You Can’t Teach That

It’s statement spoken so often during training sessions I've lost count of the amount of times that someone did something out of the ordinary, a little bit special, a trick to beat someone, a flick, a piece of magic that was instinctual, and someone watching claimed - ‘you can’t teach that.’

It's said in jest of course. Someone doing such an action must have seen it or practised it before, it wasn't literally magic, it was just a bit special, unexpected, beyond the average. There is a bar for everything in life, we have expectations and goals that we define as normal, what most people should be able to achieve and then there is something beyond that. But is there a truth that in some instances 'you can't teach that?'

When I was in my second year at Morley Victoria, an Ofsted Outstanding school in the UK, our head teacher liked to read non-fiction. In fact I don't think he'd read a work of fiction for 20 years. He would go on courses during the summer, listening to guest speakers, delving into everything education. That summer he became besotted with Malcom Gladwell's theory that in order to achieve expertise you had to put in 10,000 hours of training. Gladwell had cited the Beatles and their trips to Hamburg as an example, the fact that they'd spent all this time grafting away. What I asked at the end was - surely if that was the case, why weren't the Rolling Stones making better music now than they had in the 60's? Plus, if it simply meant 10,000 hours of hard work, everyone would be The Beatles, the world's greatest band wouldn't be special, anyone could simply graft away and come out as a master craftsman of that specific subject. 

We spent more hours than that driving a car, but as the hours pile up, you don't become a better driver. The hours you spend in a car aren't designed to improve your performance, it's like walking or eating. We perform these acts almost subconsciously, not with an aim of improving them, but to simply act them out. What makes us quicker and stronger at walking is in the technique. It's in the specific teaching of which section of the foot and leg to use, in the training of the muscles at the gym. 

The point my Head Teacher was trying to state in this summer seminar was that we, as teachers, as a school, shouldn't have any excuses about our cohort not attaining the set level 4 mark at Year 6 SATs. If we put in enough time and effort with each child, the springboard interventions, 1:1 reading, making sure that every minute of class time was devoted to learning, then the hours added up, the information, the skills, the knowledge would be fully embedded and everyone would succeed.

At the time, this all linked to the buzzword/phrase 'Closing the Gap'. It happens constantly, ideas cycle as the system rebels by what has come before - bright classrooms are replaced by the beige, being a winner is no longer as important as being a participant. The idea of 'Closing the Gap' was that a school's concentration should be placed on those who weren't succeeding in order to bring them level with the rest of the cohort. It seemed a strange thing to say, because surely those who were already ahead, who were considered 'gifted', for whatever reason, in a certain subject, would stagnate, when surely, if they were given the same tools, should actually accelerate beyond where they were and the gap should actually increase. 

During the past couple of years in the UK, there has been a desire of the government to 'Level Up'. They want to gentrify and build up lower socio-economic areas so that they come in line with more affluent cities and areas, but how do you prevent those at the top, who not only want to stay there, but desire  go beyond where they currently stand from improving as well? There's a famous story about the production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It's a play whose focus is supposed to centre on the female teacher, Blanche DuBois. Yet it became quickly apparent during the first weeks of shooting that the film was becoming about Stanley due to the prowess of Marlon Brando's acting. The solution wasn't to sack Brando or request for him to tone down his performance, they went and brought in Vivian Leigh. For many years The West battled against the prospect of socialism, balked at the idea of the collective to put emphasis on success through innovation, the individual; Armstrong, Hilary, Superman, Banister, Einstein. But just like cycles in education, there's now Closing the Gap and Levelling Up. How can we teach in a way that makes everyone equal, when, quite evidently, we're not? When apparently there are some people who have ascended beyond what could be taught?

Last year, in the Premier League, Erling Haaland joined Manchester City and scored 36 goals, the most ever in a Premier League season. He'd made the most difficult league in the world look like Ligue 1. Critics of such a record would point to the fact he's playing in one of the best teams to have ever been assembled (certainly the most expensive), with one of the best managers in history. But was he always this good? Could he have broken such a record if he had moved the season before? More importantly, the question is - did he become better? Was he being taught? Surely, the answer is yes. He trains daily, he analyses tactics, hits the gym, Haaland must be learning. Yet, why him? What is it that makes him this special player and not one of the classmates he shared a primary classroom with? His father was an international footballer, but not one of the greats, and how many players have we seen dwarfed by their father's aura? Paul Dalglish, Jordi Cruyff, do you think either would have been given a game if clubs hadn't been in awe of their dads?

It's a start though, children following, being indoctrinated into the same way of life as their parents. A mum paints, a child is likely to want to join in, there's likely to be an emphasis on art. Parents and grandparents are able to pass down this expertise to their progeny, but also value whatever this is very highly. Yet, even then it doesn't always work that way, there are those who rebel and go in the exact opposite direction. A friend of mine at school had a deacon as a father, she certainly didn't follow him into the church.

Yet there's the opportunity, Picasso's father was an artist, growing up in such an environment, given the opportunity to experience and analyse such a world is a start - Aristotle was a student of Plato. Like Newton said - [We're] standing on the shoulders of giants. We don't learn in a void. We might go on to transcend beyond what we were originally taught, but the foundation has to be laid.

So is it the desire of certain individuals? Do they take this original learning and experience and bend it to their will? Again, if that is the case, what gives them such inner strength? Where did they find the power to go beyond? To mentally fight through inevitable setbacks and come out on top?

Twice, last year, in sporting contexts, I watched two of our students triumph in different contexts, ones which had nothing to do with their taught technique, but simple will. I'd like to think that this had been installed in them, that through daily interactions and the ethos, the vision of the school - Inspire, Evolve and Endeavour - they had been taught subliminally to go until the end, to get over the line. Yet would it have happened with every child in the school or was it just because it was them, their nature, rather than their nurture? As a teacher your job is to present knowledge, to show skills, what you present doesn't deliver identical outcomes, but it has to play a part. What if Messi had Alan Ball as manager? What if Aristotle had been raised by Pol Pot?

Inevitably, nobody, including myself, goes into teaching without thinking they are going to make a difference. Great teaching makes a massive impact on learning and the standards of students. The rest of the world agrees - it's why 2% of GDP is spent on private education alone. What produces those flourishes of genius will continue to be debated, but each of the people and moments that transcend our expectations have a start, a person responsible for setting them on that path.