Category Archives: educational philosophy

Back to life – starting over






Caring and teaching: only one is difficult



But: only one of them is difficult.















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Willingham points out three properties of thinking:


Then, Willingham considers the implications for teachers:







How many open tags is the max I can handle?

For details, read the (pdf) article.
















His conclusions:



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Is it ok for teachers to use corporal punishment? Discuss.

Schoolboy receiving bare bottom birching, from...
Image via Wikipedia

I left the following comment on a blog entry about corporal punishment in (UK) schools (I’ve reposted it here so that I can add stuff and edit the writing).

A succinct summary, with rebuttals, of the various arguments against corporal punishment. The non-aggression axiom provides a principled argument to the responses which blog-author OldAndrew lists as being often made against corporal punishment:
1) that it is wrong in principle to harm students: it is legitimate to use force in retaliation or in self-defence (I would take “retaliation” to include the notion of punishment);
2) the pacifist objection: corporal punishment is wrong because it is violence: see 1);
3) that corporal punishment didn’t work: the notion that “force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use” supports OldAndrew’s point that Punishment serves not to eliminate sin but to increase justice by inflicting a penalty on those who deserve it.

In addition, the non-aggression axiom would free teachers to use physical force in self-defence and/or in retaliation, i.e. punishment, an autonomy that seems to me sorely needed (and not just in schools, I might add): even acts of self-defence are likely to see a teacher end up in court and fired.

Some will no doubt argue that this would open the flood gates to abuse of the sanction. OldAndrew has already replied to this argument. I would only add that, if parents disagree with the school’s policies they should be free to not send their children there.

Photo by BaboMike on Flickr
Photo by BaboMike on Flickr

In Japanese public high schools, corporal punishment is allowed, though there is quite a lot of debate about this. Corporal punishment is traditionally the responsibility of the P.E. teachers. They are usually big and tough, accustomed to physical contact and not so easily intimidated by hulking high-schooling boys. I’ve seen such teachers cuff students around the head, either with their bare hands or with clipboards. Other punishment is usually being made to kneel in seiza (see photo), sometimes with arms held aloft for long periods; or push ups, or laps around the sports ground. I think straps, canes, etc., are banned.The only book in English that I have read that discusses punishment in Japanese schools in any detail is The Japanese High School by Shoko Yoneyama. She discusses it in the context of bullying and other violence in schools. She mentions some of the spartan school rules, such as no dyed hair, length of hair (for boys and girls) specified down to the millimetre, colour and size of bags, etc., and punishment for being late. Almost all Japanese schools have a heavy main gate that slides on wheels and looks  like this:

Photo by Junicci on Flickr

Teachers stand by the gate and greet students in the morning, and then close the gate when the bell rings. As you can imagine, there’s sometimes a rush of students squeezing in at the last minute before the gate closes completely. In one infamous incident, an overzealous, careless teacher squashed a girl to death, pinning her between the gate and the wall.

Elementary school gate, Japan
Photo by ykanazawa 1999 on Flickr

The incident was national news, and Yoneyama mentions it in her book as an example of violence from adults to students that, in her opinion, is part of a pattern of violence and power-plays that is then played out by students on other students in bullying. Yoneyama points out that in many cases of bullying, a group of bullies (the lone bully is hardly found in collectivist Japan!) picks on someone for “standing out” in some way, such as having a bag that is not quite the regulation colour, or hair not quite the regulation length. Yoneyama’s point was that children bully others in exactly the same ways that they are “bullied” by the adults in school.

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Source: Fraser Institute
Image via Wikipedia

Here is a comment I posted to a discussion about Needs, a blog post at Scenes from the Battleground. I suggest you read the original Needs article first. It will hopefully make the following more intelligible.

Update: I have edited this slightly (tho it is still too long and wordy) after reflecting on a comment left by OldAndrew.


A most interesting and provocative post, with lots of frank-bordering-on-the-plain-rude responses in the comments. I shall try to enter into the spirit of things.

In your original article, you fail to make several, crucial, distinctions; which omissions weaken your argument, whereas inclusion would strengthen it.

1) You fail to distinguish personal needs from social ones; i.e. personal, private needs (such as for food, sleep, sex, etc) which are and should be met by the individual him/herself, on the one hand, and needs which can and should be met by others, e.g. the educational institutions, on the other.
You write, we have the problem of identifying what counts as a need and in particular which needs educational institutions have an obligation to meet. It is indeed difficult, so all the more reason to bear in mind the distinction between personal and non-personal needs. Failure to keep, or perhaps make, this distinction leads you to set up straw men, such as Are we really obliged to make all students happy and psychologically healthy? (“We” here presumably meaning schoolteachers.) Who is suggesting you are so obliged? However, students are people and need to be happy and psychologically healthy. It does not necessarily follow that schoolteachers are responsible for meeting this need. Presumably, you have heard people make this assertion. They are wrong, and need to have their faulty logic pointed out to them (but please see also the point below about the hierarchy of needs).

2) You fail to distinguish between needs and wants: (quoting P.S. Wilson) a young bully, for example, from his point of view may ‘need’ to find victims. Plainly this is a ‘need’ which, though identifiable, should not be met.
This is not a need. A bully may want to find victims, but a want is not a need. Although I am quoting Wilson, not you, nowhere in your post do you make this rather crucial distinction. That omission weakens your argument – “needs” implies some kind of obligation or necessity for someone to do something about it – because your opponents’ argument (that if something is a need, that implies a moral duty to meet it) is seriously weakened once this distinction is made plain.

3) I have discussed the three main explanations given as to why children are blameless for their behaviour.
The three you list are, in my experience, given as explanations for behaviour. An explanation for behaviour is not the same as an excuse for bad behaviour, nor is it a reason not to blame or not to punish. Folks who use these explanations as reasons why children (or adults) should not be blamed or punished for bad behaviour, are failing to make this crucial distinction and guilty of sloppy thinking. An explanation for behaviour (bad or not) does not imply blamelessness; the one does not logically follow from the other.
It seems to be a common human need to explain behaviour. This is not the same thing as explaining away behaviour. Why don’t you point out this distinction to your opponents and detractors? It would seriously weaken their argument, and strengthen yours.

4) You fail to show you are aware of the significance of Maslow’s Theory, A Hierarchy of Needs (the key word is “hierarchy”, it’s right there in the title; that’s a hint. Maslow (as I recall) stated that basic needs must be met first, before higher needs can be attended to. Your apparent ignorance of this key fact, combined with your failure to make the above 3 distinctions, leads you to make the hilarious statement, “Maslow has helpfully included sex as a basic need, a fact forgotten by those who would quote him in an educational context, as the obvious implication would involve turning schools into brothels.” Who is implying this? Only you! Only someone who fails to distinguish between private, personal needs (e.g., sex), and social ones, i.e. needs that should be met by, e.g., an educational institution, could make such a suggestion. Only someone who fails to distinguish clearly that a need does not imply a moral duty to fulfill it, could make such a ludicrous suggestion. In addition, only someone who fails to appreciate the significance of “hierarchy” in “hierarchy of needs”, and someone who fails to distinguish between an explanation for behaviour and an excuse for behaviour, could make such a statement. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is relevant to teachers, I would suggest, because they have the problem of identifying what counts as a need and in particular which needs educational institutions have an obligation to meet.

if it is not possible to identify what needs we should be meeting then we can’t possibly declare that needs haven’t been met. Identifying needs that an educational institution should meet is greatly helped by distinguishing between needs and wants, between personal, private needs and others, and between basic versus higher needs.

Finally, students are people and have emotional needs which must be met. One such need is for attention. For a baby, attention or lack of it means the difference between life and death, because a baby cannot feed itself. Some children learn that a sure-fire way to get attention is to do something naughty. This puts the adult, who is aware of this, in a dilemma when considering how to deal with the bad behaviour: paying attention to the behaviour merely re-inforces it, yet not paying attention to it may encourage the behaviour, a) because the student thinks they can get away with it, and b) because the person’s need for attention is still unsatisfied.

The knowledge that emotional needs are basic needs, and it can be useful to bear in mind that one key emotional need, particularly with young children (but not limited to them)  is attention. It helps satisfy the teacher’s/parent’s/adult’s need for explanation for behaviour. Explanation for behaviour is useful when deciding how to respond. But it does not excuse bad behaviour. (Did I already mention that?)

Now imagine we accepted the belief that meeting this need was not, a moral duty, or an act of charity, but a method of treating the underlying cause of poor behaviour. We would cease looking for the most famished child to feed first and start feeding the worst behaved.
A very good point. And your final paragraph is particularly powerful.

For the record, I agree with OldAndrew. People who fail to distinguish between needs and wants, who bundle human behaviour up into all-encompassing “needs”, then further simply assume (without justification or explanation) that some or all of these “needs” must be met (“because they’re needs!”) by the educational institution generally and by teachers in particular – such people are using sloppy thinking, faulty logic, and they should be exposed without mercy and as soon as possible, because their ideology is seriously damaging.

I don’t live in the UK so I have no idea how dominant the ideology is which OldAndrew is arguing against. Judging from his blog, it sounds like he (and a handful of other crazies) are the only dissenters. Is there a big debate going on about this? Or is he, in fact, a minority of one?

Suggested further reading: Go For It! by Dr. Irene Kassorla;
How To Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk, by Faber & Mazlish;
anything by Dr. Haim Ginott

By the way, I usually vet the related articles listed below by Zemanta. Not all of them are relevant, and of those that are, not all are interesting or well written. This one is particularly interesting.

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Image by …storrao… via Flickr

I am reading everything I can find about TPRS.

I recently got Blaine Ray‘s Fluency Through TPR Storytelling, and have been reading it each night until I fall asleep.

Today, I got hooked on Ben Slavic’s page. Yesterday, I downloaded all the handouts, docs, posters, everything that wasn’t nailed down. I spent the early hours of this morning reading them until I fell asleep. I’m doing the same today.

I want to credit AJ Hoge for turning me onto TPRS. He mentioned it on an old blog he had years ago, when he was teaching English in a university in Thailand, I believe. He wrote a bit more about it after he returned to the States. I didn’t investigate at the time. It was only when I happened across AJ’s most recent site that I felt an urge to find out more about this method.

What prompted me to do so was a few things that AJ said in a video or somewhere on his blog. They were very similar to what Ben Slavic wrote here: Professionally sad.

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Facing The Future

Facing The Future
Originally uploaded by duncmc

[Update: Comments have been closed.]

So, where to, now?

I tried direct instruction. It “worked” in that,
* students meekly did what they were told
* it gave students a feeling that they were in a “proper” class, taught by a teacher “in charge”
* it was easy to sort the sheep from the goats.

It didn’t work, in that,
* students were still not producing anything approaching higher order thinking (that’s a lot of -ings in one sentence!)
* students were no more enthusiastic than in previous semesters
* students remained in the “group” mode, i.e. restrained/suppressed individuality in favour of the group
* I still didn’t feel like I was making the best use of my skills, knowledge and experience.

This wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, at least not with these students.


I learned about educating the disenfranchised, how language and education are used by ruling elites to perpetuate the status quo. That seems to be the case, however, it did not find this explanation sufficient, nor did it provide me with enough tools to come up with practical “chalk-face” solutions (altho An Unquiet Pedagogy was very interesting and helpful).



Gatto wrote, “You teach who you are”, and in searching for ways to “beat the system”, he had gone back into his own childnood and found there gems that gave him valuable clues as to what to do.


One of the things going on at work was an increase in surveillance cameras. Another was a private initiative which I had started (a bookcase of second-hand English books) had been taken away without my permission, and I was told it was unacceptable to have unattended “rubbish” (that’s what my boss called it) in the hallways.




Their anti-collectivist philosophy seems to match Gatto’s: Gatto and Hayek warn that centrally planned, compulsory systems lead inevitably to a severe curtailment of personal freedom and that will lead to a nation of slaves, of uncritical, obedient automata (Hayek’s famous booklet is called The Road to Serfdom). Gatto adds that not only is liberty curtailed under compulsory education, but also the minds of children (and of everyone in the system) are dumbed down.



“Rubbish! What could be the harm in taking attendance?”

Well, what is its purpose? To make sure students are where they are supposed to be. It’s part of the tracking mechanism of schools. It has become so ingrained in this society that a large majority of people equate attending a class with education, with learning (or perhaps, even more cynically, they equate “education” not with learning but with simply spending time in a classroom! It would not be easy to argue against such a position, given the reality in many schools); such that many will expect a passing grade simply on the basis that they have a good attendance record. Is this the kind of philosophy you are happy to promote? Because that is what you are doing when you take attendance.





Good night, and good luck.

Looking back (5)

Where To Now?
Originally uploaded by Katelyn Gibson


Holt pointed out that children (people) learn most from what they themselves actually do, rather than from what teachers do (or don’t do): “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” (from Holt’s Wikipedia entry).

Both Gatto and Holt seemed to have come, independently, to the same conclusion (here in Holt’s words, though they could easily have been written by Gatto): “Education… now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and ‘fans,’ driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.” (from Holt’s Wikipedia entry).

When I first read Holt, I found it hard to accept his bitter anti-school conclusions. I had a similar reaction to reading Gatto at first. If Gatto is right (and he’s not the only one to have pointed out the roots and motivations of compulsory, state-sponsored educational systems, by any means), then I am part of that social engineering: I’ve gone through it, and am now implementing it. How can that be, when schools are so full of good, nice, sometimes even inspiring, passionate people? Like me, for instance! I’m not a bad person; my teachers weren’t bad people.

* my students certainly behave like people who know that they are being asked (and will inevitably be asked) to do essentially meaningless things in school. That’s what happens in school: you do meaningless things. Hence the lethargy, the lack of enthusiasm, the boredom;
* they do seem to be being trained to move at certain times, to be grouped together with other people they don’t know and haven’t chosen to be with, according to criteria they have no say in; they accept this as “normal”;
* school (here I mean the universities where I work) seems to be more a matter of keeping people managed than actually educating them – hence the memos warning teachers of dire consequences for letting the students out early.



1) What do I really know of freedom?
2) What kind of freedom or autonomy do I have?
3) Am I really free? Or do I assume I am because of certain symbols I’ve been accustomed to associate with freedom?
5) Am I a slave unwittingly perpetuating an enslaving system?
6) If I’m not really free, how can I “teach” autonomy? Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Where to, now?

Looking back (4)

facing the wall
Originally uploaded by NEINmeister

I began to question my own values and assumptions:
* what if all this, the “freedom, autonomy, choice, fun, reflection” schtick, were a monumental waste of time? Actually making learning more difficult for them, and less likely?

* much more lock-step work;
* more lecturing with students taking notes;
* a final exam.


And I wasn’t having much fun, either.


Looking back (3)

Look Back
Originally uploaded by InTheSunStudio

The next stage (tho it wasn’t actually so neatly chronological) was reading stuff about empowerment, about language as power, about power differentials, about the classroom as a stage where power plays are enacted.

That seemed to make some sense:
* If so, in what ways are they disenfranchised?
* How does this work?

I also explored the politics and psychologies behind various approaches:
* what values underlie the “project method”?
* how might those differences play out with my students?
* what are the arguments for and against “traditional” instruction?
* how valid are those arguments?

I read E.D. Hirsch,
James Herndon,
Neil Postman,
Maxine Greene,
Lisa Delpit,
William Perry,
Jacques Barzun,
Robert Leamson,
Dennis Littky,
Theodore Sizer,
several books by Henry Giroux.
I re-read John Holt.
I read Melanie Philips.

(To be continued).