Episode 162: Are we forgetting the importance of Arts and Sports?

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School podcast. Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Welcome back, everyone to another, what is going to be very exciting episode of the School of School podcast. And it's going to be exciting because we have two very important and clever people here. We've got Robin Potter and Adam Gifford, and I'm here just as a facilitator.

Robin Potter

You talk so much though.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, I know. Well, I was just trying to pepper you guys with good response, things to talk about. Anyway, what were we going to talk about? We're going to talk about all this stuff that never seems to be, I don't know, we maybe don't spend enough time thinking about because we're so concerned about probably language and mathematics in elementary schools or primary schools. I'm talking about art class, I'm talking about music. I'm talking about sports, not just PE, but actually sports, competitive sports in school and all this kind of stuff. We don't seem to have as much of an emphasis on these things. Or maybe we do. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do we do enough? Do we do too much?

Robin Potter

And I am curious to know, because we also live in different countries, so I know there's an emphasis, at least in my experience in Canada, there's certainly emphasis on sports in primary school to get kids... They have PE obviously, but there's a number of sports that are offered and they try and get kids to come out and to play and play, I'll call it competitively, as in they play against other schools in other regions, and depending on how well they do. And there's individual sports where maybe it's cross-country or I don't know, tennis, making this up. But I think there's certainly a big element of that in our primary schools. As far as art goes, we have art class. I think it's pretty generic. Some schools offer a drama programme. Usually schools introduce music at the higher level, primary age, where then they could go on and do that in high school. It is introduced. Is it emphasised versus learning your reading, writing and arithmetic? Not so sure. Adam, what did you find?

Adam Gifford

Well, I suppose in the first instance, we accept that part of the public face of schools is the results that they get part of statutory tests. And at the moment, things like music, sports, most things outside of English and maths and science, they're not the public face of the school. They're only people that can make decisions about how successful those other subjects, or other areas, forget subjects, just other areas that make up life, probably down to the parents' perception, the children feeding back and the teachers in the school will know in each individual school. But I think that when you look at surveys across schools, I think that people feel most under pressure to get marks in those, or to invest the most time, the most professional development, the biggest resources. Outside of mainstream classroom delivery. I'm thinking about booster groups and things like that, intervention groups, the money tends to be spent on English and maths, not so much science, but science as well.

But those two areas that make up not just the statutory testing, but the statutory testing that feeds into your monitoring through Ofsted or whatever else. I think that what we have to remind ourselves is the role of school. And I think a big part of that is for children to have opportunities to do something that they love and they can be really, really good at. And I think that that's part of our remit. And I think that that's something that we know some schools do really well. Some schools not so well. I think we'd all agree these things are really important. If you take music for example, that gives pleasure, it's massive. It would be absolutely huge. Wouldn't it make sense to get more people doing it so we can listen to more better music, or all of those sorts of things.

How much pleasure's done in art and design? These are the people that when you wander around cities on a large scale, they dictate what a city might look like all the way through to something that you'll hang on your wall or these sorts of things. And I guess my worry is that if you don't have support outside of school, it's not just a case of not having an opportunity, but you might walk away from it going, "Oh no, I can't do art me. I can't draw, I can't paint." And you're defined for the rest of your life. And the idea of picking up a paintbrush or trying to learn an instrument would never cross your mind because it's already been established very early in the piece. You had one go at school, you weren't that good at it. You're done. And I think these things are really important. They're important culturally, massively important.

Andy Psarianos

But this is, like you say, it's part of the issue is that schools don't get measured on these things. Because schools get measured on how well they do in science, and math, and reading and writing, then that effectively becomes the benchmark for school. Their emphasis will go on there because that's how they'll be judged by the community as well as the government and whatever. And also just your ranking as let's say a principal or a head teacher.

Robin Potter

Then you end up relying on the parents to introduce these things to their children. And they're in dance outside of school, they're taking an art programme or they're in a drama programme. They play competitive sports outside of school. But some parents aren't going to introduce their children to these things for many reasons. Either they're not familiar with them, never saw the value in them, don't have the money to pay for their child to be involved in that. It's taking away the emphasis, or at least any pressure for the school to be focused on it. And yet, as you said before, Adam, it's so important. These are things culturally that are incredibly important later on in life for all of us. How can that change? It's so embedded in our culture.

Adam Gifford

Because these schools that do amazing jobs, we know them. We've been in them where you walk in and you go, "Holy smokes. The art programme is so ingrained in this school that not only is it just about the art on the walls, but it's just a way of life. The people that are supporting the children do are experts in their field that the capacity to do these things and all sorts of different mediums, all that sort of thing, or music would be the same, those sorts of things."

But where I see it falling down and where it slims down is when schools, and again, you can read plenty of Ofsted reports with this, where they'll criticise a school saying that the curriculum was too narrow, so it focused too much on those core subjects. But then if you look at the history of those schools, some of them might've been in a position where they've been deemed inadequate or in a category that's really serious.

And it might've been because your English or your maths results aren't good enough. If that's your public face now, that effectively you've failed your children or you are perceived as failing your children, what's the first thing you work on? First thing you work on are the core subjects. You have to, but then it's almost like you get penalised. I think it's really hard because I think that... And really, I don't know, I'm going to use the term good schools. They've got things really well established. They're in positions that the core subjects are doing really well, and there's these programmes that run alongside them.

And I think it's those schools that are trying to jump from one to the next, especially when that cycle of monitoring is happening so fast and it's not set up to be supportive. If they go into your school and just say, "Right, Robin in your school, the maths isn't any good, you'll do your best for the maths." And they come back and they say, "Your maths is okay. Your English isn't good enough." Ah, quick, what do we do? Quick, just concentrate on the English. You've got those core subjects too narrow. Where's your music? Where's your art? Where's your this? Where's your that? You leave headship. You go, "Oh, I've had enough of this. I can't do it." It'd be different if it was a supportive programme, if they came in and said, "The school's inadequate. We are going to provide these supports. We're going to help you, but don't let these things disappear alongside it." Here's what we do. And there's some countries that do have that monitoring that also has a support mechanism. That's not the case as a general rule. Ofsted would probably argue otherwise. But the reality on the ground is that if a school comes in and they're told this, "It's a monitoring exercise, not a supporting exercise," thereafter. And that makes it difficult.

Robin Potter

A little off topic, but I was in a meeting yesterday and we often at the end of the meeting pose a question to the group just for conversation. And the question yesterday was, "What was your favourite subject in school?" Let's see. I think there were about seven of us in the meeting. Almost every single person responded with art, music, phys ed. I think one person mentioned math. I find that fascinating. And the other comment was often they had to give up that favourite subject as time went on into high school because it was an elective. It wasn't a core subject that was going to impact their...

Andy Psarianos

University...

Robin Potter

Getting into university. They had to actually give it up at some point. And I think this is tragic, absolutely tragic.

Andy Psarianos

If I distil both what you guys just said, it's like these are systemic problems. They're problems with the system, the system, the motivations are wrong or they're not balanced, they may be based on things that don't really, maybe you're not necessary or don't really exist anymore. The emphasis in schooling was set up a long time ago for a different world. And maybe we don't need so many people to study those core subjects to the level that we want them to. Everything seems to be focused on, "Either you're going to become an engineer, or a scientist, or you're going to become a university professor."

The education system seems to be really geared towards making those people. It's like, "Well, you're going to go and you're going to go to university. You're going to study either sciences or arts. And if you're going to go into arts, really you're going to do more arts. You're going to do your master's, and then you're going to do your PhD." And then what do you do with a PhD? Well, you teach at university, so we can create more people who can teach at university. And then the other form is like, "Well, you're going to be an engineer, or you're going to be some form of scientist." And those are the two main streams. And it's like, "What about all the other people who actually have to work?"

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

You know what I mean?

Adam Gifford

I was just going to say, I think you touched on something that's really important there is that societally, I'm sure if we went into a school and we had all parents here, and we said, "How important is music?" "Oh, really important." "Art, really important. This is fantastic." Now, fast forward. Child's 16, 17, having a talk with mom and dad, "I'm thinking of going to art school." "Oh yeah, go on. Are you?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to do textile design or something, or I'm going to paint, or something like that. Something like that." I don't know if that pays too well, Adam, I think, wouldn't you be better off doing X, Y, and Z? That comes with almost a guaranteed paycheck. And if you listen to actors and actresses, it's not uncommon in interviews where they said, "Oh, when I told my parents I was going to go into acting or music or whatever else, and they were horrified. They wanted me to do this and all that sort of stuff." I think that society on one sense, really values the arts and values the music and all those sorts of things.

But I guess the other question is, is that when it really comes down to it, is it valued enough? Now, I know that there's a correlation between struggling artists. You hear it all the time in movies and all those sorts of things. But I guess it's still as a society, we're still not ready to accept that say the arts is a reasonable career choice. Music is a reasonable career choice. That actually no, these things are for those people that... No, they're for other people. What you need to do is a decent job, one that pays your wages and pays the mortgage. None of this other stuff. And I wonder, what I would be interested in is how different countries, whether societally, if there's aspects that are so treasured that if you came home and said, "I'm going to go to art school," they'd say, "This is the best news I've ever heard. This is fantastic." And of course, there's parents that do do that. I'm not naive. Of course there's supportive parents everywhere, but do you know what I mean? Just societally, it seems...

Andy Psarianos

It's not the norm though, right?

Adam Gifford

No. No, I think that there's a freak out moment that says, just to paraphrase, "Get a real job." Something that you turn up nine to five and you get your wages at the end of the week or whatever.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Well, the focus all too often is on following the money, or trying to get as far or as high as you possibly can in education. And I don't think that that's necessarily a good goal. But the idea, I think if I were to translate what you're saying, the idea of what's useful in society. You want to be a doctor, that's really useful. You want to be a lawyer, that's really useful. You want to be a scientist, that's really useful. Artists are not. A bit self-indulgent isn't it? It's a bit all about you, isn't it? Who's going to pay you? How are you going to make... And those are the things. It's a system problem. But then the issue that we're getting is is that there's, "Well, we don't need that many scientists and we don't need that many university professors." We actually don't. It's actually not helpful. You look at work that happens in universities that a lot of it's just about making up stuff because everything's been done already. "You got to do a thesis, but you can't do anything anyone's ever done before." But there's nothing good, so I got to make up something that I'm not really interested in to write my thesis about, because it's going to be some really obscure, super narrow focus because it can't be something that somebody already did. And there's too much of it.

Adam Gifford

I think the other part for me is that, I know we've discussed this before about mathematicians. There needs to be a really good PR job done on what a mathematician actually is. We've talked about that before. I'd suggest that most of us have probably got this illustrated dictionary idea of what an artist or a musician is. And usually it's prefaced by struggling, struggling artist, struggling musician.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

But actually, if you think about art, fashion, well, the fashion industry is worth billions. Absolutely billions. I think perhaps these things need a PR job as well to say, "Actually in this industry, this industry is huge. I heard the richest person in the world. We'll, think of people like Apple. Think of Google, but it's the Louis Vuitton group. Now, I'm not saying that that's a measure of success, but what I'm saying is you don't get that level of empire. That's clothes and fashion. A lot of that is employing artists and creatives. And I think that's the thing. I think that that's what people also need to realise is that there are so many different avenues. There's a massive industry and those sorts of things. And that's the motivation to say, "This is a legit course of study." And for whatever reason, of course, how do you define legit, that's a stupid thing for me to say, but you know what I mean? It's naive to think that it's just you're basking in the underground.

Andy Psarianos

Well, it's like, are musicians useful? Are artists useful? Of course they are, but we don't seem to remember that at those key stages because the system is like, we talked before about gamification, and it's like, "Well, it's like the whole system's gamified. If you want to create particular types, the reward system is there to create particular types." And then we translate that as usefulness. And then these other things are like, "Well, if you do that, you're not going to be a useful member of society." But actually that's not really true. And we need a recalibration because the whole system's been created for a world that doesn't exist anymore. The world's shifted.

Robin Potter

That's just it. And there is acknowledgement now that having creatives in a business environment is extremely important actually.

Andy Psarianos

Oh my God, is it ever?

Robin Potter

More so important now. There is a shift. I don't know if there's necessarily a universal mind shift in the general population yet, but certainly in business they're looking more and more at people who are creative in various ways because it's necessary.

Andy Psarianos

Okay, you're really fired me up here. We talk about critical thinking. What is the difference between critical thinking and creative thinking? Really, if you think about it, and it goes back, we talked to Rosie Ross a long time ago, and she said something and it stuck with me so much. She said, "We need to start thinking that math, it's not a procedural thing or whatever, but it's a creative thing. Math is a creative subject, and it's so closely tied with the arts, music, and art, there's so much mathematics in both of those. And if you want to be a mathematician, you have more in common with a musician or an artist than you do with what most people think a mathematician is, which is adding and multiplying and doing long division or writing those really complex formulas on a blackboard.

That's not actually what it is. It's about free thinking. It's about having thought experiments. And in order to have thought experiments, you need to have creativity. You look at who are the greatest scientific minds of our time, they talk like philosophers. They don't talk like mathematicians. Einstein was as much a philosopher. Richard Feynman was just as much of a philosopher. All these people, they were as much artists as they were mathematicians or physics people. Anyway, there you go. Yeah.

Robin Potter

If we could just get our schools and our parents and everyone involved in education to be more open to supporting the arts, we'd probably all be better for it.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, you need the balance, right?

Robin Potter

Yeah, absolutely.

Andy Psarianos

It has to be a balance. It can't be all about one thing. If you were to ask me, "How do you do it?" Because I think the first argument that everyone will say is, "There's too much in the curriculum." Stop pushing the curriculum down. Stop trying to teach university courses in high school. Stop trying to do secondary material in primary school. Spend the time in primary school to do the things you should do in primary school and then in secondary school, do the... Because I see it, this idea of AP courses where you're going to do first year university courses in high school, so you don't have to do them in university, and it's going to get you in because you already... It is kind of like, "That's just a crazy idea. It's just so misguided," because you end up in two years, or even three years before you graduate, you're doing university courses in high school. That's just insane. Shouldn't be doing calculus in year nine. That's so wrong.

Adam Gifford

Well, exactly. And we're setting the children and the teachers up to go back into that cycle of, "You start doing that, you make it more difficult to get the grades that are now expected against something that's an accelerated level of development." The only choice schools have, if they want to be seen publicly as doing well, is to focus on these things they haven't had to previously and what gets lost. It's just as simple as that. And I agree, and I think that jeepers creepers, it's kind of like when you used to fret as a parent about at what point your child crawled, or walked, or whatever, but when you meet up and all your children were 15, did it matter that your child was crawling three months after someone else? Well, they're walking around and they're playing or they're doing whatever. Does it matter? No, of course it doesn't because I get there. You know what I mean? These are the things that I think that...

Andy Psarianos

What's the rush, right?

Adam Gifford

What's the rush? And...

Andy Psarianos

My kid knows his timetables coming into year one.

Adam Gifford

Yeah. And at what cost is that... Societally, is it a win if your child's doing university mathematics or we're trying to get everyone through university mathematics in secondary school, or bringing GCSE mathematics into primary school? Is that a win? I don't know. It's a pretty dangerous experiment though. Time will tell. But...

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.