Elizabeth Pisani
It’s hard to know what goes on in other people’s relationships. But there is one point on which all of us can be certain: our parents had sex. Most of us, though, don’t want to imagine their amorous exploits, and most parents don’t care to spend much time thinking about the finer details of their children’s sex lives either. All of which makes the ongoing controversy about sex education in schools somewhat strange.
Children currently cover the technicalities of reproduction in science classes. But from 2011, 15 year olds will be given sex education, whether their parents like it or not, as part of a compulsory class teaching the basics of adult life. Personal, social, health and economic education (or PSHE—ugh!) covers the joys and pitfalls of relationships and sex, alongside internet safety, first aid, and the downsides of addiction and gangs. It will be part of the national curriculum from the age of five.
The problem is that parents will be able to pull their kids out until they are 15. That seems odd: if such education is important, why make it optional for most of a child’s schooling? Even more bafflingly, 30 per cent of adults tell pollsters that they think parents should be able to deny their kids access to sex eduction altogether. “Parents are the first educators of their children,” declared the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales. And yet the truth is that the “ick factor” of thinking about your children having sex makes parents peculiarly ill-suited as sex educators.
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Donald Hirsch
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
The familiar sounds of an early English summer are with us once again. Millions of children sit down to Sats, GCSEs, AS-levels, A-levels and a host of lesser exams, and the argument over educational standards starts. Depending on whom you listen to, we should either be letting up on over-examined pupils by abolishing Sats, and even GCSEs, or else making exams far more rigorous.
The chorus will reach a crescendo when GCSE and A-level results are published in August. If pass rates rise again, commentators will say that standards are falling because exams are getting easier. If pass rates drop, they will say that standards are falling because children are getting lower marks. Parents like myself try to ignore this and base our judgements on what our children are learning. But it’s not easy given how much education has changed since we were at school.
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Donald Hirsch
When I assembled a group of teachers aged over 35 at my local comprehensive school (which, despite being in the home counties, deals with children from very difficult as well as privileged backgrounds), I was struck by their honesty about what has been gained and lost since they were at school.
They started by justifying how they do things now—but with enthusiasm rather than defensiveness. “The education experience has become more exciting because learning has become more active.” Students, I was told, are encouraged to find things out for themselves, which allows them to understand things in more complex ways than if they are spoon-fed.
These teachers did not accept that students should have to learn vast quantities of factual information, as opposed to learning where to look for it. I pressed them on the risk of ignorance: “How can you understand history without some basic knowledge about what happened when?” I was relieved when a history teacher conceded that core knowledge has sometimes been neglected in the past, and assured me: “We have come back to a respect for facts.” But she wanted her students as far as possible to discover information for themselves. At present they are looking at evidence to decide the strengths and weaknesses of King John. I hope that along the way they learn that he signed Magna Carta and lost most of England’s possessions in France. I suspect that good teachers ensure this happens, but with others it can be hit and miss.
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Adam Phillips
There is a famous sentence in Thomas Jefferson’s declaration of independence that formulates something essential about what most modern liberals believe about both government and education: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Some of us might not believe in the creator part, and all of us would assume now that by men Jefferson means men and women, but probably none of us would quibble with the idea that people are born, if not created, equal, and that they have a right to life and liberty. But what does it mean to have an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness? At first sight, it seems to be a pretty good idea; no one, presumably, wants to promote the pursuit of unhappiness. If we are convinced of anything now, it is that we are pleasure-seeking creatures who want to minimise the pain and frustration of our lives. We are creatures who, perhaps unlike any other animal, pursue happiness.
But fortunately, and unfortunately, the other thing we know is that pleasure, like happiness, is not as simple as we would like it to be; that people can be frightened of pleasure, or can hide their real pleasures from themselves; that they can use pleasure as a way of avoiding necessary pain (drinking alcohol or taking drugs, for example, to avoid intimacy or the useful and necessary awkwardness of social life); that they can get pleasure from their own pain and that of others; and that they can have competing pleasures (a child’s pleasure in pleasing parents and teachers can outstrip the desire to avoid schoolwork, so he sacrifices his genuine—if short-term—interests for the love and approval of the grown-ups).
“A people who conceive life to be the pursuit of happiness must be chronically unhappy,” the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins wrote in Utilitarianism. Whether or not this is true—and I think in many ways it is—it raises the question of why happiness should matter to us at all. It has certainly become the focus of much debate. Anthony Seldon has introduced “wellbeing lessons” to the curriculum of Wellington College, where he is headmaster, and some would like to see the innovation rolled out across the country. Discussions of what makes a good life, and whether virtue can be taught, are as old as literate human enquiry. But happiness is now the thing, and so we need to have some idea of what the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of; whether education can make people anything (that is, how open to influence children are, and in what ways); and what the much-cherished phrase “making someone happy” might mean.
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Christopher Hird
If you make documentaries for the main terrestrial television channels, one of the greatest challenges is getting the balance right between entertainment and information. Britain’s broadcasting system places some public service obligations on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five, but television is also a mass medium and, quite apart from the fact that there is no point in making programmes which no one watches, most of these channels would go out of business if they didn’t get decent viewing figures. As one channel controller once put it, this process is “an endless navigation between the popular and the important, a constant tension between the pragmatic and the purposeful.” It matters that programmes get this right, because television is still an important source of information: a recent Mori survey showed that radio and television were the main sources of information for the public about science. When television gives advice, people may well follow it. Take, for example, Bringing Up Baby—a four-part series shown on Channel 4 this autumn.
The series followed six families with new babies, who were exposed to three mentors (pictured, below) with very different approaches to bringing them up. There was Claire Verity—the proponent of the popular 1950s idea of “strict routine,” based on Frederic Truby King’s 1913 work Feeding and Care of Baby. Then, representing the 1960s, was Dreena Hamilton, a supporter of Benjamin Spock’s “listen to the babies’ needs” approach. And representing the 1970s was Claire Scott, a supporter of the “continuum concept,” which the series described as “parenting tribal style.” These three examples were chosen, the programme said, because “the chances are that you were probably brought up on one of these methods.” In fact, one suspects, they were chosen to ensure that we got a real contrast and “good television.” The “continuum concept”—which includes carrying babies in slings and giving toddlers knives to cut up cucumbers—is based on Jean Liedloff’s 1975 book of that name. This was also the year that Penelope Leach published Babyhood, which, along with her 1977 Your Baby and Child, has a much better claim to be the child-rearing bible of the 1970s. Leach, however, supported the “choose the rules that work for you and your baby” approach—which would not fit in easily with a formatted series such as this, where sharp contrasts are needed.
And this is the first question the series raises: was it necessary to have a format to make it work? Obviously, the series is a construction—the six families were chosen from hundreds of applicants and, until this idea came along, had probably given no thought to Truby King, Spock or Liedloff. So what was filmed would not have happened if the programme-makers had not constructed it—like lots of television. Once filmed, however, it would still have been possible to make an observational documentary series—interweaving the stories of the six families as they wrestled with the challenges of having new babies and bringing them up on different systems. The mentors would have been in the films, although their role would probably not have been as prominent as it was.
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Judith Rich Harris
During much of the 20th century, it was considered impolite and unscientific to say that genes play any role in determining people’s personalities, talents or intelligence. But we’re in the 21st century now, the era of the genome. So when Robert Winston informs us, at the opening of each episode of the BBC1 documentary series Child of Our Time, that we’re going to “find out what makes us who we are,” we know he’s going to say that people are the way they are partly for genetic reasons. (In case you’ve missed it, Child of Our Time is a project tracking the lives of 25 children for their first 20 years, returning to them each year to assess their progress. This year’s series—the seventh—is being screened in three episodes, starting on Sunday 6th May.)
Child of Our Time is itself a sign of scientific progress because of its enlightened approach to the genome. Nevertheless, the series is scientifically misleading. Simply depicting the lives of 25 children, or sprinkling little “experiments” here and there throughout the programmes, sheds no light on the nature vs nurture question. Psychologists studied child development in this way for the better part of a century and learned remarkably little. Observing children at home or in school, individually or in groups, is not the way to answer the question of why they turn out the way they do.
The problem is that most children are reared by their biological parents, so the parents provide both the genes and the home environment. The effects of the genes are therefore impossible to separate from the effects of the environment. Young Johnny has a strong drive to succeed? Well, that’s not surprising—so does his father! But does Johnny’s drive to succeed come from lessons learned from his father, from genes inherited from his father, or from some combination of the two? Most 20th-century developmental psychologists assumed it was mainly Johnny’s experiences at home that made him who he is today. Even those who admitted that genes may play a role continued to feel that the child’s environment—by which they meant the home environment—was of greater importance.
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Tessa Livingstone
Judith Rich Harris’s article (Prospect, May 2007) on nature, nurture and the BBC’s Child of Our Time project—which follows a cohort of 25 children every year from their birth in 2000 to adulthood in 2020—argues that the series doesn’t acknowledge the power of peers. This is odd, since the series starts with several examples of peer influence. The first comes from six-year-old Parys, who declares his intention to stop eating brown bread because all his friends prefer white. At six, our children, like their peers, want to fit in.
The fact that children are influenced by their peers is not contentious, but Harris goes further, arguing that parents have no important long-term effects on the development of children’s personalities. The influences that make us who we are fall into two categories: our genes and our environment. So far Harris and I agree. Genes are important in the creation of personality; some more so than others, with IQ generally believed to be at the top of the list and matters of conscience at the bottom. But I part company with Harris over the relative importance of peers, teachers, society and, in particular, her dismissal of parents.
Success in education, for instance, is dependent not just on IQ but also on resilience, ambition and a feeling that education matters; forces that are levered first by the family and second by schools. Peers are much less influential here. The Institute of Education’s Effective Provision of Pre-School Education Project has studied the factors affecting educational outcomes, and began with a cohort of three year olds in 1997. The children are now 11 and, the study shows, still benefiting from learning activities they did at home before they were five. The effect is independent of wealth or parents’ education. In short, it is what parents do—not just who they are—that matters.
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Ronald Dworkin
The British government’s refusal to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from its ban on discrimination against gay parents misunderstands the complex principles at stake. A liberal society faces a difficult decision when some of its members claim that their religious conviction will not allow them to obey a law that the majority deems necessary to prevent injustice. In such cases there is an apparent conflict between the demands of justice and respect for the freedom of citizens to follow their own convictions on matters of faith, and care is needed to discover the best way to reconcile the two liberal principles at stake. Liberal societies have exempted conscientious pacifists from frontline fighting in war, for example, in spite of the important principle that danger ought to be shared equally among citizens able to fight.
Discrimination against gays is indeed unjust; it is wrong for an adoption agency to refuse to help a gay couple adopt a child when they meet all other tests for qualified parents. But the leaders of the Catholic church not only disagree, as a great many private citizens no doubt disagree. They also believe that it would be unconscionable for them, a sin against cardinal tenets of their faith, to hand a child in their care to gay parents. True, Catholics are not forced to run adoption agencies. But requiring them to choose between abandoning a historical mission of charity, in which they have contributed much benefit, and acting as they believe their faith forbids, does place them in a position in which they think their duty is compromised however they choose. It also diminishes the chances of abandoned children finding a stable home: the Catholic agencies, by all reports, have been among the most conscientious and successful.
Is this harm necessary? Of course qualified gay couples have as much right to adopt as any other couple, and any policy that seriously compromised their opportunities would be unacceptable. But Catholic agencies arrange only some 6 per cent of adoptions in Britain, and they could be required, if they were exempted, to inform gay applicants that other agencies are fully subject to the anti-discrimination rules and even to supply a list of convenient other agencies. It is said that exempting Catholic agencies would mean that the government endorses their discrimination. But that is silly: no one thinks that when government exempts conscientious objectors it endorses their view that it is wrong to fight. It is also said that since the church has charitable status, exempting Catholic agencies would mean that the government subsidises discrimination. But that is wrong as well: it is more accurate to say that government subsidy makes possible the benefits that those who are exempted are nevertheless able and willing to provide. The NHS does not require Catholic doctors themselves to perform abortions.
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Ian Benson
An end to one of America’s most bitter “education wars” is in sight, and it may have implications for Britain’s schools. In September, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) issued recommendations for teaching the subject to American schoolchildren that emphasised the importance of algebra in primary schools.
This apparently innocuous report represented a U-turn by the NCTM. In 1989, it had sparked off the “maths wars” with a set of guidelines for teachers that emphasised “open-ended” solutions to problems, encouraging children to develop their own techniques.
The 1989 report strongly influenced school textbooks and the authors of US state maths curricula. The result was a generation of underachieving schoolchildren and angry parents, many of whom petitioned their local schools to drop what they called this new “fuzzy maths.”
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Josephine Wall
Mumsnet: beware lawsuits from angry childcare experts
A few weeks ago my children were drinking bleach in the kitchen while I was once again wasting time on the Mumsnet talkboards (
Mumsnet is an online community of mothers sharing advice and support). Life with small children is boring. Small children do not appreciate my witty asides, opinions on current affairs or snide comments about people who are more clever and successful than me. My carefully refined skills in sarcasm and irony go over their lice-ridden heads. Years of developing a repertoire of hilarious office banter stagnate in the hamster-wheel of laundry and hoovering that defines my life as the mother of small children. So, like a lot of mothers—over 250,000 a month visit Mumsnet—I spend more time than I would like to admit on internet talkboards.
Talkboards are the office floor for stay-at-home mothers who want to joke, debate, talk, swear a lot, argue about the best way of using up sausages—basically to get a bit of intellectual stimulation. People are fiercely loyal to their talkboards. You get to know the regulars and they become like the people at work on the desks next to yours. You throw comments into the ether and you know how people will respond, what will make them laugh and what will get their backs up. Talkboards feel cosy. And it’s easy to imagine that your comments are only being listened to by your select group of fellow “posters” and will simply disappear afterwards, like when you mutter about your boss to your colleague by the photocopier.
In July I found myself once again gaily ignoring the children so I could log on to Mumsnet to discuss a controversial childcare guru who had teamed up with a washing powder manufacturer for a laundry promotion. “Win a one-to-one consultation with Gina Ford!” warned the blurb, and I was debating the promotion with some other virtual mummies.
Some mummies were incensed about the promotion and declared that they had emptied their stock of washing powder down the toilet. Others said they would actually rather relish the chance of a one-to-one with Britain’s number one childcare guru and the author of The Contented Little Baby Book, and we concluded that we would rush out to bulk buy washing powder in the hope of a golden ticket. All in all, it was a funny, flippant and light-hearted conversation.
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