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Making Kids #Cleverer – Chapter 2: Built by culture

This is the second of a series of posts summarising the arguments in my new book, Making Kids Cleverer.  The second chapter reviews some what we know from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and archeology about how we learn and think. The human mind is both built for and by culture. Although our brains are essentially the same as those of our Palaeolithic ancestors, our access to the vast accumulation of human culture is what makes us special. However, learning is a costly activity and we have evolved to maximise what can be learned in as short a time as possible. All learning is [...]

2019-01-02T10:17:56+00:00January 1st, 2019|Featured|

Making Kids #Cleverer – Chapter 1: The purpose of education

This is the first of a series of posts about the arguments in my new book, Making Kids Cleverer. The intention is, obviously, to sharpen your appetite in the hope that you'll actually give it a read. In this first chapter I set out what I consider to be the three most commonly stated purposes given to the endeavour of educating the young: Socialisation – in this view, education is primarily a tool of the state, employed to make its citizens more productive. Children should be both prepared for work and to become loyal and enthusiastic participants in the activities of [...]

2019-01-02T10:18:43+00:00December 31st, 2018|Featured|

My most read posts of 2018

After almost 8 years of blogging, I find myself becoming more erratic and less concerned about updating the site. That said, I still manage to write 61 posts over the course of 2018. These are the post that got the most hits over the past year. 5. “It’s all about relationships” 11th November Of course the relationships between teachers and students matter, but maybe they matter less than many would like to believe. This post was written in response to a school leader claiming that at his school there are no behaviour problems in either the English or maths departments because the teachers [...]

2018-12-31T12:35:28+00:00December 31st, 2018|Featured|

Making Kids #Cleverer – a summary

At long last, my new book, Making Kids Cleverer: A manifesto for closing the advantage gap, is out in the world. The argument is divided into 10 chapters and a conclusion and, over the coming days and weeks, I will elaborate on what each of the chapters contains. Chapter 1 The purpose of education - In which we examine the various claims made about the purpose of education and conclude that if we aim to make all children cleverer we are most likely to achieve whatever else we value. Chapter 2 Built by culture - In which we discuss the ways our brains have been shaped to [...]

2019-01-11T12:05:16+00:00December 30th, 2018|Featured|

The best books I’ve read since June

Back in June I posted on the books I had found most interesting and enjoyable during the first half of the year. They were: Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker, Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb, How to Fly a Horse, by Kevin Ashton, Thinking Reading by James and Diane Murphy, Educated by Tara Westover, The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley, Why Nations Fail: by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, We Were Eight Years in Power by TaNehisi Coates, Carthage Must be Destroyed by Richard Miles, Fatherland, Robert Harris, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, Bettany Hughes and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The stories in [...]

2018-12-17T21:30:05+00:00December 17th, 2018|Featured|

Do children succeed despite or because of what we do?

One of the most beguiling assumptions in teaching is that children succeed in school because of what schools and teachers do. We feel this to be true because we're acutely aware of all the things we've done; all the hours of teaching, marking, planning, pastoral support and everything else we do. We know these things are what make the difference to young people's lives. But how do we know? It would be obviously unethical to test this assumption using a randomised control trial with some children assigned to a control group in which they experience none of things schools do, but [...]

2019-11-17T22:10:18+00:00December 3rd, 2018|curriculum|

Breadth trumps depth

According to Teacher Tapp, 56% of teachers reckon their schools start GCSE courses at some point during Year 9. Part of the justification for this approach is that Key Stage 3 has sometimes had a reputation for being a bit of an intellectual wasteland. In 2015, Ofsted publish a report entitled Key Stage 3: The wasted years? which argued that "in too many schools the quality of teaching and the rate of pupils’ progress and achievement were not good enough." Clearly, doing something purposeful is an improvement over three years of colouring in, poster making and young adult class readers. The other [...]

2018-12-02T20:53:30+00:00December 2nd, 2018|curriculum|

A tribute to my best teacher

There's little doubt in my mind that my English teacher, Roy Birch, was the best teacher I had at school. He became my teacher in what is now known as Year 10. I was part of the first ever cohort to take the GCSE and none of us really knew what to expect, but I do remember dreading having Birch as a teacher. He was a physically imposing man - well over 6 and a half foot tall, with a spade beard and size 13 Dr Marten boots. He was widely considered terrifying and there were rumours that one 1st [...]

2023-02-11T10:54:55+00:00November 26th, 2018|Featured|

“It’s all about relationships”

Every now and then I come across the argument that the success or failure of a teacher is due to the quality of their relationships with students. Poor behaviour? Ineffective lessons? "It's all about relationships."* Most people are incapable of maintaining much more than 50 relationships and the number of people we actively care about tends to be far fewer. Most of the people we encounter we know slightly if at all. How then do we contend with the Hobbesian idea that the natural human condition is a "war of all against all"? Why don't we just take what we want from [...]

2019-10-14T14:19:34+01:00November 11th, 2018|behaviour|

How to explain… structured discussion

Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that there is something particularly cognitively 'sticky' about speech. We are more likely to remember that which we have said than that which we have merely read or heard. One of the big problems teachers regularly encounter is that children who are able to articulate interesting opinions and make useful connections orally will often struggle to record these observations in writing. All too often this is because the way children have expressed themselves is the only way they have of expressing themselves. As literate adults, we have the ability to instantaneously translate between [...]

2021-12-16T20:39:12+00:00November 9th, 2018|literacy|

How to explain… schema

I've spent a fair bit of time trying to explain various psychological concepts in a way that is easily grasped by busy teachers and have come to the conclusion that some of my explanations might be worth recording on the blog. First up is a simple explanation of what a schema is, how it is formed and why this is worth knowing. Because we have no capacity to introspect our long-term memories no one has any idea what actually happens in there. We know we must have a long-term memory because we can think about something, stop thinking about it and [...]

2018-10-31T20:39:37+00:00October 31st, 2018|Featured|

An argument for order

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy within a system will always increase over time. What starts off as order descends, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but inexorably into chaos. In simple words: everything deteriorates over time. Fending off chaos and bolstering order requires continual effort and careful maintenance. Whatever else it is, a school is a system. The orderly running of schools is something most people take completely for granted, but the balance between order and chaos, especially in secondary schools, is precarious. As they become teenagers, children begin to desire greater independence and autonomy. They believe themselves ready [...]

2020-07-07T21:23:03+01:00October 24th, 2018|behaviour|
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