The politics of teaching politics: Ambition, imagination and pedagogic prowess

Most people can remember a favourite teacher; someone who really influenced them in a positive way, possibly even changed their life. My teacher, the person that changed my life, was a man called Bill Cullen.

I was not a great student at school. I left school with the equivalent of just one GCSE at ‘Grade C or above’, and even that was in cookery! This led to a short spell in the British Army (cruel, violent, hopefully much changed today) before returning to college. Five GCSEs were completed in the space of nine months and suddenly some academic potential seemed to have been unearthed. And then I met Bill.

Bill Cullen had been teaching A-Level Politics at Swindon College for some years before I enrolled but what I first noticed about him was that he had some energy, some passion…he did not lecture at us but seemed to float and dance around us, regaling us with insights and anecdotes that brought the study of politics to life. Fast forward twenty-five years and I somehow find myself as a Professor of Politics and President of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom (the second largest learned society for the study of politics in the world). I’ve worked hard over the years but it was Bill that created the initial momentum, the spark, the intellectual energy.

Never under-estimate what a profound and positive impact a teacher can have on a student’s life.

And yet maintaining that level of energy must be exhausting.  I know what it’s like to have group after group of students year after year and to sometimes wonder if you are just part of some vast educational machine or if there is something deeper going on in terms of cultivating a rich social legacy. My sense is that there is a powerful ‘legacy effect’ and that when it comes to the teaching of politics those effects are needed today more than at any point in the past. This, in turn, takes us back to the notion of an educational machine and what might be termed ‘the politics of teaching politics’.  Put very simply, the pressures placed on teachers, especially within the sphere of further education, is greater than ever in terms of delivering ‘more with less’. It strikes me that the definition of ‘success’ has altered considerably with the emphasis placed very much more on the teacher not just in terms of successful course completion but also now in terms of stellar grades for all students, entry into the most prestigious universities, vocational success, physical and psychological wellbeing, etc.

Similar pressures are evident within higher education where the impact of marketisation and student choice have changed the dynamic between student and tutor in quite fundamental ways. For many students ‘success’ is defined from Day 1 of Semester 1 as securing an Upper Second Class degree and the role of the most enthusiastic tutor is to persuade their students to take a few risks, cultivate the art of writing, read beyond the set texts and  - most of all – reveal a little intellectual imagination. Why? Because it is these elements that define the chasm between the majority of students that will receive an Upper Second Class degree from the tiny minority that will receive a First Class degree.

Which brings me back to the sphere of further education, the teaching of politics and the themes of ambition, imagination and pedagogic prowess noted above.

Ambition: the challenge that all teachers currently face from infant schools to graduate schools is the impact of external audit and inspection regimes alongside an increasingly constrained curriculum that risks almost squeezing the life out of teaching. The bureaucratisation of teaching to the extent that teachers become little more than classroom technicians is, for me, a real concern. The constraints are significant but somehow we must create the intellectual space for real ambition. Real, in the sense that students don’t focus on getting ‘A’ grades or a First Class degree for instrumental reasons linked to future earnings or high-prestige careers but for the love of a topic, for passion, to test themselves and see how far they can really go. Naive, unrealistic, ivory tower thinking…possibly… but I’ve never met a teacher who (deep down) did not share such broader values and I would argue there is a clear link between passion and performance.

Which leads me to think about the cultivation of passion and the role of the imagination. In this regard I need simply to point to the classic work of C. Wright Mills and what he called The Sociological Imagination (in a book of 1959). His argument was simple: society had fallen into ‘a trap’ reflected in the growth of social alienation, political disengagement and the rise of ‘disaffected democrats’ around the world. Traditional social anchorage points had and were being eroded (tight knit communities, trade unions, marriage, religious beliefs, the notion of a job for life, etc.) and, as a result, individuals often felt trapped and no longer understood their place in the world, let alone how to take control of their lives or shape the future. ‘The promise’ of the social sciences, Mills argued, was that it offered a way of freeing those individuals from ‘the trap’ by providing them with the information through which they could make sense of the world around them, the changing social and economic flows and, through this, exert some degree of control on their lives. In the last fifty years the scale and extent of ‘the trap’ has increased massively within advanced liberal democracies and the most obvious reflection of this is the growth of populist nationalism in many countries.

The simple point I am making is that, in terms of fostering ambition and nurturing an imaginative and playful state of mind that reaches beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room, Mills’ focus on ‘the trap’ and ‘the promise’ of the social and political sciences offers huge inspirational potential. Students who understand and possess what Mills called the ‘sociological imagination’ and I prefer to label the ‘political imagination’ will also be those that achieve ‘A’ grades and First Class degrees.

Which leads me to the topic of pedagogical prowess and cultivating this ambition and imagination – the capacity to connect private troubles with social issues and the everyday lived experience with global shifts. The simple fact is that although teachers are generally brilliant at appreciating and cultivating such skills, the broader educational framework in terms of tight curricula, close management and a risk averse professional atmosphere often squeezes out the space for innovation and the exploration of intellectual cul de sacs. And yet the imagination we seek to nurture is unlikely to be fostered through the careful analysis of a small number of textbooks whose aim is explicitly to almost carry the student throughout the course.

This is ‘the politics of teaching politics’ – somehow inspiring a breadth of knowledge and intellectual inquisitiveness while at the same time being required to focus on a set curriculum with huge pressures to achieve a narrow definition of success – that demands a certain pedagogic prowess.  Like democratic politics itself, there are no simple answers to complex questions and a resolution forged around compromise, pragmatism and common sense is likely to be the best response which is exactly why I have written What Kind of Democracy is This? (Policy Press, 2017).

This is not a textbook. It is not designed to mirror any set curriculum. It is not written solely for students. But it is intended to support students with an interest in politics and society. It is designed to nurture the political imagination by providing short accessible, provocative and stimulating articles on a vast range of topics that should stretch the mind of even the most intellectually malleable student. From fell running to smart forks, from Trump to terror, from poetry to parliaments and from architecture to ashes this book is designed to make students think differently; to turn their way of looking at politics and society (and their own lives) inside-out and upside-down for the simple reason that these are the mental skills that tend to underpin the best scholarship. This book - What Kind of Democracy is This? - is intended to complement the new A-level curriculum and system for Scottish Highers but in a more sophisticated and stimulating sense than set textbooks or study guides. The aim is to make the reader think and to provide an introduction to some of the most influential theories and scholars in the social sciences.

In order to support the teacher and not to overwhelm the reader, the book is divided into sixty short articles – mere postcards – that sit within two longer essays on the changing nature of politics and society. The aim is to allow the book to be dipped into, put-down-picked-up; teachers can highlight specific articles as the focus of a discussion, debate or assignment or encourage their students to produce their own collection of similarly short, pithy and accessible reflections. In terms of style, I also hope that What Kind of Democracy is This? provides a tool through which to encourage students to not simply ‘collect knowledge’ like some primitive hunter-gatherer who simply regurgitates facts and opinions on the pages of an exam script, but also to encourage the simple skill of writing. I am no George Orwell but I do cherish his ambition to turn political writing into an art form. Teachers would do well to get their students to read his short essays ‘Why I Write’ and ‘Politics and the English Language’ as a way of providing the baseline skills for a successful academic career.

Which brings me – once again – to a final note of thanks to all the teachers of politics (and the social sciences) within schools and colleges. I think you don’t really get the credit or recognition you deserve because I know full well that if there are standout examples of pedagogic prowess they are most likely to be found amongst your ranks. Take a look at What Kind of Democracy is This? and let me know what you think. Any royalties that I make on the book will be donated to the Political Studies Association’s Teachers’ Network and will therefore be re-invested not in me but in the excellent work you do.

Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He is also President of the Political Studies Association and serves on the council of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is still in contact with Bill Cullen.

Image: Fischer Twins