Why Student Agency Matters
Flying back to the UK, after working in the Philippines and Australia for 2 months, was a sobering experience. Before I could unpack my case, there’d be a ‘meaningful’ vote on the Prime Minister’s Brexit (as opposed to a meaningless one, I presume). Amidst the hyperbole in the media, few journalists seemed to point out that the people who would be affected by the decision for the longest time — young people — were being denied a say in the outcome. We know that 84% of young Brits would want to Remain in the EU, but it seems their voices don’t count.
Indeed, the UK’s two leading stories involving students in the final weeks of my trip seemed to concern the likelihood of so-called ‘off-rolled’ and excluded students being drawn into knife crime, and the absurd reportage of the student strike against climate change (Toby Young of the New Schools Network dismissed it as ‘just truanting’)
Working with teachers all over Australia, the question I was frequently asked is “what’s this ‘flattening the grass’ thing in the newspapers?” For those who missed this story, it first appeared in Headteacher John Tomsett’s excellent blog. He didn’t name the Multi-Academy Trust (later revealed by Schools Week to be the Outwood Grange Academies Trust), but he gave a pretty good description:
“Allegedly, this involves the MAT executives visiting the school, en masse, to stand around the edge of the assembly hall whilst the head of school outlines, in emphatic terms to year group after year group, the MAT’s expectations of students’ behaviour. Before the assemblies begin, individual students are identified for the head of school to single out in front of their peers until they cry. If the head of school is not emphatic enough, the MAT CEO walks forward, replaces the head of school and concludes the assembly in a more suitably emphatic manner.”
I’ve been at pains to stress to my Australian friends that not all schools have been accused of ritually humiliating students, but they still find it barely believable. And it seems to represent only the extreme end of a worrying trend in ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘no excuses’ behaviour policies. The net result of this is to strip away any sense that students might be expected to self-regulate their actions, and the underlying message is clear: ‘just remember who’s boss around here’.
These kinds of conversations frequently arose during the leadership workshops myself and Valerie Hannon ran, based upon our two books, ‘Open’ and ‘Thrive’. A central argument we made was this: the planet, and society, are in such a perilous state that we have to ensure our young people see the experience of school as a place where they develop a sense of agency. Valerie described it as a ‘game changer’ for education and I challenged leaders to reflect that the young people currently in high school have 30–50 years to save the planet. It’s as stark as that. So, why would we keep reminding them that school is something that’s done to them, that they have no real say in ? Their job, memorably summed up in a single book title, is to be Excellent Sheep. William Deresiewicz’s book, like Thrive, argues that we have to recast the purpose of school for the urgent tasks at hand. The New York Time’s David Brooks has written that moral education has become ‘largely abandoned ground’ and we simply have to change.
Think about the hand these young people have been dealt: the first generation in over a century that will be worse off than their parents; a global epidemic of mental health issues among their age group; broken political systems and dysfunctional democracies all over the world; mass migration challenges as parts of the world simply become uninhabitable… how dare we think that we know better than they do?
It is the height of adult arrogance to expect students to be compliant cogs in the machinery of education whilst it’s blindingly apparent to them that no-one knows what the hell is going on…… and we can’t just pass the blame to those who govern us. Valerie and I talked about three aspects of agency within school: Ownership (teaching and learning processes that build self-efficacy); Voice (increasing student influence over their learning environment), and Leadership (giving students the opportunity to lead the direction of change). We have the autonomy to make changes within all three aspects, yet many schools impose needless curtailment on all three. Please, no more exercises in student voice that ask them ‘what colour should the new school uniform be?’
Growing student agency starts at home, but can go so much further. Last year I worked with teachers from Tri-County Early College High School, (TCEC) in North Carolina. Now I know that no-one ever clicks on blog links, but do me a favour, click on this one. The website, like all of the school’s marketing, is run by the students. They thought of the strapline “We Dream, we act, we thrive”. And they do. I met Erin Manuel, a student who first got involved in helping Haiti after the earthquake, and at the age of seven, started selling her artwork to raise money for a school that she’s now partnered with TCEC. At the age of 15 she raised tens of thousands of dollars through her foundation, and her work with What If? . Erin is an extraordinary person, but the school can point to many of its students doing great things in the community, or globally, because it believes in, and practices, learner agency.
Ultimately, we can choose to see the moral imperative behind learner agency, or we can watch as they exercise it for themselves. Increasingly, they’re no longer asking permission. On the long flight back from Sydney, I watched Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9. I heard the incredible students from Margory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parklands, Florida, describe how they organised the #March For Our Lives rally, one of the largest protest events held this century, without a single adult on the stage. I’ve seen the vilification of these passionate young people on social and cable media and still they rise. I hear them laugh at the self-righteous indignation of commentators, claiming that they’re missing out on their education, while they’re changing the shape of politics in the US and re-engaging young people in civic society. As they said recently “Until this problem is fixed, we’re not going anywhere”.
Another inspiring student who isn’t going anywhere is Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16 year-old who, last August defied pretty much everyone by sitting on the steps of the Parliament, in a one-person strike against the failure to deliver on the Paris Climate Accord.
This Friday, March 15th, she will be joined by hundreds of thousands of students all over the world, having built a global movement that may finally force some action. Anticipating criticism that she is neglecting her studies, she works 15-hour days. But, if you are one of those who feel that her school should be making sure she does well in her exams, ask yourself, as Greta does, “What’s the point of good grades if the planet reaches the point of no return?”
And then ask yourself: how we can re-think teaching and learning, and the purpose of schooling, so that it’s not an either/or — between acquiring knowledge and becoming empowered — but rather a vehicle to ensure that we transform education through the act of transforming the world?
