It's perhaps no surprise that Gavin Williamson MP, Secretary of State for Education, is overcome at the sight of a few hundred teenagers moving along school corridors in silence, considering the baying bear pit that constitutes what passes for debate in our Houses of Parliament. To those accustomed to the unedifying display of Prime Ministers' Questions, silent school corridors must seem like nothing short of a miraculous achievement.
Having said that, I do think raving about silent corridors was an odd choice for Williamson on the day that the members of the new elite behaviour task force (or whatever it's called) were announced.
Silent corridors are a massive 'whatever' for me. They're not that difficult to achieve if you crack the whip hard enough. I just don't think they are in any way impressive, or at all indicative of a culture of 'good behaviour' more generally, and I'm disappointed that Williamson thinks they are.
Imagine I ask 30 adults to sit together in a room in total silence for 5 minutes. Then I ask another 30 adults to sit in a room where they may speak to each other, but must not exceed a certain decibel limit as a group. Which group has the hardest task?
I'd argue it's the second. Using your freedom responsibly takes effort and skill. Those adults need to constantly moderate their own behaviour, remain regulated and aware of themselves, and be vigilant about the effect that their behaviour is having on those around them and their contribution to the group noise level. These are skills that many adults do not always have, never mind children.
How do we expect children to learn those skills? It doesn't happen by magic. Adults need to model the behaviour, lay it out explicitly, guide and correct, monitor progress, frame and re-frame over and over again. It's a lot of work for the adults.
It seems to me that silent corridors excuse adults from the graft of teaching children how to exercise their freedoms responsibly. Silent corridors make adults' lives easier. Fair enough, you might say, considering funding restraints and teacher workload. But if that's the case, let's just be up front about it: we couldn't work out how to teach the children to move around the school calmly, safely and with appropriate noise levels, so we just stopped trying to achieve that. It was a lot of effort to teach the children to use their freedoms responsibly, so we took their freedoms away.
Silent corridors are like those parenting moments when, tired of your kids bickering, you yell at them and send them to their rooms so that you don't have to hear their noise any more. The house may immediately seem calmer, but it's a veneer of 'good behaviour'. I don't think it seriously harms the children, but I don't think it helps them in the long run either. It may give you a break now, but you'll be dealing with the bickering again tomorrow for sure.
If all we want is the appearance of 'good behaviour', then that should be fairly easy to achieve. If we want children to really learn what it means to be in society with others, to regulate themselves, consider the impact of their actions on others and exercise their freedoms with responsibility, then I'm afraid we're just going to have to put the work in.
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| Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash |
Having said that, I do think raving about silent corridors was an odd choice for Williamson on the day that the members of the new elite behaviour task force (or whatever it's called) were announced.
Silent corridors are a massive 'whatever' for me. They're not that difficult to achieve if you crack the whip hard enough. I just don't think they are in any way impressive, or at all indicative of a culture of 'good behaviour' more generally, and I'm disappointed that Williamson thinks they are.
Imagine I ask 30 adults to sit together in a room in total silence for 5 minutes. Then I ask another 30 adults to sit in a room where they may speak to each other, but must not exceed a certain decibel limit as a group. Which group has the hardest task?
I'd argue it's the second. Using your freedom responsibly takes effort and skill. Those adults need to constantly moderate their own behaviour, remain regulated and aware of themselves, and be vigilant about the effect that their behaviour is having on those around them and their contribution to the group noise level. These are skills that many adults do not always have, never mind children.
How do we expect children to learn those skills? It doesn't happen by magic. Adults need to model the behaviour, lay it out explicitly, guide and correct, monitor progress, frame and re-frame over and over again. It's a lot of work for the adults.
It seems to me that silent corridors excuse adults from the graft of teaching children how to exercise their freedoms responsibly. Silent corridors make adults' lives easier. Fair enough, you might say, considering funding restraints and teacher workload. But if that's the case, let's just be up front about it: we couldn't work out how to teach the children to move around the school calmly, safely and with appropriate noise levels, so we just stopped trying to achieve that. It was a lot of effort to teach the children to use their freedoms responsibly, so we took their freedoms away.
Silent corridors are like those parenting moments when, tired of your kids bickering, you yell at them and send them to their rooms so that you don't have to hear their noise any more. The house may immediately seem calmer, but it's a veneer of 'good behaviour'. I don't think it seriously harms the children, but I don't think it helps them in the long run either. It may give you a break now, but you'll be dealing with the bickering again tomorrow for sure.
If all we want is the appearance of 'good behaviour', then that should be fairly easy to achieve. If we want children to really learn what it means to be in society with others, to regulate themselves, consider the impact of their actions on others and exercise their freedoms with responsibility, then I'm afraid we're just going to have to put the work in.
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