NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 31

Arts education I and the disaffected student

Annie Cornbleet Principal, Daniel House Pupil Referral Unit Hackney, London

Introduction

have worked in education for almost thirty years in the UK and internationally. Since 1987 when I cofounded an international theatre company called CETTIE (Cultural Exchange Through Theatre In Education), I have worked as an arts practitioner and arts education consultant in parallel with my teaching career. I have consistently tried to reinvigorate and inspire young people and teachers through the use of drama across the curriculum. In his excellent book Out of our Minds, Ken Robinson talks at length about the hierarchy of knowledge that makes up the British National Curriculum and how outdated it is in our massively changing 21st Century. As someone who taught both drama and science in the late 1970s I learnt first-hand what this hierarchy meant. When I was being a science teacher, I was treated with respect and as though I was intelligent. When I was being a drama teacher, I was seen as a radical feminist, a hippy, a troublemaker. These superficial stereotypes confirm Ken Robinsons findings: that in the UK (and likely elsewhere) we have a totally different level of respect towards the arts and sciences and this has a detrimental effect on the education of our young people. Given the epidemic of disaffected young people for whom education holds no value, we need to radically re-think the system that we currently have. Arts education, is, I believe, the antibiotic injection required to heal this sickness, and I hope that this article will help others to realise the potential of the arts to re-engage the most difficult and disaffected young people in our schools.

Pupil Referral Units the end of the road?

I am currently the principal of Daniel House, a small secondary school-age Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) or alternative high school in the London Borough of Hackney. I have only been in this post two years after managing three other inner London PRUs. Pupil referral units are legally both a type of school and an alternative to school. Their small size, rapidly changing roll and the type of pupils they teach mean that they are not subject to all the legislative requirements that apply to mainstream and special schools. A PRU must, however, have a policy on Special Educational Needs and appropriate Child
Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

31

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 32

Protection procedures. The 1996 Education Act places a duty on local education authorities or other agencies delivering education services to provide full-time education for young people who are permanently excluded (expelled) from mainstream school. There are other reasons why a young person may be at a PRU, such as persistent truanting and teenage pregnancy. At Daniel House, the student body is made up entirely of permanently excluded young people from the ages of 11 16. Many of them have been excluded for seriously threatening or violent behaviour. They are sometimes referred to as having ESBD (Emotional, Social and Behavioural Difficulties). In a nutshell, our students are unable to be accommodated in mainstream schools and present very serious and complex emotional and behavioural issues at the PRU.

PRUs have very small classes (often no more than six in a group) and will sometimes employ teaching assistants as well. The much greater adult:student ratio means there is a certain amount of success for most of the youngsters attending. However, sometimes even this amount of care and attention does not do the job and young people can become involved in crime and end up at Her Majestys Pleasure (a legal term referring to a prison sentence being handed down for as long as the authorities think it is necessary) in a Young Offenders Unit instead of reintegrating back into mainstream school. This article addresses the value of arts education when working with such youngsters.

32

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 33

Arts Education reaching the parts other subjects cannot reach.

As Ken Robinson put it: In many school systems throughout the world, there is an imbalance in the curriculum. The emphasis is on science, technology, mathematics and language teaching at the expense of the arts, humanities and physical education. It is essential that there is an equal balance between these areas of the curriculum. This is necessary because each of these broad groupings of disciplines reflects major areas of cultural knowledge and experience to which all young people should have equal access. Secondly, each addresses a different mode of intelligence and creative development. The strengths of any individual may be in one or more of them. A narrow, unbalanced curriculum will lead to a narrow, unbalanced education for some if not all young 2 people. The rigid compartmentalisation of subjects within the National Curriculum causes problems, particularly for the arts, which generally are not seen as a discipline. Learning the Periodic Table and remembering it is seen as academic work; learning lines from any play, except perhaps Shakespeare and other literary greats, is seen as a hobby. Fundamental to good teaching of the arts is this aspect of discipline, which somehow seems to repeatedly get ignored. Most drama lessons start with Trust Games, where the right atmosphere for safe and happy learning is created. In my work as a drama teacher and arts practitioner, I have seen these games transform hostility into co-operation as if by magic. Until the National Curriculum was introduced in 1986, art, music, drama and dance all existed as discrete subjects on school timetables. There were drama departments with heads and deputy heads of drama and it held a rightful, equal place in the scheme of things, albeit with lower status than science and maths. But with the focus on you could call it worship of technology and the subsequent integration of drama (back into English) and dance (thrown carelessly into P.E.), things for the arts started to slip backwards and have been slipping ever since. As Ken Robinson says, no one ever came out of a production of Swan Lake and asked who won. In terms of arts education and PRUs, it is possible, with the vision and commitment of senior managers, to keep things going. Music education is common in

PRUs and is one of the ways of ensuring good attendance. I have had particular success with drama. In 1992, while working at another PRU for truanting young people, we put on a small end-of-year performance. One of the students, Jacinta, was transformed by the experience and was inspired to continue her education, receiving high grade vocational qualifications in the performing arts. At her National Record of Achievement celebration, Jacintas mother took my hand and thanked me for saving her life.

Arts Education and the PRU the power of creative education.

In his study of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman included the results of a major survey of pupils and teachers in the United States and beyond. It shows a worldwide trend for the present generation of children to be more troubled emotionally than the last: more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, more nervous and prone to worry, more impulsive and aggressive.3 The arts can be transformational for individual students and can, thanks to organisations like Creative Partnerships, provide entire institutions with new and rewarding opportunities. Creative Partnerships is an innovative government-funded initiative, established to develop schoolchildrens potential, ambition, creativity and imagination. It achieves this by building substantial partnerships that impact upon learning between schools, creative and cultural organisations and individuals.4

Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

33

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 34

Courtesy of Stephanie Gill

During the year 2003 2004, Daniel House PRU had the incredible opportunity of working with Eelyn Lee, an independent filmmaker, through a Creative Partnerships scheme that we devised. Eelyn brought in various different artists to work with the students, at the beginning in groups, later as individuals. The result after three terms work is the innovative, challenging and moving documentary Beneath the Hood. Through rap, MC-ing, poetry and music, we are given a unique insight into students lives following exclusion. Referencing music videos, graffiti, martial arts and cooking programmes as well as including observational filming and interviews, Beneath The Hood experiments with documentary form while providing triggers for discussion around exclusion. The film gets to the heart of this topical issue, raising questions on both sides of the debate about the role of PRUs within an inclusive education system.5

Eelyn joined us in September 2003. She brought in a series of skilled artists/performers who worked with our students in six week blocks on a regular basis. But because of the nature of our intake, often students who were present one week would be absent the next due either to a fixed term exclusion, truancy or other factors not related to the project. Great patience and flexibility are required when attempting to carry out workshops with a sometimes volatile and everchanging roll of students. Eelyn also quickly became a part of the PRU, contributing regularly to staff meetings and preparing clear planning schedules. The whole PRU benefited initially from taster workshops (on portraits, digital photography, games/ groupwork, video workshop). We then graduated to graffiti and drama improvisation, where the students created two fictional characters through whom they

34

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 35

would later express themselves in poetry workshops with Adisa. Performance Poet Jonzi D and musician Kew helped put the six poets work to music. They then recorded them in a professional recording studio. Music videos were created and filmed in different locations in Hackney, while a different group started learning Capoeira a martial arts discipline. Food Technology is a very popular subject and four one minute cooking sequences were included in the final film. At first the students ignored Eelyn in the way that they will ignore teachers. But after a while and in response to the high quality arts workshops, they started to engage with her. The one main advantage she and the artists had was that they werent teachers so it was cool for the young people to co-operate with them. Eelyn commented to me that she was amazed at the difference between the interviews filmed at the end of the project compared to those done at the start. She had succeeded in creating trust that most difficult commodity and the openness of the students interviews provides touching and thoughtful moments in the film. Beneath the Hood premiered at a screening for the Daniel House community (parents, students and staff ) at the National Film Theatre, the leading venue in London for arthouse films. After the screening, one mother who I had had to spend considerable time with persuading to stay, told me she would go home and treat her son differently from now on. When I asked her why, she said because she could see things from his point of view for the first time, instead of being caught up in her own pain at the way she saw things. One girl astounded us all with the depth and maturity of her poem,which was one of the gems of the film. She had hardly spoken while she had been a student at Daniel House. Her performance of the poem in the film increased her status and gained her a very real respect. She has now fully reintegrated into a mainstream school. Her chorus was: Thrown in this place And it feels so wrong But now I have to accept Dis is where I belong Another girl student who impressed all of us with her intelligence, commitment and articulacy says: When the boys throw Verbal grenades

Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

I diffuse them quickly I never get fazed This student achieved seven GCSE passes (final exams taken at age 16) and has moved on to a good further education college to continue her studies. One of the boys had written a poem entitled My Father, which had people weeping in the audience: Families need their fathers Like flowers need water You were the bricks And we were the mortar.6 The film was shown to large audiences at other venues and to an audience of government ministers; future screenings for invited audiences are planned. In addition, a DVD will be available for sale. There is now, thankfully, a strong, detailed and growing body of research both in the UK and internationally that confirms the value of arts education within both mainstream and out-of-school education. It is widely accepted that the arts have a key role to play in developing a young persons sense of self worth and confidence. Excluded young people have no difficulty expressing their primary feelings which for many tend, sadly, to be aggression and violence. They need the tools to learn to control these emotions and the discipline to think before they express them inappropriately. The arts, as many case studies and research studies confirm, provide these tools.

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

35

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 36

At the start of the twenty-first century, young people have developed their own fashion, language and culture as young people throughout time have done, only it seems that the output of some of todays youth represents real anger and disaffection, which has the effect of alienating the wider society in which schools function. Street culture and many of its attendant features (hoods up, trousers down, faces covered etc.) is anathema to a safe, happy school environment. These factors can contribute to a student being permanently excluded from school and ending up at a PRU.

Summary Alchemy: from the negative to the positive

What has become clearer and clearer to me after working in four PRUs in inner London is that education for these vulnerable and difficult young people is a matter of life and death. It is that serious. The healing power of the arts lies in the way we use

Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

Beneath the Hood, Eelyn Lee Productions

36

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

NATIONAL DROPOUT-InsidePg-29651

12/6/04

5:19 PM

Page 37

them to reflect upon the issues of our lives. They give us pause time to look in the mirror and take stock. Will arts education stop the murders and assaults that young people run the gauntlet of daily from happening? Of course not. But it could be one strategy for tackling the vicious downward spiral of negativity from spreading throughout the whole education system. The arts have a major role to play in ameliorating some of the alienation and aggression that young people bring into schools. If we deny this and do not give the necessary status and resources to the arts in schools, we will be missing a real opportunity to tackle the disaffection afflicting so many young people in inner city London, New York, Paris, Johannesburg and elsewhere. There is no other area of the curriculum that touches todays youth in the way the arts do. We must let young people in our schools have some fun and laugh again. We must acknowledge the power of the self-discipline that the arts teach, the need for commitment and stick-to-it-iveness. Arts education must be given its rightful place and status at the heart of any curriculum offered in any school. Only then do we have a chance of reclaiming the hearts and minds of this generation and the next and the next.

Contacts
Daniel House, Clissold Road, London N16 9EX E-Mail: anniecornbleet@danielhouse.hackney.sch.uk Eelyn Lee: eelynlee@blueyonder.com Creative Partnerships London East: londoneast@creativepartnerships.com

Acknowledgements
Film Stills: Beneath the Hood, produced by Eelyn Lee Productions. Photographs: Courtesy of Stephanie Gill.

References
1 2 3 Guidance on Pupil Referral Units: www.dfes.gov.uk Out of our Minds; Ken Robinson Capstone 2001 D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, London, 1996 A report in 1999 by the Mental Health Foundation, The Big Picture, gives graphic evidence of this among children at school. Snapshots (Issue Three, Summer 2004). Article on Beneath the Hood. Creative Partnerships London East. Press Release for Beneath the Hood, CP London East Extracts from the Daniel House Programme: Beneath the Hood PRU web-site: http://www.prus.org.uk

5 6 7

The International Journal on School Disaffection Trentham Books 2004

37