A couple of years ago, the then Education Secretary (Damian Hind) visited my school. As a lifelong Labour voter, at the end of a bruising decade of austerity, I was a little uncertain as to whether I should accept the request. Indeed, my School Business Leader (who he was really coming to see as a result of her excellent work with the Schools’ Buying Hub) was even more conflicted, as she was a lifelong Unionist and ex member of staff at the TUC.

But we weighed up that it was better to have the ear of the Education Secretary than not, so come he did. His car was greeted at the school gates by a protest group campaigning about better funding for SEND (which was, and is, most definitely needed).

He toured the school and sampled the many extra curricular activities which are well known for (although not the pistol shooting as a re-shuffle was due and ‘his people’ felt a photo here might be used as a metaphor in the press! He had a long meeting with myself, the Buying Hub and my SBL about how to achieve best value through collective purchasing.

As the meeting concluded, I told him that efficiency savings were all well and good, but there wasn’t enough money in the school system and gave examples as to how this underfunding was undoing a lot of the work done to create a fairer society. He listened, and then told me that he worried about this a lot and that he was pressing the Treasury for more money as he knew I was right.

This caught me off guard as I’d fully expected him to parrot the ‘you’ve never had it so good’ DfE line. But here was the Secretary of State admitting that he was worried about what to do. He showed a human vulnerability (as Brene Brown calls it). Despite our deep ideological differences I saw him as a human being first, politician second. We had a useful conversation.

As he was about to leave, the protesters had moved to outside of the main school entrance. Again, to my surprise, Mr Hind offered to speak to them. I went to talk to the protestors and explained that now would be a very good time to have a constructive conversation with the Secretary of State.

They shouted at him for a full five minutes before he had the opportunity to talk. “Schools have never had it so good” he parroted back, as if a switch had been flicked in the back of his head…

The silence of the corridors – and the shouting in the darkness.

I’ve always had a perfectly lovely time on Twitter, where I tweet my thoughts on leadership, cider and early 90’s Grebo, under the name @southgloshead. I tend to avoid the ‘beef’.

However, not a day goes by when teachers, commentators and educationalists aren’t metaphorically shouting at each other and expressing outrage at someone else’s views.

Earlier this week it was about Gavin Williamson saying something about mobile phones. Yesterday, the NEU was arguing with itself about exclusions. Today, it was about a leader at one of the new Behaviour Hubs singing the praises of silent corridors – and (true to Godwin’s Law) being called a fascist for doing so.

However, my least-favourite Edutwitter rumble, is the ongoing battle between the ‘Trads’ (Sharks) and the ‘Progs’ (Jets). If you’ve missed this epic struggle (which if you’ve spent more than 10 minutes on EduTwitter you won’t have done), here educationalists subscribe to one of two tribes…

On one side you have the ‘Progressives’ – advocating a practical, thematic curriculum.

On the other side are the ‘Traditionalists’, advocating a knowledge rich, instruction-based curriculum.

‘This sounds like a rich and worthwhile debate about core principles of education’ I hear you cry. And you’d be right – if that is what it was.

But almost every time, ‘Prog’ is made a proxy for ‘left-wing’ and ‘Trad’ a proxy for the Right.

This creates two tribes, burning with righteous indignation at any views, ideas or research proposed by the other. If a Trad suggests anything they are naturally a fascist puppet of the Tory Government, whereas if a Prog suggests anything then they are almost certainly a communist, who probably listens to exotic and dangerous Jazz.

And this would be funny if it wasn’t so toxic.

Debate – yes. Abuse – no.

I am not suggesting for one minute that big educational themes shouldn’t be debated – they absolutely should be. We as professionals working in education, and society as a whole, will have differing views on how best to achieve our common goal of developing educated, responsible, emotionally literate and happy young people.

I am not even suggesting that there should be less passion in this debate.

But we do need to be polite.

Shocking as it is, I have seen countless examples of fellow educationalists being personally vilified on Twitter because they subscribed to a school of thought not matching the orthodoxy of one of the tribes. Here, the individual’s character is attacked, not just the idea which they have suggested.

At its worst, it has degenerated into name-calling (including sexual remarks – yes – from fellow educators!?) and being compared to Hitler and/ or Stalin. Some good educational commentators have left Twitter as a result, depriving us of their ideas.

If you don’t like the idea – ignore it. Better still, listen to it anyway and think about why it challenges you.

“Be passionate about listening“

Brene Brown talks about ‘being passionate about listening’. Covey talks about ‘seeking first to understand, then be understood’.

Sadly, EduTwitter on a bad day doesn’t go in for listening to the opinions of others outside ‘our tribe’.

And this is where bad manners and small minds do real damage to the educational outcomes of pupils.

If we discount half of all educational ideas because they don’t align with some vague ideology (or worst still, lazy tribal group-think) then we may miss something which will really help the children at our school.

I really enjoyed Paul Dix’s book on Behaviour (called a Prog by some) and have successfully used many of its ideas. I plan to read Tom Bennett’s book (a Trad to others) next, and I do quite like children walking quietly down corridors… We have an Enquiry-based foundation curriculum at Blackhorse (Prog), but are big on direct instruction and teaching children times tables (Trad).

We need more curiosity and less judgement.

More evidence, less ideology.

‘Evidence-based practice’ is the current zeitgeist in education right now – and not a moment too soon!

Sadly, for my entire 24 year career, politicians (and in the social media age, teachers themselves) have selected policies not on whether they actually work, but on whether they align with an ideology.

I have been guilty of it myself – lapping up things about brain gym etc because they seemed ‘hip and happening’ and ‘liked by the cool kids’ (as I’m a hip and happening kind of guy!).

This has done enormous damage to the educational outcomes of our young people for many years, as the pendulum of educational initiatives swings from the ‘progs’ to the ‘trads’, and back again, without nuance or evidence.

We seem to never start with ‘this is a problem, what research is there about possible approaches which could work?’ but always… ‘this is a problem and here is an untested solution, by someone in my echo chamber, which fits with my ideology’.

Be more kind.

As is usually the case, there are no deep wisdoms or truths here. Just my own observations on something which is holding us back.

Our profession has never experienced a time when information and ideas are more freely available – which has enriched our professional than ever before. But if we are to make the most of this gift, please:

1. Don’t close yourself off to new ideas by only following people in your ‘tribe’. Better still, don’t belong to a tribe at all.

2. Listen to ideas (and I mean really listen) – even (or, actually, especially) if they don’t sit well with your own ideology. If you don’t like them, nobody is asking you to adopt them (this is a feature of our educational system which has more freedoms in terms of pedagogy than almost anywhere in the world).

3. Follow evidence not ideology. In the third decade of the twenty first century we really should be over that nonsense by now.

4. Be more kind. If you wouldn’t say it to your Gran – don’t say it on Twitter!