Did you hear about the car aerial that married a satellite dish; the wedding was a bit boring but apparently the reception was brilliant. Sadly, I can’t apply this adjective to the response I received for my set of posts over the New Year about entitlement. Yet, unabashed by the evidence that the longer I talk about an issue the less convincing I become, I am this week planning to write a series of posts on aspects of human development…..

Last Thursday I chaired an event at which Richard Sennett spoke about his new book Together. As tends to be the case with Richard’s work the book is often fascinating, sometimes inspiring and occasionally baffling. His core thesis certainly struck a chord.

Sennett joins many other thinkers in identifying both the importance of collaboration to human prospects in the 21^st century but also the challenges of living and working with people – often very different to ourselves in values, backgrounds and lifestyles – in a fast moving, shrinking world. He suggests three attributes which people need to be able successfully and enduringly to function together (and alongside these, three apparently similar attributes they must supplant).

First, we must seek dialogic rather than dialectic communication (in essence this means conversation which accepts and negotiates different perspectives rather than seeking to find a single shared view). Second, we should aim for a subjunctive rather than a declaratory form of expression. Sennett writes:

‘The subjunctive mood counters Bernard Williams’ fear of the fetish of assertiveness by opening up instead an indeterminate mutual space, the space in which strangers dwell with one another…’.

Third, the sentiment that suits modern togetherness is empathy rather than sympathy:

‘Both sympathy and empathy convey recognition, and both forge a bond, but one is an embrace the other an encounter…Sympathy has usually been thought a stronger sentiment…I feel your pain puts a stress on what I feel; it activates one; own ego. Empathy is a more demanding exercise, at least in listening; the listener has to get outside him- or herself’.             

Rather like the objects in an impressionist painting the edges of Sennett’s concepts tend to blur into each other, but what struck me was the congruence with the idea of self-authorship developed by developmental psychologist Robert Kegan. Using a similar framework to Jean Piaget’s pioneering work on child cognitive development,  Kegan’s masterwork is The Evolving Self, in which he describes the stages of psychological development, each subsuming the one before, which take place not just in childhood but throughout life.

Kegan argues not just that we should aspire to greater self-awareness but that we need to reach a higher, more empathic, level of functioning to meet the practical requirements of twenty-first century citizenship. In particular, successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles “requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions, rather than be captive of them”. Kegan writes of an ability to “resist our tendencies to make ‘right’ or ‘true’ that which is merely familiar and ‘wrong’ or ‘false’ that which is only strange”. In a 2002 overview of survey evidence for the OECD, Kegan concluded than only one in five people across the world have achieved the competencies necessary for what he termed a ‘modernist’ or self-authoring order of consciousness.

The view that there is both the need and the scope for human beings to develop to a ‘higher’ level of functioning has many adherents. Another version lies in my articulation of the RSA strap-line ‘twenty first century enlightenment’. But many questions arise?

How distinct is such a view from well-meaning but vacuous view that it would be a better world if we were all better people?

Among the different accounts of human beings need to develop to thrive in the modern world, what are the important similarities and differences?

How credible is the view that human development can enhanced. Perhaps it happens anyway (cf the Flynn effect or Steven Pinker’s recent evidence of declining violence) or perhaps, as John Grey would no doubt argue, we flatter ourselves with the idea we can somehow transcend the flawed character of our species.

Broadly, what routes to enhanced human development hold out the greatest promise: education, culture, institutional innovation, spiritual awakening?

Specifically, what examples are there of sustained improvements in human psychological and behavioural development and can these examples be scaled?

As a strong advocate of a necessary human development thesis, my aim here is to sharpen the case rather than find holes in it. I was excited last week to be contacted by Robert Kegan himself who has said some very generous things about the RSA’s 21^st century enlightenment thesis. But I am also impatient of making the same broad case time and again but not yet feeling it carries sufficient conviction let alone a concrete set of policies and practices.  Of the questions above my sense is that the last is both the most important and the hardest.

Related posts:

1. Barking up the wrong tree
2. In deepest empathy
3. Always look on the bright side of life …

There has been a great deal of attention paid to Mr Gove’s long predicted move to scrap some BTecs and reduce the league table value of the rest to one GCSE (from as many as four). But what will be the result in terms of secondary school priorities? Looking at payment by results (PBR) systems might be a useful starting point for debate.

PBR schemes in which the payment is connected to a specific outcome will tend to see clients divided into three groups. I’m sure there are other terminologies, but these groups could be called ‘the cream’, the people who would have achieved the outcome (getting a job, staying out of prison etc) without any support, ‘the core’, who may be more likely to meet the outcome or meet it more quickly as a result of support and ‘the hard cases’, who are unlikely to achieve the outcome without a level of support which is unfeasible given the terms of the contract.

Cream skimming and parking (what is done with the hard cases) don’t happen because contract providers are bad people, they are the inevitable consequence of certain PBR systems. The main way to avoid these tactics is to move from a focus on a specific outcome to ‘direction of travel’ measures. In this approach the provider doesn’t get much money for the employment of cream clients but can get a payment for getting a hard case to, say, attend a literacy course. For several years the view among employment policy makers has been that this direction of travel is dangerous; leading to providers putting core clients on access courses of dubious value but never getting them anywhere near a job.

Schools aren’t paid by results but they are paid for places. The number of pupils they attract and the status of the school and its staff depend on key performance measures. Mr Gove and Alison Wolf have today repeated the allegation that many schools have pushed pupils into BTecs of dubious value because they are an easy way to lift a school’s GCSEs score. However, both have had to admit the evidence is circumstantial; lots more pupils do vocational qualifications like BTecs and as this isn’t in children’s best interests  – according to Gove and Wolf – schools must be guilty of putting their institutional needs above the interests of pupils.

My own experience suggests that the motivation is somewhat more complex. Schools encourage less academic pupils to take courses which they may find more engaging and in which they have more chance of success and the welcome by-product of this strategy has been – until now – that it helps with the GCSE score. A more charitable interpretation of school behaviour might have been a bit better for staff room morale but it wouldn’t have made such good headlines.

But there is a perverse incentive I have frequently seen at play. It lies in the power of the five GCSEs (including Maths and English) target. This clearly encourages many schools, particularly those worried about their overall OFSTED ranking, to focus resources (for example, small group and Saturday top up classes) on those at the border line of attaining the magic five (rather than those who could get many more or have no chance of making the threshold). This incentive remains in place. Indeed, as Mr Gove presses harder on attainment of the EBac  - in which there are five required subjects not just two – the key measure of school performance, the channelling of resources into the borderline pupils may be accentuated.

The latest school performance tables offer a lot more information in a more accessible form than before. I particularly welcome the information about how low, medium and high attainers have done based on their level leaving primary school. This is a direction of travel measure; the top-line school rankings have for some time combined absolute and progression targets, but the latter are made more vivid in the new performance information.

The excellent Conor Ryan has suggested that the proliferation of measures could cloud rather than enhance accountability. He may be right, but, then again, perhaps a more pluralist approach in which different schools can pursue different measures of success would be good. (Although the hard part of choosing something other than headline GCSEs is persuading parents to shift their focus from this measure.)

My point is slightly different. I agree with Mr Gove, Professor Wolf and many others that if vocational qualifications are weak and equivalences unjustified then something should be done. But just because Government removes one allegedly perverse incentive doesn’t mean everything now lines up in a natural and benign way. It would be very interesting to see from Government an analysis of how they think the different measures now applied to schools will affect how schools use resources and guide pupils.

The fear about the EBac – that it will increase the proportion of pupils who fall into the hard case/parking category – will probably have been increased by today’s announcement (as it cuts off some routes for lower attaining pupils to achieve results for themselves and their schools). Mr Gove is a powerful communicator and decisive policy maker but he doesn’t always seem very interested in the detail, but when it comes to the way national targets shape school policies that’s exactly where the devil is hiding.

PS Since first posting I have discovered that Graham Stuart, independent minded Conservative Chair of the Education Select Committee made a very similar point today, but using rather more forceful language.

Related posts:

1. Mr Gove’s awfully big experiment
2. PBR – high hopes, big questions.
3. Selectively grumpy

Some childhood experiences never leave us. The experience of humiliation is particularly hard to forget. Back in the sixties, at the age of eight, I was the only southerner attending Park Grove Junior School in York. To add to my general discomfort I also had a pronounced lisp. Maybe this was why I had a relatively modest part in that year’s nativity play. I was a wise king and my script in its entirety consisted of the word ’myrrh’. I suspect my father knew this when, barely concealing a snigger, he offered to hear me read my lines.

I only had one word but I appeared in two scenes and it was this that led to my humiliation. The rather unsympathetic deputy head in charge of the production came to visit my class to discuss arrangements. Perhaps to compensate for my various inadequacies (or was it was just an early manifestation of my lifetime habit of talking too much) I always put my hand up when it came to questions:

‘Miss, will we change our costumes between the scenes?’ was my innocent but looking back on it, ridiculous question. Even now I can see the sneer on the Deputy’s face. I can’t recall her precise words but it was something along the line of ‘ oh yes, Matthew, of course, we will and we’ll also have a make up assistant on hand to refresh your face paint, unless that is you want to bring your own staff in your own limousine’.

I thought again about this experience on the way from an event today. I had been asked to contribute to a lunchtime seminar about social innovation at Northampton University (if only those cruel teachers could see me now, oh yes!). It occurred to me too late that we had perhaps been a bit too structural in our account of the barriers to innovation (you can imagine the list: silo working, wrong incentives, lack of capacity etc): Because, in reality, one of the biggest inhibitors to innovation is a fear of humiliation.

The simple truth is that many – and it may even be most – people would rather take the small risk that they have wasted a great idea than the big risk that their idea will be greeted with a mix of indifference, scorn and hilarity.

If this seems unduly pessimistic look at the mauling given today by the health select committee to the idea that Sainsbury’s might use shopping habits to identify customers who have caring roles in order to offer them information and advice. The criticism seems to be based on the lazy and spurious idea that the Department of Health is asking Sainsbury’s to test out this idea instead of professionals using more traditional public service channels.

I know the Coalition is a bit tight with money and can even sometimes seem a little unsympathetic to the plight of the disadvantaged, but can you really imagine a Departmental letter to GPs along these lines:

‘Dear colleague, instead of the usual policy of seeking to notice when patients have major informal caring roles and offering them support we would like you to ignore people’s needs on the basis that they might get spotted at the local supermarket’.

That shop assistants could be given a bit of training to spot the shopping habits of carers and then offer these customers information about local services is only a small idea but it is sound, it is free and (unlike many other policy initiatives) it is difficult to see it doing any harm. But judging by the reaction of the select committee perhaps whoever developed the initiative in Government and Sainsbury’s may be tempted in future to keep their good ideas to themselves.

Part of the reason I feel defensive for this scheme is that RSA is itself soon to publish a report about the role that B and Q stores are playing in increasing social capital and engagement in localities. We’re just waiting for a foreward from a minister or Government policy advisor. Let’s just hope they aren’t now put off for fear of being made to look trivial or uncaring.

And on the subject of compassion it may be that the staff of Park Grove weren’t quite as cruel as I paint them: with my speech impediment it must have been tempting to make me the king who proffers the frankincense.

Related posts:

1. A social media challenge for Fellows

In these hard times a free meal is always welcome so I hope it won’t be considered churlish of me to describe a recent dinner – one of the regular gatherings of a somewhat secretive members’ club – at which I was kindly hosted by some corporate friends of the RSA. As well as food, wine and good company, I overcame my aversion to black tie dress code because David Miliband was the keynote speaker.

David’s speech focused on foreign affairs and was a powerful combination of insight, experience and conviction. Whilst avoiding political knockabout, the former Foreign Secretary didn’t hide his concerns that the UK seems virtually alone in thinking that it is possible to operate effectively on the international stage without cultivating strong relationships with our neighbours.

With so much content in the speech I was looking forward to the question and answer session. A couple of hands shot up straight away. The first question was along these lines: ‘given that you are so impressive and your brother less so, do you think the Labour Party will simply accept defeat in the next election or be brave enough to commit regicide?’. I was about to remark to the person next to me how completely inappropriate this was when the second questioner chirped up with; ‘how do you respond to the news that voters apparently think you’re better looking than your brother, and when are you going to come back and seize the leadership of your Party?’.

With most people in the room squirming, it was not a time to hesitate. Even though I was only a guest, up shot my hand for the third question. Picking up one small reference in the speech I asked him about my favourite subject; how can politicians help close the social aspiration gap by persuading people to think and act in ways which help to build a better future out of our current difficulties.

If I had been David I don’t know how I would have handled the situation. He simply said ‘That’s why it’s always good to take questions in threes’ and ignored the first two (just one reason he’s a politician and I’m not). His response to me went straight to the biggest flaw with my argument: it sounds both judgemental and unrealistic.

As David said, most people have no choice but to rise to the challenge created by economic stagnation and public sector austerity. They are working as hard as they can to keep their head above water and, through individual caring and contributing to their community, doing their best to make up for the withdrawal of state support. Just now they probably don’t need pious lectures from politicians.

Of course, this is right. It must be some flaw in my character (one of many) which tends me towards making the case in judgemental terms. The reasons for a lack of engagement, resourcefulness and social responsibility in the general population lie much less in the individual failings of people than the nature of politics and political discourse, the design of policy and the organisation and culture of public services.

Our tendency to blame people when things go wrong rather than deeper structure and culture is an understandable but impeding cognitive frailty. Thus we express our ire towards bankers not the financial system, expense-fiddling MPs not our flawed democratic system, even journalists rather the puerile obsessions of celebrity culture. Sometimes the initial blame fest gives way to a more reflective approach, such as we may see emerge from the Leveson inquiry, but other times we pluck out the rotten apples but ignore the rotten barrel.

So I won’t blame the two rather over-excited gentlemen for the embarrassing questions the other night. Instead I surmise it may be something about wearing slightly silly clothes and breathing an atmosphere of intense mutual appreciation that beings out the worst in people.

No related posts.

I have always been proud of my present-receiving face. A few years ago three different people bought me Adrian Chiles’ book about West Brom fans (a book I had myself purchased on the day it was published). I was confident they all thought me delighted as I tore off the wrapping paper and exclaimed ‘ooh, I was just thinking of buying this’.

Often at Christmas a particular present becomes ubiquitous. This year I gave three copies of Rebecca Ferguson’s lovely CD and received two in return. I also gave and received Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize winning novel ‘The sense of an ending’ .

It is a wonderful book. The story follows the narrator’s school and student years and then switches as in retirement he gradually and disturbingly comes to see actions of his earlier life in a very different light. It is one of those books that works both as an engrossing piece of fiction but also a treasure trove of ideas, in this case about the perversity of memory.

Indeed the book led to an insight that, although now I repeat it may seem obvious, felt profound when it came to me.

My intuitive idea of memories is of each time I remember an event revisiting the original moment stored somewhere in my brain. It is as if the recollection is a locked room I can choose to visit from time to time. It may get a bit dusty and various features decay, but each memory takes me back to that original scene.

The unfolding narrative of ‘The sense of an ending’ tears apart this illusion. The truth, of course, is that the place we visit each time we look back does not contain the event but actually the last recollection of that event. Each memory is a memory of the last memory. Thus – unless we check our recollections against those of other people – remembering is our own private game of Chinese whispers. Emotional associations may seem to strengthen the memory but they also create more background noise, increasing the chances of distortion.

As with other cognitive biases, recollection also tends to be self-serving. So for example our tendency to view our own mistakes as trivial or unfortunate and the mistakes of others as the consequences of their failings helps rearrange our memories into a more comforting form. The pivot of Barnes’ novel is when the narrator is shocked to realise how unpleasantly he had behaved much earlier in his life.

I was trying to explain this to some friends at Christmas when one of them impatiently burst out:

‘Well, at least this novel seems to have been a successful present. Much better than when we gave you that Adrian Chiles book a few years ago‘.

‘Oh yes’, the other friend chipped in, ‘your face when you opened it; like we’d given you a dead rat’.

No related posts.