Andy Hargreaves: "Don't educate your children as if childhood were someone else's waiting room"
The education specialist, professor at the University of Ottawa, and advisor on reforms of education systems in Scotland and Wales asks not to blame teachers for the problems that are actually due to how the school is structured.
Andrew Hargreaves has spent his life teaching and researching the factors that influence education at universities in the UK, US, and Canada, including Boston College, where he is emeritus professor, and the University of Ottawa, where he now works. Born 71 years ago to a working-class family in the north of England, Hargreaves has written dozens of books and been involved as an adviser on education reforms in Scotland and Wales. The interview takes place at the Palacio de Congresos de Zaragoza, where he has been invited to participate in the IV International Congress of Educational Innovation organized by the Government of Aragon. Despite being recently landed from an intercontinental flight in which his suitcase has been lost, Professor Hargreaves shows during the hour that the conversation possesses the same intelligence, affability, and humor that transmit the videos available on the Internet of his lectures around the world.
Question. It has been a warning for some time that a student cannot learn well if they lack well-being, if they do not feel well, do not have friends or suffer bullying.
Answer. For a long time, we have thought of well-being as something alien to learning. But children need to be cared for, to know that they belong in an environment, and that they matter. These are important things in themselves, but they also affect learning. We have seen during the pandemic that children live in all kinds of homes and there were parents who had to work, sometimes struggling a lot just to get their children fed, with no other adult to take care of them. That affects mental health. And also learning. Well-being has come to the fore, and that's a good thing. But be careful not to see well-being only as protecting children from harm. Protection from harm is vital, of course. They must be well fed, have a suitable place to sleep, be cared for. But we can do more. Children need to develop, feel fulfilled, have fun, not all the time, but a lot of the time. And the best way to achieve this is not to present it as something separate from learning, but as part of it. One thing that makes children feel good is going to school knowing that their teacher knows and cares about them, and that they will learn something new every day that will be interesting and important. So, well-being is important for learning and learning is important for well-being.
Q. Does the school pay enough attention to this aspect?
A. I think elementary schools have made comprehensive child care a priority. And that's one of the reasons people become elementary school teachers.
Q. And in high school? Studies show that in Spain the enthusiasm for going to school sinks when moving to this stage.
A. It's true. In many parts of the world, when children exceed a certain age, around 11 years old, they stop feeling so satisfied and motivated by school. Some think it's a natural process, part of growth. But it happens that then, from the age of 16, among those who have remained in school, that commitment increases. Why? Because they can choose from more options. In the previous phase, the intermediate years between leaving primary school and reaching 16, students have more content, have few options to choose from, and have to interact with more teachers than at elementary school. Teachers also have more students in their care than primary school students, making it harder to care for them. In addition, students are older, and teachers feel that they need more control, more discipline, instead of engaging them with classes that involve, for example, more movement and more noise, but that can generate behavioral problems. So, the loss of motivation towards school has nothing to do with a growth problem, but with our schools and how we organize them.
Q. The Spanish system stands out, when compared in international reports, for the low level of collaboration between teachers. To what extent do you think it is a problem?
A. When teachers do not collaborate, it is always a problem, as with other professions, such as doctors. Effective teacher collaboration is a challenge in many countries. And sometimes the first instinct is to blame the teachers; saying that teachers, like a mother or father, have their own ideas and ways of doing things, and they don't like others meddling. But the problem is more related to how we design the structures and culture of our schools.
Q. Can they be changed? How?
A. The person who can do this the most is the one who runs the school. Whoever leads the school often has to get educators through difficult situations, which can sometimes be uncomfortable. Principals need to earn the trust of their teachers and must support their teachers. It is not a question of disciplining or evaluating them, but of having authority and leading people to a different place, which will be more satisfactory for the whole school, but which not everyone sees immediately at first. The person who leads can establish a culture, habits, patterns of collaboration.
Q. And what can governments do?
A. They can build structures that give teachers time to collaborate. Are there enough teachers in the school, not only to make the classes smaller, but so that teachers can spend enough time with other teachers, to plan, prepare, evaluate, and improve their way of teaching, and not just be teaching all the time? If you're a lawyer and spend all your day in the courtroom, you won't have time to prepare cases. For teachers it is the same. Finland, one of the countries with the best educational results in the world, is a good example. Teachers spend more time outside their classes there than anywhere else in the world, and that allows them to collaborate, plan, prepare, reflect, and improve.
Q. The Spanish education system is moving from a content-based model to a more competency-based one, a change that not everyone shares. Do you think it's the right path?
A. I ask the reader to try to answer two questions. The first: Can you state Boyle's law? The second: Who won the Hundred Years' War?" In recent times I have asked thousands of people in many countries. And most do not know how to answer either, although they are questions that are studied in many places. The point is not that we should stop teaching them, but how we teach them. If you look closely, Boyle's law, which deals with the pressure, temperature, and volume of gases, does not apply under certain circumstances. If you had explained to me that this shows that science is not perfect, that it is always moving forward and must update its conclusions, I would have remembered that idea and could use it for the rest of my life. And if you had explained to me that the Hundred Years' War was what led countries to create standing armies, perhaps now I could ask myself, and in view of the war in Ukraine, do we need larger standing armies? The truth is that we cannot teach everything, we will always have to make a selection. And whatever we do, the most important thing is how we teach it so that children acquire knowledge, learning, and skills that stay with them for the rest of their lives, rather than forgetting them as soon as they leave school.
Q. You have dedicated your career to teaching and researching education, you are also a father and grandfather. What advice would you give parents about their children's education?
A. I think the first thing I would say to them is that we hear a lot about preparing children for what awaits them, preparing them for work, preparing them for a phrase that drives me crazy: "Jobs that have not been invented yet." The Queen of England once said, "It's a pity that people don't take jobs for life anymore". There is a lot of rhetoric around the preparation of children. But the best way to prepare children for the future is to educate and care for them well in the present, not treat the present as a waiting room for the future. Human beings spend almost a quarter of their lives as children and teenagers. So, we can't treat childhood as a waiting room for anything else. It must matter for itself. And the important thing is to feel loved, to feel that you belong to an environment, to learn to live in community - and family is your first community - to develop responsibilities and become the best you can be. Have a great time, but also know how to make an effort and be aware of how difficult things are sometimes: it can be learning to play the guitar, which is hard, or becoming a great swimmer. There are many ways to do this, but they are all really about the same thing: providing them with well-being, learning, a sense of belonging and responsibility. If we do all this, the future will largely take care of itself. And I would tell them one more thing: listen to your son or daughter. Take them seriously, don't downplay what they tell you, and when they're worried or aggrieved about something, give them the same attention you would give them if they were adults.
Andrew Hargreaves has spent his life teaching and researching the factors that influence education at universities in the UK, US, and Canada, including Boston College, where he is emeritus professor, and the University of Ottawa, where he now works. Born 71 years ago to a working-class family in the north of England, Hargreaves has written dozens of books and been involved as an adviser on education reforms in Scotland and Wales. The interview takes place at the Palacio de Congresos de Zaragoza, where he has been invited to participate in the IV International Congress of Educational Innovation organized by the Government of Aragon. Despite being recently landed from an intercontinental flight in which his suitcase has been lost, Professor Hargreaves shows during the hour that the conversation possesses the same intelligence, affability, and humor that transmit the videos available on the Internet of his lectures around the world.
Question. It has been a warning for some time that a student cannot learn well if they lack well-being, if they do not feel well, do not have friends or suffer bullying.
Answer. For a long time, we have thought of well-being as something alien to learning. But children need to be cared for, to know that they belong in an environment, and that they matter. These are important things in themselves, but they also affect learning. We have seen during the pandemic that children live in all kinds of homes and there were parents who had to work, sometimes struggling a lot just to get their children fed, with no other adult to take care of them. That affects mental health. And also learning. Well-being has come to the fore, and that's a good thing. But be careful not to see well-being only as protecting children from harm. Protection from harm is vital, of course. They must be well fed, have a suitable place to sleep, be cared for. But we can do more. Children need to develop, feel fulfilled, have fun, not all the time, but a lot of the time. And the best way to achieve this is not to present it as something separate from learning, but as part of it. One thing that makes children feel good is going to school knowing that their teacher knows and cares about them, and that they will learn something new every day that will be interesting and important. So, well-being is important for learning and learning is important for well-being.
Q. Does the school pay enough attention to this aspect?
A. I think elementary schools have made comprehensive child care a priority. And that's one of the reasons people become elementary school teachers.
Q. And in high school? Studies show that in Spain the enthusiasm for going to school sinks when moving to this stage.
A. It's true. In many parts of the world, when children exceed a certain age, around 11 years old, they stop feeling so satisfied and motivated by school. Some think it's a natural process, part of growth. But it happens that then, from the age of 16, among those who have remained in school, that commitment increases. Why? Because they can choose from more options. In the previous phase, the intermediate years between leaving primary school and reaching 16, students have more content, have few options to choose from, and have to interact with more teachers than at elementary school. Teachers also have more students in their care than primary school students, making it harder to care for them. In addition, students are older, and teachers feel that they need more control, more discipline, instead of engaging them with classes that involve, for example, more movement and more noise, but that can generate behavioral problems. So, the loss of motivation towards school has nothing to do with a growth problem, but with our schools and how we organize them.
Q. The Spanish system stands out, when compared in international reports, for the low level of collaboration between teachers. To what extent do you think it is a problem?
A. When teachers do not collaborate, it is always a problem, as with other professions, such as doctors. Effective teacher collaboration is a challenge in many countries. And sometimes the first instinct is to blame the teachers; saying that teachers, like a mother or father, have their own ideas and ways of doing things, and they don't like others meddling. But the problem is more related to how we design the structures and culture of our schools.
Q. Can they be changed? How?
A. The person who can do this the most is the one who runs the school. Whoever leads the school often has to get educators through difficult situations, which can sometimes be uncomfortable. Principals need to earn the trust of their teachers and must support their teachers. It is not a question of disciplining or evaluating them, but of having authority and leading people to a different place, which will be more satisfactory for the whole school, but which not everyone sees immediately at first. The person who leads can establish a culture, habits, patterns of collaboration.
Q. And what can governments do?
A. They can build structures that give teachers time to collaborate. Are there enough teachers in the school, not only to make the classes smaller, but so that teachers can spend enough time with other teachers, to plan, prepare, evaluate, and improve their way of teaching, and not just be teaching all the time? If you're a lawyer and spend all your day in the courtroom, you won't have time to prepare cases. For teachers it is the same. Finland, one of the countries with the best educational results in the world, is a good example. Teachers spend more time outside their classes there than anywhere else in the world, and that allows them to collaborate, plan, prepare, reflect, and improve.
Q. The Spanish education system is moving from a content-based model to a more competency-based one, a change that not everyone shares. Do you think it's the right path?
A. I ask the reader to try to answer two questions. The first: Can you state Boyle's law? The second: Who won the Hundred Years' War?" In recent times I have asked thousands of people in many countries. And most do not know how to answer either, although they are questions that are studied in many places. The point is not that we should stop teaching them, but how we teach them. If you look closely, Boyle's law, which deals with the pressure, temperature, and volume of gases, does not apply under certain circumstances. If you had explained to me that this shows that science is not perfect, that it is always moving forward and must update its conclusions, I would have remembered that idea and could use it for the rest of my life. And if you had explained to me that the Hundred Years' War was what led countries to create standing armies, perhaps now I could ask myself, and in view of the war in Ukraine, do we need larger standing armies? The truth is that we cannot teach everything, we will always have to make a selection. And whatever we do, the most important thing is how we teach it so that children acquire knowledge, learning, and skills that stay with them for the rest of their lives, rather than forgetting them as soon as they leave school.
Q. You have dedicated your career to teaching and researching education, you are also a father and grandfather. What advice would you give parents about their children's education?
A. I think the first thing I would say to them is that we hear a lot about preparing children for what awaits them, preparing them for work, preparing them for a phrase that drives me crazy: "Jobs that have not been invented yet." The Queen of England once said, "It's a pity that people don't take jobs for life anymore". There is a lot of rhetoric around the preparation of children. But the best way to prepare children for the future is to educate and care for them well in the present, not treat the present as a waiting room for the future. Human beings spend almost a quarter of their lives as children and teenagers. So, we can't treat childhood as a waiting room for anything else. It must matter for itself. And the important thing is to feel loved, to feel that you belong to an environment, to learn to live in community - and family is your first community - to develop responsibilities and become the best you can be. Have a great time, but also know how to make an effort and be aware of how difficult things are sometimes: it can be learning to play the guitar, which is hard, or becoming a great swimmer. There are many ways to do this, but they are all really about the same thing: providing them with well-being, learning, a sense of belonging and responsibility. If we do all this, the future will largely take care of itself. And I would tell them one more thing: listen to your son or daughter. Take them seriously, don't downplay what they tell you, and when they're worried or aggrieved about something, give them the same attention you would give them if they were adults.