Dealing with a bit of racism in the playground (the little girls refusing to hold the hand of one of our few white kids because she’s ‘not Muslim’ and it’s ‘ghoona’ – a sin.)
Now they do get a bit confused with what they’re told at home, kids after all start off with a blank slate and racism is learnt behaviour, but you can see where the problems start and I have to deal with it, though my heart is sinking.
So I’m giving them the big speech about how we’re all different, and we all have to get along, and doesn’t it make the world a more interesting place that we’re all different. ‘Look at Mrs U’ I say. Mrs U is another teacher who works in my year. She is Nigerian, about 15 years older than me. We look about as different as different could be.
‘We’re very different, but we get on. What different things can you see about us?’
Hands go up. ‘Yes, Tasnia.’
‘Mrs U is wearing a watch, and you’re not.’
About Yoko Ono
2 days ago
10 comments:
I have to disagree about the blank slate. Stephen Pinker, and many other researchers, have shown that children aren't a blank slate. We also have an innate distrust of anyone who isn't like us. Sometimes it gets rationalised and reinforced as sinful, but it's part of our primate nature - territorial and tribe/clan-oriented. We have to unlearn this us-and-them suspicion instinct.
Other supposedly "blank slate" aspects are equally false because our neurology affects how we behave and what our aptitudes are.
Hmm, I distrust research psychologists Llewtrah, (though I haven't read much Stephen Pinker to be fair.) In psychology and the science of the mind generally there are competing theories,which rise and fall like any other fashion. You might find one plausible but that doesn't make it the literal, only truth. Not so long ago, Piaget's experiments led him to believe that children's minds developed differently from adults because the children consistently gave the wrong answers to certain questions. This was an accepted tenet of child psychology and educational theory for years and years. Guess what happened years later when they redid the experiments and re-phrased how they asked the questions...?
For example, I've seen with nursery age children, they don't notice eg if someone is the same colour as them or not, but they might notice if that person has a loud aggressive voice or is smiling and friendly - children play together without discrimination, and clearly become wary when they are told or shown (by adults that they trust) that others are different from them. This is learned behaviour, they are picking up from their role models.
How old are the kids you teach, Annie? You've probably said before, but I can't remember.
The problem with science of the mind is that no one really knows what's going on there and you can only find a theory that fits your observations. Look at all the competing psychoanalytic theories: they can't all be right! (and I suspect none of them are)
I'd recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate & Matt Ridley's Origins of Virtue. There are lots of good neuropsychology books out there. The Blank Slate theory has been pretty comprehensively destroyed through careful study of child development (not solely in the lab, but through field observation). To be honest, I'm very dismayed that it is still being given any credence in modern education as treating children as blank slates could be detrimental to their development (by not understanding how our brain wiring and instincts influence development, learning and aptitudes).
If young children are consistently exposed to chldren of different races, they learn that the nursery school is the tribe/clan/family. Children from other schools, whom they aren't familiar with, are the outsiders to be treated with suspicion. In spite of all our culture and learning and written/spoken language, our brain is merely a highly evolved primate brain and retains a lot of those instincts. Only through understanding the neurological basis for certain types of behaviour can we successfully modify the behaviour (a comparison: true phobias are hard to shift because the neural path involved is through the amygdala, not through the rational part of the brain hence the years of telling someone to rationalise their way out of a phobia is unsuccessful because the amygdala cannot be reasoned with, but must be conditioned out of the fear response).
Billy - modern imaging techniques are way better than the old psychoanalysis - you can actually see how brain areas respond to images (including to "us and them" situation). I'm not a fan of the old psychoanalysis and modern techniques are showing how wrong some of the conclusions were.
Oh hey, I'm Rita Hayworth! This is where Bloglines falls down, really.
I liked this post. I am about to post something similar, and link to you as well on account of you being my (dramatic flourish) inspiration.
Llewtrah, To be honest, I'm very dismayed that it is still being given any credence in modern education as treating children as blank slates could be detrimental Sorry, this is a misunderstanding arising from my sloppy writing – it was a (poor) metaphor, we don't think they are literal blank slates, I used the phrase as shorthand for 'children are not born with innate racial prejudice, racial prejudice is learned behaviour.' In my humble opinion, (and from my humble experience, which I would trust over any other authority, no matter how big and well-funded his research study) they are fairly trusting and open to all people until they’re taught otherwise.
by not understanding how our brain wiring and instincts influence development, learning and aptitudes… It may be interesting, but do we really need to know neuropsychology first before we can help children learn? Is the lack of the theories of Stephen Pinker in their education giving them a deprived childhood? I’d argue that teachers (and parents) have traditionally been the most open-minded people when it comes to learning how children develop, as they watch what goes on without having a theory which they are trying to prove (or disprove). And in fact one of the frustrations of this job is having to go by someone else’s bright theoretical idea which you can see is NOT WORKING, because you are with the real actual non-theoretical human beings all day every day, but that’s a post for another time…
I accept your point about the primate brain etc - I just find some evolutionary psychologists a tad reductionist in their portrait of human beings. This article puts it better than me with my sloppy writing...)
Billy, they are 5 and 6, though I’ve worked with younger and older children too.
I agree with you, there’s a lot of research and theoretical work going on but we still don’t know exactly how, for example, children acquire language. And I kind of like it that it’s a mystery…
Katie, yes yes you are. I’m so glad you agree, Llewtrah had me doubting myself. BUT I AM RIGHT, SO THERE!!
Kids, they're so damn watchist.
"It may be interesting, but do we really need to know neuropsychology first before we can help children learn?"
Yes.
There are some superb publications on the topic. Take the example of intelligent kids that have mastered verbal language, but not mastering the reading skill (typically their compensating mechanisms fail around 7 or 8 years old). Mostly they've been put in teh catch-all "dyslexia" category. Knowing the neuropsychology (which vision and language areas of the brain do what) and identifying the the type of reading deficit has resulted in methods tailored to the children so that they can learn and are no longer seen as lost causes, lazy or underachievers.
Sorry Annie, but I was involved in a years long fight to get proper school for a friend's autistic boy (and I work in a field that attracts many Asperger people) and I ended up learning why it IS important to understand how the brain works in order to get the best out of people.
I have blogger's block at the moment. Gargh.
But this is very interesting. I can only go on my limited experience of how children behave around me, and I would say that whilst they do see differences between people, and perhaps fear people who they see as different to them (e.g. children from a different school or a different area), skin colour/race/religion are not differences that children find naturally frightening. My experience is that children of different colours and/or religions will coexist together quite happily unless or until the adults around them teach them, by words or by behaviour, that they shouldn't.
Adrian – right, they understand the importance of not being late. ;-)
Getting a bit off-topic but... Llewtrah, the examples you give are known as 'specific educational needs'. Despite the push for 'inclusion’ in education, these children still need specialist help. We get some training to recognise specific educational needs, but even the experts are still debating areas such as dyslexia/autism, what chance to 'diagnose' a child has a regular class teacher, whilst catering for classes with every level of ability? This is why schools now have SENCOs & LEAs have educational psychologists. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing - I would never dream I had all the answers just by reading a book on neuropsychology, when the medical establishment itself is still learning to recognise and understand autism! In the scenario that you describe, I'd hope I would have referred the family to the SENCO, and maybe to YoungMinds, rather than imagining that I knew how to identify the issue and come up with methods to deal with it all by myself.
Getting a child on the register of special needs is a slow process but that's a good thing, there's also a danger in institutionalising children - for example I've seen them come up from reception often on the register but by the end of the year they are flying, because they've adapted to school. (Have you ever noticed how conditions come into vogue with Ed Psychs too? In the 70s everyone was dyslexic, these days it's Aspergers/Autism - wonder what the next 20 years will bring?) Sorry your friend with autism had problems at school, but it doesn't just rest on a teacher's knowledge of neuropsychology (or lack of it), it also depends on the politics and culture of the school, the local authority, the area of the country, enlightened doctors, the persistence of the family, & a million other factors, whether a child gets help or not.
And these days if a school labels a child lazy, a lost cause or an underachiever, it's not doing its job properly anyway.
Thanks Katy, that was what I was trying to get at in my inarticulate way...
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