(PhysOrg.com) — When students are underachieving, school policymakers often examine class size, curriculum and funding, but University of Missouri researchers suggest establishing relationships may be a powerful and less expensive way to improve students’ success. In a review of the research they show that students with positive attachments to their teachers and schools have higher grades and higher standardized test scores.

“In this era of accountability, enhancing student-teacher relationships is not merely an add-on, but rather is fundamental to raising achievement,” said Christi Bergin, associate professor in the MU College of Education. “Secure student-teacher relationships predict greater knowledge, higher test scores, greater academic motivation and fewer retentions or special education referrals. Children who have conflicted relationships with teachers tend to like school less, are less self-directed and cooperate less in the classroom.”

The authors summarized a range of research on attachment-like relations with parents, teachers and schools. They found that student attachment influences school success through two routes: indirectly through attachment to parents which affects children’s behavior at school and directly through attachment to teachers and schools. Children with healthy attachment are able to control their emotions and are more socially competent and willing to take on challenging learning tasks in the classroom.

“To be effective, teachers must connect with and care for children with warmth, respect and trust,” said David Bergin, associate professor of educational psychology, and the other author of the article. “In addition, it is important for schools to make children feel secure and valued, which can liberate them to take on intellectual and social challenges and explore new ideas.”

There is nothing inherently good about education, schooling or learning. Learning can be either very good or very bad, depending on what is learnt, how it is learnt and what it is designed to do. Clive Harber (p7)

A question I have asked myself many times is: what is education and what is it for? More recently I have asked: Why, when you add the word “system” does all real learning stop?
One key assumption that needs challenging is the myth that education is a “good thing” and the more one has the better off one will be.( Thompson 1983). The idea that schooling=education needs questioning. Access to schooling is seen as a key issue worldwide. However, the content, process, context and purpose of that education is seldom challenged. The purpose is always presumed to be benign; if it goes wrong it is with good intention. I will question that assumption.

I will look at the content of education; what is learned, what is not, the imposition of a curriculum and who decides what is on it and why, in the section on learning.

The process, the how it is learned, is referred to throughout, but particularly in “Rigid methods for rigid minds” and “School is the only way”. How the process is pushed by assessment and exams is considered under “Numbering our children”. The methods prescribed, the metaphors of learning, the how it is done, are often seen as separate from the content. But in many ways, the process is the content. How it is done dictates the messages taken in. It was Marshall McLuhan who told us that the medium is the message- how we transmit a message is the real meaning. As Illich points out, school tells us that learning is the result of teaching despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Illich p35) This turns knowledge into a commodity, owned by institutions, rather than something everyone has a right to access and create.

In the section on separation, I look at the role of schooling in creating the many personal and social schisms that destroy community cohesion and individual wholeness.

By “school” I am referring to:
An age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum. (Illich p32)
It has become the worldwide default for educating children and for initiating them into a global culture. I will look at the culture of school, the context, the environment of school learning. The culture of school includes the myths, beliefs and values that school upholds and transmits. It includes the power structures it demonstrates and how this acts nationally and globally to the detriment of us all.

Despite much that is written about the benefits of child-led learning, the process of schooling has changed little in hundreds of years. The teacher is still the centre, the leader of learning by rote instilled through confrontation and punishment. (Cohen 1983) Please Finish Reading Here

PREFACE

A lifetime in education taught me the lesson of deferred gratification, which is really foregone gratification. It taught me to accept the unacceptable; to detach from the screams within; to pursue the academic without feeling, well not without: sometimes with boredom, sometimes with fear, very, very rarely with exhilaration at an idea that resonates. That kind of learning seemed only to happen in genuine connection to others or with books freely chosen. The years spent in tedious lectures, on pointless lessons- most of the information was lost the minute the exam is over, if it was ever there in the first place.

This is a one sided argument that wouldn’t gain me any credits in an academic institution, but having spent way too many years in such institutions, its time for me to break free. But there is balance- this is to counterbalance an overwhelming weight of pro-school propaganda from all parts of the political and social spectrum that, even when it acknowledges that there may be some problems with some schools still argues that schools are essential socialising machines for the young, to deny them even a day of this wholly positive experience is to rob them of life chances, to neglect their needs and hamper their development. It is to expose and dissect this cruel lie that I decided to write this book. This is the other side of the story….

What’s wrong with school?

Flies in our eyes

In Catch-22 there is a running joke about a soldier who has flies in his eyes, but he can’t see them because he has flies in his eyes. When we have been through a school system, we all have flies in our eyes and can’t see clearly what it is that put them there. To remove those flies we have to ask important questions: What sort of society and planet do we want? What sort of children and adults are we creating by the education we are giving? Who or what benefits most from the type of education that exists in schools? These are some of the questions I am trying to answer in this book (blog). Read More