Paul Parker – Quaker Values in Education Conference 28 September 2019
Hello Friends, It’s really good to be with you, I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but thank you for inviting me to speak to you at this Quaker Values in Education Conference.
I’m Paul Parker, I’m the Recording Clerk of Britain yearly meeting, and I suppose one of the reasons I’m speaking to you today is because of that role, that I have a bit of an overview of where Quakers are involved in education, what’s going on in our society and what sort of issues might come to the fore for us if we’re talking about Quakers and education. But I think I’m also talking to you because until I became Recording Clerk of Britain yearly meeting, I was an educator, I spent sixteen years teaching in state secondary schools as a languages teacher and then as a head of department, and as assistant head with responsibility for the curriculum in the school I worked at, which was a large comprehensive school in Hertfordshire. And prior to that as a consumer of education, as a pupil in a state primary school and in a state comprehensive school, in fact the same school I then taught in for most of my teaching career. So I have a perspective from that point of view as well, as do we all really, as consumers of education over time and as participants in the education service, as I know lots of you are. And it’s really great to be speaking to a group of friends who care about education and who care about the values that our education service in this country needs to espouse. And I hope you have a great conference and that you get somewhere, it’s really easy I think for us to sit around lamenting the changes in the education service over the last few years, and what I want dearly for Quakers to do is to articulate our vision for what we think education should be like, so that we can then start to help tease out what forms, what kinds of schools, what kinds of structures and systems and policies actually lead to our values flourishing in the education service.
Read More... And so, I think we have to try and strike the balance
as we think about this, between the challenges that we find in a school setting
or in the school system, and the places where actually a lot of what we care
about is already the case, that schools can be places of great challenge to our
values but also places of great fruitfulness and of great…what you might think
of as fertile soil for what we’re trying to do.
And one of my worries always about us as Friends is that we lay claim to
our values as if nobody else holds them, and my experience in education is that
there are many, many people who care about the same things as we do. And so we have to look, I think, at how we
can make our presence in the education system as Friends as valuable and as
constructive as it can be, rather than setting ourselves up as having something
that others haven’t got or can’t see. So where is that influence? Where can we have some impact on what happens
in the education service in this country?
And I can think of lots of different ways, and I’m sure you can think of
more, but the ones that came to me really are…first of all there are schools we
control as the Society of Friends, Quaker schools or other schools we’re
involved with – so there are six independent boarding schools, there are three
non-maintained special schools, two with a specialism in autism, one with a
specialism in children with social and emotional difficulties, there is a state
primary school in the voluntary controlled model, with some Quaker governors, but
it’s a local authority school, and there’s a residential therapeutic community
for boys with a history of harmful sexual behaviour, that’s also a registered
school and provides education. So we already have influence through those
institutions that are directly under Quaker governance, where some experiment
with what Quaker values look like in an educational establishment can happen,
and some experiment does happen. Then
there are all the schools that we’re governors in as individual Quakers, and I
know that there are lots of Quakers involved in the governing bodies of
schools, local authority schools, academies, free schools, studio schools, in
their personal capacity, but bringing their Quaker insight, their values, their
sense of what a school should be like, into those schools, and I think that’s
probably a much larger number of schools than the ones we control directly as Friends. But perhaps the control is less direct. Then there are the schools we teach in, many Quaker
teachers, many retired Quaker teachers as well, of course, in all kinds of
schools, the whole spectrum of different kinds of establishments that we
have. And I think, you know, I was one
of those; I was very clear that I was a Quaker teacher, whether I would go so
far as to say that I saw teaching as my ministry as a Quaker, I’m not sure, I’m
not sure I thought of it like that at that time. But I know there are Quakers who see their
work in schools as an expression of their faith, and some of whom find that
easy to do and some of whom find that challenging because they come up against
difficulties and clashes of values in the establishment they work in, or in the
communities where those establishments are.
But I think there are Friends who see their work in schools as part of
their Quaker ministry. I also think we
have to be respectful of Friends who see their Quakerism as their escape from
the stress and the hurly burly of school life!
And I was one of those too I think.
That Quaker meeting was one of the places I went to refuel and rebuild
myself and develop the resilience to be able to carry on as a teacher. And so in some ways, thinking about education
when I was in that Quaker space wasn’t what I wanted to do because I went to
Quakers to get away from that. And so
there’s that tension as well for us I think, between those of us who see work
in education as part of our Quakerism and those of us who see our Quakerism as
part of how we cope with the work in schools, and some of those people are the
same people. And then there are other ways, there are people
involved in teacher training, there are people involved in S.A.C.R.E.s,
designing the RE curriculum at a local or regional level. There are people involved in curriculum
development in universities or in the peace education movement particularly,
where Friends have had a disproportionate level of influence over how schools
pick up on some of the themes in a peace curriculum. There are Friends working in restorative
practice, in mediation, who have made it their business to take that work into
schools, there are Friends involved with philosophy for children, philosophy
for communities, who see that as a way of taking Quaker values into
education. So there’s a real diversity there, and that’s without
even thinking about the schools where we might be parents, where our children
or our grandchildren are pupils, and the schools that Quakers attend as
pupils. I think if you look at the
number of young Quakers involved in school strikes for climate at the moment,
for example, you can see a real influence there, people taking Quaker values
around sustainability and environment into schools and having an influence as
young people, and we shouldn’t discount the role of young people and their
families in influencing schools. We saw
that as well around issues about militarisation of schools for example, that it
was often parents who were most shocked to discover the high level of
involvement that the Army has in some schools in this country, and who were
then the most effective at challenging that and taking head teachers and
governors to task. And so we need to ask
ourselves I think what is it we’re trying to achieve, and which of those
different modes of influence are the best ways of taking these things
forward? It’s not just about campaigning
or advocacy or writing letters to the Secretary of State, it’s actually about
looking at this school by school, and saying how can we change things in the
places where we have connections and the contacts and the relationships
already. I think a lot of what we know
as Friends about Quaker work at its most effective is that it’s about human to
human relationships and building those bridges and having these conversations
with each other, so that we can be engaged in the dialogue and not necessarily
turning up and saying, we’ve had this idea, we’re definitely right, we’re the
only people who think like this, you need to do it our way, which isn’t
generally the way you get changes to happen. But there is that advocacy side, there are books like
the book that QVinE has recently produced, there’s research, there is political
campaigning, there’s the work that we can do to influence public opinion in our
own communities or nationally, and I think we have to be aware as well that we
come to this with quite a reputation as Friends. We are good when we’ve done the work at
articulating the faith basis of our concern and really rooting our concern in
morality and the faith heritage of Quakerism, the Christian heritage of
Quakerism. We have a reputation for
being thoughtful, for listening well, for engaging in respectful dialogue, and
we need to make sure those things are part of how we influence what happens in
education in this country. In a way, how
we go about influencing what happens in education may be as important as what
then happens from our point of view; we should be making sure that we’re
espousing the values that we talk about in the way we approach change, as well
as in the way we approach education. So what might we want to say about Quaker values in
education? What can we say from the
perspective of Quaker testimony about schools and what they should be like? If you start with peace, you quickly I think,
certainly in my experience in schools, end up talking about the importance of
dealing well with conflict. Some schools
with a strong Quaker influence have rooted their whole curriculum in thinking
about conflict and how we deal well with conflict. One of the Quaker schools which specialises
in autistic spectrum of students, conflict resolution is right at the heart of
how they work, and I think that’s interesting.
The state primary school with Quaker governors has set out to become a
restorative practice school and was supported by their local Meeting to train staff
and pupil mediators to really embed restorative practice in this community of
the school. And I think that’s a really
interesting and exciting thing that we can do.
We’re not unique in caring about that, but it is something where Quakers
have long experience. Obviously, there’s the issue of military involvement
that I’ve mentioned; there are issues I think around the curriculum, about looking
at where do the skills needed for peace building, the skills needed for
dialogue, for reconciliation, how are those taught in schools? Where in the curriculum do those things come
up? How do we engage with parents in
schools about those things? Are there
things we should be saying about the teaching of history, and the
interpretation that the teaching of English history in particular, puts on some
of the events that led to the British Empire, that led to slavery and its
abolition, are there ways that we can put a different narrative from the
prevailing story, or encourage students and pupils to explore some of these questions
at a personal level? And I think there
are massive issues then about how you create a culture of peace in the
community of a school, with its pupils, with its parents, with its teaching
staff, with its governing body, with the community around it – how do you do
that kind of cultural peace in a school community, in a way which means people
walk in and feel at peace, to bring some of our understanding perhaps around
shared security from the work that Quakers do in peace and reconciliation
between countries or between factions, and apply that at a microscopic level in
a school community. And I think that cultural bit then leads on to
thinking, well what can we say from the perspective of equality? So much about the way schools work and the
way schools function is about the quality of relationships, relationships
between pupils and pupils, relationships between pupils and teachers,
relationships between teachers and teachers, parents, the rest of the
community. Can we encourage schools to
look at the contract between teachers and pupils, the kind of covenant, if you like. Schools thrive because there’s a kind of deal
between the teaching staff, who are massively outnumbered, let’s remember, and
the pupils, about how it’s going to work.
And the parents are involved with that peripherally as well, I think. But there’s a real power relationship there
and an imbalance, and how do we address that and make sure that those
relationships are respectful and safe? I think this was the area when I was teaching that I found
the most problematic: I taught in two schools where children were expected to
address me as Sir. I think my preference would have been that they called me
Paul, but my colleagues didn’t do that, and to be the one teacher who allowed
the children to address me by my first name would have been to undermine my
colleagues and perhaps to de-stabilise that contract between pupils and
teachers that exists in any school. So
there are issues about titles and about respect, and about how that’s earned,
and about how that’s bestowed, that I think we have to look at and see, you
know, what can we say as Friends that helps schools move away from a kind of
‘because I say so’ mentality to something which is more about mutual engagement,
and recognising that teachers and pupils have different roles, but are equal
members of a school community. And there
are all sorts of issues about control and about uniforms and about, you know, expectations
of how people behave to one another, which make that a really fruitful but
challenging area of debate. I think at the moment, in the context of the climate
emergency, there is work we can do around sustainability and simplicity
too. Things we can say as Quakers that
perhaps challenge the narrative, the prevailing narrative, in our society about
lifestyle and how people liv and we have seen, I think, in the last few months
with the emergence of the school strikes, and people like Greta Thunberg who
came and spoke here at Friends House a few months ago, a real space where the
youth can show leadership and can be the people who generate the excitement and
the urgency around the climate emergency campaign. How can we work in the education service to
foster that? I think things like the
climate strikes have been really challenging for schools: on the one hand they
need pupils to be there and safe, and schools are in loco parentis, and so kids
going out on the street striking is problematic. And on the other hand, what a wonderful way
for young people to develop the skills of leadership and organisation and
passionate advocacy and challenge that we need.
And so, you know, perhaps there is a way of building into that some of
our Quaker understanding about what it means to live truthfully and with
integrity; how can we build into what schools do the chance for children to
learn how to scrutinise, how to question what they’re being told, how to draw
out scientific evidence and use it in ways which challenge people in positions
of power. How can we teach them to
assess evidence for its reliability, to spot fake news, to use all the tools
that are around now to bring about the sort of social change that we might want
to see? So I think there’s a really
exciting opportunity, but I also think it’s a really difficult landscape in
schools at the moment. All of that really is about what happens in a school,
and I haven’t talked very much about this education system and about
structures. And I think we have to be
careful here to separate kind of values from forms. It would be very easy I think, as somebody
who taught in a comprehensive school and was absolutely passionate about
comprehensive education, for us to go into a kind of moaning space where we
lament the change that’s happened in the last few years. And I’m acutely aware, having been out of education
for a little bit over eight years, that I’m totally out of date already about
what schools are like now, what the education service is like now; I’ve seen it
change but from the outside. And so
those of you who are teaching in schools today or working in schools today, are
in a much better place to inform this debate, I think, than I am. But I think you know that golden age of
comprehensivisation and that sort of great principled vision that there was
going to be an education service that was capable of being…offering absolute
equal opportunity for everybody, that immediate time has gone for now, and
we’re now in a fragmented system, with many different types of establishments,
academies, free schools, studio schools, different kinds of places with, you
know, an in-built assumption of competition and league tables and schools being
pitted against one another. That is the landscape and we can lament it if we
like, but actually I think we have to look at the opportunities for moving on from
where we are now, much as there’s that story about the man who asks directions
and gets the answer, well if you want to go over there I wouldn’t start from
here. Here is where we are, and there
are opportunities in this system to influence, to shape, to engage with some of
the organisational structures that exist, whether it’s academy chains, or
what’s left of local authorities, or some of the opportunities around free
schools and different shapes of school that are there, and perhaps there are
opportunities for experiment that we need to be trying to embrace. And I do think you can have good schools of
all these kinds, and I think you can have good teachers and committed teachers
and committed governors and well educated students in schools of all these
kinds, and so we may have to stand back from talking about the forms in order
to make space for talking about the values.
I think we have to be able to say what values we want the education
system to espouse, and then question the structures where we can see that
they’re not doing that. And so I really want to finish by kind of emboldening
you and encouraging you to keep this conversation going. I think we’ve got an opportunity to build on
our role, and the level of influence and engagement we already have in
education, and the respect we carry for that work, the ways in which we go
about influencing change and our experience – particularly I think at
facilitating processes for people to talk about values. You know, if our Yearly
Meetings or our Area Meetings or our Local Meetings for Business aren’t a model
in a way for how to bring people together and have an opportunity to explore
and try and discern something collectively that everyone can then embrace, you
know, can we use some of our methodology as Quakers to help some of those move
forward. And that means towards an end
might be as important as the end itself. But I think we absolutely have to be able to articulate
what we want to see. In an age when
we’re being offered things that we want to vote against, can we provide a
persuasive vision of what we think education should be like, what the hallmarks
of true education should look like? Can
we work with other people to spread that?
Who are our natural allies in this?
Whether it’s other churches, whether it’s other organisations seeking to
influence education, whether it’s charities working with children – who are our
partners in this, who are our allies in this?
How do we make sure we listen to the experience of pupils, of parents,
of teachers, of governors – and make sure that we come to an informed sense of
what are the changes that we can usefully press for, that mean some of the values
that we hold dear about education can flourish? (END OF RECORDING) Transcriber: Jo
Porter (joporter@west-kirby.co.uk) Length of interview: 23 minutes After a very thought provoking day, Anne Watson, Oxford and Swindon Area Meeting gave these closing thoughts… Since the formation of the Quaker Values in Education Group (QVinE) we have grappled with the question of whether there is anything the group feels about educational values that is specifically Quaker. During the 20th century Quaker thinking about education in this country was mainly in line with other so-called ‘progressive’ ideals and, while there were Quakers among the leading thinkers, only the use of silent worship in schools could be labelled as specifically Quaker-inspired. More recently several movements and campaigns have grown that focus on values, restorative justice, peer mentoring, use of silence, and other aspects with which Quakers might agree. These are of broad foundation, appeal and effect and many Quaker teachers have been involved in the growth of these movements. They are not specifically Quaker, largely sharing a humanist perspective, and Quakers can attach themselves to these developments with integrity. In this personal contribution to the debates about Quakers and education, I try to identify some themes that are specifically Quaker and that live first in the hearts and actions of individual teachers. Read More... Next, we have a special way of thinking about truth. Truth is not only honesty, it is a search for coherent, experiential meaning. In our seeking we reflect on experience, and more than that we join with others in order to contact truth. We can live with uncertainty. In the current educational climate of a ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum, knowledge refers largely to western/white/male sanctioned knowledge that is testable and tested and provides a national cultural norm. A Quaker view of knowledge would focus on methods of inquiry, which might be subject-specific. The shared culture becomes one of questioning, seeking and being prepared to change our minds and actions. Finally, we have a special view of childhood. Children are not born in original sin as unshaped beings into whom knowledge, culture and morals have to be inserted, but are born in grace as people of equal value, deserving equal respect. This has educational implications. It means that equality goes hand in hand with active inclusion, listening with integrity, and genuine respect. Childhood is not an opportunity to push children into conforming to some norms of behaviour and received mindsets, but times for adults to learn to listen, to interact, to explore, and to offer those skills, along with their own wisdom, to young people. We hold these views not as educational fads but as the sacred duties of older people who themselves have to be flexible, recognise when they need to change, and provide the means for change. Could these principles provide a foundation for a legitimate and unique vision of education that could be called ‘Quaker’?What can Quakers contribute to a vision of education?
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