The debate about whether schools should be allowed to internally exclude children from lessons is a hot topic at the moment, with all sorts of people weighing in at both ends of the spectrum of opinion. Whether you agree or disagree with the concept of internal exclusion probably says something about whether you prioritise the rights of the group or the rights of the individual. But it’s also probably true that we all care about the rights of both individuals and groups. So, how can we get past the inflamed rhetoric and reason coldly of our grievances?
One way to begin might be to calibrate our opinions and place them on a scale. So, on a scale of 0-10 how would you rate your agreement with the following statements?
- Children should not be removed from a classroom and placed in supervised isolation under any circumstances.
- Children have a right never to have their lessons disrupted by threatening or dangerous behaviour.
Or maybe you’d prefer a differently worded pairing?
- Schools have an obligation to ensure children are never removed from lessons, even if their behaviour is threatening, violent or bullying.
- Schools have an obligation to provide safe learning environments where children are protected from threatening, violent or bullying behaviour.
These statements are mutually exclusive. Obviously, it ought to be logically impossible to score both with a 10, but further, if you’ve really thought through the consequences of both statements, it ought to be the case that your ratings should add up to 10. So, for instance, if you gave the first statement 10 then it ought to follow that the second statement should be scored as 0. And, if you gave the first statement a score of 5 then it makes sense that you also give the second statement a 5. If your combined scores add up to more or less than 10, this reveals the extent of your inconsistency.
We’re all somewhat guilty of inconsistency but being able to calibrate just how inconsistent we are can help us track the extent to which ideology may have overtaken reason. It’s likely that no one thinks children should never be removed from a lesson no matter how extreme their behaviour is, just as it’s likely no one believes children have no right at all to undisrupted lessons. Our differences are, in all probability, ones of degree.
So, if I were to give the fist statements 1 a score of 8 and you gave them a 3 we would be able to see the extent of of disagreement, but also that there’s at least some consensus. We could then attempt to shift each other more towards the middle. For instance, my instinct is to think that if children are disruptive it makes good, practical sense for them to be removed from a lesson and, if disruptive children are going to be removed there needs to be some sort of system for putting them elsewhere. I’ve worked in schools were children have been sent out and then roam around the school causing chaos. No one wants that, right? But, since hearing all the reaction against the concept of internal isolation that’s been doing the rounds recently I’ve been persuaded that in some (hopefully very rare) cases children have been consigned to isolation rooms indefinitely and spend their days copying out worksheets and being told off for coughing. I can’t imagine anyone is in favour of this extreme either.
I would expect that most teachers see the need for a system where disruptive children can be sent to a safe environment to allow lessons to continue. but I would equally expect that most teachers would want a system where children who are regularly being sent to an internal isolation room are assessed to see if they have underlying issues which are making it difficult for them to behave and to receive some sort of intervention to get them back in lessons. If we both agree that the extremes are egregious we can, maybe, arrive at a proportionate middle ground where productive discussion becomes possible.
This is just one of the excellent ideas I’ve taken from How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay.
Mine didn’t add to 10 though I initially ignored the absolute wording in both.
Factoring that in I give both zero, even worse. Not convinced about specifics of this idea though I agree with its sentiment.
I think you might have come at this the wrong way. The statements are deliberately absolute. The invitation to score them on a 1-10 scale is to move *away* from absolutes and consider gradations and nuance. Scoring this “Schools have an obligation to provide safe learning environments where children are protected from threatening, violent or bullying behaviour” as 0 is somewhat eccentric and I’m sure not what you believe.
The fact that our scores typically don’t add up to 10 in an invitation to discussion not some sort of failure in the idea.
A collective right in this case, i.e. the right to learn without disruption are the basis of all classroom teaching. Without it , there is no learning I a collective situation such as a classroom.
The punishment has to be sufficient to deter, in order that the pain experienced outweighs the benefit of the act of disruption. However, there are limits on this in the same way we do not allow capital punishment irrespective of whether it would deter murder, and those limits are defined by our concept of fundamental human rights.
A disruptive child does not have the right to be in a social situation anymore than an adult that breaks the law. They have the right to be fed, watered, kept warm and spoken to with respect but going to an isolation room is the school equivalent of being sent to your bedroom and is a reasonable and limited deprivation of liberty in response to anti-social behaviour.
Anyone who doesn’t recognise this has either never run a school or believes the right to personal freedom of expression is absolute and can never be denied, which is rather an extreme position to hold.
In the vast majority of cases isolation rooms are effective and act as a reasonable deterrent. They can be abused, like any punishment, but that is not an argument for not having them but for applying them properly.
Apologies in advance for a long reply. I want to make it clear that I agree with most of your analysis my only disagreement is with the idea that summing both answers over 10 is evidence of logical inconsistency rather then evidence of the sensitivity of responses to question composition.
Lets look at both statements.
Children should not be removed from a classroom and placed in supervised isolation under any circumstances.
Children have a right never to have their lessons disrupted by threatening or dangerous behavior.
Looking at the two questions the words any and never could be taken literally in which case they make both statements absolutes. In this case I end up disagreeing with both as there are circumstances in which I would permit both. (I give them both 0)
In reality, in this context, we don’t read any and never as absolutes but more hyperbolically.
Now we could state that both need to add to 10 in order to make it clear we want to investigate their relative importance on a scale. I am perfectly fine with that but it should be stated clearly as we shouldn’t assume that they will be interpreted as polar opposites.
Ideally we should phrase the questions like so,
Please assign 10 points to the relative importance of the following two statements. (I.e 5 points to both if equally important)
Children should not be removed from a classroom and placed in supervised isolation..
Children should not have their lessons disrupted by threatening or dangerous behavior.
Now if you want to see if a logical inconsistency occurs you would need to try wording like.
Please rate on a 1-10 scale how important the following statements are
We should prevent children from being effected by missing mainstream lessons because of their behavior.
We should prevent students from being effected by the poor behavior of their peers in class.
I am aware those are very different statements. The first permits the use of lot’s of 1:1 support to try and keep students in class while minimizing their effect on others. It also permits alternative activities and the use of rewards. (I don’t think these are good ideas by the way). As an aside I had to include mainstream in the first statement to prevent small group catch-up being permitted. (A more euphemistic wording for isolation). I also had to include in class in the second to distinguish between allowing dangerous students to be unsupervised out of class and being supported to stay in class. This doesn’t mean I advocate playground anarchy.
Now by this point I guess your saying what about the alternative phrasing.
Schools have an obligation to ensure children are never removed from lessons, even if their behavior is threatening, violent or bullying.
Schools have an obligation to provide safe learning environments where children are protected from threatening, violent or bullying behavior.
I do like this wording better. The issue is that the first still has the word never while the second uses protected which is less absolute. Let’s drop that never though by rewording
Schools have an obligation to ensure children access mainstream lessons, even if their behavior is threatening, violent or bullying.
This is much better but we are back to being able to provide 1:1 support, differentiated learning objectives and other inducements. Forgive my assumption but i am pretty sure we both agree on the value of those alternative approaches but if you do accept them as viable it is possible to square the circle and score both highly. It is not logically inconstant and is in fact exactly what has been going on in many schools as well as my own college.
I realize that I have taken liberties with my rewording and that there are loads of alternative phrasing but that is part of my point. That sensitivity to composition undermines the idea that we can conclude any kind of logical inconsistency in peoples responses even if, like you, I suspect it is there.
Hope this makes more sense.