Kevin McLaughlin

Many years ago, an education academic posted a picture of kids at Michaela school alongside a picture of the Hitler Youth. The school is a free (charter) school with a focus on strict discipline, a knowledge-rich curriculum and explicit teaching. The clear implication was that the school’s approach amounted to fascist indoctrination, and by extension anyone involved with the school must be morally suspect. I remember the shock of seeing that tweet, which was swiftly deleted. (This was before social media descended into the tribal hate-fest it is now). I was relatively new in education and it was unsettling that a fellow educator could stoop so low and use kids from a school they didn't like to score political points against that same school. I realised then that many in education were activists first, educators second. The activist playbook for years with Michaela School and others like it, was to take an element of the school or the programme (like being silent/attentive or sitting up straight) and then to twist it into something truly malevolent to fit an already decided narrative. At it's worst point, some people actually visited the school trying to get quotes from the kids to say something negative about their school. I remember also that Success Academy in NYC received similar treatment. 'Teach Like a Champion' was criticised as racist, oppressive and even described as “carceral” pedagogy. One education podcast even devoted an episode to the question: “Is it Time to Cancel Teach Like a Champion?” A similar thing is happening with Alpha school right now with people taking elements of the school and portraying them in bad faith as some form of abuse. Over the last week, social media posts from kids were taken out of context and spun into a story that was highly misleading. How we educate kids is a heated topic and disagreement is expected and an important part of how we improve. Criticism of Alpha like that from @greg_ashman and @rpondiscio is serious, made in good faith, and the school would do well to answer it properly. That is what scrutiny of any new model should look like. But using kids to frame a highly misleading narrative that the school is some kind of cult, to imply that anyone involved is a bad person and then encourage a media pile-on from cheerleaders is not acceptable. There are fair criticisms of a school sanctioning kids to use social media. But a 14 year old posting publicly on social media is not the same thing as consenting to have that post reframed by an adult with a grievance against their school. By all means criticise the school. Demand the evidence, and hold them to the highest standard but leave the kids out of it. I am working with Alpha school to try and create a learning platform that is informed by learning science principles like retrieval practice, spacing, explicit instruction and DI and am very hopeful about where this is going. I believe that AI can greatly help with the design of those platforms and help us further what we know about learning. There needs to be evidence and again, the school should be held to the highest of standards. I don't know if I am right, and have no idea whether Alpha school will achieve similar things but I believe in their learning model and want to advocate for the science of learning and and the centrality of knowledge within this new age we are undoubtedly headed into. When I visit Alpha schools I see incredible learning. I see leaders who listen to evidence and adapt accordingly. But most of all I see happy kids, and I see caring adults who have the highest of expectations of those kids, hold them to account and who act as mentors and guides. To see the baying mob describe all of those people as running a cult is not just inaccurate, but deeply unfair. Michaela school in London went on to achieve the highest scores for their kids, many of who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. I have nothing but respect for all the staff who made that school what it is today. In the end, maybe that is the best form of activism. Again, I have no idea of the Alpha model will work for similar kids but I want to put my energy into finding out because I think it's important. That is what the science of learning is for. It is not a side to be on; it is a way of being wrong less often.