Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

as unchangeable and they blame themselves for their helplessness’.
    (By the way, the flip side to learned helplessness is what we seem to allow to develop in our Gifted and Talented children which is an inability to deal with failure because they have never experienced it. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? They don’t know, they’ve never been in that situation before. The biggest disservice we do our G & T children is not letting them fail every now and again. Ten out of ten consistently with the same child is not good enough.)
    The Gordons argue convincingly that ‘learned helplessness’ needs to be addressed using a ‘three-legged stool’ approach which (1) confronts the reasons why the child has developed such a response, (2) seeks to understand the nature of the ‘root beliefs and distorted perceptions’ that the child carries and (3) that gives the child ‘the tools to change’. In other words, as a teacher once told me, ‘Don’t ride the bike for them!’
    A primary school in Bootle shared with me their ‘Four-B’ strategy for helping children think for themselves. Whenever a child became stuck, ratherthan resorting to a state of learned helplessness they, instead, went through the four Bs of, and in this order, Brain – Book – Buddy – Boss (‘Boss’ being the teacher). In other words, when they felt they were stuck they had to spend some time thinking about it for themselves. Then, if they were still stuck they were to consult their books or the board. If, after that, they still felt stuck they could go to one of their peers. This could be ‘informal’, going to a friend and seeking help, or ‘formal’ where the role of the child in the ‘Expert Chair’ was to help those who had reached the third B. Be reassured that these ‘buddies’ will also be learning. You can’t really know whether you have learned anything until you can put it into your own words and teach it for yourself to someone else. As Virgil said, ‘As you teach so you shall learn, as you learn so shall you teach.’ (Insert
Thunderbirds
joke here – you know you want to.) The fourth B is when the child comes to you for help, something you should only give if they can prove they have exhausted the other three Bs first. Another version of this I have heard of is ‘Three before me’ or ‘Four before me’, where the child can only go to the teacher for help if they can demonstrate they have attempted three or four different strategies for trying to think for themselves first. In other words, in a managed, structured and supportive way, you are actually teaching children how to think for themselves.
    So, in the interests of encouraging children to think, and for themselves, it is worth moving away from the ‘put your hand up if you’re stuck’ approach in the classroom. What’s more, it is also worth moving away from the ‘put your hand up if you know the answer’ game too. This is especially apparent when you observe a ‘hands up question and answer’ session in a classroom and see the 80:20 Rule in action. Also known as the Pareto Principle after the turn-of-the-century Italian economist who noticed that 80 per cent of the land was owned by 20 per cent of the people, this rule describes nicely how 80 per cent of the responses come from 20 per cent of the children, the same 20 per cent. Which means that large groups of children can sit there for extended periods doing absolutely nothing and, because every time you ask a question you receive the sort of answer you were looking for, you think the lesson is going well.
    What’s more, if you do pick on a child who isn’t answering, if he or she looks dumb enough for long enough you have to move on anyway.
    Some schools have banned the ‘hands up’ approach altogether, 14 such as the Jo Richardson Comprehensive in London claiming that ‘the ban on putting hands up has improved attention levels’.
    Another benefit of eschewing the ‘hands up to respond’ scenario is that it helps you avoid having to say, ‘Don’t shout out!’ 100 times a day, especially important when you think that often when we say don’t shout out, what the child hears is, ‘Will you stop being so enthusiastic with yourright answers. Your learning’s getting in the way of my teaching, now stop it!’ Sometimes you can do a ‘shout out’ activity; sometimes you can do a ‘shout in’ activity where they have to say the answer but only so they can hear or else