each time, participants drastically over-estimated the extent to which people had noticed the face. What’s more, if the student was wearing a face they were embarrassed to wear (in this case the face was that of Barry Manilow –sorry Baz), then they over-estimated even further the extent to which people had registered the great man’s face, on their t-shirt. This has quite pleasing implications because it means that when we are embarrassed, we’re likely to have a more severely skewed idea of just how many students notice the gargantuan sweat stain emanating from our left armpit as we give assembly.
So, what does this mean for teachers? A few things.
1. BE BOLD
It means you can wear that new ‘zany’ tie, sport that new haircut, or try out that new neon yellow dress, without fear of ridicule from students and staff alike. So go on, if you think it will make you feel good, embrace the skinny tie your Mum said looked good on you at Nana’s wedding.
2.DON’T SWEAT IT
If you’re new to the classroom, or you’re having to present to some god awful panel, or you’re delivering CPD after school on a Friday, and you feel nervous, the chances and despite what you think, your whole audience hasn’t noticed your shaky hands, the tremble in your voice, or the sweat patches.
3. SLIDE AWAY FROM SLIDES
Perhaps many of us resort to overly slidey PowerPoint slides as a means of distracting from something about ourselves that we consider to be embarrassing: A bad haircut, a pimple on the nose, or a tightly-fitting shirt that reveals just a little too much of last night’s six-pack. Your students need more of you and less smoke-screen. Give them it.
4. MODEL, YOURSELF
Often teachers avoid live modelling in class because they become hyper aware of things their audience probably won’t notice, or care about: the odd typo, wonky handwriting, a bit of thinking time from the teacher before committing thoughts to the board. A seven second pause as you try to remember how to spell ‘excruciating’ might seem like eternity to you, but for your audience it might seem like…er…7 seconds.
5.SHINE A SOFTER SPOTLIGHT
Your students will fall victims to the spotlight effect too. They will over-estimate the extent to which people might react badly to their answering questions in class. Make your students feel less self-conscious by telling them about The Spotlight Effect, and building a culture where it’s safe-even desirable- to get things wrong every now and again.
Our book, Boys Don’t Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools contains a whole chapter looking at boys’ mental health. In the chapter we offer a range of suggestions as to how we can improve boys’ mental health. In honour of Mental Health Awareness Week, here are two of these suggestions, taken directly from the book.
Talk with boys using their language
Despite the dominant narrative of male emotional mutism, often men and boys are talking about mental health, but we’re failing to notice that they are because they’re not using the language of mental health we’re listening out for. Men, encouraged to stifle any emotional outpourings from a young age, lack the vocabulary of mental health: so, whilst it wouldn’t seem unusual for a female to say, ‘I’ve been feeling really anxious,’ or, ‘I’m worried I might be depressed,’ the opposite is true for a male, who has been encouraged from birth, to display stoic fortitude and strength at all times. Male use of clinical words such as ‘anxious’, and ‘depressed’, which directly refer to mental health, are not part of the male lexicon because to speak those words would be to speak of weakness. There is a further issue, as Robertson and Baker note, that even phrases like ‘I’m feeling unloved,’ or ‘I have butterflies in my stomach all the time’, which avoid medical terminology, are still feminised and therefore less likely to be used by men. An Australian study, conducted by Fiona Shand et al, surveyed men on the language they used to express suicidal thoughts and depression. The top 5 words or phrases men used to describe feeling suicidal were:
The top 5 words or phrases men used to describe feeling depressed were:
Whilst you won’t get many teenage boys using the phrase, ‘down in the dumps’, what we do see here is the use of acceptably male words (‘stressed’ and ‘tired’ is what you should feel after a day of all that manly work) used euphemistically to express feelings associated with a serious mental health issue.
As teachers we need to be mindful of the language boys use and the very real possibility that when a boy tells us he’s ‘tired’, it might not be because he’s had too much late night X-Box – it might be that he feels he’s had too much life; when he tells us he’s ‘stressed’ it might not be that he’s fed up with revision, it might be that he’s fed up with living. As teachers we need to ensure we take note of the frequency with which boys use these terms, and take note of the contexts in which they are used: I’m tired because I stayed up late is very different to I keep falling out with my friends and I just feel tired of it all.
Provide men to talk to
Whilst students ascribe very little importance to a teacher’s gender in terms of learning, a study in Australia found that where personal matters are concerned, students would prefer to talk to someone of their own gender. In my previous school, the pastoral team – that is, the body of teachers responsible for helping and supporting students with issues not directly related to their subject learning – was largely female. Noticing that this was also the case with pastoral teams on a number of school-based television documentaries, I took to Twitter to see if this reflected a wider trend. Here are the results of a poll, in which 413 people responded:
Overwhelmingly, the staff whose job it is to counsel and console children tends to be female. It’s important that school leaders make a concerted effort to ensure boys know that in their schools, on their pastoral teams there is a man with a kind smile and a sympathetic ear. A boy who is anxious about his penis size, or confused with his sexuality, or fuming at the fact that Lucy in 9B told her friends about the love letter he wrote her, may be desperate for a man to discuss this with. If the shoulders to cry on are always female, we could be doing some boys a huge disservice.
Martin, A. J. & Marsh, H. (2005) ‘Motivating boys and motivating girls: does teacher gender really make a difference?’Australian Journal of Education, 49:3, pp 320–334.
Published in 1934, English Journey details JB Priestley’s 1933 tour of England, a trip commissioned by the left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz (who would later commission Orwell’s copycat travelogue, The Road to Wigan Pier), who was eager to expose the grim realities of working-class post-war Britain. Perhaps to Gollancz’s alarm, English Journey begins optimistically: it is with childish awe and excitement that Priestley observes the Ocean Liners at Southampton, comparing them to Medieval Cathedrals in the way that they are testament to the ambition and accomplishments of mankind.
But, as the days and miles pass, and as Priestley heads further North, away from the private clubs and champagne dinners of London, towards the industrial communities of the North, what begins as a seemingly sentimental jaunt around the country, quickly descends into a record of decimated neighbourhoods, impoverished individuals, and futures devoid of hope and comfort.
Thirteen years later, An Inspector Calls is performed on the London stage for the first time. English Journey, the experiences related in it, and the biographical insight it provides into the thoughts, motives, and political beliefs of its writer, bolster any contextual interrogation of An Inspector Calls and for those studying it at GCSE, I outline the following essential takeaways.
1.Priestley’s experience of the First World War informs his contempt for Mr Birling
In EJ, Priestley visits his hometown of Bradford for a reunion battalion dinner. The occasion prompts Priestley to remark that
The men who were boys when I was a boy are dead. Indeed, they never even grew to be men. They were slaughtered in their youth; and the parents of them have gone lonely, the girls they would have married have grown grey in spinsterhood, and the work they would have done has remained undone.
Priestley goes on to say that his childhood friends, victims of the war that killed so many, were ‘killed by greed…by old men gobbling and roaring in clubs.’ It’s tempting to think that Priestley’s relentless efforts to present Birling as an arsehole stem purely from a contempt for the ruling classes on an economic and political basis, but this suggests that Priestley’s contempt goes far beyond that. One gets the sense that for Priestley, men like Birling are not only responsible for the poverty and deprivation endured by the working classes in post-war Britain, but are also responsible for the slaughter of so many working class men in the first world war.
Priestley’s musings also invite us to look at the younger Birling male in a different light. Will Eric’s ‘public-school-and-Varsity-life’ protect him from the fate suffered by Priestley’s childhood pals? Or is the deplorable behaviour he exhibits in the play, a desperate attempt by Priestley to justify the inevitable fate that Eric will inevitably suffer, as a young man of Britain, in the ‘Great War’ that will begin two years after the play’s action ends.
2. Priestley knew the Midlands and he knew factories
Priestley’s decision to set the play in an ‘Industrial City in the North Midlands’ was based on an in-depth knowledge of the area and the processes of the factories within it. In EJ he describes how the landscape of the Midlands ‘unrolled before you like a smouldering carpet. You looked into an immense hollow of smoke and blurred buildings and factory chimneys. There seemed to be no end to it.’ Interestingly, considering the way they are presented in AIC, the factories that intruded upon the landscape of the Midlands and beyond impressed Priestley. He dedicates substantial amounts of ink to marvelling over the way factories produce typewriters, hosiery, and even chocolate. And yet, for all this, he is distinctly aware of the differing impacts of mechanisation on the lives of those who ran factories, like Birling, and factory workers, like Eva:
[there is] a great distinction between the fortunate few who are outside the machine and are capable of making changes in it, and the great mass of ordinary workpeople, mostly women, who are inside the machine, simply part of it. This distinction is so great that you feel that there two sets of people ought to belong to two different races.
Mr Birling (and the class for which he is a metonym) are outside the machine: he can raise prices and drop wages. He can forgive disruption and punish it. Eva, however, is someone inside the machine: a vital, but easily replaceable-and dispensable-cog. His observation that factory workers and factory owners are like people from ‘two different races’ explains the motivation behind Mrs Birling’s attempts to distance herself from Eva when she talks about ‘girls of that class.’
3. Priestley is an obsessive dramatist
AIC abounds in Stage Directions. In fact, Priestley’s fastidiousness in outlining exactly how he wants the play to look, the characters to talk, and the lines to be delivered may explain why productions of An Inspector Calls are so uniform in appearance and delivery. In the past, I have always theorised that Priestley’s meticulous approach is an indicator of his absolute determination to convey his message. But actually, EJ suggests that political motive isn’t the only thing driving force behind Priestley’s pedantic insistence on exactly how each line of the play should be delivered:
The theatre gets you. The play binds you, body and soul. There seems to be nothing else worth talking about…The whole life of the city, except so far as it touches your theatre, is nothing. You and your colleagues might be members of a secret society, working feverishly to strike a sudden blow at authority…The real questions are: “Will Bert manage that five seconds fade out all right?” and “Is Miss So-and-so going to get that move right at the end of Act Two?”
Priestley’s maddening technical attention to detail isn’t just about striking a blow against authority; it’s also inextricably linked to that ‘tide of excitement, sometimes roaming into hysteria, which inevitably rises when a play is being produced.” Priestley just wants to be perfect at something he loves. What’s clear in EJ is just how dependent he is on theatre as a means of escape. With every visit to a new town he discusses with verve and enthusiasm, the state of theatre in that particular location. It’s worth baring in mind this enthusiasm, when discussing AIC’s stage directions. They are the product of a political man, but also a political man with a hobby.
Bibliography
Priestley, JB (2018) English Journey, Great Northern: Bradford
All Ears 