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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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