I helped write the letter in the Guardian this week.
While I personally do think the report should be withdrawn – as purposefully or not – it leaves out whole swathes of important Early Years pedagogy and approaches, I recognise that we do not have the political power to make this happen. What’s much more important to me moving forward is finding ways for Reception teachers, and really all educators in all phases, to be free to work to the best of their ability and professional knowledge.
I am a little more than a year into edutwitter and it still confounds me. At first I jumped in ready to argue with any and everybody, but I am getting very tired of it. I can read extremely disagreeable and even hateful things online with a detached sense of curiousity about how others might think these ways. To be entirely honest I have found the one corner of the internet where I can get “mad online.” I imagine this is because like all of us in education, no matter our views or interests, we all put so much of myself into my work.
Adults arguing on twitter really should not be the point of all of this, but I fear we are all getting stuck here. Education social media arguments and debates are just plain weird. Many times we don’t know each other, and the format of twitter lends itself to discussion becoming a battle of quips, citing studies we like and silly one-upsmanship. We then find “our people” with who we can have some good discussions with and fortify our views. I am as guilty of this as anybody and I am interested in moving beyond this.
At the moment I honestly don’t have much hope any real discussion across views can happen, on Reception or anything else. I still tweet at some people because I can’t help it, but it never goes anywhere. If any Bold Beginnings fans are reading this, and interested in trying to have a real discussion, where we both genuinely assume the other side is not out to set children up for failure, please send me a tweet.
So the rest of this is going to be aimed at my fellow Early Years people. The main message of this is do not get stuck on social media. Twitter is not real life.
If you want to see changes in our education system, and culture in general, this is not going to happen overnight. Before we solve the big problems, we are going to have to learn to come together, where we are, and solve our smaller problems in our schools, settings, towns and settings. There are teachers who have managed to make changes towards quality play based approaches, dealing with skeptical Heads and SLTs. There are others who have slowly brought along coworkers to improving their interactions with children and their observation skils. We could learn so much from blogs like these people.
What problems are you facing as educators or parents in your daily life? What do you want to improve in your practice? What is stopping you? What can you, and the people around you, do about it? What do you need help with? Leave a comment or send me a DM. If this stupid site is going to be worth anything, it should help us figure out ways to improve our jobs and skills offline.
David Cahn 