 Matrix Pills (c) ThomasThomas CC BY-NC 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasthomas/258931782 The government have just announced that they are to make the Netflix series Adolescence free to show in all secondary schools. The move reflects a wider concern about the waves of disinformation and radicalisation flooding the lives of young people. Radicalisation of young people is not a new issue. When I began my career, I can remember concerns being raised about pupils being drawn into post-9/11 Islamic terrorism, as well as racist movements such as the English Defence League. Indeed, I had to raise concerns about pupils on the latter front more than once in my time in the classroom. More recently we have seen the concern over the rise in toxic masculinity, the influence of Andrew Tate and online Incel communities. What is common in almost all of these groups is that they seek to ‘red pill’ those who fall into their orbit. By this, I mean that, they try to show why the world as most people experience it is a lie and attempt to ‘awaken’ their victims with a new set of truths – the ‘red pill’. These ‘truths’ commonly play on a victim’s existing fears and prejudices, encouraging them to abandon the complexities of the real world in favour of the simplified ‘red pill’ narrative and its equally simplistic (and often violent) solutions. These new truths quickly become embedded through repetition and connection with a community of likeminded people. A sense of belonging is engendered and the truths become enmeshed with a person’s sense of self. Kier Starmer has already noted that there is no silver bullet, nor policy lever for preventing radicalisation. So, before I go further, I want to agree that history education and education in general cannot solve the problems of disinformation and radicalisation alone. But that does not mean they aren’t part of a solution. School history can play an important role in protecting young people from the mindsets around disinformation and radicalisation. Unlike Starmer I do think there are policy changes we could make which would enable this work to be more impactful. One such area is in the continued centrality of ‘mastery’ in the DfE’s stated direction for education. In this blog I want to reflect on how concepts like ‘mastery learning’ are enabling or hindering us in our broader work to prepare young people to meet the challenges of disinformation and radicalisation.
History teaching and the red pill In my last blog, I noted that history education (and education more broadly) needs to take seriously its purposes and potential as a force for shaping young people’s lives and responding to their needs. One of those needs is helping young people navigate a world in which ‘red pilling’, whether by an Incel community, or just through the constant barrage of disinformation, is a reality. Having a clear sense of our educational purposes can guide and shape what our subject can do, but also guide us in the pedagogies we need to employ to achieve those ends. At their best, history lessons offer the chance for young people to grapple with complex and sometimes divisive issues. They ask young people to engage with the concept of truth and recognise its complexity. They are a space for young people to explore their beliefs and ideas about the world; to engage with messiness and complexity in relative safety; and to evolve their thinking as they become adults. In a secondary context for instance, students in Year 7 might be asked to explore issues of why a woman’s legitimacy was denied in the case of Stephen and Matilda. In Year 8 pupils might be asked to grapple with the ways in which systems of enslavement and racial segregation were created and justified. Similarly in Year 9 pupils might be asked to unpick what the campaign for civil rights in Britain might reveal about past and contemporary inequalities. The history curriculum is rich with opportunities for young people to make sense of their worlds. History classrooms are places where pupils can explore ideas and concepts and work collectively to develop new understandings not just of the past, but the present and future as well (Lee, 2004; Nordgren, 2021; Rogers, 2009). However, this kind of work relies on careful attention being paid to how we learn as human beings – a topic which, in recent years has become very stuck in narrow concepts of memory and mastery (Alderson, 2019; Chapman, 2021; Ford, 2022; Harris, 2021b, 2021a). This excessive focus on master risks robbing the history education of its potential in preparing young people for the challenging world they are part of. How do we learn and why does it matter? Despite more than a decade of pronouncements from the DfE and Ofsted, if we look to the consensus in cognitive psychology, we see that learning is not so neatly defined as enacting a set of changes in memory through mastery (Department for Education, 2017; Ofsted, 2019; Spielman, 2019). Or rather, cognitive psychology recognises that learning is a complex process which involves our beliefs and prior knowledge, our interactions with external input, a range of affective dimensions, and the opportunities we have to make sense of all of these things (Ausubel, 2011; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; National Research Council, 2000; Sweller et al., 2019; Willingham, 2012). As the highly regarded National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s ‘How People Learn II’ consensus report notes: “Each learner develops a unique array of knowledge and cognitive resources in the course of life that are molded by the interplay of that learner’s cultural, social, cognitive, and biological contexts.” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, p. 33) This is vital because decades of research suggests that we integrate or reject ideas according to how well they connect with our existing beliefs. Where ideas don’t already fit with our existing knowledge and beliefs, we are prone to reject them. If educators want us to change or modify our beliefs and ideas, they need to provide space for us to consider any new knowledge, explore it, and wrestle with it in light of our existing ideas. Only then can be incorporated into or modify our existing beliefs and mental schemas. To make this kind of effort, the consensus is that we need to have an emotional investment in what we are learning: “Quite literally, it is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about or remember information about which one has had no emotion because the healthy brain does not waste energy processing information that does not matter to the individual (Immordino-Yang, 2015)…People are willing to work harder to learn the content and skills they are emotional about, and they are emotionally interested when the content and skills they are learning seem useful and connected to their motivations and future goals.” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, p. 29) Research suggests that emotional investment also comes from being part of learning communities where we feel we belong, have some agency, and have a sense of common purpose. In short, we make sense of things together. “Motivation to learn is fostered for learners of all ages when they perceive the school or learning environment is a place where they “belong” and when the environment promotes their sense of agency and purpose.” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, p. 133) What is interesting is that we see many of these traits of effective learning at play in instances of online radicalisation. Those who have been de-radicalised often talk about falling into the orbit of extremist groups and then being pulled in through a sense of shared beliefs and community. Unlike educational programmes however, radicalisers exploit victims’ prior beliefs and experiences, as well as their feelings of isolation to propagate their own agendas. Rather than helping their victims explore and challenge their beliefs they use the same tools of effective learning to reinforce and strengthen existing prejudices by adding more weight to them, isolating them through community connection and pulling discussions out of the light where such ideas might be challenged. How is ‘mastery learning’ disempowering history lessons? As I noted at the beginning of this blog, I think history classrooms have the potential to contribute to insulating young people against disinformation and radicalisation because of the nature of our discipline. However, I have real concerns about the continued focus on ‘mastery learning’ as a one-size-fits-all approach for teaching across all subjects. This is because the ‘mastery’ concept is often at odds with good subject pedagogy in history, as well as wider research on what helps young people to develop their understanding. ‘Mastery’ as enacted in schools is often based on a problematic set of assumptions which:
Where ‘mastery’ approaches are adopted wholesale in history departments, the focus of curriculum design is narrowed to the learning of core knowledge. Definitions are copied down, facts are memorised, consolidation questions (or exam questions) are answered. But the aim in all of these endeavours is to reproduce the knowledge which has already been decided upon in the curriculum. Lessons therefore collapse into rehearsals of correct answers rather than providing space for genuine explorations of history in conversation with the present. I have written more about the issues discussed here in my previous two blogs: HERE and HERE. Focusing solely on ‘mastery’ in history disempowers our subject in three important ways. 1. Failure to understand what impact our teaching is having on pupils First, when we ignore the beliefs and worldviews pupils bring into school with them, and make no space for them to explore their developing ideas and beliefs in light of their learning, we lose all sense of what meaning pupils are making. For many pupils, the result is that their chances of remembering, or indeed taking anything from that learning will depend largely on how well it connects with their existing and unexplored beliefs and ideas. This in turn means missing out on opportunities to develop historical consciousness: understanding the present and the future through the past. More worryingly though, for others we cannot see how underlying racist or misogynist ideas end up being reinforced as they learn about oppressive regimes, encounter anti-Jewish propaganda, or learn about the Nazi methods for seizing power. In a small number of cases, these knowledge sets, untested and unexplored in community, become evidence to support the views they have been sharing with more nefarious communities online. If we make no space to genuinely discuss historical knowledge and pupils’ interactions with it, we will never know what is happening and leave underlying beliefs away from the light of challenge. 2. Leaving young people without a forum to explore their understandings Second, in reducing history lessons to ‘mastery’ we are at great risk of losing one of the most important spaces we have for young people to wrestle with their understandings of the world. Classrooms are a vital space for young people to make meaning in community with their peers. They are a space where young people have to engage with people outside of their circle of family and close friends. A space where they will face challenge, but also have the opportunity to make sense of these challenges. A space where young people develop an understanding of what it means to learn, and try to integrate this with their sense of self. But they are also spaces where we can shut down discussion and debate and reduce learning to recall. Teachers who allow young people opportunities for genuine engagement with historical issues; who enable pupils to develop their own ideas and thinking; who encourage pupils to wrestle with their pre-existing beliefs; and who make space for meaning making meet a vital need for learning, growing and belonging. For some young people this sense of belonging may well be their only point of challenge to simplified narratives and disinformation they are encountering elsewhere. If we offer no space to do this, then young people will simply reject the information which does not fit with their view. When people are de-radicalised, we know that this is a long process and one which involves concerted effort, not only from those helping to do the de-radicalising, but also for the person being de-radicalised. It involves being exposed not just to uncomfortable truths but also being supported through a process of deep introspection and deconstructing of core beliefs. We can model this process every day in our classroom if we attend to the pedagogies of our discipline appropriately. 3. Setting up dangerous misconceptions about the nature of knowing Finally, if our classrooms become places in which the core aim is to embed a set of predetermined knowledge for pupils to ‘master’, then we do almost nothing to ensure that pupils make sense of it for purposes beyond our own assessments (internal or external). For many pupils this is simply boring, but the risks are actually far greater. History is complex and ever changing – a constant search for meaning (P. Lee, 2017; P. J. Lee & Shemilt, 2004; Seixas, 2015). When we reduce the complexity of the past, and the endless debates over it, to a set of ‘core knowledge’ to learn, we suggest that historical knowledge not a living discussion, open to change, but a list of ‘important stuff to learn’. To borrow briefly from Durkheim, there is an attempt to create a school history as something sacred to be known, and to separate it from its profane complications as a disciplinary endeavour towards better understanding. As Faragher argues, it is impossible and indeed counter-productive to attempt to separate the sacred and the profane in school history (Faragher, 2017). To do so is a form of disciplinary violence. We create a false reality in which the identified curriculum knowledge masquerades as historical reality. Learning history is then reduced to a “declaration of faith in that past” (Lowenthal, 1985). In oversimplifying the nature of knowing in history we lead some young pupils to never question where their knowledge comes from at all, or just to lose interest. Again, Faragher argues that “the failure to fully engage middle and high school students in the contradictions between sacred and profane American history helps explain why kids lose interest in American history” (Faragher, 2017, p. 6). For others, the oversimplified world of historical facts is later blown apart when they encounter the counter narrative. It is no accident that Loewen’s ‘Lies My Teacher Told Me’ and Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ are two of the best-selling books on American history of the last half century. For many adults, Loewen and Zinn’s accounts were ‘red pill’ moments leading them to conclude that everything they had been taught at school was lies. These of course are quite mild ‘red pill’ experiences, but any time school history mischaracterises historical knowledge as fixed, it leaves pupils open to rejecting that framing and swapping it for an alternative simplification. History classrooms have to be places where young people get to see the sacred and the profane coexisting. To quote Marc Bloch, we need to make the space for young people to ‘reflect upon [the] hesitancies…[and] incessant soul searchings of our craft’ as the only sure means to pioneer a path towards ‘truth and…justice’ (Bloch, 1992, p. 113). Will the history curriculum stop young people being radicalised? No. But the ways we plan and enact curriculum; the ways in which we choose to give young people a voice in that curriculum; and the spaces we offer for young people to make meaning in schools can provide a pattern which can insulate them more from the risk or help them find a road back. References
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