Schools, Technology and Parents:

How should schools work with parents when things get back to normal?

A TTS webinar given on 22/06/2021

   

Mobile Phones in Schools - Letter to the Times

Sir
Schools can only do so much in the battle to limit the amount of time that young people spend on mobile phones (‘Ban mobile phone use in schools’ 2nd February 2019). It is parents, not schools, who are responsible for purchasing mobile phones, and, whilst one can accept that children may need to carry a mobile phone as part of their personal safety, there is no need for this to be a smartphone which facilitates full, unfiltered web and social media access. In contrast, where schools allow or supply tablet devices or laptops for educational purposes, responsible institutions usually provide full web-filtering and a device management system that allows the teacher to monitor and take control of the pupil’s tablet.
Yours faithfully,
Mark S. Steed
Director
JESS, Dubai

Published 5th February

GCSE results: academic success cannot be measured by grades alone

Today sees thousands of students who study in UK curriculum schools in the UAE receiving their GCSE results. Like many others, this year I am an anxious parent, hoping that my sixteen year-old has got the best possible set exam results that will allow him to progress to the sixth form on a path that I hope will take him to university and, from there, on into successful and fulfilled employment. Amid the anxiety and relief, the questions nagging at the back of many parents’ minds on results’ day are ‘Did my child get the best possible grades that he could have?’ and, given the amount we invest in our children’s education in the UAE, ‘Has the school done a good job?”

As parents and teachers we know that not all children are the same. Some have a greater aptitude for academic studies than others; for some work comes easy - for others it is hard; some make a huge effort – others are lazy or disengaged. For this reason, academic success cannot simply be measured by the final grades: a gifted student who achieves 10 A grades may have under-performed, whereas a less gifted student may well have fulfilled her potential and achieved 5 Bs and 3Cs. The true measure of performance in any examination is not raw results, rather we should judge our children’s performance in relation to their ability. The question is how do we decide whether or not a student has fulfilled his or her potential?

One important way of evaluating this is by looking at a measure of “Value Added”. The Durham University Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) has been researching student performance for over thirty years. Over this time, millions of students have been tested at the start of their secondary schooling (aged 11) and their performances monitored at GCSE (aged 16). These data allow CEM to define with a high degree of accuracy what grade a student of a given baseline score is most likely to get in their GCSE in a given subject. This is not to say that all students of the same ability get the same results: the CEM data set is able to outline the percentage chance of a student of a given ability will achieve. For example, 2% of students with a given baseline score might have a got an ‘E’ in French GCSE, 8% got a ‘D’, 21% got a ‘C’, 29% got a ‘B’, 26% got an ‘A’, and 13% got an ‘A*’. In this case the ‘most likely grade’ is a ‘B’. Thus if a student of this ability gets an ‘A’ or an ‘A*’, it might be said that he or she has exceeded expectations; whereas if the student gets below a B grade, he or she has fallen short of expectations.

Value-added is also a useful measure of evaluating schools, departments and even teachers. A school, department or teacher who consistently has students who are exceeding expectations is adding value and is doing a great job; conversely a school, department or teacher whose students consistently fall short of expectations indicates the urgent need for improvement. Savvy parents looking for a secondary school, would be well advised to ask for the schools’ value added scores, rather than just their raw GCSE results – they can be far more telling.

At JESS, we use CEM baseline data to set aspirational targets for students (and staff). These targets are published to parents and we report on the student’s performance in a given subject against these targets.

Results days are always anxious times for all concerned. It usually is a time for celebration, as well as a time for relief. When your child brings you the result slip, don’t forget that their greatest achievement is sometimes the hard-fought ‘C’ grade in the subject that they find most difficult. Good luck!

A version of this article was published in online version of The National.

The Last Foundling by Tom H. Mackenzie - Book Review

The Last Foundling is not the sort of book that I'd ever pick out in Waterstones, but fortunately social attitude and human interest stories are a particular interest of my partner, hence it found its way onto our holiday reading list. It caught my eye because the book is set, for the most part, in Berkhamsted and unveils a chapter of the town's history with which I was previously unaware.  

It follows the parallel stories of a mother, Jean, and her child. It tells how Jean was forced to give up her son in 1939 to the Foundling Hospital, because, as an unmarried mother, she was unable to support him. She expresses her anguish in having to give up her child and charts her hopes and aspirations to be reunited with him once more.
The heart of the book is Tom's account of his upbringing: how, once removed from his birth mother and given a new name and identity, he was placed in a safe and happy foster home for his early years, from which he was torn away to be placed in the Foundling Hospital in Berkhamsted just before his fifth birthday.
The original Foundling Hospital had been established in Bloomsbury by Thomas Coram and received its first foundlings in 1741. It moved to a purpose-built school in Berkhamsted in 1935 only to close in 1954. The buildings are now used by Ashlyns School.  No doubt the intentions of the Founder and the Foundling Hospital staff were otherwise, but Tom Mackenzie describes a cold, loveless, institutional existence; the brutality of the dormitories; and the scrapes into which he got with the various families who were kind and brave enough to take him in during the vacations.

Written throughout in the first person, the unemotional, matter-of-fact style of the book powerfully conveys the detachment and lack of belonging that clearly characterised the author's upbringing. There is no bitterness or blame here - just the mature reflections of an old man looking back on how this institutional unloving childhood shaped the adult that he became. Above all the book explores the theme of the importance of family life in defining who we truly are: the account of a foundling childhood devoid of affection or family can only draw out in the reader a deeper appreciation of those who provided love and a stable home for those of us who were lucky enough to have both.

'I was one of Britain's last foundlings' Guardian 08/03/2014

Why Neknominate is so popular with Young People and what Parents and Schools should do about it.

As NekNominate claims its third UK victim (Salesman becomes third British victim of NekNominate craze after downing two PINTS of gin and posting video on the internet Daily Mail 16/02/2014), there is little doubt that the latest Facebook craze is dangerous - but that indeed is its attraction for young people.

The NekNominate phenomenon brings together four drivers of the culture of young people:

1. The propensity to explore drinking limits.  This is not a new phenomenon: young people have played drinking games since the invention of alcohol. 
2. The desire to take risks. Research by Professor Sarah-Jane Blakemore of University College, London, demonstrates that risk-taking is a key feature of the adolescent brain. She has found that the limbic system of young people aged 16 to 24 is hypersensitive and rewards risk-taking. 'They are particularly prone to taking risks when they are with their friends.' (See Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's TED Talk: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain). The fact is that young people are wired to take risks. This goes a long-way to explain the  Gap-year bungee-jump phenomenon.
3. The need to be loved/ respected by one's peers is a well-documented driver of many aspects of human society. Family, employment, philanthropy in its many forms and, more recently, celebrity have provided these for generations. Today, the Internet provides the ability to achieve "fifteen minutes of fame" and to engage instantly no only with friends and family but with an audience that twenty years ago was only available to TV celebrities and leading politicians.
4. The ability to publish information about oneself to the Internet. There is a tendency among many people 'to live out their lives' on Facebook. Social Media provide instant feedback and reaffirmation - friends can comment and 'like'; 'hits' and 'retweets' are counted, all fueling the need to be loved and respected. The problem with this is that young people have little concept that publishing to the Internet is like having a digital tattoo: it is very difficult to get rid of what you have written once it is published.

The combination of these factors mean that young people are competing for each other's attention on a world stage and the threshold for notoriety and 'respect' are consequently higher. As the rewards go up, so do the stakes and the consequence is that the entry level for the respect of one's peers is for NekNominees to risk their own lives.

So what can we do as parents and educators?

Well we can't really stop it or ban it.  The phenomenon is out there and young people will always find ways around any parental controls that we put in place. 

Here are four antidotes to the NekNominate phenomenon.

1. Ensure that young people not only are educated about safe drinking limits, but also that they know what to do if they or one of their friends go too far.
2. Channel the risk-taking.  Given that young people are wired to take risks, it makes sense to provide young people opportunities to take risks in controlled environments. Outdoor education has a huge part to play in this - rock climbing, skiing, expeditions take young people out of their comfort zones and can fulfil the need to take risks, but within the bounds of overall safety. 
3. Provide 'real-world' opportunities to demonstrate love and respect for young people. Parents and schools need to celebrate the positive contributions that young people make. Most importantly young people need to feel loved by their parents (and this is often best achieved by setting consistent boundaries for them).
4. Ensure that young people not only are Internet-aware, but that they have people to talk to when times get tough. Extended family and a school's counselling service can play a very important role in this.

Three Reasons why Schools and Parents are not nurturing a generation of Entrepreneurs:

A journalist contacted me last week to ask if I thought that schools should teach enterprise and entrepreneurship: How important is it? Is it a good idea? Is it realistic for teachers to try to teach it? and, if so, how far should we go?  Is there a danger that it could overshadow traditional subjects? The questions were framed in a way that suggested that, whilst attending various carol services and nativity plays, I had missed a pronouncement from the Secretary of State that 'Enterprise and Entrepreneurship' was to be the next candidate for inclusion in the Gove/National Curriculum. The questions posed struck a chord. They open up the important debate about how both school and home are bringing up this generation, and how this will impact on their ability to cope in the world of work . . . .

Qualities of the Entrepreneur

Three of the most important qualities of enterprise and entrepreneurship are arguably:

1. the ability to take risks; 
2. the ability to pick yourself up when things go wrong; and
3. the ability to make connections and approach a problem in a novel way.

Unfortunately, today these are alien concepts. Here are three reasons why I believe that the implicit messages that parents and schools are sending to young people foster quite the opposite values.

"Have you got a risk assessment for that?"

Think of your fondest childhood memory - I wager it was outside, and that was away from the supervision of adults. Chances are that your mother sent you out to play saying "Don't come back till tea time." Mine did - most did. Looking back on my childhood, it's amazing that I'm alive. We went off to play in the way that boys did - we climbed trees, we broke into condemned buildings that had collapsing floors, I explored all the loft spaces of the house, went on all-day bike rides, and so on. Undoubtedly it was dangerous - but we learned to take and manage risks. Children don't do that anymore. Their idea of danger is served up by Alton Towers:  it's scary, but fundamentally it's safe - you think that your going to Oblivion, but really you know that you'll get to queue up for the next ride.

The same goes for travel - so few pupils walk or even ride a bike to school. Most are chauffeured by parents everywhere - even to be dropped off to catch the School bus.  Few ever use public transport and most can't even read a railway or bus timetable, let alone plan a long distance journey. In contrast, I walked three-quarters of a mile to catch a train to school each morning (sometimes carrying a 'cello!) When I was 13 I was put on a train at Chelmsford and expected to get myself  to Valenciennes in north west France by train and ferry (operating for a part in my schoolboy French) to stay with my pen-friend. Unthinkable today - and all the more so when one thinks that we grew up in a world without mobile phones. It was a different world - but I'm not convinced that it was any more dangerous.

There is little doubt that we have become overprotective of our children, that they gain independence later (helicopter parents at University!) and that they are far less skilled at managing risk. If this is the case, how can we really expect this generation of young people to show enterprise and take the risks needed by entrepreneurs if on a daily basis they remain wrapped up in cotton wool?

"Practically Perfect in Every Way"

There is a growing culture in independent schools and amongst fee-paying parents that a B or a C grade is a failure. There are two factors driving this. First, A-level grade inflation means that top universities find it increasingly difficult to discriminate between candidates. In a world where significant numbers of pupils have A* and A grades - anything less and your chances of getting into a top 10 university goes out of the window. Secondly, School league tables (and therefore a schools' academic standings) are determined by the percentage of A*+A. 

The consequence of this is that young people are expected to be "practically perfect in every way" - or at least to have a perfect academic record. There is no doubt that young people are under much greater pressure to perform at a high level than we were at school:  last summer the vast majority of Berkhamsted Sixth held and made university offers in excess of ABB  - pressure reserved only for the most prestigious courses in the 1980s.

Perhaps the most bizarre unintended consequences of the "A-grade = Pass culture" is that children are no longer allowed to fail. Parents are increasingly vocal as soon as a grade drops below an A. Let me illustrate:

When an essay set early in the AS course is marked at a B or C grade, it is not uncommon for a parent to contact the school to ask why their child has dropped a grade. ["It has been very upsetting for her."]  It does not take long before the accusation that "The teacher clearly hasn't taught them properly!" is levelled. When it is explained to the parent that few experienced teachers would expect a pupil in their first weeks of the Lower Sixth to be writing at A grade standard [because it takes time to develop a mature essay writing style and that the transition from GCSE to A-level is not an easy one] a typical parental repost is along the lines of  "Well, your expectations should be higher, Mr Steed" or "Why set a task when they can't get an A grade?"

Something has been lost here. Getting a B or a C grade has always been a normal part of the learning process. B or a C grades should indicate that a pupil has reached a certain standard, but that there is more work to do. Yet in our "practically perfect" culture, any deviation from an A grade is seen as an aberration that in some way damages the young person's self esteem. 

Learning to cope with failure and disappointment is an important part of life and schools have a fundamental part to play in this. How a young person reacts to getting a B or a C grade is important: "What do I need to do to get an A grade?" "Where did I go wrong?" "What does an A grade essay look like?"  There the  is a real danger that we are creating a generation of young people who lack the basic resilience that is fundamental to success in the world of work - let alone embarking on a career as an entrepreneur.

"We are breading a generation of accountants, not entrepreneurs." 

There was a time when I started teaching when we all knew what an A grade essay looked like - it was sometimes difficult to put your finger on why, but we all knew one when we saw one. We knew for the same reasons that Oxbridge dons 'know' what a First looks like (or indeed an Beta+? for that matter) - because it had been passed down through the generations with professional rigour and pride. The old system could accommodate those with flair, it could accommodate the maverick. That was all part of the fun. Teachers would encourage the bright pupil to take a different angle or to make the quirky connection, knowing that she would be rewarded for doing so. Today flair is an alien concept to examiners: the mark schemes are so rigid that we only reward the careful. The consequence is that the bright pupil has the maverick beaten out of him. Flair has become a vice. Making quirky connections a menace. We have an A-level system that is breading a generation of accountants: they are reliable, they are careful, they don't make mistakes and they get the job done - they are trained to think in the same way. Consequently most bright pupils don't have an entrepreneurial bone in their body.

Final Thoughts

I'm sure that it would be very good for the country if more young people were to go out into the world to become Entrepreneurs. However, I don't think that 'enterprise and entrepreneurship' can be taught in a classroom - indeed the key skills are best taught outside of the classroom.

1. Risk:  "We expose young people to risk in controlled situations" (Duncan Hardy, Director of Outdoor Education at Berkhamsted). Young people need to learn to take and manage risk. Some of the most important things that we do at school are the most dangerous: the rock climbing club, the CCF survival weekends, Duke of Edinburgh Expeditions and so on - these activities teach young people a whole range of important skills and give them "character-forming" experiences that will shape them for life. They should be a fundamental part of every child's education.
2. Failure is a great teacher:  "Life isn't fair - get used to it."  Young people need to learn how to cope with disappointment and failure. Resilience is a vital life skill that can only be learned in the school of hard knocks. We need to let young people fail, if they are to succeed.
3. In Praise of the B grade:  We all need to see ourselves as "work-in-progress" - we are never "the finished article": to think of ourselves as A* is hubris.
4. Encourage the maverick:  We need people who can see problems from different angles. We need to value people who can make connections. We need to encourage intellectual risk-taking.  In terms of the examination system, this will never be possible if we continue on the path to tick-box examining.

Pressures on Young People: Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'roll and Digital Tattoos

A presentation to Berkhamsted School Y9 Parents given on Wednesday 27 November 2013

 

This Presentation included two videos produced by the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty:

Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture by Hilary Levey Friedman - Book Review

I bought this book on the back of a Harvard Business Review Blog article by the author (for links see previous blogpost) believing it to be a research study into the relationship between competitive sport/ activities and future university and career success. Sadly, despite this being the thrust both of the HBR article and of the book's Preface, this is not the core of its thesis. Rather, Playing to Win is a sociological study of American parenting - focusing on how and why (middle class) parents are devoting increasing amounts of time and money to taking their Elementary school aged children (age 5-8) to after-school competitive activities. It describes how parents think and behave and seeks to unpack their motivations and aspirations.

Methodology

The field research was clearly a significant undertaking for one person. The study, which was conducted over sixteen months, took a "deep dive" into three different competitive fields (soccer, dance and chess) with six to nine months devoted to each field. It considered the parents of 86 children;in two areas, one urban ("Metro") and the other suburban ("West County"). The primary source of information was 172 "semi-informal" interviews (95 of which were with parents). 

Hilary Levey Friedman's thesis is an interesting one 

'I argue that the extensive time devoted to competition is driven by parents' demand for credentials for their children, which they see as a necessary and often sufficient condition for entry into the upper middle class and the "good life" that accompanies this. I develop the concept of "Competitive Kid Capital" to explore the ways in which winning has become central to the lives of American children." (p.3)

and 

 'I argue that it is this organised, competitive element, outside of the home, that is key to understanding middle- and upper-middle-class family life.  Parents worry that if their children do not participate in childhood tournaments they will fall behind in the tournament of life.  Whilst it's not clear if the parents are correct, what matters is that they believe that they are and act accordingly. Their beliefs about the future shape their actions in the present when it comes to their children's competitive after-school activities.' (p.8)

"Competitive Kid Capital" 

Playing to Win identifies five reasons why parents believe that competitive activities are important for young children - she terms these benefits "competitive Kid Capital":  

1. This Sport internalizes the importance of winning; 
2. Sport helps young people to learn how to bounce back from a loss to win in the future; 
3. Sport teaches the importance of performing within time limits; 
4. Sport helps young people to learn how to succeed in stressful situations; 
5. Sport teaches the importance of being able to perform under the gaze of others.

Review

Hilary Levey Friedman's has excellent academic credentials (Harvard-Princeton-Harvard) and it is no surprise that the book is structured like a serious piece of sociological research (in the "say what you are going to say", "say it", "say what you said" style). The author has command of the relevant literature and studies - it goes without saying that the noting, referencing and indexing are immaculate. However, it falls short in two respects. First, the author has not yet mastered an engaging popular writing style (typified by Gladwell and Pink) and drifts from argument into anecdote and, at times, into a stream of consciousness (e.g. in the mis-named Conclusion, which degenerates into the author's personal reflections on the broad theme of parenting). Secondly, the field research on which this book draws was on such a small scale that it is very difficult to draw any wider conclusions with any degree of certainty.

What disappointed me most was that the book set out to answer the question, 'Why do so many families spend their weekends watching their children compete?' (p.3) but ended devoting so much space simply to documenting and describing the micro-societies that are the world of the out-of-school chess/ dance/ soccer parent. Consequently, I found myself wanting to write "Don't narrate, argue" in the margin for large parts of book (it took me back to the days of marking C grade A-level essays!). For this reason, the best parts of the book were undoubtedly the Preface and the Introduction, where Hilary Levey Friedman outlined (and argued) her central thesis - these are well worth a read.

Those of us who work in schools are only too aware that young people in the UK already are engaged in many more activities that were those of us of the parent generation and that competitive parenting increases the closer to London that one travels. Playing to win serves as a timely reminder that things are only likely to get worse.

As a parent, I am relieved that the lion share of my children's activities have been provided by the school 'as part of the package'. One of the great benefits of the independent sector is that so many after-school and holiday actives are provided by the school which extend and develop young people. Furthermore there are many opportunities to compete in a whole range of areas. In short, "Competitive Kid Capital" comes as standard.

Hilary Levey Friedman, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (September 2013)

The Importance of Independent Learning

"One of the key responsibilities of any good school is to provide the context in which young people learn how to study on their own. “Learning to learn” is a complex process that entails pupils taking responsibility and playing their part within the educational process. You can see the shift in mindset when a boy or girl moves from saying “Here’s your homework, Sir” to “Here is my work.” After all, schooling is not about teachers teaching great lessons – it is about young people learning and understanding things. 

Independent Learning is important because it develops creativity and intellectual curiosity. Independent learning is about pupils being active rather than passive. It is about them working out the answers rather than being told them. It is about them wanting to study because they want to understand more, rather than taking a Utilitarian stance that I am doing this because I want to pass the examination. Independent Learning is not the easy option – it is tough. 

Here at Berkhamsted we are committed to fostering Independent learning and, parents, you can help us here – we need your support. But before I say how, let me first explain why. 

As a teacher I have a choice. If all I want to do is to get results, I can spoon-feed you. I can give you dozens of model answers and I can get out my big stick and I can make you learn them.

But if I want to educate you, I will encourage and inspire you to explore the subject, to make discoveries and set you tasks that will challenge you. There will be times when you will feel out of your depth, but as you develop new skills and greater resilience, you will begin to understand the subject and to make connections. Alongside this I will teach you the techniques so that you can answer any question that the examiner chooses to throw at you. 

The “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish you feed him for life” principle is at work here. 

This year we have had a focus on independent learning and the teaching staff have been encouraged not to spoon-feed, but to set challenging tasks. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I have encouraged teachers to be less helpful and not to just jump straight in with the answers. For it is only by being less helpful that pupils will have the opportunity to develop the resilience and problem-solving skills that will help them rise to future challenges in life. 

And this is where you come in as parents; or more to the point, this is where you shouldn’t come in as parents. The response this year of some parents to our shift towards more independent learning has been to complain. “My daughter has been set a prep on a subject she hasn’t yet been taught.” “My son has dropped from an A grade to B – what is going wrong?” etc. 

Here at Berkhamsted we are committed to educating young people – not just cramming them for examinations. A true education is challenging. A true education will involve failure. Getting an A grade all the time is probably a bad sign.   

So, parents, bear with us.
Support us.
Encourage your children to stretch themselves.
Encourage your children to take responsibility for their own work.
Encourage your children to take risks.
And, above all, encourage to your children to learn from their mistakes."

Extract from Berkhamsted School Speech Day Address 4th. July 2013

Body Image: How the media distorts reality:

The camera never lies . . . (not)
Every picture tells a story . . .

 

Click here for related Blogposts: 

How Schools can support Parenting

A presentation I gave last year to a meeting of ISA Heads

 

How to be a good parent

Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington, given the title "How do you raise a winner", instead writes an outstanding piece on "How to be a good parent" in the latest edition of the Independent School Parent Magazine.

In this much-needed counterblast to the "Tiger Mother" approach to parenting, Seldon argues:

"The key to being a good parent is learning how to let go. It is important to realise that you don’t “own” your child, but rather that they are their own person, with their own thoughts, feelings and passions. 

The good parent will spend attentive time with the child, the father as well as the mother, and help the child to think through and develop their own thoughts, feelings and opinions. They will help the child through the key decisions in their life; including choice of school, choice of subjects and choice of university, rather than subtly making the child do what the parent wants. 

Good parents help their children to become autonomous and independent. Bad parenting prevents a child from becoming autonomous and fully independent, with life-long damage, not least in the way that those children will in turn bring up their own children."

 For the full article: 'How do you raise a winner?'  Independent School Parent Spring 2013, p17

See also previous blogposts:

• Failure - A key educational Experience  12/03/2013
• Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua 18/07/2011

Failure . . . a key educational experience

As a teenager one of my favourite reads was Stephen Pile's The Book of Heroic Failures, which distilled failure into humour and thus made it fit for human consumption. Failure may be funny when served with a side order of schadenfreude, but in the real world, it really isn't all that popular at all.

Perhaps it has always been this way, perhaps I'm just noticing it more, or perhaps it's a product of the easy A-grade culture, but I am increasingly conscious that parents don't like their children failing. And I'm not talking here about the fundamentals - no one wants their child to fail their A-levels or to fail to get the grades for a chosen university course - but parents increasingly intervene when there is a slightest blip from the flawless path of success. Here in the independent sector, there is a growing constituency who believe, just because they are paying fees, that they are buying success. We are in danger of falling into the trap of creating a false universe where the only thing that matters is success. (And we in schools are just as guilty -  we celebrate success in every assembly, on every website post and in every Speech Day address.  When did we last celebrate a failure?)

As parents and educators we want our children to grow and thrive. We want them to have a range of experiences that develop them as into mature, thoughtful, productive, independent adults. We naturally want to protect our children. But protecting children from harm is one thing, protecting them from failure is quite a different matter.

Real life - especially very successful life - is made up of both success and failure. In "bigging up" our children, we are neglecting to see the value of failure as an educational experience. If we are to equip young people for the real world beyond the security of our homes and schools, we need to give them the strength and resilience to cope with failure. Failure is only a bad thing if we let it defeat us. It is how we respond to failure that matters most - indeed, it is what my parents' generation would call "character-building" (a phrase we rarely hear anymore - why?). 

One of the consequences of the "succeed, but don't fail" culture is that young people become risk averse. The much-quoted research of Carol Dweck at Stamford University has demonstrated that the young people who have a "fixed mindset" are less likely to cope with failure and more likely to take risks academically, than those who have a "growth mindset" (See Carol Dweck's Mindset). What is clear from Dweck's research is that we need to encourage young people to take risks, to allow them to fail, and to teach them to learn from their failures - thus developing resilience. (There are excellent summaries of Dweck's research in both Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and Matthew Syed's Bounce).

The last word here must go to Michael Jordan in his iconic Nike Advert (which makes a great school assembly!).  

"I've missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I've lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life . . . . . . . and that is why I succeed."

Further Reading:

• Malcolm Gladwell 'The Talent Myth' New Yorker 22/07/2002
• Malcolm Gladwell Outliers: The Story of Success
• Carol Dweck Mindset
• Matthew Syed Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

Are you a Veeping Parent?

Excellent article on the dilemmas facing parents:

Anne McElvoy: 'I keep veering from Tiger Mother to Mumsnet softie' Evening Standard 27/02/2013

Veeps — Veering Parents, who swing between the fierce demands of attainment and letting the little darlings have the run of the iPad and chillout time.

See also Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua

Miss Representation: how the Media presents women

The following film was recommended by an American delegate at the GSA Conference. It is a thought-provoking and powerful presentation that challenges the way in which the media present women. It is sure to provoke discussion in the home and schools alike.

http://missrepresentation.org

Body Image - it's all about perception

Young people have always been concerned about their appearance, but this generation is under greater pressure to look good than ever before. On average British children are spending between six and eight hours a day looking at screens, during much of which they are being bombarded with images of the "beautiful". Men's and women's magazines present distorted images of human perfection. At present the average model weighs 23% less than the average British woman, so it is no surprise that at any one time 1 in 4 women in this country are dieting and that the UK has the highest rate of cosmetic surgery in Europe.

Poor body image is not just an issue for adults. It is now an acute problem, not only for teenagers, but also for children. Age 9 to 10 is a crucial time for developing poor body image. By age of 10, 1 in 3 British girls say they want to be thinner: by 13 half have a dissatisfaction in body image. And it is not just an issue for girls, boys are increasingly feeling pressure to look good. A recent survey found that 22% of boys are concerned about their body image. 

So how are parents and schools to respond to this challenge? Parents and schools need to equip young people to develop a strong sense of self-esteem and self-worth that enables them to resist the social and media pressures that they face.

Reflections based in a presentation by Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland, authors of Body Image and the Primary School, at the GSA Annual Conference. www.notjustbehaviour.co.uk

Broken iPad - The generation gap widens

I'm not sure whether or not to be worried about this one . . . . . . .

. . . . . . but it is clear that the next generation already expect everything to be digital and magazines can't have much a future when these kids grow up.

How do high achieving "Super People" stand out from the crowd?

Travelling back from a day in London, I enjoyed reading an interesting feature article in yesterday's Evening Standard on "Super People".

Super People "have got qualifications coming out of their ears, speak lots of languages and have been 'prepped' for success by the experts, and are set on landing the very top jobs."

The article explores what it takes for the very best to be literally "outstanding". With competition fiercer than ever for places at top universities and for jobs in top firms, how does one "stand out" from the crowd in a world where so many people get top grades? The simple answer is that they have to shine elsewhere, be that in the skills that they have [languages etc] or in what other things that they have achieved.  The article outlines how coaches can 'prep' Supers so that they can build a CV that will enable them to get the top university place/ job.

However, there is a sting in the tail here - the danger is that such an approach is artificial, not grounded and even counter-productive. As one executive coach candidly admitted,

"the biggest problem with Supers is that they only care about one person - the hospital that they helped build in Africa actually to build their own résumé. The charity work is for them, not for the people they claim they are serving."

50 Rules Kids Won't learn in School - Book Review

This book was the original inspiration of the 11 things that Young People don’t learn in school, but need to know about life that went viral purporting to be a speech to High School leavers by Bill Gates.

Sykes has a clear agenda: he believes that the American education system and parents are letting children down because they are not preparing them for the realities of adult life. He hopes the book will be "an antidote to our culture of complacency and indulgence" (p.4).

He is highly critical of the "bubble-wrapped" culture disseminated by the "nanny class" that has not prepared young people for the realities that face them beyond home and school. He has no time for an educational philosophy where everyone is a winner and that nothing is permitted that might endanger a pupil's self esteem.

So we get a world of meaningless gold stars, "participation" trophies, inflated grades, and happy faces on work that might otherwise be recognised as schlock. But (the philosophy goes) if we don't ask too much, or set expectations too high, no one will feel bad about himself. Instead of preparing children for the challenges, setbacks, defeats, frustrations, and triumphs for life, we bubble-wrap them. (p.15-16)

He is concerned about falling standards in basic life skills such as literacy and numeracy, furthermore,

Evidence continues to mount that the bubble-wrapped generation is also finding itself badly handicapped in dealing with other major challenges of life, from relationships and personal responsibility to distinguishing right from wrong without a reliable moral compass. p.6-7

His intention is clear:

I want to help to prepare young people to be responsible, competent , confident, self-reliant, independent, realistic individuals who are armed with inner resources and the habits of mind to resist the blather and blandishments of the world they are about to enter.

The book is "very American" - and I am not sure that we experience the extreme examples which he uses in the book [$150,000 Sweet Sixteen parties] - but the book serves as a warning of a possible direction of travel. Sykes is passionate and, at times, his style is far too preachy and is in danger of tarring all young people and all parents with the same brush. He seems to be unaware that there are some pretty amazing young people out there who do get off their backsides and achieve something meaningful.

Overall, once you have translated from the American, there is a lot of good sensible advice both to young people and parents in this book, indeed it has a refreshing reality about it.

The Amazon website helpfully supplies the contents page, free online, so if you want to spare yourself the time, energy and expense of purchasing the book, and get the guts of Sykes' message without the [at times tedious] anecdotes then click here.

See Charles Sykes' website www.the50rules.com

Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua

If you ever want to feel inadequate as a parent, then read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Amy Chua produced two A-grade musical child prodigies who won International competitions and performed around the world in their early teens: Sophia on the Piano and Lulu on the Violin. In this book she outlines the secret to her success as a parent and the price she paid in time, sweat and tears.

Chua is the Über of all Über mothers, who manages to combine full-on parenting with a legal career that leads her to join her husband (Jed Rubenfeld) both as a Yale Law professor and a successful author. Her disdain for Western approaches to parenting permeate the book; indeed it sets out to compare the flawed approach adopted by most Americans to her preferred methods of what she terms "Chinese parenting". The cultural battle is played out in the lives of her two daughters who achieve so much due to the focussed approach of their mother, but who ultimately rebel. Chua throughout is convinced that the Chinese approach is not just different, but superior to any Western methods of parenting.

On the first page of her book she sets the tone when she lists some of the things that her children were never allowed to do. These include:

1. Attend a sleepover
2. Have a playdate
3. Be in a school play
4. Complain about not being in a school play.
5. Watch TV or play computer games
6. Choose their own extracurricular activities
7. Get any grade less than an A
8. Not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
9. Play any instrument other than the violin or piano
10. Not play the piano or violin.

To the liberal, Western mind, her methods are Draconian bordering at times on the monstrous. However, amongst the moments of confession, self-justification, therapy and maternal angst, there are some profound insights into the real dilemmas that we all face bringing up children.
Amy Chua's approach throws up a mirror to the post-Enlightenment values of freedom, rights and above all choice - all of which she asserts have no place in parenting. Children should obey and respect their parents, make them proud and look after them in old age.

The sadness of the story is that the girls did rebel [This is not a funny book - despite the protestations on the cover to that effect]. Amy Chua eventually lost the battle. Lulu ultimately gave up playing the violin seriously aged 13. Indeed, having backed off and given her the choice ["horror of horrors" - Western heresy!], Chua did not really learn the lesson and even tried to "backseat drive" when Lulu decided to devote herself to tennis instead.

Her "Chinese parenting" methods clearly worked, but for whom? Is she so driven because she wants the best for her daughters or does she need prodigious children to confirm her status as a good mother? Were the hours of toil and argument in the music practice room for them or for her? She certainly wears the highs and lows on her sleeve. It is difficult to like the author. Indeed I spent most of the time sympathising with the children and, above all - reading between the lines - for her long-suffering husband, Jed.

Chua's concluding insight is that life is too short to waste time. Like many high-achieving people she obviously lives by this mantra. But like many high-achieving people I wonder if she ever steps off the achievement hamster wheel to enjoy life. She even snatches victory from the jaws of the final defeat at the hands of teenage rebellion by writing a best seller - a Radio Four book of the week, no less. I suspect that says a lot about this particular Tiger Mother.

Clearly there has been a lot of controversy, particularly in the States, over whether or not Chinese parenting methods are superior [just Google the book!], but what struck me most was that there is something genuinely prophetic here.

Above all, this book serves to warn us about the way the world might become. If Amy Chua's approach reflects what is going on in the majority of homes in China, then the West needs to take note and prepare for a tidal wave of highly motivated and driven talent sweeping the world. The "Chinese parenting" approach and drive has been there for generations, but we are faced for the first time in recent history with a generation of young Chinese who have had significantly greater educational and travel opportunities and greater access to wealth than their parents. "Chinese parenting" on that scale will undoubtedly shake the domestic foundations and values of Western society.

Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was published by Bloomsbury in 2011
[You don't really need to purchase this book - the first chapter says it all and that is available free online on the Amazon website]