Shouldn’t you be in school?

Beyond headlines about school refusers and ghost children, lies a challenge to adult notions of schooling. Henna Cundill unpacks the issue, inspired, in part, by fish.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A school of tropical fish swims to the right, while one swims to the left.

A school of tropical fish off the Maldives.

The squeaky black shoes are back in the hall, and by now all the white polo-shirts in the land (except aged 4-5, slim-fit) have been snaffled by harassed mums and dads. Yes, it is that time of year again – the time for newspaper editors to dredge up some statistics about the rising number of “school refusers” – anxious young people whose squeaky shoes and white polo shirts are looking set to never leave the house.

The numbers are “spiralling” frets the Guardian, and the Daily Mail asks “Are you raising a ‘ghost child’?” Forth come the stock images of a sulky teenage girl pulling the duvet over her face, or a young boy with an oversized backpack and hands clamped firmly over his ears. A parent, frowning, is quoted as saying that the school isn’t doing enough. A headteacher, eyebrows knitted, says how difficult it is without the support and cooperation of the parents. Then everybody shakes their heads and blames the pandemic.

In my time as a School Chaplain, before the pandemic, I saw how truly awful school refusal is – for everyone involved. Beneath the covers, underneath the backpack, there is actually no “refusal” of anything – in fact, there is a campaign to get rid of this term, which I heartily support. Refusal implies there is a choice, but when a young person feels so overwhelmingly anxious and afraid, there is no choice for them, other than fight, flight, or freeze. Parents and caregivers feel judged, teachers are largely helpless. Social workers, when they get involved, quickly feel like they are the enemy of absolutely everyone involved. Surrounding any long-term school refuser there is often a hot mess of frustrated adults, and underneath the frustration, sadness.

No Scouts, no community choir, not even traipsing down to the park to hang out informally with their peers. Instead, anxiety traps them into the perceived safety of home.

Why sadness? Because we know that, regardless of our views on the importance of cookie-cutter educational attainments, no young person should be isolated. Even families who are committed and evangelistic about home-schooling will also schedule social activities for their children, be it membership of various clubs and organisations or group sessions of learning with other home-schooled kids. But the school refusers I have known have typically also refused anything like that. No Scouts, no community choir, not even traipsing down to the park to hang out informally with their peers. Instead, anxiety traps them into the perceived safety of home, that one tiny corner of the world where they have a sure sense of belonging and some modicum of control.

With the idea of “belonging” in mind, perhaps it is helpful to think about what a school actually is. The word school is multi-faceted in meaning. In nature, it denotes a group of fish, all swimming together. Such behaviour would seem counter-intuitive, since it means that all the fish are then competing for the same food or other resources. But ask any fish and it will tell you that being part of the group is itself a resource, enhancing their ability to find food and to protect themselves from predators. We could put this a more familiar way: a school is where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s also another meaning to the word school – groups of creatives or philosophical thinkers whose styles and methods influence and complement each other, e.g., “His paintings are those of the Impressionist school.” We can see how, in these schools, people spark off one another, constantly developing and refining their own work in response to the work of others. Those with greater skill and experience mentor those who are just beginning. In this respect, we could say that a school is where people can push the boundaries of human creativity and knowledge.

Since the ancient days, when learners gathered around the Greek philosophers, first to listen, then to discuss, and then to refine ideas, we have gathered our young people into schools for the purpose of educating them. We have long acknowledged that the best learning is a group activity which takes place over time. This is why home schoolers also schedule the clubs and activities – not just because children need friends (although that is important) but because there is a particular “other” kind of human progress that happens when we have to rub along with other people. When learners are placed in groups, ideas can be tested, boundaries can be overcome, creativity meets with critique - the whole quickly becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

You may notice that many schools promote themselves as being a “learning community” or a “family.” It’s not just about being twee – research shows that promoting a sense of belonging reduces the amount of school refusal and non-attendance. We know that belonging matters, as Belle Tindall has recently discussed, and that a sense of belonging can impact our health and even our mortality. (“Well, I told you so!” says the fish.)

This was something the early Christians knew too. In the first few decades after Jesus’s life and ministry they gathered in groups to pray and to discuss, just like those earlier followers of Plato and Aristotle had done. There was an eagerness to learn from those who had heard Jesus’ teaching first hand, and to develop and refine their understanding of what that teaching could mean in practice. It was a school, although they called it a church – or strictly speaking an ecclesia in the Greek, which just means a gathering of people.

In the ecclesia there was good natured debate, but also some spicy disputes and arguments, along with a lot of discussion about who was “in” and who was “out” - something which is also a hot topic in the school playgrounds of today. Into that context, Paul (one of the first leaders of the ecclesia) wrote that the church was a bit like a human body, in which:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”

His point was that belonging is about knowing not just that you belong but that you are needed. In a human body, different parts have different roles, and Paul also asks his readers to consider this point:

“If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?”

I have seen that schools do often try very, very hard to communicate to young people that they belong. But, shackled to the syllabi and never more than a few short months away from the next round of exams or individualised assessments, it’s much harder for schools to show young people that they are needed. With our present system, how can we show young people that, even if they are not predicted to be the student in the class who gets straight A’s, their presence there in the group and their role in the learning process is vital, and contributes to the learning of others?

When it comes to the presence of absence among our young people, schools have often gone as far as they can practicably go, as have parents, as have social workers. And the young people themselves? Well, they are stuck – biologically their only options are fight, flight, or freeze.

So that leaves us, the society that over-emphasises individualised achievement, that glorifies celebrity and individual success. In adulthood we so quickly forget how to “do” school, how to model it to our young people, swimming all together in a way designed to promote human knowledge, protect each other from danger or even just to ensure that everyone gets fed. No wonder our young people absorb a sense that their presence isn’t needed, when in so many areas of life it’s every fish for themselves.

As adults, perhaps we should be asking ourselves the question: why aren’t we in school?

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Feminism

Leading

23 October 2024

5 min read

Can Kemi really have it all?

For female experiences to mean something, we need to be part of something bigger.

Sian Brookes

Sian Brookes is studying for a Doctorate at Aberdeen University. Her research focuses on developing a theological understanding of old age. She studied English and Theology at Cambridge University.

A woman works at a laptop on a desk surrounded by picture frame.

Kemi Badenoch campaigning.

Kemibadenoch.org.uk

Apparently Kemi Badenoch is unfit for leadership due to a ‘preoccupation’ with her children. Such comments are hardly a surprise. After all, she is both a mother and a woman vying to be in a position of power. Since the beginning of time women have been mothers, but women haven’t always been in positions of power. So it is not surprising that some people have problems adjusting to the change. But it isn’t just Robert Jenrick who finds this adjustment difficult. In my experience, most women find it hard too. Becoming a mother is a beautiful but body-breaking, exhaustion-inducing and identity-questioning process. And that is just in the first few months. Add to that the expectations of also having successful careers as well, and it is no wonder we find it hard.

Kemi Badenoch’s response, naturally and rightly, was to show how capable she is to lead the Tory party alongside her maternal responsibilities, whilst challenging the view that just because she is a woman she is more responsible for her kids than a man with similar age kids would be. But her lack of acknowledgement of the hardship involved in being a mother and having a successful career does leave an awkward silence around what is an ongoing imbalance in many relationships when it comes to holding the fair share of parental, household and professional responsibilities.

This relentless pursuit of the ability of mothers to do everything else as well as being a mother says something about what we expect from women in our society. We need to prove that it is possible to be a woman and do all the things men have traditionally done. Yet sometimes I do wonder if we make it harder for ourselves. Is it our own expectations which make this thing called being a woman much harder than it needs to be?

Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

I’ve been blessed with the task of raising three boys, but I think about my friends who are raising little girls and the hopes they have for them. The hopes that they will grow to defy the expectations placed on them because they are female; to counter the oppression put upon them by breaking through the ceilings that may be built over them by others, to become whatever they want to be; engineers, consultant doctors, CEOs, even builders or plumbers if they so desire.

At the same time, (if the girls want them), they are expected to build families and loving safe homes. All of the things our mothers hoped for us and their mothers before them hoped for their own daughters.

Yet now, alongside those hopes for domestic fulfilment, so many other expectations have been added. Of course, the obvious solution to this, as Kemi has argued, is for men and women to share the load on both sides – to build the home and work life in a way that benefits both in the partnership. But the fact remains that relatively speedily in the course of historical development, we have come to a position where we are all expecting to have it all, all the time. And especially for our girls – we want them to be strong, powerful, successful, fruitful and productive all at once.

Now, this is not to say that we should revert to a time when only women ran the household and only men inhabited the professional domain. But sometimes perhaps it’s OK for a woman just to be a mum, if that is what she wants. She doesn’t have to also show the world she can be everything else as well. Some would criticise that decision as selling out on the relentless need to fight for equality with men. But not everything a woman does has to demonstrate some ideological end in fighting for equality, as though that is what gives her value as a woman. Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

Whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world.

Many of the friends I spoke of earlier who have those little girls chose to have their daughters baptised as babies. This act of infant baptism puts the stake in the ground for the belief that before they could do anything, before they could prove their worth as a female member of society demonstrating all that power, strength, purpose and ability to right all the wrongs of the past, they were loved and valued beyond measure, without condition.

As a girl, and before they grow to be a woman, maybe a mother, and then potentially the leader of a political party, they are a child of a God who values them not because of what they have done or will do, but because they are His child. At the same time, this doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing – it’s central to the Christian faith to fight injustice and overturn oppressive powers, but this is never achieved by human action alone as though the weight of the world falls on our shoulders, it is done by bearing witness to a God who has a better plan for the world and for society than we could ever dream or imagine. It is only when we realise this that the burden might be lifted from all the women fighting for all the things we are supposed to fight for.

Of my three closest friends in the church, one is (currently) a stay-at-home mum, one a doctor, one a vicar. As for myself, I am studying for a PhD in theology. We also all spend a lot of time looking after children, cooking and doing the dishes (as do our husbands). And yet, when we reflect together, these choices feel less statements of how we might be empowered or not as women, but more the result of a belief that whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world. And so, we can each celebrate what we “do” because in each offering of ours can be found meaning, purpose and life beyond our own abilities, even our own individual actions. Perhaps, this is better than any kind of feminism you find around these days, because it allows us each to do the small thing in front of us without loading more on ourselves than we can bear alone. Only together, and only in knowing we are part of something bigger than ourselves, can our variety of female experiences mean something. In this way of living, being a woman feels very free indeed.