More positive schools?

Emotional well-being is one of the most important factors in school success. In other words, happy children learn best in the proper sense of this word. Of course, pressure-cooked pupils may get better results as “right answers” are instilled into them, but long term learning is something quite different. Therefore, the emotional health of people in school needs to be a top priority.I say ‘people’ because the tone is set by the staff. In a school whose (implicit) purpose is to traumatise pupils emotionally (with thanks to John Holt [How Children Fail] and Ivan Illich [Deschooling Society]) the following might be true:

Staff achieve control by punishment
Threaten frequently
Communicate by sarcasm
Insult and belittle pupils
Shout at pupils
Test what they don’t know as often as possible
Fail to deter bullies
Avoid physical contact when the pupil needs comfort
Encourage competition to show who is weakest
Encourage assertiveness and criticise shyness
Tell children to pull themselves together and grow up
Do not check that children understand
Regard failure as stupidity.

This well describes part of my own school education.
Today, pupils bring emotional traumas from home and from the playground. Sometimes from a young age that makes learning difficult for them. Parents may be part of the problem, but they are also part of the solution. Pupils may be fine at home but be traumatised by school and become school phobic – this might be the result of bullying, or simply an inability to cope socially.
A successful school is one which adults and children are happy and fulfilled. Pupils in this context are likely to succeed and achieve. Emotional well-being leads to self-worth; being provides the foundation for caring for others. Praise leads to a can do attitude; however, especially when unjustified causes a can’t do complex. The latter is more common than the former. The aim of education is to develop habits of enthusiastic and independent learning, which involves a hunger to pass on knowledge and points of view to others. The educated person wants to help others to be educated too. The emphasis, as far as behaviour goes, is to develop self-control, and self-discipline. Education thus is about emotional understanding, self determination and motivation to learn.