Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes - Or Who Watches The Watchers?

The beginning of August always sees me refocus on the teaching year ahead. After all there are only two weeks of the summer holiday left until I go back to the chalkface. With this in mind I went into work the tail end of last week to get some photocopying organised, and to have a look at my mail.

Newly arrived as late as ever were documents from the Scottish Qualifications Authority concerning new subject and examination arrangements for Intermediate and Higher Psychology to be implemented with effect from June 2004.

My heart sinks when I see this stuff. For too long have our students been the guinea pigs of changing examination arrangements in Scotland. While I pray it doesn’t happen I predict meltdown in psychology exams next year. There are very good reasons why I say this. Take the new Higher psychology for instance!

The documentation outlining what we have to teach, and what students have to know for examination purposes is woolly and non-specific. This is a bad idea as then what happens is that your Higher Psychology teacher in Inverness will emphasise different topic content than a teacher in Dumfries. I also strongly suspect that these new examinations are in breach of our candidate’s human rights. But this beef is for a later day.

Where there is guidance as to what we have to teach it is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it’s nonsense!

We have to tell our students for example about the work of a ‘Jane Elliot’. Indeed this person appears in examination questions. Only one snag is that nobody called Jane Elliot has ever been associated with psychology!

I think our psychology experts mean a Jane Elliott. If they do then they might want to know that Jane Elliott is not a psychologist, nor has ever conducted any psychological research. She is a teacher, lecturer and diversity trainer who conducted an exercise in 1970 in her primary school classroom in Riceville, Iowa to expose prejudice and bigotry.

Her conclusion, again non-psychological, is that prejudice and bigotry results from an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors. You study class in sociology, not psychology! Her work has never been published in any psychological journal for critical analysis. It doesn’t figure AT ALL in Richard D. Gross seminal work, ‘Psychology: The Science Of Mind And Behaviour. As far as I am concerned if it’s not in Gross then it isn’t relevant. But it wouldn’t be, as its not psychology. Next thing will be that Big Brother will be on our curriculum!

Interesting though Elliott’s work is, Jane does not claim to have anything to do with psychology. This can easily be ascertained by visiting her website at http://www.janeelliott.com/index.htm, where she can be contacted.

I love psychology, and the good folk who study the subject too much to let downright rubbish pass without comment, however unpopular this makes me in the corridors of power. We are entrusted as teachers to impart correct knowledge to our charges. Lets do so? Otherwise we and psychology become a laughing stock.

I was told a meeting in Aberdeen last Spring that one of the reasons we are now doing what we do in Higher Psychology is to reduce the number of pre-16 pregnacies in Scotland! Psychology claims many things but never that it is a successful contraceptive! This kind of drivel must be challenged and I hope parents, teachers and students, now begin to do so with some vigour.