Tag: learning

Teaching, Profit, and the Stories We Tell to Stay Comfortable.

There is an old saying that people do not like seeing laws or sausages being made.

For teachers, the same could be said of wealth generation.

Teaching is imbued with a public sector ideology. It is labour that transcends renumeration; work that’s a calling, not a demand. The children, after all, are our future. But can teachers in the private sector be squeamish about supporting, even actively increasing their school’s wealth creation? Is there a friction between whether teaching is caught between public sector virtue and private sector profit propagation?

When I was a social worker, a not insignificant part of the job satisfaction came from being paid by the taxpayer. I was answerable to the community I served. This is a narrow view of course, but it was the uranium rod of truth that powered my ethics and beliefs.

And like social work, teaching is often imagined as sitting above ordinary economic logic. It is framed as a public good, a moral practice, a form of labour whose value exceeds its price. Teachers do not do it “for the money”. Education, we are told, is not a commodity. These ideas are repeated so often that they begin to feel like truths rather than choices.

And they are powerful truths. A good teacher rarely leaves your memory, and their instruction quietly shapes the futures of young people across the world – and can you really put a price on that?

Take that same ideology, however, and deliberately structure it for wealth creation—for private equity firms, individuals, or publicly listed companies—and it is hardly surprising that some teachers begin to feel a strain.

This should be caveated. Many of these same teachers have chosen to take their skills into a labour market—often overseas—that offers higher remuneration than state school wages and, in some cases, a better quality of life. To paraphrase my favourite line from the 1994 Kevin Smith movie ‘Clerks’, when a character is challenged about the innocent lives lost when the Death Star is destroyed:

“They knew what they were getting into. They knew who they were working for.”

Still, I don’t want to be disingenuous to private schools. This isn’t a class rant, certainly not from someone who is happily employed at one.

Teaching carries a powerful moral inheritance. It is one of the few professions still routinely described in vocational terms: service, care, dedication, sacrifice. That inheritance matters. It protects teaching from being reduced to a transaction and teachers from being treated as interchangeable service workers.

But moral inheritance also carries constraints. It shapes what can be said out loud.

In particular, it creates discomfort around money. To speak too openly about efficiency, cost, productivity or return on investment risks sounding crude, even unethical. The language of markets is tolerated at the edges of educational discourse, but rarely allowed into its moral centre.

This makes a certain sense in the public sector, where education is explicitly funded as a collective good. It becomes more complicated when teaching takes, even actively takes place inside private institutions.

Private schools are not naïve about economics. They must recruit, retain, invest, compete and plan for long-term sustainability. Fees do not simply maintain buildings; they fund futures. Yet even in fee-paying contexts, there is often a reluctance to name the relationship between teaching and wealth generation directly.

Instead, financial realities are softened through moral language. Schools speak of reinvestment, of quality, of excellence, of outcomes for children. Profit, if it exists at all, is described as incidental or virtuous—something that happens almost by accident on the way to doing good.

Teachers are rarely told explicitly that their labour generates institutional value; that reputation converts into enrolment; that enrolment underwrites salaries and expansion. Everyone understands this. It is simply not spoken plainly.

The result is a curious duality. Schools operate in markets, while teachers are encouraged to think of themselves as existing above them.

The tension here is not simply between public and private sectors. It lies deeper, in the collision of two incompatible logics that teaching is increasingly asked to inhabit simultaneously.

One logic treats education as a moral and civic practice. Its value is long-term, diffuse and social. Its outcomes may not be immediately visible, and their worth cannot be easily quantified. The other treats education as a service purchased by families. Its value must be demonstrable, comparable and timely. Outcomes must justify cost. Teachers are asked to hold the first logic as their professional identity while delivering the second as their professional output.

This is not hypocrisy. It is structural contradiction.

Most teachers are not opposed to schools being financially healthy. They want stability, good resources and fair pay. What unsettles them is not the existence of money, but the pretence that it is irrelevant. When teachers are asked to maintain public-sector moral identity while absorbing private-sector pressures, something gives. Often it is not performance, but trust. Cynicism creeps in. Branding language feels invasive. Metrics feel misaligned. Burnout is framed as personal failure rather than systemic tension. This is sometimes mistaken for ideological resistance to markets. More often, it is a response to being asked to live inside an unacknowledged contradiction.

Education does generate economic value. Acknowledging this does not diminish its moral importance. What corrodes professional integrity is the refusal to hold both truths at once. Private education will remain ethically uneasy for as long as it relies on public-sector virtue while operating on market logic. Teachers deserve honesty about the systems they work within—not euphemism, not moral fog, and not polite silence.

I spent three years working in the admissions and marking department of a private school and now teach within one. I have lived both sides of the contradiction. If private schools wish to claim moral seriousness, they must find transparent ways to articulate both the role of wealth creation and the responsibility of educating future citizens of a shared world.

January 4, 2026
Busy today, isn’t it!

In the city we currently call home, the main language appears to be Russian. The ‘second’ language is Uzbek – but only with the confines of its capital, Tashkent. I am reliably informed that the more we explore Uzbekistan, the more we will hear its own language. This is the fourth foreign country I have lived in and my first since France (over 25 years ago) where English is not the main international language. We were given fair warning that this would be the case and decided as a family to embrace this challenge and put various language apps and some good old-fashioned confidence and bravado to good use.

Five months in and we have a good grasp of some basic phrases, numbers and can read the letters phonetically. It’s not bad given the overstuffed confection box of new experiences we’ve had to sample and familiarize ourselves with, including navigating the weekly grocery shop. We have started using the local markets to buy the bulk of our groceries – if for not for any other reason than it is certainly cheaper. But we have found it has, to some degree, accelerated our learning of the Russian language. There are a couple of stalls where I am now recognized with a degree of familiarity:

“As-salamu alaykum” shouts the dairy guy as he sees me coming to buy our weekly 8 liters of milk ( we really should simply invest in a cow) – his hand warmly outstretched.

Walaykum-asalma” I reply.

Uzbekistan being 90% Muslim means you mostly hear the Arabic greeting – and the locals are always surprised to hear me giving the correct Arabic response!

I got round to learning the Russian numbers and alphabet and, along with some stock phrases and most often used nouns, he and I can converse very simply on what is required on that day.

Most folks we interact with have as little working English as we do Russian. However, there’s a cashier in our local supermarket ‘Korzinka’ who is always pleased to see me so she can use some of her English (and I my Russian). I popped in yesterday and store was uncharacteristically busy. I searched on my Google Translator for the phrase ‘it is busy today’ but then remembered that I am some ways off a reciprocal conversation – and even if I managed to say the sentence correctly – there could be no back and forth. And that’s when I realized how much I miss the simple exchange between strangers.

All my life I have taken for granted, as an English speaker, the ability to converse with those around me – but not just converse but convey light and shade – depth and width depending on the nature of the interaction. This ability, this often-daily connection has been temporarily suspended…and I miss it.

There are many situations where we find ourselves conversing with someone new. Maybe it is purposeful, with utility at its core; there’s something I need from this new person and likewise, a service they may be paid to give. Then there’s situations where a shared experience is heightened by turning to a fellow patron and exchanging views, emotions, reactions, and insights. When you think about it – communicating with strangers is something that happens so frequently, fluidly, fleetingly and, at times, fruitfully – that its position within the framework of our human experience is less functional and more proprietorial.

A stranger is another person with whom we are not familiar. And there are no guarantees that the time of interaction with a stranger will necessarily inform greater familiarity. As I have stated, interactions with strangers vary from the purposeful to the accidental – from the obligatory to the exploratory. What I miss, funnily enough, is the obligatory. Maybe it’s my Englishness…that’s not a rabbit hole I plan to explore here! I think that for the most part, we all recognize and agree with Aristotle that we should pursue a ‘good’ life and part of that goal is an obligation to a degree of civility and adherence to a ‘moral code’. Therefore, what troubled me most, given my newfound challenging situation? Is it that I could be perceived as rude? I mean, there aren’t a great many Caucasian men here in Tashkent, so I would assume most folks would initially surmise my foreign status – and I certainly know the greetings.

No, my melancholic reflection was not ushered in by some worry of being rude.

More plausibly it could be that I always have something to say! Now, there’s some truth to that! I am not going to sit here typing away and pretend that my personality is not underpinned by a social confidence that enjoys watching myself navigate conversations. But again, that’s not what is at the core of the malaise. It is simply because I am not fulfilling that obligation to converse and connect. Every interaction is like a simple melody – it has a beginning, a middle and an end. I have the beginning, it’s typed into my Google Translate and I often practice how to say it so that it’s not too ‘Franglaise’ (or should I say…Englussian…?), but there is the middle part that will come…the listener ready for the a reciprocal comment in Russian…and it will not come. I am in the current sticking point in this stage of my learning where I feel the scald of inability to completely fulfill my obligation.

I am confident, as with my French, that I will reach a degree of simple conversational Russian if we stay in Tashkent long enough. What I will remember, however, is that some obligations should not be seen as being needfully and dutifully filled with dispassionate execution – maybe, more than I realize, some obligations should be coupled with warmth. Why? Because some obligations pin my humanity, badge my morality and can simply make my day.

January 28, 2023
Back to Basics: A call to the head and heart – or simply ice cream for everyone?
Those of us in teaching have all experienced that exhausting final term at school. Behavioral problems from the usual suspects, every teacher running on empty but pushing ourselves and our charges over the line with as little drama as possible. We try to maintain discipline with increasingly wearied and fatigued cohorts of children (whose parents also hanker for the last day of school) as we continue to operate in the long shadow of Covid. But for certain there must be a discussion on how to address the behaviour problems encountered throughout the school over those final four months. In the concluding full staff meeting before planes are boarded, bars propped up or beds receive the dead weight of teacher ‘husks’ – the plan to address issues since January are disseminated and lo and behold out trots – ‘it’s time to go back to basics.

There’s a contrary itch in an idiom that states that to achieve progression we must first achieve regression – but I understand the mis en scene. As an appeal to the head – it’s about simplifying a complex operation and re-establishing how it works at its most basic level, and it’s easy to see how problems arise. How about this as an analogy: Over a period of time, an operating system that worked well with a basic structure whereby the main cogs ran simply and operated their primary functions without fault has incorporated into it more complex machinations. The belief being that the convoluted ways of working would either improve on the basic fulcrum of the system, meet new demands on the system or favorably tweak some issues. So far so good. Then, over more time these more convoluted moving parts start to take on the role as the new base system of operations and their more multifarious and intricate ways of working deemed ready to be front loaded yet further with systems thus causing more problems in of themselves instead of positively performing their primary function. The result is that folks look at the assembled muddle and say ‘Hey, remember when it worked really well because it was simple, and it did those simple things well…let’s just do that again!’

The biggest issue with my mechanical analogy is that whilst we could imagine a machine which at its most basic form worked seamlessly – the same cannot be said of a human constructed values-based organization. For when a school talks about going back to basics, for example requiring pupils to line up silently before they enter the classroom, you have to ask yourself: Are we doing this because lining up is a simpler more basic way of managing a classroom before learning? Or are we doing it because returning to some previous more basic way of working is just good in of itself?

My assumptions about ‘back to basics’ is twofold:
1. It implies that more complex or convoluted ways of working are to blame for errors given the nature of complexity.
2. That going ‘back to basics’ is of itself a virtuous action – but that this can be construed as a token phrase rather than really exploring values and individual well-being.
Let’s examine these two points:

I will take ‘lining up in silence outside the classroom before the lesson’ as an example of ‘back to basics best practice’. Let’s ignore that this strategy suits secondary school (where pupils move about from class to class) more than it would say an Elementary homeroom teacher. My problems are not situated there. Why is lining up in silence outside the classroom considered a fulcrum ‘basic’? Is it because it works simply, or is it because it feels good?

Let’s consider the issue that newer, or more convoluted ways of working are to blame (instead of keeping things simple) for a breakdown in school discipline before class begins. Maybe the newer system that was in place was that pupils could enter the classroom but had to get started on a task that had been set for them. In this instance, teachers would plan for an activity as students walked in that could be accessed independently that either would prepare for the main learning ahead or put them in a good cognitive mindset. This is sometimes referred to as ‘bell work’. Certainly, a more convoluted approach to the start of class discipline than lining up outside silently and awaiting the teacher’s permission to enter. However, the argument is that the new approach is more appropriate to promoting learning, though I don’t want to get bogged down by this. Let’s just state that ‘bell work’ is a more convoluted and load heavy approach than lining up outside silently.

Maybe there had been a problem with the ‘bell work’ approach because a teacher had gone from say a GCSE history class with 16-year old’s straight to a Year 7 class with eleven years old’s and they didn’t have time to prepare a suitably engaging activity for them to dive in to. Possibly, the previous period of teaching had been fraught, and the teacher needed a five-minute breather and lining the pupils outside gives them the space to reset? Both perfectly rational reasons to have children line up outside.

However, that the more convoluted, but arguably more learning focused start to the class could at times be difficult to achieve, does not necessarily mean that it in itself is at fault for a breakdown in class discipline. Its more complex nature compared to simply lining them up does not necessarily make it at fault. Maybe the convoluted ‘bell work’ approach works, but meaningful help needs to be offered on supporting that teacher with different strategies when switching between grades. In this operating system (discipline and order before class) ‘bell work’ is a great way to engage children in being ready to learn – there’s nothing wrong with it. Therefore, to that end, there’s no need for a return to basics – we just need to take more time and give more care to embed a newer way of working because it’s not 1955 anymore and research has moved us on. Oops! Did you see what I did there? I threw in a little ‘values’ wink. Am I suggesting that when we talk about going ‘back to basics’ we are talking about a more ‘simpler time’ rather than a simpler way of working? There are ways of working throughout history that still work today…but sometimes ‘back to basics’ isn’t an appeal to review the machinations of a way of operating to ensure the foundations are sound – for at its worst, it’s a values laden treat:  churned creamily with simplicity, dipped in sumptuous good old fashioned values and sprinkled with straight talking – no nonsense sparkles. Mmmmmm…so comforting.

As it happens there is, I think, an argument that going back to basics is in of itself a virtuous action. I make a play on how it can be used to give a false sweet sense of comfort that things will improve irrespective of the context, but for me that is where the issue is. If you were to say to a group of beleaguered or confused people that the plan was to go back to basics – there may well be a sense of relief and a hope for a more direct path. That said, it’s virtue is not located in its promise for a simpler time (that may have never really existed, except for false memories or dominant discourses)  – it is its link to asceticism. That is its virtue.

Asceticism, in its strict religious meaning, is stark self-discipline. A rejection of any indulgences; abstention from practices that may cause erring or swerving the most pious path. If I can dilute this harsh definition – I think it would be fair to say that most religions hold it to be true that living a simpler life, a life less over burdened by technology or one that shrugs off over complicated or convoluted ways of thinking or acting , as a ‘good’ life. And intuitively we feel it to be so – think of detoxifying, de-cluttering, breaks from social media…these are viewed as important if not necessary ways of recentering and recalibrating what is important and what works. So much like our machine analogy at the top – seen through the lens of a virtuous action; going back to basics from a personal almost ‘spiritual’ way will inevitably offer some insight into why a way of being or acting is causing consternation or a lack of productivity. And there is benefit in that. There is benefit in going to back to basics both in personal reflection and in reviewing an operating system that may be at fault.

So what’s the problem?

Therefore, the problem arises when going ‘back to basics’ is a token gesture. This idiom should not be free from constructive criticism. When someone tells you they are taking something ‘back to basics’ are they offering a plan to reflect and review on a way a thing functions?  A chance to re-establish what we know works and really try and embed newer systems to work well and not reject them because complex necessarily equals complications. Are they offering the space and time for an individual to re-calibrate and re-assess what is ‘good’ for them? Giving folks time to mentally recharge. Or are they simply hoping you’ll hear in your mind the faint lilting chimes of the ice cream truck – wistfully recalling how you once could leave your doors unlocked at night, no one had a mobile phone that now ruins everything and a tenner could buy you a movie ticket, fish and chips on the way home and still have change for a mortgage. And in your reverie, you agree to whatever is suggested because ‘back to basics’ feels like it can only be a good thing, right? Don’t be afraid to challenge this idiom when it’s presented to you whether it be an appeal to the heart or the head – but always accept a scoop of ice cream.
August 14, 2022
Should we reward a ‘work ethic’?

Before school finished (finally) for summer, my Primary (Elementary) aged son came home pleased to have received a certificate from school praising his hard work and effort. We were delighted to hear about his journey and reflected with him on the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of a year like no other (fingers crossed). However, it felt discombobulating that he should be rewarded for something that is good ‘in of itself’. We wouldn’t ply him with rewards for being ‘honest’ or for showing ‘respect’ because those are qualities he should possess – because they themselves are good qualities.

When we talk about something being ‘good, in of itself’ we mean that the thing doesn’t require anything else to make it ‘good’. For example, the member of staff who helped pack my shopping today shouldn’t be thanked because he did his job, his job is not what defines him– he is thanked because he is a fellow human and that kindness, that ‘thanking someone’ is a virtuous act that is good ‘all by itself’.

My argument this month is that if we place a work ethic as a ‘rewardable act’, in school it somehow makes its nature, its essence, contingent on an external, rewardable, measurable outcome. In other words: we make ‘working hard’ a rewardable act instead of an established virtue in of itself. If, in its place, we reinforce the value and virtue of hard work through reflection – and support internalising it within the individual child – then we respect that a work ethic is good ‘in of itself’ which doesn’t need a reward to validate it.

You may or may not know it, but if you work with children in any capacity be it their parent, teacher, guidance counsellor…you will most likely utilize behaviorist psychology to bend them to your will. ‘Behaviorism’ refers to a branch of experimental psychology which places the importance on learning through association rather than ‘cognition’ which relies more on logical structures.  Whether you explicitly learned such techniques in training for a role – or recall how effective they were on you; behaviorism is the brand leader and therefore most recognizable technique for disciplining and modifying child behavior.

Of Behaviorism’s product range – one of the most popular is ‘operant conditioning’. This is the one where good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished. Only children who are good get ice cream. If you keep picking your nose, your brains will fall out. If the wind changes, it’ll stay that way…forever. These examples of ‘positive reinforcement’ and ‘negative reinforcement’ are very effective in modifying behaviors. Any time you have laid out a course of action for a child – and wish them to attain a goal – you may promote a pleasing outcome if done correctly or a less than positive outcome to keep them on the straight and narrow. Either way, tangible rewards, punishments or dire consequences can be powerful associations to learning. If you work in teaching, behaviorist techniques are a daily tool in the ever-present toolbox.

For the purpose of this month’s blog, it is the technique of positive reinforcement through a tangible reward that will be my focus.

Nothing wrong with this per se. Operant conditioning is highly effective, especially when it comes to gaining results in an expedient way. Recently, Carol Dweck, in her groundbreaking book on ‘Mindsets’ changed the game somewhat when she suggested that teachers should seek to reward ‘effort’ not ‘outcome’. Her shift of using positive reinforcement for the effort put in toward a goal over the measurable outcome of the goal itself was, in my view, a welcome shift from the old paradigm of praise the trophy, not the journey. However, I cannot help but feel an extra opportunity is being missed in terms of supporting the child’s growth as a person, for whilst rewarding effort is commendable – it is still a ‘reward’ and an extrinsically sought reward as well.

Extrinsic rewards or motivations are those things sought outside of ourselves. If teenagers tidied their rooms (right!) for fear of an argument with a parent or for $20, that’s an extrinsic motivation. The consequence is coming from ‘outside’ of themselves.

“I need to act in this (good) way, for fear of a bad consequence (negation of reward) or in the hope of a good consequence (gaining a reward). “

If the same teenager tidies their room because a tidy room is virtuous and keeping it tidy maintains that virtue – their motivation is intrinsic. The desire to do well is acted upon not because of a consequence, but because it is good ‘in of itself’. They may experience good feelings and positive sensations and garner the praise of others – but these were not the primary motivations.

I would argue as well then, that intrinsic motivations are more sustainable. They are internalized and are acted upon because of the ‘good’ that the action itself possesses. They are locked in, and not only because it makes the person feel good – but they are ‘objectively’ good and transcend the need for reward. Extrinsic motivations rely on others or in some cases on the constant requirement of a separately sourced outside consequence. Rewards must also be well considered – they must match the achievement. What person would engage in a gargantuan effort for a small candy bar?

How could promoting this mindset look in the actual real world? Let’s imagine that ‘Sally’ has worked hard on her ‘Volcano’ project for school. Her final piece is not terribly good, but the teacher wishes to reward her effort:

Extrinsic / Consequence/ Reward: Fantastic effort today, Sally – here is your effort certificate.
Intrinsic/ Good in itself / Virtuous:  Sally, I think you have worked very hard today, but how do you feel about your efforts? What were some of the positives from working as hard as you did? Do you think others should work hard as well? If so, why?

Let me stress – I am not ‘anti-rewards’ for effort – of course not. But I would argue that a model of reflection and critical thought promotes a deeper connection to a virtuous act – an extended learning opportunity. Her hard work isn’t finished with the brandishing of the reward, but instead a process of reflection, discussion and critical thoughts which embeds the virtue of working hard beyond measurable outcomes or full-stop rewards. Ideally, Sally is left not feeling like she has been given a token gesture – but she’s been able to fully understand the quality that working hard and persevering enriches not only her own learning – but is a constructive personality trait.

Why should a ‘work ethic’ or the practice of putting in effort be considered so highly? It doesn’t require much in the way of evidence gathering to know this to be true and not just in schools but in the workplace, culturally and spiritually. Two of the world’s largest religions have some clarity on the virtue of hard work. Most famously in Christianity is the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’. This perspective, forged from Calvinism, places significant importance on act of working hard as being good ‘in of itself’ where working hard, along with ascetism and frugality’ is of itself a form of worship to God. This belief of working hard as an act of worship is also mirrored in Islam with Qur’an being pretty clear that time should not be wasted.

But hold up – surely this isn’t universally true!? The German existentialist philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche, doesn’t necessarily agree that ‘working hard’ is always good in of itself. In his ‘Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality’ he opined how whilst the virtue of a hard work ethic will use up all that ‘nervous energy’ it comes at the cost of energies being put into ‘love, refection, brooding and dreaming. I will leave it up to each of you to make your own decisions on the virtue of brooding. It’s worth pointing out that, in the same book, Nietzsche also said that ‘I deny morality just as I deny alchemy’! However, the point here is that where we put our hard work and efforts is a whole other story!

It would be hard to deny the argument that, whether through philosophical reasoning or its application in everyday life, a work ethic is an objectively good thing. This status places it alongside fairness, kindness, benevolence, perseverance, honesty – all virtuous actions that feel beyond the chocolate bar and a pat on the head.  These ways of being or ways of acting are not virtuous because of their consequences or how they can be measured, they are valued as good in themselves – shouldn’t ‘working hard’ rank alongside them?

July 25, 2021
Pupil or Student – Is there a more suitable noun for today’s child learners?
In this month’s blog, I will argue against naming school-aged child learners as ‘pupils’. I will suggest that calling them ‘pupils’ is at best simply naming a child who goes to school and at worst it is idealistic and out of touch with modern pedagogy – promoting the outmoded product of a dependent taught child. I will then offer the argument that to promote the image of a school child who doesn’t simply attend school for instruction but as an active learner who is studious by nature – then only the term ‘student’ will suffice.

My wife and I are both teachers. Now in her twelfth year, Mrs. Wolfe is significantly more experienced than I having taught in one Europe’s largest secondary schools in West Yorkshire followed by seven years teaching internationally in Asia and North America. We have worked in schools that have called child learners students and schools which call them pupils. My wife really hates the term ‘pupil’. In fact, this debate was her idea. I told her I would consider it philosophically and she could do the actual research. When she is typing reports, I can hear the extra punch saved only for the sequence P-U-P-I-L. But why is this a problem? Does it matter? And if it does matter – is there a reason why one term should be preferred over the other?

A good place to start is with a definition:

Pupil: a child or young person in school or in the charge of a tutor or instructor : Originating from the 16^thcentury Middle English pupille (minor ward), from Anglo-French, from Latin pupillus (male ward) from the diminutive of pupus (boy) and pupilla (female ward), from diminutive of pupa (girl).
Student: One who attends school; one who studies; an attentive or systematic observer. Originating in the 16^thCentury Middle English, from Latin student-, studens, from present participle of studēre to study.
Merriem webster – online dictionary

We can see some similarities and some differences that will go straight to the heart of the matter and also explain why Mrs. Wolfe’s nervous tick is so pronounced during report writing season.

In terms of etymology, both terms originate from some form of Latin (no surprises there) but each sketch a different picture about the nature of the child learner. If we were to simply rely on the definition of each term and its etymology – then ‘pupil’ is a child who is in ‘the charge of another’. Deriving from a word meaning ‘ward’, the term ‘pupil’ (like Batman’s sidekick) is a young person who is watched over by someone other than their parent. Therefore, the nature of a pupil is one who is dependent upon instruction. A student on the other hand is one who ‘studies’ and that verb study is intrinsic to its definition because it casts the mould of a learner – with a degree of independence. A learner for whom studying and learning are within their nature.

With our terms defined and to some extent explained, why is calling a child learner a ‘pupil’ an issue? The problem lies in an apparent contradiction. Of the schools I have worked in and the current pedagogy as it is – our learning institutions should be promoting independent critical thinkers, not children who are simply in the instructional care of their teachers. Furthermore, to stick with pupil because it best categorizes school-aged children is to suggest that it is only when they leave school that independent thinking and study should start. It is clear to me that etymologically speaking and given the challenges of the twenty first century that we need more students – not pupils.

Let’s speak intuitively before we get too analytical. When I think of a ‘pupil’ I think of blazers and straw hats; white socks pulled up above the knees and lichen on granite. Elsewhere in my mind are wood paneled classrooms, desks in a row (socially distanced, of course), ink wells, stern mustached school masters their faces contorted in a snarl; children trudging into a meat grinder…giant hammers marching past…hang on…that’s the video to Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in The Wall’. However, that’s what pupil connotes. Its essence is ‘old-fashioned’, a term for a simpler time. The appeal of pupil is romantic and idealistic – it can offer a vision of well-disciplined rows of obedient children being processed through a system, dependent and deferent to their school teachers and its rules and policies. What is wrong with that? What could possibly be the problem with quiet, obedient and dutiful school children? Quite frankly, it’s fantastical! A school that promotes quiet, deferent dependency…show me the school brochure where that’s the selling point and the first round is on me. A student however cuts across ages, feels dynamic and has ownership. A student is still someone who receives instruction – but there’s a self-study, independent thought. Put simply:

A pupil is taught; a student, learns.

If you are already swayed by my argument to emotion then read no further! We all agree and everyone’s home in time for tea. If, however, you want some meat on the bones…fine…but you asked for it:
1. School is a place for learners.
2. A learner is the same as a person who studies.
3. A person who studies is a student.
4. Therefore, we should refer to school learners as ‘students’.
For premise (1) I have made what I think is a pretty strong claim. Learning is a necessary essence of school for without ‘learning’ taking place, it’s difficult to define what the purpose of having children at a school truly is. Furthermore, isn’t everyone in a school a ‘learner’? The term does not necessarily denote a minor. As a teacher we never stop learning. It also helps me considerably because ‘learning’ is at the heart of the argument.

For premise (2) I have to make the claim that a ‘learner’ is the same as someone who studies. Again, I feel confident that they are one and the same. For someone to be described as ‘learning’ then a period of study, no matter how long or short, must take place. I would agree that there are things that could be learnt intuitively with a minimum of study – but is it at all possible to learn anything without actively studying?

For (3) to hold, we have to be firm with our dictionary definition. I would argue that one objective source of information for the purpose of a non-academic blog should be enough. But let’s be fair, there is some traction to the argument that there may be some ‘pond’ differences here. Some may argue that ‘student’ is more an American term with pupil being more British. Ostensibly, they are the same thing. Furthermore, it could be argued that ‘pupil’ fits more for school aged children whilst ‘student’ for college and undergraduate learners. To that I would argue that we need a term that best defines ‘learners’ – not simply souls enrolled in a school. The noun must be ‘active’ not ‘passive’ to play slightly with the terms. The term student is by definition intrinsic to study – study is intrinsic to learning – consequently; student most aptly defines a studious learner. Therefore, I would argue, that if a school places learning at the heart of what it does and places at the top of its lists of objectives that at various points during their school career a child will evidence self-study and critical thinking – they must call them ‘students’.

I couldn’t make the argument as succinctly for ‘pupil’ for not only is it difficult to prove etymologically – it doesn’t do enough to promote an active learner.

Conclusion:

It may be that my argument could flop into one about values as much as it is about definition and rationale and if so, fine, and I am happy to park it there. My wife and I talk often about our values as teachers being centered around the learners and their learning. We need a term that encapsulates that belief. I want the children I meet daily to not only be students of a subject, but students of the world. No-one says ‘pupils of the world’ because of the inference of dependency and of inexperience. Let’s consign this term to where it belongs – attached to disturbing music videos, hilarious Monty Python sketches and the quintessential English romanticism of a bygone era.
March 13, 2021