Views & Opinion


Ready, steady…let’s go to school! Comment by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years lecturer and consultant


Something is happening out there in the world of education that is making us all believe we need to prepare for what’s coming next. It has become a regular occurrence to hear more and more about school readiness, gaps in learning and academic achievements, and this is just Early Years I am talking about! So much so, that we are feeling the pressure of a system that works on ranking children according to what they are ready for next and not how they are flourishing now. I have chosen to question whether all this judging of performance according to a list of skills children should have achieved at certain ages is simply not what Early Years is about. Through my research, I have developed a real


sense of wonder about young children and how they are able to turn life experiences into magical moments. I do believe that there is a lack of understanding as to why those magical moments are so important during the first seven


years of a child’s life. What I have concluded is that since children’s interpretation of the world during those years is less close to what we see as reality as adults, there are many grown-ups that see it as less important. However, as soon as the word “school” is brought into it we let this fictional preparation process begin. Children should be ready for this and that otherwise they will not be able to cope with the demands of being at school… but should they really? I come more from the perspective of letting children be, so I can learn about them before I try to help with what a target driven system tells me they should be ready for. I choose to let children bring their dreams to life and together we make magical moments truly meaningful. What they learn through this approach stays with them because they are real life skills that do not show scores but individual qualities. I dream about giving children a voice so that


their future stops being a decision made by others. I dream about connecting with children so that their dreams matter to us all. These are the kind of dreams Freire would have called true hopes. Hope can be to watch a child use a pair of scissors for the first time and being there to encourage that sense of self-discovery. Hope can be to observe children run after a ball whilst they try to kick it. Hope is to let children use tape and glitter just so they can turn into unicorns and live in a world created by them. How as Early Years Practitioners we become part of those dreams is something I am determined not to measure. As a result of this, it has become my priority to use observations as the tool to discover how children think. I know what children are ready for during


those initial years. They are ready to be allowed to show us who they are, and that ability appears naturally. Let’s not stop it!


Is politics the new educational frontier? Comment by FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation


While the teaching of politics has frequently been seen as an esoteric subject, in today’s world it’s increasingly important that children are taught to understand the frameworks that control their lives and how their society implements its choices. Many of today’s big stories are fundamentally driven by politics, whether


it’s the election of Trump, the schism in the UK over BREXIT, the use of Facebook data to influence voters, or trying to uncover whether the poisonings in Salisbury were a Russian attack or a means to control Russian expats in the UK. My teachers always told me to follow the money and the power – one of


the questions we all need to ask is whose interests are being served. In a world where our data is exchanged for cash, and that data is used to influence the way in which we think, children need to be armed with the tools to ask the right questions. As Professor David Runciman at Trinity Hall, author of ‘How Democracy


Ends’ says, “Today we’re seeing the failures of the democratic process in the rise of racist rhetoric in politics, the spread of conspiracy theories and the growing deep distrust of mainstream institutions”. He looks at lessons from history to explore how democracies fail but seems


convinced that democracies that fail this century will fail in new ways, driven by the forces of technological progress – such as the rise of intelligent machines - and growing social divisions. Populism is currently right-wing, but it could just as easily swing left as democracy itself is being pulled apart by digital technology. Democracy


20 www.education-today.co.uk


delivers two critical things: social benefits (such as prosperity and progress) and human dignity (the right to express oneself and be heard). Digital technology enhances these two things but separates them and this is the issue. Everyone has their own biases and blind spots, whether it’s a developer


unaware of how a new product or service might be exploited or an individual judging others for the way they think or behave. Runciman argues that while Facebook may be a service that connects people, it is subject to abuse. In the last couple of years the airwaves have been full of concern about the


rise of populism, the dumbing down of debate. Perhaps what we should actually focus on is how our political systems could be transformed to keep up with the dramatic changes that technology is driving within human society. Society itself needs to understand more about political systems, about the


history of why countries behave in certain ways under certain pressures. We need to understand more about human geography, cultural psychology and the ways in which we might respond to new technologies. That means that we need to learn more than history or geography, we need to teach politics, at least the frameworks and what they are intended to achieve. That education needs to start as soon as possible – why can’t KS1 and KS2


history include modern geopolitics instead of just the Vikings and the Egyptians? If we hope to create citizens that can manage the ever increasing rate of technological change and the impacts that this has on human behaviour, we’re going to have to look at education through a new lens.


May 2018


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