Tag Archives: education

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong

03 Thursday Dec 2009

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This story is a little old (Inside Higher Ed carried the story on 20 November), but I can’t stop thinking about the levels of wrong involved, so I’m hauling it out in order to be pissed about them, and to enumerate them in public. Nothing like a blog to get things off your chest!

First up, here’s the low-down on what happened, according to Inside Higher Ed:

More than two dozen seniors at Lincoln University, in Oxford, Pa., are in danger of not being able to graduate this spring — not because they’re under disciplinary probation or haven’t fulfilled the requirements of their majors, but because they were obese as freshmen.

All had body mass index (BMI) scores above 30 — the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ threshold for obesity — when they arrived on campus in the fall of 2006, but none have taken college-sanctioned steps to show they’ve lost weight or at least tried. They’re in the historically black university’s first graduating class required to either have a BMI below 30 or to take “Fitness for Life,” a one semester class that mixes exercise, nutritional instruction and discussion of the risks of obesity.

Now, there is a long tradition of colleges having physical health and well-being requirements as part of students’ general course of study — my undergraduate college, for one, had such a requirement (more on this below). While I have opinions about what definition of “health and well-being” a given school promotes, I see nothing egregious about encouraging students to be physically active and health-conscious, and giving them the information they need to make decisions about self-care and health care (for example: a component on patient advocacy might not go amiss!)

Singling individual students out, based solely on their body mass index (BMI) is something wholly different and wholly fucked up. As Kate Harding over at Salon wrote in You Must be Thin to Graduate

Like most such debates, [the Lincoln University story is] being framed quite simplistically — as a matter of public health vs. individual freedoms — with a number of important questions going unasked. Such as: Does BMI actually give a clear indication of an individual’s fitness level? No, for a number of reasons — e.g., BMI is only meant to give a general idea of weight distribution across a population; a large amount of muscle mass can make a person with relatively little body fat technically obese (Lincoln also uses waist measurements in an effort to weed these people out); and above all, fitness and fatness are not mutually exclusive.

On that last point, consider that Lincoln students are given the option of testing out of the class. If a number of students with BMIs over 30 can demonstrate a level of fitness that would make the course redundant, that should tell you right there that targeting fat people for remedial phys ed is discriminatory bullshit. If Lincoln wants to make a certain fitness level a general requirement for graduation, then blatant ableism aside, I guess that’s its prerogative. But why not test people irrespective of weight, and offer the course to those who are demonstrably unfit, rather than starting with the deeply flawed assumption that fat people are ignorant about physical activity, while everyone who falls below the obesity threshold is already sufficiently active?

I would add to what Harding says here (which I think is pretty much right on target) by pointing out that not only is this policy targeting people seen by our culture as overweight, it is ignoring people whose health is in jeopardy because of disordered eating or other health issues that put them below a body weight that would help them optimally flourish. Not to mention people who look and weigh a “normal” weight according to our culturally-conditioned filters, but who may be struggling with life-threatening conditions, either diagnosed or un-. Or whose quality of life is chronically undercut by a disordered relationship with food, exercise, and/or their own physical embodiment. (I speak from the perspective of someone for whom what I ate on a given day often during undergrad often had more bearing on my mood than any academic performance).

A fellow Women’s Studies major in my undergraduate program did her senior-year project on our own health class requirement (one that was expected of all students, regardless of physical health or body type), showing how obsessed the supposedly holistic curriculum was with thinness, and how it often exacerbated the disordered eating and exercise patterns of students already prone to obsessive or self-destructive behaviors. While modifications were made in the course curriculum to include resources on eating disorders and the dangers of being undernourished, when I took the class as a senior in 2005 the in-class message was blatantly and repeatedly the following:

1) As a college student you are surrounded by opportunities and pressures to make bad decisions about what to eat, with “bad decisions” primarily meaning “deciding to eat fatty foods.

2) As a college student, you are also surrounded by opportunities and pressures not to exercise, and therefore,

3) Between the lack of exercise and the fatty foods, unless you maintain constant vigilance you will become fat and unhealthy.

4) Oh, and by the way it’s also not good to be too skinny and if you think you might have an eating disorder contact the counseling center.

I have a beloved sister and several close friends with diagnosed eating disorders. Most of the women I know (myself included) have chronic — though less-than-clinically-critical — disordered relationships with food and our bodies. I can name half a dozen women who put off, or simply refuse to meet with, health professionals because they know that the first thing the doctor will see — regardless of their overall health — is how much they weigh. All health recommendations will be filtered through the doctor’s personal perception of whether the woman (or man) standing in front of him (or her) meets our cultural standard of “thin.” (Yes, I mean “cultural standard” not “science-based”; go read Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.)

Beyond arguments about the relationship between physical health and body weight, I think it’s critically important to highlight, bold, capitalize and underline the following: WEIGHT IS NOT A SIGN OF MORAL AND PROFESSIONAL FITNESS. People who suffer from physical or mental illness and disability are fully capable of completing programs of higher education and finding work in which they excel. To screen college students by weight and place an extra academic burden upon students deemed physically unfit is NOT OKAY.

To reiterate what Harding said in her piece at Salon, this should not be framed as a a case of individual rights versus collective well-being: neither is being furthered here by this policy. Helping young people to grow into compassionate, self-aware individuals who will (hopefully) have the generosity of spirit to make the world a better place should never, at any time, involve publicly punishing them for their physical appearance, health, or athletic capacity. Goodness knows, if they fail to meet the narrow standards of physical perfection demanded by our culture students already know before they hit college exactly, precisely, where they have failed at unattainable goal of effortless perfection. The last thing in the world they need is one more voice — this time with the weight of institutional authority — telling them they are less-than-worthy. Ceasing to harass them achieves the double goal of protecting individual rights to personal privacy while simultaneously making the case for a vision of the common good that encompasses all of our imperfect humanity, not just those who magically mystically meet the current physical ideal.

Quick Hit: Congrats Arin!

02 Wednesday Dec 2009

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Back in October I wrote a post venting about the immaturity exhibited by the administration of my alma mater over a student-issued invitation to screenwriter Dustin Lance Black to speak at the college in conjunction with a screening of his film Milk. Via my Dad (and our hometown newspaper) comes the news that after a long delay and a change of venue, the talk will be held at an off-campus location.

Hope College is not involved with the event.

“Although the college did not choose to invite Mr. Black to speak in an open forum on campus, the film ‘Milk’ raises a variety of moral and social issues and questions,” school spokesman Tom Renner said. “Many of these and other challenging issues have been and will continue to be discussed in a variety of college courses and in other events on campus.”

Hope College student Arin Fisher is among those in the grassroots group Hope Is Ready, which is sponsoring the event.

“Hope Is Ready is just a group of concerned students, faculty, staff and community members who want Hope to know that we as a community are more than ready to discuss questions about the LGBT community, the church and any other relevant issue,” Fisher said.

I’d just like to say congratulations to my sister Maggie’s friend Arin (quoted above), whom I know has been working hard for this all semester long. Hope College is a better place for having you there, and I hope at some point down the road they recognize that!

Hope you all have fun at the screening.

putting the breaks on school insanity?

18 Wednesday Nov 2009

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From The Guardian comes a story about Canadian parents who hammered out a legal agreement with their children’s school district that guarantees that their children will not be sent home with additional work at the end of the day (or at least that that work will not affect their performance evaluations).

Usually it is the children, not the parents, who are loath to spend their evenings practising spelling and learning times tables. But a Canadian couple have just won a legal battle to exempt their offspring from homework after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance

After waging a long war with their eldest son, Jay, now 18, over his homework, they decided to do things differently with their youngest two, Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. And being lawyers, they decided to make it official.

It took two years to negotiate the Milleys’ Differentiated Homework Plan, which ensures their youngest two children will never have to do homework again at their current school. The two-page plan, signed by the children, parents and teachers, stipulates that “homework will not be used as a form of evaluation for the children”. In return, the pupils promise to get their work done in class, to come to school prepared, and to revise for tests. They must also read daily and practise their musical instruments at home.

The tone of the Guardian article seems to me very much along the lines of, “can you believe the crazy things over-involved parents will do on behalf of their kids?” Framing the parent’s struggle with the school system in the context of their training as lawyers and the fact that this case went to court makes it seem like an extreme reaction to something that most people who have gone to school, or send their children there, take for granted: assignments which must be completed after the school day is officially over. Part of me wants to agree that turning this into a legal battle was extreme, and that if you’re going to send your children to a school for their education, then on some level you should play by the school’s rules. None of the other children at the school, presumably, will have similar protection against being penalized for not completing homework assignments. That doesn’t seem fair.

On the other hand, the Milleys are challenging the authority of schools to have the final say in what is good for their children, and that (I would argue) is valuable not just for their own children, but for other families whose children are negatively affected by institutional schooling practices. Not every family has the flexibility, financial ability, or desire to pull their children out of public schools, yet this shouldn’t mean that they have to give up their role as parents in the cooperative (ideally) enterprise of raising small persons.

And the Milley’s arguments are not off-the-wall concepts. As they themselves noted in their negotiations with the school, the neutral and at times negative effects of burdening children, especially very young children, with homework assignments has been documented. In a 2007 article for Principal educator Alfie Kohn makes the case for “rethinking homework”:

1. The negative effects of homework are well known. They include children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their relationship with their children; they may also resent having to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will be criticized either for not being involved enough with the homework or for becoming too involved.

2. The positive effects of homework are largely mythical In preparation for a book on the topic, I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through the research. The results are nothing short of stunning. For starters, there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school. For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement. At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.

3. More homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value. Over the last quarter-century the burden has increased most for the youngest children, for whom the evidence of positive effects isn’t just dubious; it’s nonexistent.

It’s not as though most teachers decide now and then that a certain lesson really ought to continue after school is over because meaningful learning is so likely to result from such an assignment that it warrants the intrusion on family time. Homework in most schools isn’t limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Rather, the point of departure seems to be: “We’ve decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). Later on we’ll figure out what to make them do.”

The rest of Kohn’s article offers alternatives to homework and a bibliography of further reading on the subject.

While it’s disappointing that, in this particular case, the Milley family had to put the breaks on after-school schoolwork for their family alone, through a “differentiated homework plan,” perhaps their example will begin a school-wide (or broader!) conversation about why we so rarely question the value of “homework,” instead holding it up as an inherent good and a fact of life for schooled youth.

sexuality education: asking the wrong questions?

13 Friday Nov 2009

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Christopher White, over at the National Sexuality Resource Center, has a thoughtful piece up about the way we assess whether sexuality education is effective here in the United States.

I spend a great amount of time talking to educators, researchers, students, friends, family members, and many others about why I think it is important that we reframe the ways that we think about sexuality education and sexuality research, shifting away from a model that focuses on disease and prengancy prevention that I believe pathologizes sexuality and sexual behavior in a way that is harmful and confusing. One of the responses I constantly receive regards the evidence of such an approach and whether or not it will continue to work; and to be honest, this is a part of the conversation where I tend to flounder a bit. “Chapter Nine” [in When Sex Goes to School by Kristin Luker] allowed me to understand why I have such a hard time answering this question, and I disagree with Dr. Luker about whether or not this is the right question. The problem is not whether or not it works but how we (and I mean everyone from researchers to students to politicians to parents to teachers) decide whether or not it works.

I encourage you to check the whole thing out.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways we do and do not speak about sexuality in our culture — who does the speaking, who does the listening, in what contexts, and with whom. This is largely because I really like talking and thinking about sex — hell, I’m a talker and a thinker, and when it comes to things I take pleasure in, I enjoy talking and thinking even more than usual! — but talk about sexuality that respects personal privacy and social convention (or at least disrespects social convention with knowing intent) is an extremely difficult balancing act!

More on this, possibly, to come, particularly as it pertains to my future in the library/archives profession. But in the meantime, I’m not sure I have much more to say as a direct response to the piece, other than that I basically agree with him: when we focus so completely on disease and pregnancy prevention, and on the negatives of young people being sexually active (thus the equation of “successful” sex education with delayed commencement of sexual activity), we lose out.

We lose out on the chance to have much more holistic conversations about the pleasure our sexuality can bring to ourselves and relationships, and how that pleasure can be meaningfully integrated into the rest of our lives in a whole range of contexts. And I personally feel like our culture is that much more impoverished because of our unwillingness to have those conversations — in school and out of it, with young people, middlers, and elders alike.

not cool, alma mater: a bit of a rant

30 Friday Oct 2009

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My alma mater, Hope College, has been making minor waves in the news recently due to the administration’s unwillingness to approve an invitation by students to screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar last year for Milk) to join in a roundtable discussion on human sexuality. Since Hope is a college with strong ties to the Reformed Church in America (RCA), and the denomination — like most Christian denominations — is currently split over the issue of homosexuality, this not really a surprise to anyone who knows the campus: the invitation was bound to be controversial.

Since the late 1990s (as I was starting to take classes on campus as a teenager), sexuality and gender in the context of Christianity have been a flash point at Hope, much like they are in the wider culture. During the 1998-1999 academic year, when I was taking first-year courses in English and Religion, the campus was rocked by explosive debates over feminism, sexuality, and the place of Christianity in higher education. My own adult political awareness — the decision to identify myself politically as a feminist, and my engagement with the politics of human sexuality — has its roots in that formative adolescent experience. Thankfully, as a seventeen-year-old, I saw faculty, staff (including my own father) and students speak out forcefully against bigotry at the same time that I was witnessing the intolerance that characterizes certain conservative Christian worldviews.

The exhilaration and pain I experienced that school year of 1998-99 profoundly shaped my relationship with Hope: from that point forward, I knew that however supportive and intellectually challenging my professors were (you were awesome, folks!), Hope College as an institution was not interested in championing an open and affirming vision of Christianity or of a broader human community. Because of that, the school has never truly earned my trust or my allegiance. In conversations I’ve had this week with my sister (a current student) and some of her friends, I can see a similar trajectory in the growth of a whole new generation of students.

I know first-hand how painful and personal the politics of these denominational and institutional conflicts can be, and I recognize the powerful sway of conservative donors and the strength of religious convictions — even when I believe those convictions to be theologically misguided and inhumane. It’s complicated, and I’m usually the first to admit that. But damn, Hope. You guys gotta learn. And you really need to quit hiding behind the waffling of the church and the fear of losing donors. ‘Cause you’re sure as hell losing future donors now. Not to mention doing a patently crap job of modeling civil discourse and educated, educative discussion.

How old are we — two? Is it impossible to imagine students having thoughtful conversations about issues they have deep personal convictions or questions about? If they can’t have those conversations on a fucking college campus where can they have them, exactly? Can we please exhibit some mature behavior here and demonstrate that thoughtful people can disagree without chewing each others’ arms off? And can we please, please pause for a moment to consider what sort of message non-conversation is sending? Possibly (shock! horror!) recognize that certain members of the Hope College community, past and present, have felt “hurt and marginalized” by the institutional reluctance to have open conversation? Not talking does not make the scary bad feelings go away. It just puts them (all too often) on the shoulders of people with less political and financial clout. Which is not an unexpected tactic, but still deserves to be called out and identified as the sort of immature abuse of institutional power it is.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the folks I know who continue to work and learn in that sort of environment, and I’m sending good vibes their way. I learned ten years ago that I, personally, have limited energy for front-line action in these sorts of political and educational battles. But I deeply respect the people — including many friends and family — who have the guts to keep on speaking up day after day after day in less-than-perfect situations, doing their best to make the next day a little bit better. So thank you all for being there for me, when I was a student, and to all of you — faculty, staff, and students alike — who are continuing to make Hope a place where marginalized folks who are there can, despite the odds, find emotional and intellectual support, and forge a worthwhile learning experience for themselves.

To the folks who didn’t, and aren’t, I realize this probably means little to you, but you are on my shit list and I will see to it in my own behind-the-scenes way that you have as little power to fuck with peoples’ well-being as possible. End of story.

Quick Hit: UK reports home educated kids "disadvantaged"

14 Wednesday Oct 2009

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I wish I had more time at the moment to look into this report out of the UK that describes home educated children as generally more vulnerable than their schooled counterparts.

Children educated at home are twice as likely to be known by social services and four times more likely as young adults to be out of work, education or training than those who go to school, MPs have been told.

MPs on the cross-party select committee for children, schools and families asked the head of a government inquiry into home education and the schools minister to defend calls for tougher rules on parents who teach their children at home.

In his review published in June, Kent’s former education director Graham Badman recommended that all home educators register with their local authority. Councils should be given powers to refuse registration if a child is believed to be at risk, he said.

The article in The Guardian leaves me wondering what sort of measure of well-being were used to determine how home-educated kids were thriving, other than their being “known” by social services — something that, at least in the history of the United States home education movement can be caused simply by children not being in traditional schools. The idea of young adults being disproportionately out of “work, education, or training” also assumes mainstream markers of adulthood rather than asking deeper questions about how young people are or are not thriving in the world. After all, being “out of . . . education” is one description of unschooled young adults; it does not necessarily mean they are not learning.

If, indeed, children and young adults who are not in mainstream schools are struggling in British society, then it seems like something ought to be done to remedy the situation! However, I am skeptical that government oversight — especially oversight which sounds like an attempt to bring home educating parents in-line with traditional curriculum and teaching objectives — is the most productive solution. Maybe the problem is not with the home-educating families and children, but rather with a society at large that views home education suspiciously and fails to provide its young people with non-school environments in which to learn and grow into adult persons who feel capable of contributing to society in ways they feel suited to and derive pleasure from.

video wednesday: the home economics story

23 Wednesday Sep 2009

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Hanna introduced me to this timely 1951 promotional video from Iowa State College just as I was reading Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd last week. It is an incredible snapshot of the way college attendance was presented to young women in the postwar period; watch to be bitter end for the senior year requirement to play house in preparation for “real life” for the full creepy effect. Almost as good as the marriage preparedness video I posted back in March.

Running time: 25:02 minutes.

UPDATE: Hanna chastised me for not including the mystery science theater version of this short, which is available via YouTube, so here are the links (it comes in two parts): part one and part two. Better late than never?

On the Syllabus: Growing Up Absurd

18 Friday Sep 2009

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So I might not have a lot of time to post this year, but one thing it occured to me to do is post selections from some of my thesis-related reading for those of you who are interested in what I’m doing on the intellectual/history front. Since I’m enrolled in an independent study this semester, I have the luxury of designing my own schedule of reading in preparation for my oral history fieldwork. The reading I’ll be doing this semester is in part theoretical/methodological (how I’ll be doing my oral history collecting and thesis writing, and why I chose to do it that way) in part a review of the existing historical literature on the period and topics I am studying, and in part primary sources that help provide contemporary context for the beginnings of the Oregon Extension program.

One of the books I’ve been reading this week, Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in an Organized Society. The prolific Goodman wrote one of the earliest post-war critiques of 1950s American conformity, first published in 1957, which later became a “must read” for countercultural activists during the 1960s and 70s. The basic argument of Growing Up Absurd is that the post-war society is depriving youth (specifically boys, see below) of meaningful work opportunities — leaving them with the option of unfullfilling factory of office jobs that do not contribute (in Goodman’s view) to the betterment of society. While his argument has faults, he is also making key observations about the fault-lines in American society during the era of post-war conformity. The priceless bits, however, are the sections in which he defends his focus on “young men and boys” as a stand-in for “youth.” When I began reading, I figured he was using masculine pronouns as a stand-in for humanity in general (it’s the 1950s after all). Not so according to this parenthetical found at the end of his introduction:

(I say the “young men and boys” rather than “young people” because the problems I want to discuss in this book belong primarily, in our society, to the boys: how to be useful and make something of oneself. A girl does not have to, she is not expected to, “make something” of herself. Her career does not have to be self-justifying, for she will have children, which is absolutely self-justifying, like any other natural or creative act. With thie background, it is less important, for instance, what job an average young woman works at till she is married. The quest for the glamour job is given at least a little substance by its relation to a “better” marriage. Correspondingly, our “youth troubles” are boys’ troubles — female delinquency is sexual: “incorrigibility” and unmarried pregnancy. Yet as every woman knows, these problems [I am writing about] are intensely interesting to women, for if the boys do not grow to be men, where shall the women find men? If the husband is running the rat race of the organized system, there is not much father for the children.) [13]

I would love to write an entire essay at some point unpacking the layers of cultural “common sense” packed into this one single paragraph of Goodman’s polemic. He continues this way of raising the question of women in a tangential, completely un-analyzed way. In the section where he discusses the Beats, he critiques their cultural dissent at length and then eventually gets around to the question of “What is in it for the women who accompany the Beats?” (185)

There are several possible sexual bonds . . . Her relation to him is maternal: she devotes herself to helping him find himself and become a man, presumably so that he can then marry her. . . Another possible relation is Muse or Model: her Beat is her poet and artist and makes her feel important. This is a satisfaction of her feminine narcissism or penis envy.

So mother or virgin/whore: those are our options girls. But wait! There’s more (185-187).

One sometimes sees a pathetic scene in a bar. Some decent square young workingmen are there, lonely, looking for girls or even for a friendly word. They feel they are “nobodies”; they are not Beats, they are not artists. They have nothing to “contribute” to the conversation. The girls, meantime, give their attention only to the Beats, who are sounding off so interestingly. But these Beats will not make any life for the girls, whereas the others might make husbands and fathers.

Amazing what a long history the Nice Guy ™ vesus Bad Boy ™ mythology has, isn’t it? One might, of course, ask if there are any female Beats — in spirit if not in historic fact (there were very few women who were part of the core movement). Goodman does actually mention such women, at the tail end of his analysis:

Finally, of course, there are the young women who are themselves Beats, disaffected from status standards. Perhaps they have left an unlucky marriage, have had an illegitimate child, have fallen in love with a Negro, and found little support or charity “in” society. They then choose a life among those more tolerant, and find meaning in it by posing for them or typing their manuscripts.

So even the women “Beats,” who fit his earlier definition of “incorrigibility,” end up being not so much artist-activists themselves, but rather a sub-species of the Muse and Model he defines earlier. As women artists and activists pointed out at the time — most loudly and concertedly during the 1960s and 1970s — this was in fact far from the truth of their own lived experience.

That’s it for this week’s “on the syllabus” dispatch . . . look for more next weekend!

Quick Hit: SCOTUS 8-1 against strip search of teen

25 Thursday Jun 2009

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Speaking of teens, schools, and power relationships . . .

This morning, the United States Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of Savana Redding, a young woman who was strip-searched at her middle school after being accused by a fellow student of being in possession of over-the-counter ibuprofen (which were banned by school regulation).

Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

“What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

Earlier this year, I posted a link to Dahlia Lithwick’s column following the oral arguments . . . I look forward to any further thoughts she might have in the wake of this decision.

Teens, schools, and power relations

25 Thursday Jun 2009

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Two recent stories out of the UK on young people in school environments have got me thinking (once again) about the way in which educational spaces are often much less spaces for genuine learning than they are spaces in which unequal power relationships between young people (students) and adult people (administrators and teachers) play out in mutually destructive ways.

First, a short piece from the “odd news” section of the UK-based website digitalspy on a school in somerset that banned snogging (kissing) on school grounds. Students who are caught “in the act” will be suspended from school. While the short piece at digitalspy gives no reason for the ban, a local Somerset paper reports the impetus behind the ban was a full-frontal snog witnessed by the headmaster. This type of reaction to students public displays of affection is reminiscent of the recent New York Times’ breathless report on the hugging “trend” in American schools. While there may be legitimate reasons for asking students to refrain from heavy or prolonged making-out on school grounds, an all-out ban seems like overkill destined to provide one more reason for students to (perhaps legitimately in this case!) believe adults are completely barmy.

In a more serious and lengthy report yesterday morning on the BBC news hour, I heard a story about online “cyber-bullying” of teachers by their pupils:

Teachers have always had to put up with personal jibes from kids.

Until very recently, however, malicious gossip and snide remarks have mostly been confined to the corridors or lunch queues.

But now with the explosion of websites like ratemyteachers.co.uk and bebo.com, teachers are suddenly finding themselves mocked in cyberspace, resulting in plunging morale and even threats to quit the profession.

. . .

Ms Wallis [a senior teacher from Cornwall] claims that the site is seriously damaging trust between students and teaching staff.

“When you’re facing a class five times a day, with 30 children at a time, and you don’t know who has actually written these things, you become far more guarded in everything you do.

“And the bottom line is you lose all trust in the students you’ve got sitting in front of you.”

What struck me about the report was the way students were portrayed as the bullies with the power to destroy teachers’ emotional well-being and reputation. Obviously mean-spirited gossip is hurtful, and adults are not invulnerable to personal slurs just because they originate from people younger than themselves. Bullying is not confined to childhood spaces, and can cross generational boundaries. Yet the journalists covering this story seemed oblivious of the complex power dynamics at play in an educational institution — power dynamics that privilege adult authority, embodied by teachers and administrators, over the authority of young people. Teachers in a classroom exercise the right to pass judgment on students in contexts that have real-life consequences for a child’s future (this is especially true in a school system, such as in the UK, with national curriculum and testing standards). And while some of the “rating” comments are cruel, the reasons for poor ratings are not necessarily just kids having a bit of fun at the teacher’s expense. As one student interviewed reflected,

“I know one teacher who I think is really rude,” says a 15-year-old boy at Haydon School in Pinner, north west London. “But there’s no-one who can tell him that so, in a way, if they look at the site, it’s good because they can change their attitude.”

In a school environment that operates on a top-down, hierarchical model, students may have no (or very few) opportunities to make their voices heard — or more importantly feel they are taken seriously when they do speak up — without fear of retribution . . . except anonymously, online. Another student interviewed said she didn’t feel bad about the negative comments she had posted online. “I rated my worst teachers,” she told the BBC, “I said they were rubbish and didn’t teach me anything.” The fact that children have found alternate ways to communicate with the world about their academic experiences is not necessarily “bullying” — it may simply be providing us with a more balanced picture of what young peoples’ lived experiences in school are actually like. I doubt it will lead to any serious soul-searching on the part of those invested in an hierarchical academic system, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the struggle plays out.