Why I Left Schooling For Education
As anyone who is somewhat acquainted with my work will know, I’m rather interested in the area of education and particularly its overlap with the topic of parenting. I’m quick to share my thoughts on education and parenting on social platforms, whether they be positive comments or criticisms. There are people who see my criticism as being anti-parent and anti-teacher. I would like to share some of my own background to clarify why I take some of the positions that I do.
I used to be a primary school teacher, and I spent over 5 years teaching in school classrooms. I left teaching at the end of 2016 to travel around Europe. I left for these two reasons. I didn’t like who I was becoming and was no longer convinced that the school system was a good system. I was a generally well-liked teacher. Should you ever happen to come across any of my students, they will probably tell you that I was one of their better teachers. But that certainly does not mean that I was always enjoyable. I found out far too early that being a man and older also meant that I had a very powerful voice. When my usual classroom management did not work, I would resort to shouting. And the thing is, this does “work”. The first few times with a class, those kids stopped in their tracks. I’ve got quite a powerful voice. The children were instantly quiet and started being busy or at least looking like they were busy. But as time went one, these shouts didn’t have the same effect as at first. I ended up just shouting louder and more often.
A second classroom management technique I learnt early on was that of using rewards. A lolly jar became something I would always have on my desk. And again, the thing was that it “worked”! Children would do the work that I set them in exchange for a sweet or some other reward. But soon children were wanting sweets for nearly everything. School simply became a game of how many sweets you could win from the teacher. I remember feeling defeated and frustrated at the children for only doing what I wanted them to do if there was a reward attached. I would give up using the lolly jar only to find myself bringing it back again sometime later or in some modified form.
With these cycles not getting any better, I disliked myself more and more and felt I needed to get out. Surely there had to be a better way!
And eventually, I found that better way. It wasn’t something that I just dreamed up, but rather it was because I heard people talking about it, I read about it, and I saw it with my own eyes. I found out I was not alone in my frustrations and that people were already living a better way. It wasn’t that I invented something new, I was simply discovering a way of living that had been there all along. Now, in Frank Education, I dig deeper and extend these ideas but when I started, these ideas were all new to me too.
When I criticise some forms of parenting and the school system because of their coercive nature, some people respond with, “Well, when you’re a parent you’ll think differently about…” This was the case just recently when I shared a Facebook post that talked about the effects of child abuse and how often victims of that abuse will justify the abuse by claiming that they “turned out fine”. The response to the Facebook post saddened me and reminded me again of how often we dehumanise children. That somehow the use of manipulation and abuse towards children is justified because “how else are we going to make children do what we want them to do”. The biggest logical problem I see with people justifying abuse with the “when you’re a parent…” response is that there are already many people who are parents and they take a peaceful parenting approach. These parents also don’t subscribe to the schooling system and have been able to support their children’s freedom, enjoyment and success outside of the system with a natural approach to learning. If these parents didn’t change their opinion despite being parents, what makes people so sure that I will change my mind when I become a parent? Are these parents somehow not ‘real’ parents simply because they have found that peaceful parenting has given them a better family life?
So am I anti-parent or anti-teacher? I think not. In fact, I’m inspired by a lot of parents and a lot of educators, though these people tend to be outliers. They do things rather differently from the mainstream. My criticisms are not really intended to sway those who are comfortable with the mainstream way of doing things. When I read my first book by John Taylor Gatto criticising the school system, he wasn’t really working hard to convince me. He was giving me the words to express what I’d been feeling all along. And so that’s primarily why I write and share the criticisms I do. I want to help others gain an understanding of what they already feel is wrong and to let them know that they are not the only ones disturbed by some of the things that go on within both parenting and education.
