In this essay I am going to reflect upon my practice as an Art and design teacher and how this has been affected by the proscription of various administrations and how this has distorted my own pedagogy and how unconscious compliance with the demands of these ‘standards ‘ has compressed creativity in my working space. It will hopefully highlight my growing awareness of how this has occurred.
- How the nature of education administrations is cyclical.
- How the occlusion of creativity occurs when the ‘banking system’ of education is in ascendancy.
- How education is used by a neo- liberals whose agenda is to maintain the status quo.
- Who use and value education as a tool to feed the industrial and the economic demands and further their own ideologies.
In the process compressing the number of learning pathways open to individuals stifling social mobility and removing a potential for dissent or alternative views. A situation where pupils are reduced to data portraits
I am an art teacher of nearly twenty three years standing and have always taught at secondary level. I began my training in Liverpool in September 1991. As for many students, before and since, this was an intense, formative period. My mentors where struggling to comply with the fallout created by the imposition of the National Curriculum. It was a period of constant change and professionals where under pressure to create rubrics and structures to comply with the perceived demands of this document. During this extreme time I was left with an impression of disarray in the profession and as though teachers were searching for systems which they could cope and ensure that pupils still received meaningful experiences in the classroom. It has led, in my opinion that pedagogy now is driven by an ’addiction’ to structure and a constant search to find panaceas that might address or arrest this addiction.
This has led to the culture of state schools looking outside of their spaces of practice to find other private, agencies technologies to fulfil a proscribed need to provide and analyse data to feed league tables and monitor progress. To provide models and modes of convention to feed this 'addiction'. Do we want to create drones to administer a system to maintain a status quo dominated by elite, unquestioning and unconscious of the power to change and improve things? A total lack of risk will not lead to progress, or refinement. Therefore the shock of the new becomes displaced by a humdrum affirmation, prediction of outcome within parameters set by the other. It is my view that what we experienced in schools during this period in time has led to an entire culture in education that manifests itself today in a culture of compliance , normalisation and an inability to take risk. Where managers in schools make decisions not on what is best for the learners but what is best to maintain the appearance of that institution within the status quo. The system is dominated by the ‘banking system’ of education as coined by Freire. Supporters of the current Minister of Education for England and Wales see him as a radical determined to undo and dismantle the ‘damage’ to a structure caused by ‘progressive’ methods. However this implies that the structure, at some point ‘pre –progressive’, must have been a construction that was an impeccable, working system.
I became an art teacher in the belief that it was at least the one subject one space within the school where pupils and could explore the world through art as freely as possible within the structures of classroom environment where such structures could allow real growth to occur. Where the fear of making a mistake and being measured could be put aside and left at the door. Where learning could be centred on the way the individual may respond to the world as they perceived it. It has taken me nearly two decades to realise that far from being a facilitator I had been unconsciously complicit an 'oppressor'. This was an awful feeling. Friere distilled this with the following statement:
‘Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed…'
My persona as a progressive art teacher had been blurred by the constant drip feed of initiative, proscription and target setting over two decades. I had become almost completely divorced from the pedagogue I thought I was. My reaction to the constant demands to rethink, revise, ‘reboot’ my lessons to comply with what the other might want to see in my lessons, again unwittingly whilst I was oppressor, but I was also oppressed by these programmes these initiatives such as: assessment for Learning or the five part lesson. Pupils must be perceived as making progress every twenty minutes led to lessons that were sometimes stripped of that element of adventure in an attempt to correspond to a structure that complied with the pattern laid down by the decision makers. Often progressive movements and ideas have a limited shelf life and are adopted subsumed and then replaced by the next big idea as the addiction for the cure- all, the remedy. They have never really been given the time to bed down to become established or on the other hand to even be questioned. The demands of the banking style system of education and it’s thirst for data were amplified in their urgency by an anxiety on the part of school leaders to be seen to comply hasled to a lack of risk taking at this level and a lack of radicalism. Already we are working in system in England where ‘money talks’.
Per capita payments such as pupil premium drive decision making in schools. Assessment and measurement are the drivers of pupil progress. Pupil ‘flight paths’ determined not just by results at key stage 2 but so, on even at the early learning EFYS base line assessment. That assessment will determine, from the age of four where a child should be placed within the school system potentially affecting its whole school experience.
Colleagues who had been perceived as radical and outspoken on promotion to senior leadership had now seemingly become compliant almost invisible in their lack of dissent or as Friere would put the ‘peasant’ turned ‘overseer’:
‘The fear of freedom which afflicts the oppressed a fear which may equally lead them to desire the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of the oppressed should be examined… …the behaviour of the oppressed is a proscribed behaviour following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor’
This desire for compliance was an illustrated by the following event in the school in which I am currently teaching. The Performing Arts was the only faculty within the school that did not set an exam for students during Key Stage Three. This was deemed ‘unfair’ by leadership as this meant that colleagues in other faculties shouldered a workload and burden of assessment that the Art, Music and Drama did not. It was pointed out that we employed holistic, synoptic and formative assessments were constantly and continuously applied throughout the year; leadership insisted that this must be remedied by the instigation of a standardised assessment for all pupils in a year group- that must be produced ‘ in silence’. We as a group felt aggrieved; the ‘unfair workload’ seemed to discount all the extra- curricular activities, performances, school trips etcetera that our faculty was providing over and above all the others. The statement that came down in response to this was that we had to do it as’ other schools did’ and they had ‘googled it in leadership meeting’. Argument over, now compliance required. I complied, asking my pupils to produce the following: ‘A monochromatic observational study of a highly designed object that makes full use of tone’. All my key stage three pupils had to draw a shoe. I had found a drawing rubric on line (author unknown) whose criteria contained phrases such as the following: I am able to…..I need to be able to…, I must make myself’. Leadership accepted this without question. I now have three hundred and sixty drawings of shoes to be assessed and the same number of grades to be collated and fed into the data management system of the school.
This was in total contrast to the ideas behind the collaboration of the Lesson(in)Action and the ‘Unlesson Manifesto’ where we reflected upon this addiction to structure. The Manifesto was as follows: The Unlesson Manifesto demands that you actively avoid: Lesson Aims, Lesson Objectives, The 3-Part Lesson, Assessment for Learning, Pace, Differentiation, Measurable Progress, Learning Outcomes, Interactive Whiteboards, Seating Plans, Prior Learning. Two of my fellow students and I had decided to ‘un-design’ our lessons and we chose the date of 1st April 2014 to do it to highlight that:
‘Through the avoidance of the structures listed above you will need to prepare one lesson that encourages you as the teacher and your students to take risks. For some of you it may be a challenge to work outside of these parameters whilst for others it may be a simple reinforcement of how you already deliver in the classroom. Either way it is an attempt at a more conscious approach to how you work. We want to hear about your inventive approaches and conclusions.’ Lesson in Action March 2014.
I pushed this idea by talking to colleagues and trying to get them engaged in the dialogue by placing printed business cards in thir hands and pigeon-holes, emailing all staff in the school a link to the website. On the 1st April I decided to experiment alongside a group of lively year nine students. I switched off the whiteboard, reluctantly stepped away from the front of the class, to become an ‘absent professional', a facilitator rather than a teacher. I placed pieces of A3 and A2 paper out on the desks in front of them and the only instruction I gave them was to use any materials they wished (those that were available in the room) to create a work of art. At first they seemed to reluctant to respond ('I don’t know what to draw'), yet within ten minutes they were all engaged in their own self -directed activities. Some made images of cartoon characters, several designed images to do with their origins, making drawings and flags, others continued with work previously begun of art based on a street Art project. I merely watched and ensured that they had access to the materials they asked for. Their outcomes were photographed and put up onto the 'Lesson(in)Action' blog.
After the event I reflected upon what had occurred. The pupils had enjoyed the lesson and a few them said they recognised it as ‘free’ lesson , in other words an opportunity to do what they wanted rather than what they were told to do. I don’t think I provided them with enough time to respond and reflect and I missed an opportunity for more of their own input. Maybe my ‘Unlesson’ could have been viewed as a ‘cop out’, I felt a little down. The evidence produce was wide ranging and I had to admit that the atmosphere whilst lively was engaging that I had been very stressed by the event. I had to accept this was as the absence of structures that we are usually compelled to place into our lesson planning –it went 'against the grain’. Maybe these were symptoms of withdrawal from those structures that I have become dependent and reliant. A few other members of staff tried it and it caused much positive discussion and dialogue in the staff room. The date had put certain people off from taking part because they thought it was a joke (April Fool’s Day).
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