Dr Kathryn Ecclestone presented the basic ideas of the book she co-wrote, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, and upset a couple of people at the September Brighton Salon. A trained therapist herself who is now a professor in education, Kathryn stressed that she was was against therapy culture in education and not therapy per se, but that didn’t stop her being accused of not caring about children and of not understanding how good therapy can be within education. As a layman myself, it was good to see these therapists and teachers get worked up!
Therapy culture, the state and self-esteem

It all started quietly enough. Kathryn explained the aims and working assumptions of the book she wrote with Dennis Hayes. Building on work by James Nolan and Frank Furedi, who had published on the therapeutic state and the therapy culture, they had tried to assess the extent to which different kinds of therapeutic ideas, practices, techniques, assumptions and orthodoxies had penetrated the learning environments of schools and colleges.

Citing the widely dispersed popularity of therapeutic self-help books, the importance that emotion has in our society and the rise of counselling, women’s magazines, and more, Kathryn said the broader cultural tendency toward therapy had an insidious effect in education. The popularity of certain kinds of drama workshops, anti-bullying projects, circle time at the feet of teacher and mentoring systems are the most obvious examples, but there are many more. Among the most worrying was the recommendation of counselling not as a special measure to help a child over bereavement, divorce or trauma, but as a standard practice.

‘Angels’ are deployed as student buddies (angels stands for ‘a nice guy every (time) life sucks’). Children are given rudimentary training in counselling so they can mentor younger children moving up to secondary education. Self-esteem and the desired personality dispositions are sought as desired outcomes of these interventions and Kathryn feared that this emphasis on self awareness was having a detrimental effect on the teaching of subjects.

We’re all vulnerable now

Therapeutic approaches are used for everybody, not just those who might be in some way especially vulnerable. Valuing emotional intelligence most highly and extending concerns about self-esteem and emotional baggage to everybody. This has led to a massive rise in formal diagnosis of syndromes, more syndromes and further diagnosis of them. Many of the approaches adopted are, at the very least, highly questionable as to their effectiveness. And, insidiously, to question whether all these approaches are necessary is to invite suspicion of one’s motives and the inquiry: what’s your problem?

The study of these phenomena presents other difficulties; the huge rise in diagnosis of ADHD and other syndromes may hide those who really need the attention of experts. Furthermore, the rise in cases represents feelings and responses that are material and cannot just be dismissed.

The drift is toward the concept of emotional well-being as a sort of human right which the state should be seen to be upholding. But how far can the state be responsible for people’s mental health or well-being? Pupils are disengaged and demotivated in schools, it is said, so therapeutic approaches are attractive ways of dealing with perceived problems. As therapy culture is so broad and comes from many different directions, it has developed into an enormous industry with vested interests in further interventions. Kathryn says these have led to what Frank Furedi calls a ‘deep cultural turn toward the diminished self’.

The casting of everybody as vulnerable, emotionally, allows the formation of preventative measures by policy makers and interested organisations. These are designed to influence the behaviour of people by encouraging their self-interest in emotional well-being.

The discussion

A subtle process of emotionalism

Among the first salvo of questions: Dan Travis asked if teachers were having to take on the emotional roles of children’s parents; Steve Hudson asked what Kathryn’s preferred philosophy of education would be; Brandon, whose wife had left teaching because she was fed up with the imposed emotional discipline, asked whether many teachers agreed with Kathryn; and Nicky, a therapist, asked whether Kathryn accepted that learning was an emotional experience.

Kathryn said that this wasn’t being forced on teachers, it is a more subtle process and that the last chapter of her book dealt with alternatives. Some parents are seen as not being capable of developing their children’s self-esteem. Her concern was that subject teaching and the subject-based curriculum were suffering because of the emphasis placed on emotional well-being. ‘The idea is to take children out into the world and not keep them in their own introspective worlds. Even teachers with confidence in their subjects can still see their role as partly that of social workers,’ she said. ‘If you ask teachers how many children have emotional problems in their school the answers range from 5% to 70% to 100%,’ said Kathryn. And the idea that everybody needs therapy means that many who need it may not be getting it, she added.

It’s an emotional business

Asked if she wasn’t just picking bad examples of what should be done, Kathryn responded that it was not a question of whether the interventions had been badly done, but whether they are based on the right assumptions at all. Should all children be asked about their emotions? Teaching is very nuanced. Learning is an emotional business but the assumption that learning is about emotion increasingly diminishes the view of the student or pupil can put up with. Kathryn heard of a group of training teachers who were asked to sit in a circle and talk about themselves.

Nicky interrupted to say that intervention to talk about emotions was valuable and that learning is an emotional experience. ‘A talking teacher is the enemy of learning,’ Anna quoted from a notice on a school wall. If you’re passionate about your subject it can be dismissed as ‘chalk and talk’. Vendal, who teaches children with severe problems at a children’s home, said he more or less agreed with Kathryn. Even the most badly damaged children want to learn how to deal with situations, he added. Richard asked whether Kathryn was more concerned for the pupils or for the teachers.

Steve pointed out that ‘everything is an emotional experience’ and that therapy is good because it gives you choices and makes you more effective as a human being. His concern was that therapy was being misapplied and that it could infantilise people. ‘We need stoicism!’ he said.

Compassion deficit model

But Ben, a teacher, was the first to get passionate: ‘I disagreed with everything you said. I can feel myself getting angry!’ he said. ‘I think that what you’re saying shows an absolute lack of compassion.’ Ben went on to say that he cared about the children he teaches and that they needed an emotionally stable environment. ‘I’m really proud to be working in an education system that really cares about the emotional learning experience!’

Kathryn said she couldn’t do justice to all the arguments. She said that this was a complicated issue and that she was not being derogatory of therapy. She was trying to trace why these sorts of things were happening, was concerned with the well-being of children and did not have any ulterior motives. ‘It still goes back to what emphasis you put on emotion in learning.’ The concern with emotion put teachers and pupils in different positions from before. It affected how students responded to their teachers. Who was considered a good teacher and who was not and what should be on the curriculum were directly effects of this emotional emphasis. More and more teachers say that the most important thing is how socially skilled they are rather than whether they have learned history or English.

Government approved feelings

Brendan said that human compassion had been proceduralised within education and his wife had found it so patronising she left teaching. Ben said that if you didn’t have these procedures then nothing would change but Brendan hit back with: ‘You do have feelings regardless of what the government says.’

Kam (neither a teacher nor a therapist) said that teachers were taking responsibility for how children should act in stead of teaching history and maths. Boisterous Ben said he wouldn’t be a good teacher if he didn’t do that. Initiatives are thrown at teachers all the time. Justin Tait pointed out that of the teachers he recalled from school, it was the strict disciplinarians who were respected and remembered, rather than the others. Peter, a teacher, said he found he lost confidence if he talked about feelings with his students. Stoical Steve added that it was questionable if we wanted to produce a society of happy, well-adjusted people. Geniuses of the past and present were not well-balanced people. Andy Hearn said that the changes in education reflected changes in society. ‘Education and counselling are being forced to pick up where the parents are failing,’ he said. People make less money; work long hours and time spent with their families was limited, he added.

Jo, another teacher, said that this was an impossible subject to discuss using a case-by-case system. ‘In schools, the kids sense that the majority of the teachers will get counselling once a week,’ she said. They don’t think it’s a big deal. What was really awful was the diminished self. Nicky said it was a mistake to equate therapy with being nice. Good therapy and good teaching are about getting people out of their comfort zones. It was wrong to talk about education verses therapy.

The Finlandisation of self-esteem

Kathryn summed up. Normal human relations, compassion and care are being formalised into rituals which, if you cannot perform them, will get you evaluated as not a good teacher. Where does all this come from? Great minds were grappling with the complex problem and it may be connected to things such as the breakdown of religion. It would be interesting to trace the development of all kinds of therapy and their popularisation.

‘This is a very Anglo-American thing at present but European countries are very interested,’ said Kathryn. Although not in Finland, where there are no words for self-esteem. Nicky piped up that that country’s high level of ADHD was due to middle class parents wanting their children to be diagnosed with it. Kathryn asserted that extending therapy to the whole population could be deeply damaging. Working class people, females, and males all had different problems to be addressed by these processes.

Kathryn said she carefully defined what she meant by therapeutic and pointed out that the situation was patchy, different places and schools having different practices. But intervention in the student-teacher relationship was on the increase, leading to the confident teacher becoming something less. This is worrying if it changes people’s expectations of the relationship.

Furthermore, ‘It changes what we mean by the whole person. This used to be expressed by extra-curricular activities and other subjects,’ said Kathryn. But increasingly this idea of the whole person was being replaced with an emotional one that constantly changed how she taught her own students and the way they relate to each other.

Most of us stayed for a drink afterward and the discussion continued (politely). I thought that what Kathryn was saying felt like a personal attack to some of the people in the room. It was pointed out to me that if all teachers were good, then education would not be so poked and prodded by everybody. I think education is the talisman of the future and it always gets messed around with, but that teachers could do with more room and less expectation of being able right social ills they cannot possibly be responsible for.

The Brighton Salon wished to thank Dr Kathryn Ecclestone for a great presentation and for kicking off a hotly contested discussion. We would also like to thank our hosts, The Open House, and all those who attended.

This is a personal report of proceedings at the Brighton Salon on Thursday September 24 2009. If you have any corrections, clarifications or complaints, email, Sean Bell.