Anyone who has read the book Born to Run will know the trend that was Barefoot Running. The writer spent some time watching an obscure Mexican tribe, the Tarahumara Indians, that does long-distance running races in the canyons of Mexico. The key takeaway from the book and the cult that surrounded it wasn’t about the simplicity of life, simple foods, a lack of modern entertainment or anything else lifestyle-related. Instead, a few individuals decided that the one takeaway from the Tarahumara was that we should all be running in bare feet.
Don’t worry about the slight detail that the Tarahumara run on dusty trails and have never seen asphalt. Forget that they’ve spent their entire lives running. Get an overweight middle-aged man in New York City into some running sandals around Manhattan and all his problems would be sorted. It was a windfall for Nike and the other shoe companies who all made gazillions selling “barefoot shoes.”
Of course, the reality was very different and the barefoot running craze did a fantastic job of singlehandedly ensuring that physios, podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons could keep up to date with the latest model of Audi.
I was thinking about the barefoot running craze the other day when reading about Shirley Boys High School and its experiment with Modern Learning Environments. Modern Learning Environments is a sexy term to describe building a single barn-like classroom and chucking 100 or so kids into the room in the hopes that “collaboration” would drive far superior educational outcomes that actually, you know, teaching the kids.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, Modern Learning Environments were simply another example of a move away from discipline and order. They were, in my view, the result of a bunch of academics, none of whom do much actual teaching, deciding that what this generation of snowflakes and prodigies really needs is the space to do whatever they want and the removal of all the traditional constraints that centuries of pedagogy have refined.
Shirley is but one school that jumped headfirst into this craze, and built its new post-earthquake campus replete with these open learning spaces. Late last year, however, someone decided that perhaps it would be worthwhile gathering some data about the impacts of the new approach. And what did that research find? Unsurprising to a generation of grumpy old men, it determined that there was a huge issue with the functionality of the learning space. As for the students, 70% of the year 13 cohort responded that their education was negatively impacted by – wait for it – distractions from the open-plan nature of the spaces.
Go figure, huh? And the educators agree. Principal of Shirley Boys High, Tim Grocott said the Modern Learning Environment was a trend based on very poor policy and philosophy and went on to comment, quite damningly, that:
It’s disappointing there’s a whole cohort of students going through our school at the moment whose learning is not as ideal as we would like.
There’s so much to comment on here. I’d love to know where the genesis of this form of educational architecture came from. My suspicion was that it was from an overly permissive modus operandi that sees students as poor defenceless things that need to be coddled and given permission to set their own boundaries and expectations. It is, I would suggest, helicopter-parenting turned helicopter-education.
It’s also a fantastic example of an entire sector getting all excited about the shiny new thing and deciding to go headfirst down an alternative path. One that not only wasted tens of millions of dollars, but one that also led to poorer educational outcomes for many students.
I dabbled with barefoot running for awhile and then realised that I’m quite partial to the inched of cushioning that billions of dollars of Nike research has delivered to me tootsies. Luckily I did so before the cult of barefoot running could do me any bodily damage. I wonder what long term damage the Modern Learning Environment cult will end up being responsible for.
Could not agree more. Teaching became behaviour management in recent years and teachers’ PD includes physical restraints course… need to say more ? Yes … Not what we signed up for .
I think the same can be said for many other aspects of chid development. Pandering to every whim, filling up days with structured edutainment, and pedagogy around learning to read. I swear there is an entire generation genuinely uncomfortable (incapable?) of reading “long” articles. And don’t get me started on what AI will do to their prospects of self-sufficiency