Tuesday 21 April 2015

Impossible and Irresponsible: 'Sacrifice-Everything' Teaching

I recently read Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman, an American mom and self-confessed neurotic who found herself in Paris bringing up three bébés with her British husband. As a new mother myself (P is now five months old: is he EATING TIME?) and having had my baby in Belgium, land of the 15 week maternity leave and 'Ow-Are-We-Losing-Ze-Weight?' conversations, I was interested in her observations of the difference between typical French and Anglophone child-rearing approaches.

Of course, it's the nature of the beast that this book is full of generalisations but that's not my concern here; rather, I want to explore how the child-centric parenting philosophy favoured by Americans and Brits is bleeding into the education world and making life particularly miserable for teachers. 

You see, Druckerman perceives that the average American parent (OK, especially mom, because women are fantastic at doing the guilt thing) is prepared to make multiple significant and prolonged sacrifices for the sake of their children. It starts immediately, from racing cribside to soothe the tiniest of newborn whimpers right through to ferrying Tommy to his tennis lesson and nagging Valerie to practise her viola. Time previously spent on everything from ironing to sex is cut down - if not completely cut out - in order to ensure that the little darlings are stimulated, engaged and encouraged All-Of-The-Time.


There's enormous pressure to do it, too - to whack on the (now discredited) Baby Einstein, to cajole, to coax development on. Druckerman namechecks Piaget and his visit to the States to expound his ideas on child development. The audiences started to ask what Piaget subsequently referred to as 'The American Question' - how do we get these stages of development to happen more quickly? He was aghast. Why would you want to hasten a child's development? The way he saw it, in most situations development would happen in its own sweet time and that, quite frankly, was soon enough.





Jean Piaget - 'You what now?'



The French share Piaget's despair at this 'sacrifice-everything-at-the-altar-of-child-development' push-push-push approach, Druckerman says. They're believers in encouraging autonomy in children within a cadre or framework but strive to retain a sense of équilibre - balance, not letting one part of life, such as parenthood, overwhelm the others. And guess what? French kids develop just fine. They tend to have less parky tendencies when it comes to food and they can entertain themselves without constant recourse to their caregiver (she hits the nail on the head when she writes that she 'just knows' the mum heading down the slide in her local park is an American. You'd never catch a French maman doing that). They do well at school, despite the absence of pre-school Kumon maths or harp tuition; the 'leave them alone' school of parenting thought seems to have seeped into the education system, with feedback from Druckerman's daughter's French school being limited to the point of 'If I don't say anything, that means she's fine.' Nor do the children seem too emotionally scarred by the whole experience, growing up on the whole to be well-mannered and well-adjusted.

Reading her observations - and, for all she throws in some token science now and again, her ideas are mainly founded on her observations - it struck me that if British parents are similarly prepared to give up their lives for their children to bring on their development it's really no surprise that they expect teachers to do the same. The British government, responsive to the hysterical cries of parents all of whom have a vote, continue to pile on pressure down the chain of educational authority command. Get those books turned around in 24 hours. Give every student feedback every lesson. In the horrific period leading up to examinations, be on call for anxious students from 7am-7pm (and out of hours on email, if my school's anything to go by). The parent is prepared to give up everything from their social lives to their sanity; so, therefore, must the teacher. 

Druckerman's reward for her selfless sacrifice? Well, she reports that her kids were irritable, poorly-behaved and unpredictable, and she was pretty frazzled most of the time. She describes how her self-esteem, relationship, figure and sanity all took a direct hit. For teachers who adopt the sacrifice-everything ideology, this may sound familiar. This hysteria about progression, development, advancement at all costs is doing no one - least of all the young people in our charge - any favours. At best, they're apathetic; at worst, they're stressed to hell. Thankfully, questions are being raised about the fallacy of linear progress, but until that message really sinks through, remember this: flogging oneself to the point of collapse doesn't make for award-worthy parenting or teaching. It's more than just impossible; it's irresponsible.


Yes, we are honoured with an incredibly important job as teacher, parent or both, but the idea that we have to give up everything else in our lives to do that is a ridiculous - nay, dangerous - one. So, post-Easter and in the run-up to exams, parent, teacher, student, one and all, give yourself a break. 

***

(Andy Tharby wrote about this recently here - it was a little bit of encouragement just when some was needed. Respect, innit)



No comments:

Post a Comment