The Bullring. A Classroom Experiment in Moral Education

172 Pages·1970·2.325 MB·English

by  A. J. Grainger (Auth.)

THE BULLRING
A CLASSROOM EXPERIMENT
IN MORAL EDUCATION
by
A. J. GRAINGER
PERGAMON PRESS
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Copyright (g) 1970 A. J. Grainger
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First edition 1970
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 70-104001
Printed in Great Britain by the European Printing Company, Bletchlcy
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For
ALICE and JAMES
"The field in which it is most important that ordinary boys and
girls should learn to exercise a common-sense judgement quickened
by imaginative insight is that of personal relations. . . . This is not
something which can be taken for granted or left to traditional
methods of indoctrination. In a contracting world, where all men
are neighbours but by no means necessarily friends, everybody
needs an education of the imagination and the will to enlarge the
area of his concern and acceptance of responsibility."
Half Our Future, THE NEWSOM REPORT
F O R E W O RD
IN spite of what the author has to say, it is possible to read this book
and overlook the fact that it is essentially a serious treatise on
"moral education". This is mainly because the presentation is so
beguiling, the experiences recorded so vividly alive, and the com-
mentary so free from categorical imperatives that it is not easy to
credit it with a moral purpose. Morality, like medicine, must
traditionally be dispensed in nasty doses. The term itself, "moral
education", has a musty Victorian odour about it that conjures up
quiet classrooms engaged in catechetical instruction on the finer
gradations of sinfulness. The implicit aim of such teaching was to
produce good children, that is to say, not good for anything in
particular but compliant, conforming, and controlled. The teaching
itself was often no more than preaching reinforced by dire threats of
present punishment and future perdition.
The first step away from this de-moralizing approach was an
attempt to socialize morality and moral teaching. Dewey, along with
other progressive educators, began to insist that morality was not
derived from books but from life and that teaching morality had as
much influence on character development as information about the
mountains of Asia. Good social feelings and social perceptions could
be developed only through a genuinely social medium such as, to
use Dewey's expression, "a miniature social group in which study
and growth are incidents of present, shared experience". This was
an argument for the use of group techniques which was as far as
Dewey could go or wanted to go.
The next step was ushered in by developments in psychoanalysis
and led to a psychologizing of morality with the addition of such new
dimensions as the "super-ego" and the "unconscious". How to
introduce these radical ideas to a school system seemed at first an
ix
χ FOREWORD
insuperable task, the only solution to which was the creation of a
special school. This was done and quite successfully in a number of
so-called progressive schools, but it still left the ordinary school
out of touch with the new developments.
More recently, there have been a few attempts to introduce the
dynamics of morality to the ordinary school in the guise of a be-
havioural science curriculum purporting to acquaint the students
with recent developments in the field of human behaviour. The
course generally consists of exercises making use of laboratory
equipment that seek to focus the child's attention on psychological
processes taking place within him. From all accounts, the children
are generally entranced with these psychological games and soon
find that the classroom atmosphere thus generated is highly con-
ducive to the loosening of speech and feeling. Exulting in the new-
found freedom, the children tend to switch from the initial cognitive
and perceptual tasks to those involving group dynamics such as
role playing and social interaction, and, within a short time, it
becomes abundantly clear that these curricular innovations are
little else than a pretext for the formation of miniature social groups
intent not only on sharing experiences but doing so on every level of
consciousness. Since, however, it is based on a curriculum that can
be spelled out in the school brochure, this approach is not as
mystifying and, therefore, as threatening as a blatantly free discus-
sion group. The educational establishment is apt to treat it indul-
gently as a bee in someone's bonnet, a piece of lunacy to be tolerated
in the service of broadmindedness. It is prepared to recognize that
certain teachers are inclined to pass through peculiar phases when
they experience the itch to be different or to try something different,
and that if permitted to do so, the afflicted members may hopefully
work the madness out of their system and revert to normal, educa-
tional practice. At the same time, the establishment is eternally
vigilant lest some apparently innocuous novelty turns out to be a
Trojan horse with a great potential for generating enormous and
devastating changes. Within the confines of minimal change, how-
ever, educators are quite aware that a certain amount of mild experi-
mentation is very good for the liberal reputation of a school and
FOREWORD xi
may attract interest and attention from higher educational circles.
The "Bullring" takes quite a different approach, and there is
nothing stealthy or disguised about it. Not only is the teacher
without a curriculum, but the very title by which the class comes to
be known is guaranteed to raise the hackles on the necks of the
traditionalists. It suggests excitement and violence, attack and
counter-attack, cruelty and courage, and, somewhere along the
line, perhaps a dreadful moment of truth. As in a Kaff ka novel, it is
never made clear who is what in the elaborate metaphor that
dominates the proceedings. We never discover who is the matador,
who the bull, the picador, the judge, or the spectator, but there is a
vague indication that the roles are all interchangeable. The situation
is, therefore, an open invitation to fantasy, and it is not at all sur-
prising that the participants take full advantage of the occasion and
seem even to plead for rnore.
The author's own conceptions of the Bullring are as free-floating
as the fantasies of the children. For him it is sometimes a home,
sometimes a prison, and sometimes a castle wall, meaning that you
may feel at ease in it, incarcerated by it, or kept outside it by the
invisible barrier of non-acceptance. Moreover, he is not content
simply to experience the Bullring for what it is, but he also wishes
to understand what happens in terms of theory. His theoretical
sources are many and varied; he uses psychoanalysis (Klein and
Winnicot especially) for the individual response; group theory and
Τ group theory (Bion, Berne and others) for the interactional
response; several classroom theorists (Wilson, Morris) for the
educational response; and last, but by no means least, literature
(Golding, Grimm) for the imaginative response. This adds up to a
surprisingly rich depiction of the events taking place within the
ring, and where his usual sources fail him, the author is not above
drawing on Zen buddhism and other esoterica.
The "Bullring" as an experience can be viewed from the orienta-
tion of the teacher and from the viewpoint of the children. All the
participants in the ring are at various times perplexed and groping,
and the confusion and understanding and purpose increase with
the pandemonium. Yet, even when it looks as if it is simply not
xii FOREWORD
going to work and that chaos and confusion will prevail, the magic
of the transactional process gradually begins to exert its peculiar
influence so that group formations surprisingly begin to evolve.
The psychological task for the child within the "Bullring" is to
become "real", to see himself as others see him, and to resolve within
himself what Piaget once referred to as the two moralities of child-
hood, the one bowing respectfully towards the adult and the other
emerging from social interaction with peers. In the ring, the two
moralities are further duplicated by the sex factor which infuses
its own specific differences in moral outlook into the group situation.
The morality of the child, when confronted by the morality of the
adult, may become unsure of itself and withdraw into resentful
silence. Erikson once spoke of the humiliation of being a child,
and there is no doubt that children react to this humiliation by
either becoming cocky, aggressive, and attention-seeking or shy and
subdued. The protocols in the book faithfully record many of these
responses. The trust, to which the children so often refer, is closely
related to the consideration offered to the child by the adult. I am
reminded by one of Piaget's studies in which children were asked
how they felt about being pushed aside by adults or ignored by
shopkeepers when they went shopping. The younger ones tended to
affirm that adults had priority because they were more important
and busier people, but with the older children what emerged was
the deep resentment over the humiliation of not being considered.
It seems to me that what the author tries to do over and over again
with the young people in the "Bullring" is to give them back this
consideration. In their enthusiasm at obtaining this, some of the
children go overboard and become rude and inconsiderate them-
selves, but over a period of time many of them seem to acknowledge
the golden worth of this attitude. Under its aegis, the children
settle down gradually in the "Bullring", violence diminishes and the
bull and the matador sit together in fraternal dialogue.
I cannot help feeling that the teacher in the "Bullring" has a
much tougher assignment than the conductor in a therapeutic group.
Not only is the conductor the therapist and nothing else, but he
also confines his contact to the group. The teacher, on the other
FOREWORD xiii
hand, has to play two separate roles; in the one he is a dynamic
interpreter of human behaviour perceiving what goes on in front of
him in terms of the dynamic theory of the unconscious and reacting
to it with analytic detachment, and, in the other, he reverts to being
a traditional teacher preserving discipline in the ranks of the students
and, at the same time, helping them to process large amounts of
information. It is hard to work as a divided self with professional
pulls in different directions. The difficulties are further magnified
by the large numbers in the group and by such extraneous distur-
bances as visitors, none of whom are generally permitted in a thera-
peutic group.
Nevertheless, when all is said and done, what comes through in this
remarkable piece of reporting is the success of the venture. The
visitors are impressed, but of more importance, the children them-
selves hand out naive but honest testimonials. One cannot help but
be impressed by the sincerity and integrity of the author. On my
ratings, he scores highly on most of Wilson's moral categories,
especially "phil" and "emp", and is, therefore, by definition a good
model of the "morally-educated person". He has the capacity of an
analyst to look at himself and within himself, and when he makes
mistakes, as any innovator must, he reports them without gloss.
We get to know when the children hate him and when they love him,
when they respond to his patience, his permissiveness, and his
tolerance for regression, and when they are exasperated by his
psychological interpretations, his "nosiness", his use of "Freudian
hog wash", and his earlier tendency in the group to interrogate too
much. WTe find, as we move from the first to the second "Bullring",
that he is becoming more skilful in interpretation, less intrusive
to the group dynamics, more inclined to deal with the group than
with the individual, and less likely to fall back on sociometric tests,
tape recordings, etc. He is also increasingly aware that rules and
regulations (even those deriving from the Tavistock) are a function
of the security of the group leader and that with experience he is
able to leave more to the good sense of the children. At this point
the group can become a mutually creative experience for all con-
cerned, so that the teachers not only teach and the students not only
xiv FOREWORD
learn, but both are involved together in the process of psychological
growth and understanding.
This brings me finally to the unrecorded larger group made up of
the author's colleagues of whom all were invited to the "Bullring",
but only a few chose to come. One takes it that the author experienced
his share of criticism as well as compliment and was no doubt ex-
posed to all the arguments of tradition and veiled threats from
"anonymous authorities" when the noise level and the acting out
reached a critical level. It is hard to deal with resistances and resent-
ments in children but even harder when these emanate from one's
colleagues. The author has convinced himself and has certainly
convinced me that the "Bullring" worked to the advantage of the
children; there was no reason to doubt that it would not work
equally well for the teachers. They, too, have their need to under-
stand and to be understood, to feel and to be felt, to accept and to be
accepted, to tolerate and to be tolerated, to change and to be changed.
Why not then a "Bullring" for teachers? I, for one, will be anticipa-
ting with great interest and high hopefulness the author's next step in
this direction.
E. JAMES ANTHONY
Washington University School of Medicine,
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
PREFACE
THE principle of encouraging children to find out for themselves
and to conduct their experiments with the raw material of common
everyday objects is well established in the earlier years of schooling—
say, from 5 to 12. But the young adolescent is beginning to move
away from the world of "objects" and finds the world of "persons"
of more immediate and intense concern, questions of identity—
"Who am I?", and questions of morality—"What ought I to be
thinking and doing?" are of pressing importance. This book is an
attempt to show one way in which the principle of encouraging
children to find out for themselves at first hand, so well understood
during the first years at school, may be adapted to help older
children in the understanding of the world of persons.
The Bullring tried to provide a safe area in which young adoles-
cents could find out for themselves what sort of persons they and
their friends and their enemies were in relation to one another.
It was thus an attempt to extend the principle of free discovery into
the realm of personal relationships, to help children to discover
themselves and to discover a morality by which to live.
Since the Bullring was in essence an experience of personal
relationships and not merely a discussion about them, it follows
that the children and the teachers were in an unusual sense "at
risk". However, I believe that the risks taken were justified by
results, and that unless we, as adults, will risk being personally in-
volved in the moral education of children, such education is likely
to remain an affair of the head without ever touching the heart.
Leicester A. J. GRAINGER
Note—Pseudonyms for teachers and children have been used
throughout, and in some cases the identity of the teachers has been
further disguised.
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