According to the authors of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Dennis Hayes and Kathryn Ecclestone of Oxford Brookes University, today's focus on building up students' self-esteem is 'infantisiling' them, and leaving them unable to cope with life on their own.
Hayes says: "Turning teaching into therapy is destroying the minds of children, young people and adults. Therapeutic education promotes the idea that we are emotional, vulnerable and hapless individuals. It is an attack on human potential".
Hayes and Ecclestone have also drawn attention to the increased presence of parents on campus, and the need for substitute parents, such as counsellors and support officers. Says Hayes "Everyone looks for a difficulty to declare, like the hundreds of students who register themselves as dyslexic. Being dyslexic used to be something that people hid. Now students wear their difficulties as a badge of honour".
The recent introduction into schools of happiness and wellbeing lessons as part of the SEAL - Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning - programme, has caused further concern. According to Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, formally teaching children to express their emotions "inflates the importance of feelings to the point where they eclipse what is supposed to be going on in the classroom".
And what happens in today's classrooms will of course manifest itself in tomorrow's workplaces. We are constantly complaining about the lack of skills among our younger recruits, so why is the government encouraging them to waste their study time on wishy-washy New Age topics, rather than ensuring that they learn something useful? Shouldn't emotional development be the families' responsibility? And where do employers stand? How are they meant to deal with a generation of recruits unable to spell but more than willing to express their innermost feelings in public?
Comments (3)
Posted by Simon Clarkson | June 16, 2008 10:05 PM
The importance of emotions can never be understated – emotional development doesn't have to be 'wishy washy'. People behave according to how they feel and if we want our children to realise their potential, they must understand the origins of their performance, good or bad. However, we have to ensure that this doesn’t turn into 'naval-gazing'.
Our philosophy is to teach people – from children to business leaders and elite sportsmen and women – the hard, scientific facts about how attitudes and beliefs drive our day-to-day actions and, most importantly, how to take control of that process.
Although it mustn’t come at the expense of other skills, this fundamental information is vital in helping individuals maximise performance in any discipline.
Posted on June 16, 2008 22:05
Posted by Neil Cox | June 16, 2008 10:10 PM
I am not convinced, in reality, that this will have a negative impact on the intake of Graduate recruits into our industry in the future. The number of students meeting our minimum criteria continues to rise so this does not raise obvious concern for the standard of academic output in the Graduate population.
We pride ourselves on welcoming applications from any discipline (“wishy-washy New Age topics” and all!) and this makes for a healthier, more diverse mix of intake. For the trainees to come with a modicum of emotional intelligence, which the authors seem to be decrying, it makes for a well-rounded individual.
Posted on June 16, 2008 22:10
Posted by Steve Huxham | June 16, 2008 10:18 PM
One phrase stands out for me here – “the increased presence of parents on campus”. Really? In the UK? Kids don’t change that much from generation to generation – if even younger children are embarrassed to be with their parents when friends are around half the time, let alone teens, I feel fairly confident that the X Box generation is no different, and that the last thing most students want is parents tracking them around uni as they find their feet (and the union bar.) We as employers might want to worry about other things for this generation – health, exercise, diet, too much interest in social networking rather than “real” interpersonal skills, and parents perhaps should worry more about graduates having to return home after uni thanks to student loans and housing costs, but this concern seems to be as much hot air as the inflated language it is written in.
Posted on June 16, 2008 22:18