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Monday 28 July 2008

Positive and negative delusions.

Reviewing another book (http://escalate.ac.uk/4866) this time a diatribe against 'therapeutic education' (which it only vaguely defines); it turns out to be a polemic against two things - 'positive psychology', and pathologising people and emotions (thus promoting the dependent diminished self). These two points at least I have sympathy with. 'Positive psychology' promotes optimism and happiness as ways of coping with life and thereby living longer. It takes an objectivist realist view of knowledge so they are positive positivists. They see themselves as enemies to constructivist psychologists, who use qualitative methods. Positive psychology promotes the pursuit of happiness into a therapy - the solution to all life's problems is to find a way to make negative experiences meaningful, learn from them and achieve this 'real' contentment. A negative psychology would be to recognise negative emotions as OK and helpful, to accept them and learn from them - not rejecting the negative and turning it to a positive, but learning to relax with it. Research has shown that dreams are full of latent anxieties; a recent BBC competition to write your life in 10 words resulted in most being negative; learning to tackle anxieties and conflicts have the potential for developing growth and inner strength.
Unreasonable optimism is a delusion; it may be helpful but will ultimately disappoint, unless we keep revising our unreasonable delusion. Ambition is full of unreasonable optimism, but the ambitious tend to get more jobs than the unambitious. Ambition which incorporates reasonal optimism keeps its feet on the ground, but may under-estimate what is reasonable.
Many negative emotions are of disappointments or bereavements. Am I to see the death of my child as meaningful? or a premature death to illness as meaningful? Or death by a bomb? I think not. I am left with the sadness, the pointlessness, and have to live with the event without becoming emotionally paralysed. This may be personal growth, but it is not the cause of or reason for the disaster.
Religion it is true has created unreasonable delusions to explain death, such as an afterlife, eternal life, or rebirth; but worshippers normally do not thereby welcome death, unless there is some mental instability or brainwashing.
Our negative delusions may be pictures of ourselves as worthless, or mental pictures of anxieties as entities - demons, the devel, forces of evil. Films and pulp fiction make much of this.
Can I replace a negative delusion for a positive one? To turn an incompetent me into a demigod by dint of imagining 'I can do it' and 'I am special'. To some degree a negative image can be neutralised; but to go further like a Hitler is psychotic and delusional.
There is no wisdom in delusion, only a temporary coping strategy if it is positive delusion, a crutch to help us continue. The wisdom is to see the delusion as delusion, to recognise it and go beyond, to throw the crutch away.

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Growing the brain.

When I was young, there was a belief that eating fish feeds the brain, so I guess there are some smart sharks. Today the obsession is that drinking water feeds the brain. The simple truth is that thinking feeds and develops the brain. Over the past decade we have the benefit of various brain scanning devices and are getting to know both what the brain looks like in detail, and how it works. But it is slow business and nothing is definitive yet. So therefore beware of any book or system, especially those over ten years old, that claims to know how the brain works, and worse tells you definitively how to develop it. They are likely to be over-simplistic, or simply wrong.
The brain develops by mental stimulation, by growing connectors between different parts of the brain. The more we think, and the more disciplined we get, the more connections are created and the brain changes as a result. This much is the starting point of modern neuroscience. Children's brains are growing rapidly throughout schooling, and adult brains have a similar potential. Our message to pupils is that their brains are capable of most things, through disciplined hard work, putting their mind to the task. This will permamently make them smarter. It is a message that needs emphasising to children from infancy onwards, by parents, teachers and others; and also that 'can do' attitudes can also be fun and give a great sense of achievement.
See more on: http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/
Neuroscience%20Commentary%20FINAL.pdf

Therapy, education and therapeutic education

I have just reviewed a book on "therapeutic education" (http://escalate.ac.uk/4752) which raises issues. The authors mean positive pupil-centred education which is non-conflictual: since the book's educational focus is a special school, this is described as 'healing', hence therapeutic. It is defended through reference to therapists such as Maslow and Rogers. Of course, the authors are describing 'good', motivating and positive education per se and the work 'therapeutic' is a misnomer. A therapist will have had substantial education and training to develop a knowledge and expertise to contribute to health care and child development. A speech and language therapist for example helps children with communication difficulties. Teachers and educational professionals who are untrained in these fields cannot replicate their work. Equally a talking therapist (a psychologist, psycho-analyst or counsellor) work with particular insights and skills which the untrained cannot hope to match.
However, there are few therapists on the ground and their time and involvement is expensive. They therefore can only deal with acute cases. In practice, pupils are referred and join the waiting list. There are general things that teachers can do to help children with non-acute developmental delay or with emotional and behaviour difficulties which are not severe. Indeed this helps the therapist because some ground has been covered and acute cases better identified - there will be some pupils who make progress and don't need to be referred. Although we might call this 'good' education, based on positive relationships, teachers and others do need both training and consciousness raising to change practice.
For example, behaviourist rewards and punishments are often a school's only strategy to deal with challenging attitudes and behaviour. This aims at submission rather than personal growth and actually doesn't work. Punishments escalate to exclusion when the problem gets passed on to others and the pupil remains stuck. Education should be 'healing' in a broad sense, and promote personal growth. This is main focus for the training needed - a simple message to understand but more difficult to put into practice routinely.

Thursday 3 July 2008

Powerful Learning

I am reminded, sorting through my papers, of a paper at BERA in Warwick in 2006 by Peggy Lee (peggy@power-ed.co.nz) from New Zealand. Based on interviews with primary and secondary children, she proposes ten principles of powerful learning:
1. Make learning fun
2. Trust us to choose who we work with some of the time.
3. We need to make some choices about what we learn so we can work on things that interest us.
4. Let us walk around when we are learning. Silent static kids are not necessarily learning best.
5. Learning needs to be hands-on, doing things, even teaching things to others.
6. Using technology helps me - we done use computers enough or properly
7. Let us know how we are doing and how to make better progress.
8. We like to set some learning goals for ourselves.
9. Give us time to do things properly, and don't waste it by repeating over complicated instructions.
10. Make learning more real, going out more, meeting people and linking with children around the world. Learning needs to be communal.

A powerful conclusion is to involve children and young people in their own learning and schooling, and make sure they have a proper voice.
Peggy adds: I have continued to work with these ideas and am currently leading a NZ Ministry of Education project working in 10 rural schools looking at student decision-making: teachers and student views and practices. Our revised curriculum here has allowed this kind of investigation with a focus on ‘key competencies for learning’. I am also working in four other primary/middle schools helping with strategic planning, curriculum & assessment practices and implementing the new key competencies for learning.