Lord of the Flies: How Adults Create Bullying

All over America kids will read William Golding's Lord of the Fliesin school during the coming year. And in most of those "English" classes the interpretations sold by the teachers will blame the "nature of boys" for what happens in the story.

Let's look at what the Bellmore-Merrick School District (on New York's Long Island) has to say: (district picked randomly from Google search)

Ralph vs. Jack
Ralph represents order and composure in society. Eventually Jack grew tired of Ralph being in charge. He let the barbarism inside of him transform him into a savage-like creature and he went on a rampage, destroying the makeshift civilization the boys worked so hard to create.

Boys vs. Nature
The boys went hunting many times to try to keep themselves alive. At first, Ralph was afraid to kill the sow. Towards the end, Jack's warrior identity brutally murdered the sow and hung his [sic] head on a stick.

Boys vs. Piggy
Piggy represents the weak who are often victimized. The boys tortured him because he was fat and needed such thick glasses. His torture can also be considered a lack of understanding, because the boys had likely never met anyone with problems like his. This can be seen in the boys lack of understanding of asthma, or "ass-mar".

Jack vs. Society
The barbaric quality that arises in Jack throughout the book is really a rebellion against society. He grew tired of taking orders from Ralph and participating in the democratic system that they had. This sense of anarchy must have existed inside of him before the encounter on the island began, but his experiences served to bring it out of him.

The Need for Civilization and Order
Laws and rules are definitely necessary to keep the darker side of human nature in line. When all elements of civilization disappear on the island, the boys revert to a more primitive part of their nature, and they turn into savages and anarchy replaces democracy. Society holds everyone together, and with out civilization and rules, the boy's ideals, values, and basic ideas of what is right and wrong are forgotten, and the evils of human nature emerge. Bellmore-Merrick School District

When Lord of the Flies is taught this way, it encourages the adults in school to continue to behave as they do, and blames children, and their inherently evil nature, for all that is wrong in society. This, of course, is the tack taken by administrators such as Anthony Orsini who claims to run the Lord of the Flies Middle School in Ridgewood, NJ. And it lies at the heart of how bullying is usually combatted in our schools.

But what if we asked different questions about this book?

Who organized the choir? Who suggested to the choir that they were superior to other students? Are there any groups in our school organized like the choir? Who organizes those groups?

How did the boys learn that Piggy was fat? That fat is bad? How did the boys learn that spectacles or the inability to run fast are signs of weakness?

Where did the boys learn how to humiliate other boys? Is this innate? 

Who taught the boys about the idea of uniforms, and the value of looking the same?

Are the boys "turning into savages" or are they recreating the hierarchy of the British Public School? (and, of course, here you will have to explain what a British Public School is...)

Public School products Cameron and Clegg are
leading the effort to move education funds from needy
students to wealthy students and profit-based school operators.

In other words, what if these children were viewed as products of their society? What if what is being revealed is not the "nature of children," but the most trained behaviours. What if Ralph can be seen, as the story begins, as "natural childhood" - trusting, cooperative, believing in fairness, and what emerges later on is the British aristocracy - brutal, bullying, uniform in appearance, colonialist, and lacking empathy or even pity?

What might that suggest about school-based anti-bullying efforts?

I've blogged about this before. I've suggested that when we see bullying in schools we are usually seeing the results of adult labours. Adults create the hierarchies which create bullying. Adults decide which students will be deemed as superior, and which will be seen as inferior. From [American] football teams to cheerleaders to honour rolls and band camps, school and community adults divide children up and assign them a status position. Parents verbalize intolerance of differences - especially social class differences and body-type differences - and children learn these. Teachers humiliate students who are different: via homework, via calling on students, via grades, even via papers returned publicly ("please pass these back..."). Schools add to this through Special Education designations and methods of dealing with free and reduced lunches. Community members all across America tell football players and basketball players that they are more valuable than, say, soccer players or the drama club, or the kid interested in abstract art or maths. And, everyone else, from our news media to our political leaders, demonstrate daily that bullying is the way to behave.

And then, when children imitate those adults, and demonstrate that they've learned the important lessons, we blame the kids, or their phones, or Facebook.

"During the late nineteenth century the new imperialism had taken hold as European nations competed for new' lands, particularly in Africa. Indeed, there was very much a feeling of superiority amongst Europeans; the idea that the races of other nations were inferior to their own, and that they therefore had a right to claim these lands as their own and attempt to civilise' the people.

"This was very much the ethos of British public schools in which the notion of a muscular Christianity' was regarded as the ideal. Following Christian principles was regarded as important, as was a masculinity characterised by great physical strength. Thus sports, such as rugby, formed a great part of the curriculum and helped embody a sense of team spirit in the boys." Michelle Wilkinson

Golding, the non-public school attending son of a socialist headmaster, writing in the aftermath of the World War that had seen educated Europe descend into a nightmare, probably made his characters "public school" students for a specific reason. He was all too aware of how "the best brought up" children of his continent had just behaved.

So as you read Lord of the Flies with your students this coming year, ask them to ask different questions. And when you see bullies in your school, ask where they have learned that behaviour.

Children do learn, after all. And mostly, they learn by watching us.

- Ira Socol

Two Williams College profs tackled the same issue in today's New York Times.

Evaluate that!

My son went to a great high school. Among the things they did was combine grades with long narrative evaluations. This allowed me to see the great conundrum of educational evaluation in a unique way.

For at the end of his 9th grade year his Latin Class evaluation read (in part) this way: "[He] was the best student in the class, he completed both Latin I and Latin II this year. He will need to take future courses at [a nearby] college in order to continue his advancement. Grade C-"

"What grade," I asked the teacher, "did the second best student get?"

I was told that my son got a bad grade because he did not do his homework. "Apparently," I said, "he didn't have to." But, you see, this teacher had a rubric. Homework was 25% of the grade, and apparently there was no block in the rubric for doing two years of work in one.

I didn't really fight. I didn't care. The next year he was sitting among college students reading Ovid. That's what matters.

Except, that is not what matters.

"Can I write "Dear parent, your son has greatly improved on things not considered important by the school [reporting] system"?" Tomaz Lasic asked on Twitter today. Mr. Lasic is a teacher in Western Australia dealing with "troubled" children, and a brilliant observer of the system. He followed up: "in my 'low achievers' class. Where's "halted [self]abuse", "began to smile" box to tick?" And: "Every time a particular kid (totally socially inept past) walks in our office and says please, or gives a hi-5, we say: "Evaluate that!"
What is our national standard (whatever nation you are in) for getting a child to smile? For getting a child to publicly ask a question? For getting a child to confidently present an idea? For getting a child to be willing to ask for help? Or to ask to play with another child?

What is the national statistical trend line for feeling safe in school? For picking up that first book of interest? For solving an interpersonal problem for the first time? For absorbing an unfair call in athletics without going off?

There are so many things we hope children get from their education, but when we discuss "data driven decision making," or "accountability," or "standards," or "merit pay" for teachers we become complete reductionists, assessing (very badly) a tiny fragment of all that expected learning. And in doing this we tell children they are worthless, and we assure that success in school is a matter of socio-economics and playing the "those-in-power" game, and nothing else.

See, it does not matter if a child is rushing ahead or struggling to keep up. We do the same thing to anyone who doesn't measure up to our fictional "average." We crush them, demean them, and sneer at their accomplishments. And in doing so, we prove our worthlessness and lack of credibility to virtually all students.

So when people talk about measurement in education, I always get angry, because I know that neither Arne Duncan nor Michelle Rhee would give a dime of merit pay to Mr. Lasic for helping that kid learn to smile, nor even to that Latin teacher for letting my son rush ahead. And I know that schools which must spend years making their children simply feel safe will always be rated below those in wealthy suburbs. Because you can not discuss "standards" or "evaluation" or even "accountability" until you adopt some kind of legitimate sense of what counts in the education of each individual child. And we are nowhere close to even having that conversation.

Perhaps, as usual, The Simpsons says it most coherently...

"These tests will have no effect on your grades. They merely determine your future social status and financial success. " Edna Krabapple tells Bart Simpson's class in a legendary Simpsons episode in which the essential indifference to 'direction from average' in schools is demonstrated. "Do you often find yourself bored?" the school psychologist asks, "All the time" replies Bart.

- Ira Socol

Great Schools: 2. Environment and Choice

The little Lincoln Park neighborhood of Michigan's City of Norton Shores is known for two amazing things - Marcel Breuer's brilliant Saint Francis de Sales church, and Lincoln Park Elementary School.

Now, I have not checked in on Lincoln Park in a few years, but I want to describe the school I knew.

The school serves a strange neighborhood. Million dollar Lake Michigan homes, small postwar tract homes, and a couple of the poorest trailer park communities I have seen. It is located just south of Muskegon, Michigan, a community whose economy has never recovered from the collapse of the auto industry in 1973. (The county once had two of the three largest auto parts foundries in the world, and built tanks until Vietnam ended.) It is just one public school in a district which spans urban, suburban, and rural communities. The students are racially and ethnically diverse. There is even a Catholic elementary, a very good Catholic elementary, about five blocks away, competing for students.

But Lincoln Park Elementary was (I'll use past tense for academic certainty, but I'm guessing things haven't changed much) a great school. It is great for the students, and it tends to score as well as any primary school in the state on standardized tests.

Environment and Choice

Lincoln Park did two things right from the very start. First, it controlled the school environment long before any student entered the building, and created a very safe, controlled building in which student academic freedom could be maximized. Second, it created different options for students beginning in first grade. Traditional age-based grade classrooms, two-year looping classrooms, and a 1-5 multi-age program.

Environment

I can go all the way back to Henry Barnard's 1848 book describing multi-classroom school design to see that observant educators understand that the school environment starts long before a student reaches the classroom, and Lincoln Park Elementary made this obvious. Clothes which indicated the great wealth disparities among students were not allowed. No student could ride a bicycle to school without a helmet. Behavior on the sidewalks surrounding the school was monitored by the principal and teaching staff every morning and every afternoon.

This matters. At Lincoln Park students were getting into "school mode" from the moment they dressed in the morning. I find it hard to believe that I am about to say this - given my childhood attitudes - but this is one reason I have come to favor school uniforms, it establishes the school day from the time you walk out of your bedroom. Now, Lincoln Park didn't have uniforms, but it enforced a pretty comprehensive dress code, and yet, never made that dress code Anglo-Centric or the enforcement abusive (I was in a high school two weeks ago when girls with "skirts too short" were called down to the office by PA announcement, to show the other side).

Behavior in general was expected to be really good. And this was so consistently maintained, with all students regardless of social status, that the school simply functioned really well. No, it was not at all silent. All through the building you'd find groups of students working on projects in the halls. Students went to the library whenever they needed to. At first glance, in fact, it appeared noisy and chaotic, but it could be that because the social structure, by being clear, allowed freedom.

Choice

I always know a terrible school when I see classes which seem to be the same. Why, if you had two third grade classrooms, or two 11th grade English courses, would these be, in any way, similar? The only reason would be that you have bought in completely to the idea of education as industrial processing, and the idea of students as interchangeable raw material waiting to be stamped into pre-ordained form.

If you have more than one of anything in a school, you should be creating choices for students and parents. Meaningful choices. And helping students make those choices. Would this child be better with this teacher? or that? With this reading approach? or that? With this classroom environment? or that? With this syllabus? or that?

Lincoln Park created those choices, and helped students and parents make intelligent decisions. The wildness of the MultiAge room, 120 students and five teachers in an immense open space, was fabulous for many, but surely not for all. So students could be in relatively traditional environments, or in fully "open classroom" environments, with teachers who had also chosen their environments. It was quite amazing how well all these rooms seemed to run.

Multi-Age

The school's "star" was the multi-age room, with it's fully inclusive, grow-at-your-own-rate structure. But the whole school embraced flexibility and peer mentoring. Literacy projects, such as plays based on books, were created and performed by teams which included students from every grade. Fifth graders provided math help for younger students, playground times allowed different age groups to mix. In that situation far fewer students are ever "behind."

Celebrating all kinds of achievement

You played on the basketball team? That was very exciting and celebrated. You played in the orchestra? That was very exciting and celebrated. You were part of one of the 20 or so Odyssey of the Mind teams? You got a giant pep rally to send you off to the event. Whatever you did well, Lincoln Park was behind you, whether a school thing or something else. This created a sense that everyone could learn from everyone in this building.

A Model

Lincoln Park Elementary had no more money than any nearby school. It was not a charter, "freed from bureaucracy." It did not pay teachers more. It did not screen out any students - directly or indirectly. It was not at all without competition. It succeeded, succeeds, because it created an effective and open place which welcomed all students and encouraged them in their differing paths to learning.

As I always say, great schools are hardly impossible. They exist all over the place. We just need to expect more. Everywhere.

- Ira Socol

Great Schools 1: Changing Everything

Solution Sunday

On Twitter this morning, I just started reacting to "overnight posts" and found myself making ten statements about truly changing schools. Please, add your own, agree, disagree...

I've linked these to SpeEdChange posts.

Solution Sunday: (1) Grade level expectations fail all who develop at different rates (almost everyone) Multiage is way to go.

Solution Sunday: (2) Subject divisions kill natural learning instincts. All subjects need to be integrated.

Solution Sunday: (3) School time schedules prevent education. Flex time according to student needs.

Solution Sunday: (4) Individualized Education for all. All Students are gifted, all have special needs.

Solution Sunday: (5) All students need to start learning contemporary technology from the start. Especially those from less rich communities.

Solution Sunday: (6) Treat your students equitably and bullying will drop. It's a fact - schools encourage bullying through of adult actions.

Solution Sunday: (7) Text-To-Speech systems help all readers, should be in use right from the start (build sightword recognition, teach the value of what reading offers by providing access to content).

Solution Sunday: (8) Teacher training needs to change. Probably via interning in University Lab Schools. Learning better ways, not old ways. (and unlearning the systems of social reproduction)

Solution Sunday: (9) As long as there are high-stakes Standardized Tests, differentiated instruction is a fraud.

Solution Sunday: (10) More learning opportunities, less explicit instruction before age 8. Don't make young kids hate books and math. Stay flexible and tolerant, and natural curiousity will lead to learning.

- Ira Socol