Autumn 2009

Social inclusion

The silence in failing schools

Based on many years of advocacy and collaboration, Chris Wheat reminds us that until the experience of all teachers is valued and their viewpoints taken seriously, curriculum change cannot be achieved.

Democracy thrives with public conversation. Over the centuries channels for debate have worn deep into the fabric of democracies through letters to the editor, speeches, opinion pieces, parliamentary cut and thrust, editorials, community meetings, and now in a cacophony of voices, the internet. All are ways of bringing about change through discussion, and organising ourselves to achieve it. We’re never entirely happy with the outcomes, but we know that talk achieves change and it helps to prevent bloodshed.

But in many low-achieving schools, schools that desperately need to change, talk has withered.

I don’t really know how the world defines a failing school, but I’ll define it as one with low student literacy. (My own school has low levels of literacy, but I hasten to say that it is now tackling its problems head on.) I don’t think a school where the majority of students are reading below their chronological age can ever be a successful school. Schools like these hide their problem and are ignored by educational authorities—until the truth is painfully exposed with the publication of the year 12 results. The silence in these schools arises in part from a sense that illiteracy in the student population is part of the natural order. Fifty-two schools achieved a mean VCE study score of 25 or less in 2008—all but one were from the government sector. If you define 25 as school failure, it looks like such a big problem that it may indeed be easier (and cheaper) to say that it really is the natural order. We must never accept that nonsense.

If curriculum change specifically tailored to failing schools is to happen, then it needs to begin with conversation: respectful conversation underpinned by good will. Of course conversation is time-consuming and often subject to tension, but it an essential ingredient of successful change. If I am to support something then I must have my doubts resolved. When I believe, I am energetic, and my good will is nourished.

Failing schools have, in their struggle to overcome their depressing status, usually tried to innovate, but frequently these innovations have failed to make a real impact on student results. In such a disappointing environment, conversation finally dries up. Analysis of the reasons for failure is often just too painful.

When conversation is not encouraged in a school, then it is easier to introduce curriculum reform, but harder to make it successful. It’s easier to introduce because opposition is minimal, but it’s harder to succeed because the involvement and commitment that underpin successful change have not been fostered through discussion.

Failing schools dabble with reform and innovate out of frustration at their failing nature, but the atmosphere of failure engenders inertia, and reform and change are never subjected to serious analysis. Thus one half-considered reform follows another without debate.

The process for curriculum reform in Victorian government schools has always been top down. Changes are developed and imposed by experts, but, based on the belief that schools are diverse, the guidelines are usually loose and vague enough to provide ways out for failing schools. Thus curriculum change doesn’t work. After the change is seen to fail, it is quietly abandoned, leading to an institutionalised cynicism and a general lack of faith between parties: teachers see the experts as isolated from reality; the experts see the teachers as incompetent and lazy. It is vital that those in charge of curriculum accept that conversational processes have become dysfunctional, or almost non-existent in failing schools.

Other factors, like parent antagonism, media criticism, and the intimidating successes of private schools produce a sense of shame and an ethos among staff which says: just make sure you appear to be doing your job, shut up and don’t rock the boat. Tragically, that ethos can also develop in the student body.

In some failing schools, the reverse may seem to be the case— acrimonious debate has developed. Abuse and intimidation is of course the obverse of conversation. Failing schools can often be small, and a small staff can be easily intimidated by loud individuals—staff feel that the best thing to do when faced with abuse is to shut up. Management think the best thing to do to minimise conflict is to make meetings tedious, and discourage conversation.

We are persuaded when the facts are laid before us calmly, without manipulative rhetoric. Writing in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell explored the idea of the excellent teacher, and used recent research to describe this person. American researchers are confident they know what an excellent teacher looks like. I discovered that I’m not one. These teachers are rare, Gladwell claimed. He argues that the key is to find them, not to make them. They are not people with particular qualifications—he argues against taking the better qualifications road to strengthen the profession— they are people who see their classrooms as places of exploration and inclusiveness. Good teachers are flexible people. (Don’t stop reading. I know that sounds like the educational platitudes we drown in—but he did have some good points.) What Gladwell did in the article was show the teacher doing this. He described their actions in the classroom. He cared about communicating to his readers. I was won over by the description, if not by the rather depressing conclusions. But yes, I thought, this is what a good teacher would do. I believe this. I should try to do this too. I don’t act this way enough. I must try harder.

Gladwell had a conversation with me. He wanted to show me and convince me. We communicated. After a lifetime teaching, I realise that curriculum changes have rarely been presented to me as a conversation, they’re nearly always dictated. And that process is deadly in failing schools.

Failing schools don’t have a disproportionate number of bad teachers, they have a school ethos of mediocrity and silence—the institutionalised responses to angry or indifferent families, and a chronic shortage of money. Some teachers do need to be removed because they are a malign influence on others, but there are very few of them and they exist even in successful schools. But in failing schools, most teachers are as good as those in successful schools. The institution they work in has become dysfunctional, largely through the impact of its families and their difficult lives, and a reluctance in the school community to talk about what is going on.

If I am to believe in curriculum change, then I must believe in its value to me. Every doubt I have should be put on notice. I need to be able to work through all these confusions until I believe. In that way, I become a dynamic practitioner. If our goal is to change what happens in the classroom, imposition of change won’t work without a conversation that resolves doubt.

We all understand that the current focus in education is on the quality of teachers and their teaching, but at the same time we try to produce curriculum change using what we know to be one of the least inspiring pedagogical processes. Teachers are not likely to be engaged by this. The curriculum is not really the problem: it’s nearly always the way change is presented.

Reference

Gladwell, M (2008). ‘Most Likely to Succeed’, The New Yorker, 15 December 2008. www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell

Chris Wheat teaches at Sunshine Secondary College in Melbourne’s west.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au