On the 13/6/97 when I was 18 I wrote “I think 6th form and A-levels squashed me, the system is over powering & does not encourage self expression or discovery. It pretends to but in reality it pushes conformity”

I remember clearly staring at the fence in my first school and fantasising about running away, for some reason it involved climbing over the fence rather than going through the gate, but I suppose it added to the feeling of how impossible it was to escape. I had many things going on in my head as a child so I am sure this feeling of escape was not purely directed at school, but I did continue to feel like this throughout school.

I was very obedient at school and I only ever had one detention, I can’t remember what it was for but I remember being set an essay to write and actually really enjoying the challenge rather than resenting it. It was in middle school and we didn’t have to write essays then so I found it interesting to explore something in depth. I think this reflects that I was interested in learning through out my childhood, I enjoyed pushing myself and finding out knowledge or increasing my skills.

What I hated about school was the system, everything revolved around set agendas that had nothing to do with the learning I was doing in my diaries and my inquiries into who I was developing into as a person. I did manage to use some of my learning to explore the massive influence my families had on me and to explore the issues these brought up. In English I explored the impact my real mum had on me and my sister being born. I explored Schizophrenia which my real parents both suffered from and in Sociology I did a case study on my real mum. These small rays of self led learning were some of the most enjoyable parts of my whole school experience. I felt these taught me not just about the subject or the method of writing but about something that developed me as a person. This is something I felt was missing from education.

I remember in year 9 we were meant to be the first year to have SATs. These seemed completely pointless as we sat talking about them with our English teacher. They were exams for exams sake and would do nothing for our benefit but purely to provide the government with some new measuring tool. We decided we would rebel and if they made us take them we would refuse. Our English teacher Mr. Sayers whilst saying he couldn’t possibly encourage us to do that looked genuinely pleased that we actually had some spirit in us. As it happened the national body of teachers managed to stave them off for another year, so we were never put to the test on our resolve to rebel against the system.

I remember the discussion excited me though, the idea that you could fight the system rather than be part of it. Ultimately my obedience stopped me from straying too radically from the system. My motivation for working hard throughout my education wasn’t that it inspired me but because I wanted to get out of the small village I had grown up in. I wanted to be able to leave Dorset and to find a job that I would enjoy. I saw the educational system as a means to an end and that each mile stone was just to get a piece of paper to set me on my way to the next one until I had enough pieces of paper to get a job that would make a real difference to people’s lives and that I would love doing.

My ambitions as with any child changed many times. They always revolved around wanting to do a job that I enjoyed and that helped people. I saw qualifications as the ticket to get to that destination. So however much ticking boxes and denying myself to fit with the curriculum upset me I always produced the work so I would pass the next set of exams in order to get closer to achieving my end goal.

As a child I didn’t like being a child, I couldn’t wait to be an adult. Being 18 heralded a land of hope and freedom for me. Although this was largely based on being fostered and having so many decisions forced upon me, school was also another big factor in looking forward to adulthood. I didn’t like the petty rules around uniform and being quiet when there was no reason to be quiet. I didn’t like the way things were done to us and we didn’t have any choice in what happened. I didn’t like the hierarchy that we had to call teachers Mr, Miss or Sir, rather than by their first name. It all seemed set up to control you and not to encourage growth. It made you feel as though you were at the bottom of the rungs of the power structure in the school and therefore were powerless. Perhaps that is why kids are so cruel, they are just trying to find some power somewhere.

On the 8th September 1993 when I was 14 I wrote ‘I moved up to my final school Purbeck which I hated from the first moment. In the end I got used to it but have never got to like the place.’

The strong language I use is really shocking, I didn’t use the word hate easily even when I was younger and it shows how strongly I felt against the school. I don’t un pick why I felt that way in the diary entry, but much of it had to do with what I described above. I had so many strong views and I felt school didn’t allow me to explore those in a way that satisfied me. There were very few teachers that engaged me throughout my whole school career. Those that did were Miss Baines because she allowed us to know a bit about herself, we all knew that she liked teddy bears and had many at home. When she got pregnant we all bought her teddy bears for the baby. Sadly she had a miscarriage. It was only with hindsight that I recognise how brave she was to come back to teaching children after her loss and how honest with us she had been, we not only knew she had a miscarriage but that the baby had been stuck in the filopian tube. She had trusted us with some of the most difficult and painful information in her life. We felt this trust and honesty she respected us with.

Mr Pugh because he challenged me to think and to put that into writing. Mr Sayers and Ms Bailey inspired me more than any other teacher, both of them taught me to think rather than just to learn things. They encouraged intellectual debate and talked about perspectives rather than answers. They both treated me and my opinions with respect and gave me room to be creative. Mr Sayers set up a creative writing class in lunch times and even though at times there would only be 2 of us attending he continued to value our development by giving up his lunch times. They both treated me as an individual and as a person rather than a pupil. I learnt to learn from them. Mr Holman and Mr Broad also both opened a space for learning for me, although they were not as pivotal as Mr Sayers and Ms Bailey.

All these teachers, with the exception of Miss Baines who was a PE teacher, taught essay based subjects namely English, History and Sociology. It is therefore no surprise that these were the subjects I took my A-levels in and that my degree was in social sciences after dropping English as I didn’t think I would realistically read the reading list!

I found most other teachers either incredibly boring, patronising or annoying. I couldn’t engage with the subjects and assumed they were dull subjects. It is only as an adult that I have been able to find science fascinating, languages of interest and maths beautiful. Perhaps it was not just the teachers that strangled the life out these subjects but the curriculum and the appalling text books as well. As an adult that loves learning about all subjects now I find it sad to reflect on how much potential for learning was missed at school.

As I said I couldn’t wait to leave school and I am still so happy that I don’t have to go. This had such a profound effect on me that when I found myself in a professional capacity in a school just the sound of a school bell would make me nervous and the old hierarchies I hated as a pupil seem even more obvious as an adult. I especially see this when I am advocating for a young carer. The system is still set up to make the pupil the least powerful and the least important voice. This seems completely ridiculous as the school is only there because there are pupils to go to school! The parents seem the next up the rung but still fairly powerless. For some reason as a professional from an outside agency I am given a powerful position even though the school has the least to do with me out of everyone, but it is still the teachers and the obvious hierarchy of heads of year and head of the school that hold the most power.

From these observations I feel the oppressive nature of schools is still as strong as ever and that there is still no room for the individual.

My actual A-levels did enable me to explore ideas that were of more interest to me, but they were stifled by the curriculum. History I felt could be a fascinating subject but the curriculum was more interested in dates and events than the thinking lying behind the events. My teachers often enabled some interesting moments to shine through and would encourage us to think beyond the material, to question the source and to see the motivations for recording history as we read it. It helped me to learn never to take anything at face value and to look for the agenda behind things.

My Sociology introduced me to philosophical ways of thinking and how to debate and evidence my arguments. English taught me how to analyse a text and to look for meanings and imagery and to see the power of text to challenge the status quo. I think my teachers managed these things despite the curriculum rather than because of it. I feel that the three C’s I achieved are a reflection that the system doesn’t create growth but rather stifles it as after my first year of A-levels I was predicted A’s and B’s.

Unfortunately I found that education didn’t change that much when I got to university, again except for some exceptional lecturers the same power plays happened at university and the curriculum came before encouraging individual thought and learning. I again completed a degree for the same motivation as I went through school – to get my ticket to do a job I would enjoy that would help people.

I ended up completing my degree and gaining a 2:1 BSc in Psychology and Social Policy. The course had only fleetingly interested me over the three years despite my interest in the human mind and human potential. I had originally wanted to study Psychology due to Ms Bailey’s fascinating English lessons looking at Psychoanalysis and how text such as Wuthering Heights could use psycho analytical methods to gain a greater insight into the characters. I found Freuds ideas intriguing and although I didn’t agree with all of them I felt that your family and the influences on your life from birth had a massive impact on your adult life. During my A-levels I was exploring the impact of my fractured family life on who I was and could relate to the ideas.

Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that psychology had many forms and that at Southbank University they didn’t study any psychoanalysis. In my first lecture the lecturer said ‘of course we all realise that Freudian psychology is a complete load of rubbish and that will be the last mention of it on your course’. I couldn’t have chosen a course that was more opposite to my thinking. However I battled through as I felt psychology would give me a wide base to work with people and that as I had done anyone looking to employ me would assume it meant I would have a good understanding of people.

I don’t think the course improved my understanding of people at all. It did give me a lot of methods that I felt strongly were unhelpful and categorised people such as psychometric testing. It also made me feel that quantitative methods showed very little about people and that only through looking at qualitative findings could you really gain a sense of a person and find out anything useful to that individual.

Through my social policy I learnt that I preferred real life learning despite it’s imperfections. I felt strongly that sociology could only ever provide nice ideas, as the theories relied on having a perfect world to play out the ideas. It left no room for human nature and the greed, laziness, brutality and other such negative realities of humanity. Therefore however commendable Marx ideas of communism may have been the realities are the 1984 style examples of communism in the real world as in China and Russia.

I felt genuinely surprised to meet lecturers who said they were Marxists despite seeing the out workings of his theories in real life. I was often locked in debate with them about how unrealistic that stance was and that it was ok in their sheltered academic world but what use was that if the outworking in society led to corruption and oppression. I don’t think this helped those lecturers warm to me and I would still write my essays on the given titles even if I felt they were completely removed from my lived experiences.

Although I also believe love, kindness and generosity of spirit are part of human nature, I like to look at the real world where both walk side by side and that often the negative sides of humanity are more dominant than the positive sides. I feel it ensures you can truly support people where they are in their lives, as people don’t come with sanitised issues and problems they come with messy complex ones. Any support needs to be aspirational whilst remaining realistic, setting people up to fail is unhelpful, whilst it’s a balance between not selling them short. This is an area I feel truly interested in, but I don’t feel even social policy with it’s real world view enabled a deep enough exploration of these balances.

I think most of my real education at university actually came from living in London which was multicultural, vibrant and urban which was in complete and deliberate contrast to the white middle class, samey and rural village I had grown up in. Living amongst people with so many cultures, ideas and experiences really expanded my world view.

Even my experience with training and vocational courses have been motivated by getting the pieces of paper to help me in my career. In my first full time position after university I worked as a Connexions Personal Adviser. I loved the job and worked with 16-19 year olds they were very complex young people who for a multitude of reasons found themselves not in education employment or training. As Connexions was still in it’s infancy and the government wanted to make Personal Advisers a new profession, alongside teachers and social workers, a diploma had been designed to train new workers. I didn’t have any choice as part of my job I had to do the Diploma for Connexions Personal Advisers. The framework was explained in the Understanding Connexions Course Guide like this:

 ‘This is a mandatory programme for personal advisers who will be working with young people with multiple difficulties
 The successful completion of the Understanding Connexions programme will be a prerequisite for entry on to the Diploma
 It consists of four modules’ Pg 3.

So my training for Connexions was very prescriptive. I did agree with the priciples that were set out in the learning objectives which were to ‘define and analyse a young person centred approach’ and to ‘demonstrate understanding of the importance of reflection’ and to ‘define and analyse effective interagency working’ (Understanding Connexions Course Guide pg 6).

However I found the way the course was taught was not motivating. As Jim who worked on our team used to say frequently it was like teaching granny to suck eggs. I never really understood the meaning of the phrase but I did feel like I was being taught something I already felt I was becoming the expert in. The use of theories and methods within the course felt that they were depersonalising the young people I was working with. Connexions had designed a new assessment tool called Assessment, Planning, Implementation and Review which was based on the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families and the ASSET. The assessment covers 18 area under 4 headings.

Education and Employment:  -     participation
- achievements
- basic skills
- key skills
- life skills
- aspirations

Social & Behvioural Development:  - identity and self image
- attitudes and motivation
- relationships, within family and society
- risk of (re-) offending

Family and Environmental Factors : - capacity of parent/carers
- family history and functioning
- social and community factors
- housing
- income

Personal Health Factors: - physical health
- emotional well being
- substance use issues

The Connexions Framwork for Assessment, Planning, Implementation and Review (2001)

Although I felt all these areas to be important to a young persons life I found it hard to see how useful it was going through a complicated form to identify these areas if I was working with a young person who was going to be homeless. It seemed a paper exercise to get them to rate where they were on a wheel if they wanted me to make sure they were going to have somewhere warm, dry and safe to sleep that night. It felt like a load of bollocks compared with the issues I was working with.

I felt the Connexions Diploma was full of very reasonable and rational ideas but that the process lost the young person even though the principles of Connexions were to be young person centred. I wanted to ensure my relationship was such that I knew where the young person’s issues were without having to sit down and fill out endless paperwork. I wanted to be able to provide actual support to overcome their problems rather than a pretty form that told them their problems. The clinical and detached methods were akin to the narrow and controlled nature of the curriculum in school. Although I passed the course I continued to use my relational approach to support the young people I worked with, to treat them as people rather than a wheel of areas to improve.

I completed my diploma despite my misgivings again to ensure I got the piece of paper which enabled me to continue doing the job I loved. It also provided me with a vocational qualification rather than a purely academic one so I could meet the criteria for more jobs in the future.

I again decided to get a vocational qualification in my current role as I wanted to ensure my qualifications would continue to enable me to get the jobs I wanted in future. I felt the universally recognised youth work diploma would legitimise my vocational qualifications as not many people recognised the value of the Connexions Diploma.

The Youth Work Diploma was easy to pass again as it was based on practice. However, I didn’t feel as if I learnt anything. I felt as though I was more of an expert than the attempts that were made to teach me anything to improve my job.

Although I am lucky and this has been successful. I have a job I love and have loved all the jobs I have had in my career and all my jobs have helped people in varying ways to better themselves. I feel there has been a short fall in the system that has meant my learning journey has been very narrow and hemmed in.

I have been challenged as I have taken on a practice teacher role in my job. Each year I take on social work students and have the responsibility for their learning both in practice and to support them to be able to write this down in an academic format. I have tried to bring to them what I feel is the most important part of practice which is enabling the young people to participate and learn from them. I have seen students come to the young carers service and thinking that’s a nice idea. As they have begun to learn from the young carers as they have been involved in participation events I have seen their views transform. From them seeing it as a nice idea they have then realised it is central to ensuring your practice is centred on the service users needs. They see how empowering it is and the confidence and skills it builds up in the children and young people. I feel the teaching has been shared by me and the young carers themselves. My role is to help them see the significance of a participative method and the young carers show them what it can achieve.

I have shied away from a social work qualification and although I enjoy practice teaching I feel the academic learning remains locked to the system of feeding information to the students and not fully engaging them in their learning. I like the times they are given in practice as I feel this is where they can make some true to life learning.

It is only now in hearing about the Living Learning Theory I have heard of a way of learning that actually excites and interests me. It encompasses what I have tried to do through my diaries, drawings books and own self motivated learning which is to find what interests me and use an action research model of learning. I have realised that I have not found the forum to share my learning until now and it has remained in private writings or conversations. It is an exciting prospect to be looking at a way of sharing these now.

It has also challenged me that as a Young Carers Manager I am able to help young carers with their informal learning which as I have expressed has often been my most exciting learning. I feel moved to look for ways to support them to explore their learning through the young carers service, to be able to record this and share it. I want to ensure that I don’t do them the mis service I feel I have experienced up until this point with what I have learnt both personally and educationally.

Sonia Hutchison

25/06/2009