Therapeutic Approaches Are Being Tried in English Schools — But Schools Are for Education

Therapeutic approaches are gaining traction in English schools, and just like restorative practices or trauma-informed practice, we're seeing a lot of the same problems with the lack of consequences.

And I've been talking a lot about Scotland lately.

Somebody in England sent me this article about West Sussex's therapeutic thinking aims.

And a lot of this will sound familiar to you, right?

We're trying to look at behavior, we're trying to keep kids in class more, reduce and eliminate exclusion.

So that would be sending students out of class or sending students home.

And these therapeutic thinking principles, this is the first time I've heard this term, but it sounds very, very much like restorative practice or trauma-informed practice.

And the idea that we can provide some sort of support in schools that will take the place of consequences.

We can put some sort of plan in place or do something for the student that will help them behave better, that will keep them safe, that will help them learn even if they're struggling with their behavior, something other than consequences.

And my question would be, what is that exactly that we're replacing consequences with and is it working?

And I really, you know, I'm looking, I'm waiting for these examples where this kind of thing is working, not examples where lots and lots of people are being employed in and having their time taken up by trying these approaches.

But tell me where this is actually working, because a lot of the basic logic of this just does not hold up to me, right?

We want to keep kids in class.

Here's the thinking behind it.

Prioritizes the pro-social feelings of everyone within the dynamic based on the idea that negative experiences create negative feelings.

and negative feelings create negative behavior.

Now, I'm not sure that's true.

I would have to think about that a little bit more, but one reason that we shouldn't overlook for negative behavior is incentives, right?

Everybody knows if you send a kid to the office because they did something bad and then they get a snack in the office and they come back with a bag of chips, have we reinforced that negative behavior?

Yeah, absolutely.

And it wasn't even necessarily that the student had negative feelings.

If we've created an incentive system where students can rationally predict, if I behave in this way, I don't have to do my work, I get sent out of class, I get a bag of chips in the office, and then I get to come back to class.

We don't need negative thinking to explain that pattern.

It's incentives that are in place.

And of course, we want school to be a positive place where students experience positive things.

But the idea that we can give students positive experiences in order to improve their behavior...

I think really doesn't even pass the sniff test here, right?

If we give students positive experiences in response to negative behavior, we are actively rewarding, we're incentivizing, we're giving students rewards for negative behavior.

I mean, did anybody even think about this?

You don't have to know anything about child psychology to think, gee, if you give kids chips, for bad behavior, they're not going to feel better and then act better.

They're going to realize, as rational, self-interested human beings like we all are, that if I want more chips, I should just continue to act bad.

So I think the basic logic here breaks down very, very quickly.

And notice the shade thrown on consequences here.

Bribes and sanctions, put in scare quotes, used to manage behavior, which often results in children and young people only following instructions because they will get something for doing so.

This is where we have to think about the definition of society.

What is human society?

It is the conditional acceptance of other people based on their behavior.

That's what society is.

If you want to come and sit around our fire, you have to not mistreat us.

You have to be cool if you're going to come and sit around our fire.

The basic foundations of human society are conditional inclusion.

If you act okay, according to whatever rules you set up, then you can be a part of this.

And if you're going to hurt us, we're going to move away from you.

We're going to kick you out of our circle.

We're going to not have you here anymore.

conditional on your behavior.

And if you improve your behavior, maybe you can come back.

Certainly, we want our students to come back when their behavior makes that possible.

But this is very, very fundamental to society.

And I don't think we can just eliminate it because it sounds nice.

It's not just that students get something for doing so, it's that they get to be included because they are contributing positively and not negatively.

And the idea that we can make schools a place where some students contribute extremely negatively through violence, they hurt other people, they disrupt the process, they injure their teacher, they make their classroom aides have to get knee surgery, like all these negative things that are happening in schools.

The idea that we can just kind of reframe that and make the student feel good and then make the student act good as a result.

Like, have you ever met a child that's like, do you think this actually works?

So do check out this website, principalcenter.com slash sus.

We'll take you there, S-U-S.

And you can read more about therapeutic thinking developed by Angela Wadham.

But I think this is going to go by the wayside pretty quickly, but probably not before it is tried and fails miserably in lots of places.

Let me know what you think.