The dirty little secret of "elite" schools like Auckland Grammar is that they refuse to admit "unteachable" students where they can. Even a teenage John Banks was told in the 1960s that "there isn't even a space for you in the drongo class". Teachers already know there's a gap, and charter schools are just attacking the symptom.
A really strong paper Grant - a lot here to digest. Thanks for the post. Wellbeing (belonging, being heard and seen and accepted and acknowledged) is definately at the core of the sort of relationships that see young people learning successfully. So all good here. That said however, I am unsure as to how we can point to evidence as to know how we make this happen in a sustainable way (and the Adhern/Hipkins approach gave wellbeing a bad name). Without locating this in the question of addressing the inequality in our schooling system it may well be a distraction. For example when we come to measuring falling literacy and numeracy standards, we downplay that for well-connected, affluent school communities this is not a major issue but (despite the dedication of teachers and principals) for schools that don't enjoy these advantages the literacy and numeracy question is dire. In the same way while as a country we congratulate ourselves over COVID the impact of this on schools that serve disadvantaged communities was devasting. So prioritising wellbeing in schools that are struggling would tick the box for me - much as Bridget Phillipson (Britain's new Labour education secretary) is prioritising working class children (eg ensuring they have access to a quality state education - including music/drama/sport and dance) - but without placing it into this context I am cautious about its contribution.
Fantastic feedback, thanks, Mark! I'm just about to write about how we can improve public administration in this country in general, so your point about locating and placing in context is really useful. Grant
A thoroughly interesting read! As a retired secondary school teacher I follow avidly any interpretive assessment of educational processes. There is much to digest in this paper and I look forward to a time where such work is published as a whole. Deficit theorizing and how to combat this in the teaching workforce was a very powerful initiative that made huge inroads at the school I worked in. I might say it was THE biggest influence on improved outcomes for Maori and Pacifika students. Also the importance of including whanau in the educational process was another major factor in improved student outcomes. Mind you, I've been retired fully 7 years now! Thanks for such a wealth of information.
I thoroughly disagree with the notion that all sorts of (quite esoteric sounding) wellbeing programs and interventions should be undertaken at school (this stuff also goes on alot in workplaces, too).
Trying to use schools to cultivate "belonging such that everyone is recognized positively for whom one is, and is to become, and where one belongs in a community" is never going to work properly. Schools (especially larger schools in towns and cities) are bureaucratized state institutions used to teach students very instrumental things like literacy, mathematics, etc. Developing culture, sense of belonging, being recognized for who one is, etc., is all stuff that can only be meaningfully achieved through healthy and organic social and familial relationships, not through some curriculum designed and administered by state bureaucracy—even an esoteric one the likes of which are pushed by "socially and culturally conscious" academics. (It's very important to not here that the whole body of academic research in pedagogy and child psychology is rife with terrible methodology, replication issues, inappropriate causal inferences, etc. One of the worst fields.)
The lack of wellbeing we see in students is not caused by the fact that the teachers and the school system don't sufficiently recognize students "positively for whom one is, and is to become", or because schools don't give students "transformative recognition" (whatever the hell that means)—the lack of wellbeing comes from students not having those kinds of relations OUTSIDE of school, with actual family and friends.
All we are doing, by using schools and bureaucracy to provide wellbeing, is taking students who lack healthy familial and social relationships which would provide them with esteem and belonging, and trying to plug that hole with surrogate minders, teachers, and bureaucrats. This stuff doesn't work, and we should stop trying to use state systems to replace the role of family and organic social embeddedness. Not only does it lead to all sorts of dysfunction, but it doesn't work. Students in general can feel that the belonging and recognition they get from state carers and teachers is a faux belonging belonging and recognition.
Its all the equivalent of just giving a baby a hot-water bottle in place of a mothers actual warmth. And its just a continuation of this weird trend to try and replace real connection and social embeddedness with organizational belonging and bureaucratic care. Now government schools supposed to be our "homes", and our co-workers are "family". The problem is, everyone sees through it, and it doesn't actually meet our social and spiritual needs, it merely expands the sphere of industry and state.
Hi Brandon. Thanks for your thorough response. We kind of agree. My paper does critique the utilitarian approach to wellbeing that was favoured by the Ardern government. I don't support the idea of making schools into therapeutic institutions or surrogate families. That's why I switch to the idea of recognition. I acknowledge in the paper the importance of the family, but don't go into it much as that's not the topic of the paper. Nonetheless, one can't deny that a good education contributes heaps to our wellbeing, and there's no value in people feeling they don't belong in the schools that the state makes them attend. So I recommend you take a second closer reading. Cheers, Grant
The dirty little secret of "elite" schools like Auckland Grammar is that they refuse to admit "unteachable" students where they can. Even a teenage John Banks was told in the 1960s that "there isn't even a space for you in the drongo class". Teachers already know there's a gap, and charter schools are just attacking the symptom.
A really strong paper Grant - a lot here to digest. Thanks for the post. Wellbeing (belonging, being heard and seen and accepted and acknowledged) is definately at the core of the sort of relationships that see young people learning successfully. So all good here. That said however, I am unsure as to how we can point to evidence as to know how we make this happen in a sustainable way (and the Adhern/Hipkins approach gave wellbeing a bad name). Without locating this in the question of addressing the inequality in our schooling system it may well be a distraction. For example when we come to measuring falling literacy and numeracy standards, we downplay that for well-connected, affluent school communities this is not a major issue but (despite the dedication of teachers and principals) for schools that don't enjoy these advantages the literacy and numeracy question is dire. In the same way while as a country we congratulate ourselves over COVID the impact of this on schools that serve disadvantaged communities was devasting. So prioritising wellbeing in schools that are struggling would tick the box for me - much as Bridget Phillipson (Britain's new Labour education secretary) is prioritising working class children (eg ensuring they have access to a quality state education - including music/drama/sport and dance) - but without placing it into this context I am cautious about its contribution.
Fantastic feedback, thanks, Mark! I'm just about to write about how we can improve public administration in this country in general, so your point about locating and placing in context is really useful. Grant
A thoroughly interesting read! As a retired secondary school teacher I follow avidly any interpretive assessment of educational processes. There is much to digest in this paper and I look forward to a time where such work is published as a whole. Deficit theorizing and how to combat this in the teaching workforce was a very powerful initiative that made huge inroads at the school I worked in. I might say it was THE biggest influence on improved outcomes for Maori and Pacifika students. Also the importance of including whanau in the educational process was another major factor in improved student outcomes. Mind you, I've been retired fully 7 years now! Thanks for such a wealth of information.
I thoroughly disagree with the notion that all sorts of (quite esoteric sounding) wellbeing programs and interventions should be undertaken at school (this stuff also goes on alot in workplaces, too).
Trying to use schools to cultivate "belonging such that everyone is recognized positively for whom one is, and is to become, and where one belongs in a community" is never going to work properly. Schools (especially larger schools in towns and cities) are bureaucratized state institutions used to teach students very instrumental things like literacy, mathematics, etc. Developing culture, sense of belonging, being recognized for who one is, etc., is all stuff that can only be meaningfully achieved through healthy and organic social and familial relationships, not through some curriculum designed and administered by state bureaucracy—even an esoteric one the likes of which are pushed by "socially and culturally conscious" academics. (It's very important to not here that the whole body of academic research in pedagogy and child psychology is rife with terrible methodology, replication issues, inappropriate causal inferences, etc. One of the worst fields.)
The lack of wellbeing we see in students is not caused by the fact that the teachers and the school system don't sufficiently recognize students "positively for whom one is, and is to become", or because schools don't give students "transformative recognition" (whatever the hell that means)—the lack of wellbeing comes from students not having those kinds of relations OUTSIDE of school, with actual family and friends.
All we are doing, by using schools and bureaucracy to provide wellbeing, is taking students who lack healthy familial and social relationships which would provide them with esteem and belonging, and trying to plug that hole with surrogate minders, teachers, and bureaucrats. This stuff doesn't work, and we should stop trying to use state systems to replace the role of family and organic social embeddedness. Not only does it lead to all sorts of dysfunction, but it doesn't work. Students in general can feel that the belonging and recognition they get from state carers and teachers is a faux belonging belonging and recognition.
Its all the equivalent of just giving a baby a hot-water bottle in place of a mothers actual warmth. And its just a continuation of this weird trend to try and replace real connection and social embeddedness with organizational belonging and bureaucratic care. Now government schools supposed to be our "homes", and our co-workers are "family". The problem is, everyone sees through it, and it doesn't actually meet our social and spiritual needs, it merely expands the sphere of industry and state.
Hi Brandon. Thanks for your thorough response. We kind of agree. My paper does critique the utilitarian approach to wellbeing that was favoured by the Ardern government. I don't support the idea of making schools into therapeutic institutions or surrogate families. That's why I switch to the idea of recognition. I acknowledge in the paper the importance of the family, but don't go into it much as that's not the topic of the paper. Nonetheless, one can't deny that a good education contributes heaps to our wellbeing, and there's no value in people feeling they don't belong in the schools that the state makes them attend. So I recommend you take a second closer reading. Cheers, Grant