Teaching happiness
If we believe that the aim of education should be to teach children how to think, solve problems and understand how to achieve contentment, what would a school with this focus look like? Anthony Seldon describes his ideal school of the future
Take out a sheet of paper. Design the perfect school.
I imagine that your list would be similar to mine, which has the following five key elements:
- School should be a place children love to be: they should feel deeply loyal to their school, their fellow pupils and its teachers. They should treasure their experience of schooling as a rare gift.
- School should develop all aspects of children’s personalities and aptitudes, not just their intellect. They should learn who they are, and what they want to do with their life, both at work and at play. They should be taught how to think, and how to solve problems.
- They should know how to look after themselves, taking responsibility for their bodies, their emotions and their minds, and emerge as young adults at the ages of 16 or 18, ready to live a contented, prosperous and fulfilling life.
- Parents should be fully involved in the whole experience of learning, as should the wider community. Schools should be beacons of opportunity and excitement for all, not just the children.
- The teachers at the school should be valued and respected, with the pupils treating them with civility and gratitude, recognising that this is a profession that they should take seriously, that they are as valuable as, say, a doctor or a solicitor.
The harsh reality
No doubt your list will be more imaginative and better considered than my own. It is important not only to imagine what schools could be like, but also to ask why the reality is different from one’s ideal.
Schools in Britain today are vastly different from my own notions, but I do not believe that this has to be the case. Most children in Britain do not love their school and they are not proud of it. It is a widely reported fact that school leavers who work in the developing world during a gap year are often struck by the pride pupils there feel for their schools and their eagerness to learn. It is all the more surprising when there are often 50 or more children in classrooms in such schools, few books, and no interactive whiteboards or other facets of modern technology. Why is it that British children, who have so much in terms of teacher quality and goodwill, and classroom resources that most children in the world are crying out for, feel so little gratitude or celebration in their schools?
Education in Britain is also skewed hugely and disproportionately towards the development of the intellect, at the expense of the all-round child. The heavy insistence on exams and testing in the last 15 years has some benefits in enhancing accountability and performance, but it has been at the expense of all-round education. The gulf is noticeable between some state and independent schools. Children at the former sometimes lack the opportunities in sporting, cultural, personal, social, creative and spiritual development of those at independent schools and this is simply unacceptable.
Third, children are not taught sufficiently how to care for themselves, or each other. The instances of childhood depression, suicide, self-harming and substance abuse grow year on year. The atmosphere in too many schools is one of menace and fear.
Children are discouraged from being themselves, so great is the pressure to conform to the dominant ethos. Pupils thus leave school with an unclear idea of who they are or how they should lead their lives.
At the best schools in Britain, parents and the community are heavily involved, but in too many, parents are remote, with fewer than half attending annual parents’ evenings, and the community held at bay.
Finally, teachers are shown too little respect by pupils in many schools. It is not surprising that many teachers choose to leave the profession for this reason, and still more are deterred from joining.
Living the dream
Solutions are there for the taking. Schools can and must become places loved by pupils. A core job of school leaders is to build loyalty, as the best leaders in schools do. All schools should have smart uniforms, which should be worn with pride at all times, and schools should be broken down into houses, which have their own crest and motto. Ideally schools should be smaller: 400 should be an optimum size for a primary school and 1,200 for a secondary school. Where this is not possible, large schools should be broken down into sub-schools, each with their own heads who know all the pupils and, ideally, parents.
Each year, pupils should sign a contract, drawn up by the student leaders themselves, which, among other things, outlaws anti-social behaviour by pupils towards each other and adults. As with NATO, an offence against any one individual should be deemed an offence against the entire pupil body. The penalty for breaches of the contract should be either temporary or permanent exclusion. A great disservice was done to most pupils when it was made harder for headteachers to exclude pupils. Children need clear boundaries and, if they exist, far fewer end up crossing them. School events and activities should be organised to build a collective sense of belonging. Some children today say they love their schools: all children in Britain should be saying this and meaning it.
Opening doors to the community
All children’s intelligences should be taught (at my school we teach ‘the Eight Aptitudes’: logical and linguistic, personal and social, creative and sporting, spiritual and moral). All children should also be taught ‘wellbeing’ which goes far beyond ‘SEAL’ (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) to embrace physical and mental health and good living as well as emotional intelligence.
Healthy and happy children perform better at exams, all research shows.
Once children want to learn, and are mentally and physically prepared to do so, teaching becomes radically different. Anything becomes possible. The waste that occurs in most classrooms of pointless hostility between pupils and teachers evaporates.
Every school should open its doors to parents and the community, with evening classes and trips for parents and others.
In schools like this, teachers will want to teach, and children will want to become teachers themselves. Hold onto your paper. Lobby to make your ideas reality. It will happen eventually, because it is the only intelligent way to live.
Anthony Seldon is Master of Wellington College, a political historian, commentator on politics, education and contemporary Britain, and an author.
Further reading
Anthony Seldon: www.siteset.co.uk/anthonyseldon
