Personhood, community and social nurture

Thanks to Anna Popova for an interesting discussion of vospitanie or social nurture in Russia.
I suggest the following in applying her description to Britain:

After the Russian revolution, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to rethink the notions of personhood-in community (as opposed to previously being 'feudal serfs'), and the concept of community (as opposed to hegemony/authoritarianism). The result was grass-roots 'socialist' reshaping or redefining of what it means to be a Russian 'citizen' (and indeed more generally a 'person in community'). The community ceased to be based on patronage and needed to develop cooperatively on self-help principles. Vospitanie ('social nurture' was the means of passing on these new definitions to the following generations, and operated independently of whatever was going on in macro-politics. It became 'tacit knowledge', the common sense of this generation and the last. It is now coming into conflict with chaotic market capitalism and the rise of individualism and the resulting fat-cats, and fuels a backlash which asserts the best values of the soviet years.
In contrast, in Britain there has been no grassroots reflection on citizenship as 'persons in community' or on the nature of community. The Plowdon Report (following John Dewey's philosophy) encouraged primary schools to develop active persons in community, but that was destroyed by our own market capitalist chaos from 1980, the negative consequences of which we are still experiencing in the banking sector. At policy level (top-down) we are trying to assert 'persons in community' and 'social nurture' but without a popular grassroots tradition to support it. We need to consider how to encourage such grassroots reflection on personhood in community, perhaps using vospitanie as a guide.

Social nurture is the responsibiliy of both home and school. It involves 'what kind of neighbour are you?', 'are you helpful to your colleagues?' and other such questions. Social awareness is rooted in an awareness that others have needs and emotions, and that it is better to help rather than hurt. Such a simple start belies the fact that some children grow up to be violent killers or masochistic hoodlums. What went wrong was probably a long time ago, in their childhood. And there has been a continued failure to intevene and put things right. This is a challenge to community, society and the education process.

Our schools are pressed by government and OFSTED to be engaged with citizenship, personal and social education, social and emotional aspects of learning, a wide range of different initiatives which engage in some way with social nurture. This is part of the great concern for schools to produce productive and contributing members of society. The Respect Agenda emphasised that respect for others should be emphasised. This is top-down desperation, generated by teenage murders, muggings, and anti-social behaviour. What is needed is a bottom-up respect process in which pupils generally leave school feeling respected. That is, dialogue and discussion has happened, not recriminations, criticism and sarcasm. Pupils, teachers and parents together need to reflect on what it means to be a person-in community, and for that to be central in the curriculum. It is what we mean deep down by citizenship, but it is much more, it is a moral and ethical way of living in the world.

Restorative Justice and Practice

How do you change criminals, the anti-social, offenders, people who cause conflict? Perhaps you can't with some, and we have locked most of them up in prison just in case. And prison has not improved them. Also, what part does the victim play in the justice system? Nothing, they are entirely sidelined. The offence against them personally, and the compensation that ought to be their due is hijacked to become an offence against the state. The adversarial way the case is heard might mean the best barrister wins and the guilty offender is declared innocent, sometimes to terrorise the victim. So, all is not well in the so-called justice system.
Restorative Justice seeks to make restoration by attempting to resolve the conflict caused by the offence and as much as possible 'restoring' the situation as close as possible to how it was before the offence took place. The offender meets with the victims in the company of a facilitator. Having ascertained the facts from both offender and victim, the facilitator asks the offender firmly and persistently who has been affected by the offence, and how. The victims are asked the same question. Then the offender is asked how the harm can be repaired, and an agreement is made. If this agreement is broken, then the case moves out of restorative justice and into court. It can be used from low level nuisance to violent crime. Research show a high satisfaction rate for victims - 85% - and much lower rates of reaffending. The perpetrator often for the first time understands that his victims have been hurt and can no longer block this out.

In schools, conflicts can be dealt with similarly, by establishing the facts, discussing who has been affected and how, and making an agreement to put right the harm. This turns a situation of conflict and confrontation into a learning experience for the perpetrator, who then has a chance to apologise and make restoration, and build a new relationship with the victim. It is the opposite of a soft option - it destroys any defensive front that perpetrators have been used to hide behind. It makes them very vulnerable, and by doing so enables them to build new values.

The principles of restorative justice can be used to discuss everyday practice - how to behave in a fair and equitable way. There does not need to be an offence, simply the context which allows young people to imagine a scenario and discuss the implications. This would then merge naturally into restorative justice, since this style of questioning simply is applied to any minor conflict that takes place, resolving an issue quickly and without confrontation.

At a conference in Swindon hosted by the Mayor and led by Sir Charles Pollard of Restorative Solutions, supported by headteachers, the police and community justice, applications were discussed and research data given. The importance of adopting this approach in the justice system, and in schools, was described as a 'no brainer' - there are only benefits, in success rates, costs and community cohesion. The only impediment is a conservatism that prefers vengeance and punishment to reconciling the conflict with a long term solution.

Girls' Education

A Commonwealth Foundation report opens with the statistic that 75 million children are “denied their right to an education” and that most of these are girls, using a World Bank report to emphasise the importance of girls’ education. The Millennium Development Goals include one (no.3) to establish equity between girls and boys in primary and secondary education by 2005. This report features four commonwealth countries which are off-target – Cameroon, India, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea. Significant players in these places identified factors which are contributing to the lack of success.

Systemic issues include better access to education (especially having more reachable girls’ schools); the need for more gender-sensitive qualities throughout education; the need for free or affordable education; better infrastructure; more suitable and suitably trained teachers; and the need for a degree of compulsion. Societal issues include parental perceptions; socio-cultural demands for girls to do housework and childcare; security of travel to school; and poverty. A final issue was defined as “the misinterpretation of religion” (p.41), that is keeping girls from school on misplaced religious grounds. Each country is then assessed in depth through the questionnaire returns. Two central issues throughout are poverty and socio-cultural norms. In other words long term solutions need to involve economic and educational components, taking people out of marterial deprivation and ignorance.

These international issues have implications for schooling in Britain – and for secondary schooling in particular. When girls from some ethnic and religious backgrounds reach secondary age, domestic help and childcare are deemed by some families to be more practically useful than schoolwork, so these counter pressures affect progress at school and in qualifications. Early marriage may be encouraged, so girls could be married and pregnant while still at school – which again runs counter to school progress. The knowledge that they will be married at 16 upsets concentration and motivation – the girl barely thinks of the necessity of a career and therefore the relevance of qualifications. The local presence of a girls’ comprehensive can encourage these girls to progress to age 11 and beyond, but the lack or loss of such schools can throw these girls into an educational black-hole if parents do not allow them to attend mixed education. Legal pressures can be averted by sending the girl abroad to family. They simply go missing from social and educational records. This is an unknown and unrecorded failure to comply with the Millenium Development Goal within the UK itself.

Rectifying this situation is partly the responsibility of local authorities to consider adequate provision, and partly the responsibility of the family and community to give a high priority to girls’ education. The World Bank affirms benefits to health, nutrition, mortality figures and family education as immediate social benefits likely to stimulate change. This is apart from issues of general equity between people. Religion can impede progress and so there is a responsibility of religious leaders to represent their faith without prejudice, and the role of the whole community to monitor what is being said and done in the name of the religion. There is thus a need both for the education of children and of their parents and community. Perversely, and under-reported in western news, education for girls in the contested Pakistani hills is seen as western influence so a girls’ schools is burnt down most days, the resulting fear denying children the education that has been provided.

There is a fundamental need for educational quality. The world does not need compulsory inappropriate schooling at great expense. Children deserve appropriate enriching education. Where alternative education is provided by the community, this needs to be appropriate to educational needs rather than being relegated to an instruction into a particular point of view – so even these schools should be exspected to deliver a broad relevant curriculum. The enhancement of education and schooling worldwide, both in terms of spread and quality, is one of today’s greatest development issues. British education is by no means exempt from the lessons to be learnt.

A touching neurosis?

Heather Piper and Ian Stronach have just produced an interesting boot called Don’t Touch. The Educational Story of a Panic. It deals with the “moral panic” about touch in school education. It makes a strong case that this panic has sexualized, even fetishised touch, as even the 99+% of innocent adult staff are left questioning their own and their colleagues’ motives. The result is that the child who needs the consoling cuddle is denied one; and also that older children play on sexual possibilities, misunderstanding or misinterpreting a normal gesture, or making malicious accusations. The panic has played havoc with proper educational practice. Inappropriate fear of risk causes professionals to fear for their careers, and play safe to the extent of creating an emotionally sterile educational environment.

Research ethics committees ‘police’ research but can come to unethical decisions by rejecting research which is potentially beneficial to children, on spurious grounds of child safety coming from a notion of the child as victim. The criminal records bureau activities demonstrate that there are more restrictions on helping children than for buying explosives. Restrictive school and local authority guidelines make irrational and disproportional responses. Then follows case studies from nursery, primary, secondary and special education, and then Summerhill School, the ‘progressive’ democratic independent school. This draws on empirical data from interviews and observations. These give examples of taboos on touch being worked through professional contexts. There is evidence of a mix of defensive and protective behaviours (being accompanied, leaving doors open) and heroic resistance to “the chokechain” (p.7), especially by early years workers. The Summerhill example is interesting in that the openness of the school is declared to be a nightmare for paedophiles. Everything is discussed and debated openly, and positive relationships are promoted. In Ofsted’s concern to close the school down as non-compliant to national standards, one inspector called in the social services when a teacher was observed openly giving a girl pupil a shoulder massage. Such officious behaviour is styled corrupting, making spontaneity in relationship building (within appropriate boundaries) much more difficult, making the good seem evil.

The concluding chapter recommends that touch should be considered as part of relationships. Just as we need ‘good behaviour policies’ instead of focussing on bad behaviour, so we need ‘good relationships policies’ instead of ‘Don’t touch guidelines’ which criminalises innocent touch. Rather, the concern should be to encourage appropriate relationships, child to child and adult to child, in a context of openness to discussion. Most current guidance to schools is viewed as wholly inappropriate, as it treats touch as a problem in itself and not part of a larger concern for good relationships. The democratic and open practice of Summerhill School is presented as the best model for schools to follow.

Most people would agree that paedophiles and other dangerous individuals should not have easy or uncontrolled access to children in school. It is a far cry from this to get to a situation, described in this book, that professionals are not only deeply worried about false unsubstantiated accusations, and begin to question their own motives behind their care of and affection for their charges. This is having the effect that children are denied the physical contact and emotional warmth they need for confidence and consolation, and are becoming part of a generation which sexualises touch, brought up to believe that adult-child touch must always be by definition sexual. Summerhill School is given as a shining example of the opposite approach, where relationships come first and democratic empowering discussion give pupils the skills and understanding to understand when something is wrong, and to take appropriate action.

The tendency to maintain emotional distance between children and unrelated adults brought about by a Don’t Touch culture impedes the development of their relationships with other adults. This diminishes empathy and sympathy for others; this emotional distance makes it easier to victimise and even murder. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child report (October 2008) complains of negative attitudes to children and adolescents in the UK promoting a punishment culture through ASBOs and detention. These things are linked. Helping children improve relationships with others should be a top priority for education, schools and society at large, which should over time reduce anti-social behaviour. That is, educational and school policies need to be positively proactive rather than negatively reactive, raising intrinsic motivation over punishment as the strategy of choice. This book explores one aspect that will make a difference and should be read by both professionals and policymakers. I applaud it. (Full review on http://escalate.ac.uk/4868).

The Ragwitch 2 - moral development.

A story with a portal to another world borrows directly from C S Lewis's Narnia books. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe even has the evil witch/queen. Written in the 1940s and published in 1951, that story starts with the blitz and evacuation. The witch/queen's destructive domain represents the Nazi preference for power over ethics and her defeat by children is a moral call to arms. C S Lewis in turn borrowed the idea from George Macdonald, whose forays through the portal are highly symbolic - Phantastes, and Lilith towards the end of the 19th century. Macdonald took this idea from German developmental novels. I take it therefore that adventures in parallel worlds represent inner struggles from which personal growth develops. Most deal with struggles between good and evil, wisdom and folly, and loyalty and betrayal.
In The Ragwitch, evil is a reality which can overcome decent people through fear and powerful magic. It exists 'out there' and should be left severely alone if disaster is not to occur. Once awakened, it cannot easily be put back to quiescence. In real life, rage and hate erupt from time to time but are human choices rather than demonic possession. The genocides of the past century have been deliberate political strategies by powerful groups, exerting power through a mixture of fear and persuasion. Humans are apt to lose moral constraints very easily, particularly if the 'other' can be dehumanised as 'the enemy' or 'another race'. Evil is a human direction or set of choices in which selfishness and greed are promoted rather than the common good.
Stories such as the Ragwitch emphasise loyalty to decent people, compassion and the importance of heroic resistance. These are important lessons for children (and adults) to learn.

Garth Nix. The Ragwitch. 1990

Julia picks up a rag doll in rubbish, is taken over by the evil spirit within it, who uses her body to regenerate herself as The Ragwitch, the former banished evil queen. She goes back into her own world, Julia is imprisoned in her mind, to be tormented before becoming totally absorbed. Her brother Paul sees this, follows them through the portal, and starts an adventure trying to rescue Julia. He has Narnia like adventures in this parallel world, whilst Julia inhabits a different world inside the Ragwitch exploring her memories and evil designs as she sets about destroying her world which had previously defeated and banished her into the rag doll.

Inside the Ragwitch is Anhyvar the girl she used to be, a girl who communed with evil forces to better her world. She is imprisoned in an ice restrainer, as evil took her over. Julia finds Anhyvar with Mirran her former lover, also imprisoned in the Ragwitch mind. This little group, with Lyssa, the spirit of the rowan tree, are heroes, heroic resisters of evil forces who attach the Ragwitch from within.

Paul is the hero in the outside world. He is instructed to draw strength from nature, the elemental forces earth, air, fire and water and goes on a quest to meet the personifications of these. He receives from them a token which can help him draw on their powers. At key moments he wins wisdom by planting caggages and picking potatoes. The Ragwitch knows that these elemental forces are her biggest enenmy and pursues Paul relentlessly.

The story is one in which evil is a power which can be destroyed. Julia avoids being overcome by it by holding positive images in her head, of happy moments. The Ragwitch holds her power by bullying, usually making threats she is able to carry out. Her power is maintained by the creatures who through fear support her, and those who are brainwashed to go along with her wishes. These are described as The Glazed.

As an allegory of life, evil is shown as a pervasive temptation that once given into can take over one’s life. However, inside every one is a core of goodness, a paralysed Anhyvar, which can be reactivated to overcome evil with good. We need to recognize evil as actions which harm or destroy others, and become heroic resisters, openly challenging these actions despite the threats against us.

Forests, woodcraft and the human condition

Today we are interested again in conservation and outdoor pursuits, even adventures as an important part of a child's education. The "forest school" has returned to the fore. I am reading two related books currently, Leslie Paul's An Angry Young Man (1952) and Trail of an Artist-Naturalist, the autobiography of Ernest Thompson Seton (1951).

Leslie Paul's title gave rise to the phrase 'angry young men' being used of various writers and playwrights in the 1950s. Leslie Paul, a Londoner, founded "The Woodcraft Folk" in 1925 to introduce inner-city lads to the joys of the countryside, with an emphasis on building inner strengths and on conservation. Now under the wing of the cooperative societies, the movement is still thriving and has many local groups. Paul took many of his ideas from scouting, but without the militarism it had at the time of the first world war. Beyond that he drew on the work of Ernest Thompson Seton who began the Woodcraft Movement in America, and from it developed the American scout movement, of which he became chief scout. Readers are more likely to have heard of his daughter Ann, who wrote fiction as Anya Seton.

As a boy in Canada, Ernest set up his own Indian tribe in 1874 in order to enjoy outdoor activities. Before long it had been renamed as "The Robin Hood Band", and once outgrown the attraction of the outdoor life continued. He made studies of animals and plants, and published many stories based on the forest. He prized the wisdom of the "Indian" first nation tribes on bushcraft, which he called "woodcraft". In setting up an education programme for boys, Robin Hood became replaced with the last of the Mohicans, of Fenimore Cooper's story. The movement was named The Woodcraft Indians. He devised a range of "exploits", each of which had a badge, starting with physical activities, and developing to mental development towards the highest "spiritual" level of "service".

He described his strict Calvinist Christian upbringing which assumed "the total depravity of human nature" [p.291]. He was a rebel, and (happily) thought himself depraved. As a young cowpuncher, he notes that his very rough mates all loved their mothers, and went to church mainly so they could tell their mother that they had been. In one service in a schoolroom, the preacher said "in sin did our mothers conceive us", at which one jumped up saying his mother was a decent woman and if the preacher insult her he would fill him full of lead. Ernest came to the view: "all children come here direct from God and are pure as God can make them. We do not have to reform them, but rather to keep them from being deformed [p.292]. He bought a derelict farm to turn into a conservation area, complete with Indian village, but the local lads declared total war as their age-old haunts were now off bounds. They did nightly damage. Instead of bringing in the law, as advised, he invited them to an adventure weekend with free food and no rules. 42 came, and the Woodland Indians had begun. The area criminal was democratically elected the Chief, and, taking his responsibilities very seriously, this began his transformation. There were rules - mainly for safety and against vandalism. The cardinal virtues were chivalry, kindness, courage and honour. The motto was "The best things of the best Indians". Feathers were awarded for "exploits", 'can do' skills but not competitive. They all received the 'can swim' feather because they could all swim. Fifty years later, all 42 had made something significant of their lives.

Lina and Adelia Beard, promoting scouting for girls in America,produced An Outdoor Book for Girls in America in 1915, recently republished. There is a chapter on ‘woodcraft’ which begins with the importance of the balsam fir tree: like a Christmas tree, it has aromatic needles and makes the best outdoor bedding. These are the trees on the Woodcraft Folk logo. The book teaches girls about how to track, swim, take wildlife photos, camp, find food and cope with accidents.

There are lessons here for families and schools - such personal strengths are not built up in front of televisions or in the back of people-carriers. Skills for life cannot be taught. But they can be encouraged, facilitated, directed, respected and applauded.