The Monkey-Proof Box

Curriculum design for building knowledge, developing creative thinking and promoting independence

Jonathan Lear

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781781353288
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Written by Jonathan Lear, The Monkey-Proof Box: Curriculum design for building knowledge, developing creative thinking and promoting independence is a manifesto on how to dismantle the curriculum we're told to deliver and construct in its place the curriculum we need to deliver.

A group of monkeys. A box full of nuts. A lever. A chute. The monkeys excitedly poke at the box with rocks... nothing happens. Meanwhile, one monkey sits to the side, observing. Then, when the others wander off, he gets up and - with a curious push of his palm - presses the lever and the nuts tumble down the chute! Not believing his luck, he eats the nuts, presses the lever again and is rewarded with yet more nuts. He's cracked the challenge of the monkey-proof box.

In their early years, children experience a world full of monkey-proof boxes - it's a time of discovery, observation and experimentation, as they engage in the frustration and joy of learning how to release life's nuts. Then, as they progress through school, learning becomes more formal, easier in many ways. The nuts are handed to them on a plate and something important is lost.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

In this absorbing book, Jonathan sets out how primary school teachers can resist the 'nuts on a plate' approach and deliver a curriculum rich in authentic learning experiences that help children learn from one another and grow into empowered, knowledgeable and creative thinkers who are driven by insatiable curiosity.

In doing so, he inspires educators to unclutter their classrooms of the latest shiny initiatives and to foster a more refined pedagogical approach - incorporating elements of facilitated and concept-based learning - that simply improves pupils' learning.

Suitable for teachers, middle leaders and head teachers in primary school settings.

Contents include: Part I: Curriculum. 1 - Slippers; 2 - Less is more; 3 - Skills; 4 - Tightrope walking; 5 - Planning; 6 - 'Love and hugs, Dave C.'; 7 - Softly, softly, catchee monkey; 8 - Hitches and hiccups. Part II: Pedagogy. 9 - Monkey sex; 10 - Rapid and sustained nonsense; 11 - Nuts on a plate; 12 - Nuts scattered in a clearing; 13 - Across the curriculum; 14 - The awkward banana; 15 - Caveman Dave and the TARDIS; 16 - Mastery and independence; 17 - The monkey-proof box; 18 - A spanner in the works; 19 - Freedom.

Part I:

CURRICULUM

Chapter 1

Slippers

The idea of building a new curriculum didn’t occur to me immediately. In fact, I didn’t really think it was an option at all. There had always been plenty of documents close at hand to pick up and follow, so the thought of creating something new hadn’t entered my head. Because of this, one of the first things I did was to have a look at what was already out there. There were, and are, quite a lot of curriculum packages floating around, but there wasn’t anything that I thought would do the job. Schools are special places. They are part of a community, and whatever goes on in that school should bear some relation to this. A curriculum should be relevant – it should matter. Shipping in an off-the-shelf, ready-made package can be a solution, but it wasn’t the solution for us.

The more I thought about this, the more I convinced myself that maybe building a curriculum from the ground up was the way to go. We were pretty confident that we knew what we wanted. As teachers, we’d grown up with the prescription of various different versions of the curriculum. We understood the need for rigour and wanted a curriculum model that was built on solid foundations. But more than this, we wanted it to be inspiring – the kind of curriculum that went beyond what we’d been used to in the past.

In a previous version of the national curriculum, teachers across the country were supported in delivering whatever it was we were supposed to be delivering thanks to some units written by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). These schemes were the epitome of functionality and included detailed plans for every subject. Coverage of content was ensured, and they were helpfully arranged into units that fitted neatly into a half-term. This usually meant that you had three geography units in a year, three history, three art, three design technology and so on. The mavericks amongst us decided to alternate one half-term of history with one of geography, one of art with one of design technology – just for the sheer excitement of it all. (See my top five QCA units on page 10.)

When it was all organised, we’d cut out the unit titles (using wooden letters – obviously) and stick them to our classroom display boards, so the children would know from day one exactly how rubbish their lives would be for the next six weeks. With this sorted, all that was left to do was deliver the units. This is where things started to go wrong because it turns out that six weeks isn’t actually that long. This could just be the result of my failings as a teacher, but I never seemed to be anywhere near finishing a topic by the time half-term approached. This meant that the last week or so ended up in a mad rush to get stuff done because after the holiday I had to move onto something else.

Nowhere was this more apparent than with the most ill-conceived design technology topic ever created – ‘Slippers’. To be honest, I’ve never fully understood slippers. I get what they’re for, but they’re not really the footwear of choice for your average revolutionary. I suppose I can accept that they have a place in society, for those who apparently can’t bear to have their feet in contact with carpet, but no one will be able to convince me that they deserve a place in the curriculum.

‘Slippers’ was the actual name of a Year 6 unit – it wasn’t dressed up as anything else and it wasn’t even given one of the catchy titles that were dotted throughout the geography schemes (like ‘Passport to the world’ or, my personal favourite from Year 1, ‘Where in the world is Barnaby Bear?’1

Regardless of my reservations, it had to be done because it said so in the scheme of work, and nobody really knew what would happen if we deviated from the plan.

‘OK, children – this half-term we’re learning about slippers.’

Imagine saying that to a classroom full of children, and then imagine the reaction you might get. There were always one or two who seemed vaguely excited, but from the rest of them there was a collective sigh. I hate this as a teacher. In this sense, we’re ultimately no different from a host of other performers – a dissatisfied response from the audience is like a dagger to the heart. To compensate, I decided to go heavy on the enthusiasm and proceeded to sell the topic to them like my life depended on it.

‘Now, we’re not just learning about slippers. We’re actually going to make a pair ourselves …’

A few more perked up at this point so I kept at it.

‘We’re going to design them ourselves – they might be fashion themed or sports themed or maybe like those furry animal/monster type ones – you know, the ones with the floppy ears and googly eyes. I’ve even seen some that squeak!’

They knew exactly what I meant, and thanks to my powers of persuasion, they were now absolutely buzzing. This was the start of my problems.

In hindsight, it’s a terrible thing to raise children’s expectations in the knowledge that something won’t be as good as you’ve made out, but it was too late now. The children were already imagining skipping down to assembly and dazzling the rest of the school with their new footwear.

My first mistake was using the plural ‘slippers’. The QCA scheme actually described the children producing a single slipper, or prototype, rather than a pair. I had missed this. Making one slipper makes even less sense than making two, but I couldn’t worry about that now. We had sewing to do.

When I asked the children about their needlework skills, the last time they could remember sewing was when they were in nursery. And by sewing, what they really meant was stringing colourful shoelaces through a piece of wood with holes in it. I don’t want to go into any more detail about what happened during the following six weeks, other than to say that I still have an overwhelming sense of dread at the merest mention of any textile-based craft activities.

The upshot was basically that neither I nor any of the kids had anything even approaching the kind of skill level necessary to pull off a pair of slippers. What they did produce was barely recognisable as a piece of footwear. There were soles formed from limp bits of cardboard with slices of rubber glued onto the bottom for grip. Some had managed the upper (a technical term we spoke about a lot without truly knowing what it meant) by stapling strips of hacked up fabric to their misshapen cardboard sole. Some still had the needles embedded in them because they had become so entangled that we felt it was probably best to leave them where they were. The children didn’t wear their slippers to assembly. Instead, they remained on the windowsills of the classroom for the rest of the year as a constant reminder of just how inadequate we all were.

I gave myself a hard time over this kind of thing. Slippers is an extreme example, but I found that I was under pressure to get through similar stuff in most of the other subjects too. In the worst cases, it wasn’t simply about not getting things done; sometimes, the children would really start getting into a topic, only for us to realise that it was week five and we only had another week left before we had to change to a new one. The whole business was frustrating, but we kept at it because that’s what it said on the plan.

This exemplifies one of the problems with being a teacher. Most of us do stuff because we’re told to do it, and then when it doesn’t work or becomes unmanageable we blame ourselves, feel guilty about it all and pretend that everything is fine whenever anybody asks. Most of us don’t like to feel that we’re letting anyone else down so we don’t talk about it. This is such a damaging thing to do, yet it’s incredibly common – mainly due to the fact that we really care about what we do and desperately want to do the best we can for our children.

I knew there were topics that weren’t particularly worthwhile. I also knew that I was constantly chasing my tail because I couldn’t fit everything in. I had a sneaking suspicion that the four weeks we had spent gluing screwed up newspaper balls together to make a volcano were probably a waste of time, and that lots of the work I’d got them to record in their books as evidence didn’t actually mean much in the long run. In short, I had the feeling that I was rubbish at my job.

So I decided to say it. I found a friendly and more experienced colleague who I knew wouldn’t judge me too harshly and told them everything. I was expecting a bit of sympathy and hopefully some advice. What I got was a bit unexpected. She said, ‘I know what you mean – I think that too.’

It was a bit of a moment – we hugged and there were tears, then we got a cuppa and started to talk about all of the things that we couldn’t do or couldn’t cope with. Admitting it, and finding someone who struggled in exactly the same way, was like a weight being lifted, and now that there were two of us, we were almost certain that there must be more.

There were. In fact, virtually the whole staff was feeling incompetent – it was brilliant. None of us could do our jobs as we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I:: Curriculum
• Part II:: Pedagogy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright
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