Are schools focusing too much on feelings? from the London Times Online School Gate Page.

From ... School Gate - Times Online - WBLG
November 07, 2008

Are schools focusing too much on feelings?

By Nicola Woolcock Education Correspondent

How would you respond if your child refused to eat her vegetables with the words: “Mummy, I feel very uncomfortable having to eat all these peas”. ?

This is a question that Dennis Hayes, visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University is trying to grapple with. He is concerned that schools are focusing too much on social education rather than the old fashioned business of teaching children facts.

Lessons in “happiness” or Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL), that teach children to explore their emotions, now run in three fifths of primary schools. And they are now being rolled out to secondary schools.

SEAL has the enthusiastic support of ministers, who are currently exploring
whether pupils should be assessed at school on their personal development as well as their academic achievements.

As a mark in how far this approach to learning has gone already, schools in
Birmingham were told earlier this year that happiness in the classroom
should be treated with the same importance as academic achievement.

But Professor Hayes does not approve. Indeed, he believes that teaching
emotional lessons in school, gets in the way of learning and represents
a form of child abuse that manipulates pupils into being victims.

He told a recent gathering of educationalists in London organised by the
Westminster Education Forum that schools are in danger of becoming
“social work centres staffed by psychiatrists brainwashing pupils”.

Millions of pounds, he says, are being spent on protecting children from
bullying, teaching them to respect others and coaching them in “proper
emotions”, such as empathy not anger.

“This is a heartless denial of a real education for children,” he says. “Also it’s manipulative - a form of child abuse: getting children to feel the right emotions and learn the emotional scripts.

“One mother told me that her son had learnt the ‘dealing with potentially
abusive situation’ scripts so well that at dinner he said, ‘Mummy, I
feel very uncomfortable having to eat all these peas’.”

Professor Hayes, who is co-author of a book called The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, believes that such tactics exacerbate problems by making children oversensitive.

“It makes matters worse,” he says. “Take bullying as an example. The
more you talk about bullying, the more it sensitises people to every
social slight, and the more it becomes a problem - but one created by
adult intervention.

“Training pupils to be happy is a self-destructive policy and a self-defeating concern. Happiness is a by-product of other achievements.

“We need to get back to what education means, giving young people a grounding in disciplines that structure human knowledge and understanding, rather than patronising them and letting them talk about what they want.”

Ministers are convinced that teaching children to express their emotions boosts
concentration and motivation. But my guess is that some parents might
have a sneaking suspicion that the Prof is on to something.

From... the (London) Times Online School Gate Page: Helping you through the maze of Britain's education system ...