Been saying this for a while !

[Northam Saint]

People reveal things they heard as children that have stayed with them

Parents have opened up on Mumsnet about the cruel jibes - often made by parents or teachers - that still haunt them today, with one person saying such comments sparked an eating disorder.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I have been saying this for a while now and it’s a thing that many of my students say. During tutorial sessions part of my role is to encourage students to attend Maths and English GCSE. These are 16+ on FE courses. They say thinks like “I am crap and maths, my teachers at school said I was rubbish at it and would never pass. Makes my blood boil ! Many got a three and need a four to pass. Very often all they need is a couple of extra marks.

 

[Twelvefret]

I heard things that caused me to never allow as a parent. I took more than a handful of mouthy teachers and one principal to task. Christian school was the worse.

 

[Burgundy]

I’m not meaning to doubt your experiences but they don’t completely tally with mine. I’m further down the chain in 11-19 state schools - one of which was a faith school.

I’ve worked with (as in managed and appraised) dozens of maths teachers. The majority have been very good. Several have been genuinely exceptional. A few have been well-meaning but too wet to handle it. I can think of two who I could perhaps imagine - but never heard… even on the grapevine - telling a kid that they were ‘rubbish and would never pass’. They were both late entrants to the profession, who got a government’s golden handshake for shortage subject recruitment, and neither lasted two academic years before resigning and returning to their previous industries.

That sort of negativity is just not in the psyche of the overwhelming majority of teachers. You just cannot cope with ten minutes of motivating 30+ teenagers (a new set each hour) unless you are unrelentingly positive. Let alone controlling them. Let alone inspiring them.

Perhaps my experience of the profession has moved on since I qualified in 2010. I went to secondary school in the late 90s and I remember the ‘old school’ teachers putting kids in stress positions for misbehaving. My dad was beaten as a matter of course in the 60s and 70s because he wasn’t up to scratch. From reading what he writes, he was (is) almost certainly dyslexic and just needed extra support.

I can well imagine poop schooling was psychologically damaging to lots of our more ‘senior’ members. But, perhaps, it’s that some social values were poop to them and these were no exclusive to education.

Anyway… in terms of the article, a lot of what we internalise as youngsters definitely seems to shape the way that we think of ourselves and others. That in turn shapes our behaviours and interactions.

There’s quite a good book by Steve Peters called The Chimp Paradox that’s a good way in. I recommend it because he’s worked with the likes of Chris Hoy, Steven Gerrard and Ronnie O’Sullivan and communicates his ideas well. If nothing else, this podcast is worth a listen on your morning commute: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p072qx55