I love a good documentary. It could be about almost anything – I’m not that fussy. I’ve watched programmes about emperor penguins, extreme caravanning, beetle fighting – they’re all fascinating and perfect for whiling away time that should probably be spent on more important matters. My two girls, Eve and Imogen, love them too, which I’m really pleased about. It’s good to do things as a family, and listening to Sir David Attenborough describing a day in the life of a whale means that two-thirds of the children are essentially taken care of for an hour without me having to break a sweat.
The documentary I’d come across on this particular occasion was set in the Amazon rainforest. This was an unusual piece of good luck because, unlike most other occasions, this actually bore some relevance to a topic that Eve was studying at school. The episode I’d recorded focused on a little gang of monkeys – in my opinion the best, and definitely the most entertaining, of all the animals.
After telling her about it, and waiting while she shot off upstairs to grab a notepad and pen, we sat down to watch. (I’d gathered up Imogen – who was about five at the time – en route to the sofa, so we were good to go.) It’s hard to say exactly how long it was before things started to go wrong, but within about five minutes, I was thrust into what can only be described as a living nightmare.
Out of nowhere, and with absolutely no warning, we were faced with the most gratuitous monkey sex I’ve ever seen. Now, I was expecting the monkeys to be doing something, but I didn’t think for a second that any self-respecting documentary maker would head into this particular dark corner of animal behaviour. It was incessant, and without even the slightest attempt to protect the monkeys’ modesty with a soft-focus lens or the placement of a carefully positioned banana. The whole thing was played out in horrific high definition.
It turned out that the entire documentary was about the capuchin monkey mating season. As the action continued at pace in front of us, it wasn’t long before their antics led to some pretty uncomfortable comments from the girls. Eve had now drawn up a fairly comprehensive series of notes ready to take into school for show and tell, and Imogen had suddenly decided that she had quite a lot of questions she’d like to be answered. Like any self-respecting dad under this kind of pressure, I decided to lie about what was happening on the screen and come up with different excuses to cover the monkeys’ strange (yet undeniably impressive) performance. I couldn’t turn it off, partly because the girls wouldn’t let me and also because – in-between the bursts of monkey porn – there were some great little nuggets of information about the Amazon. And apparently, as we were about to find out – as well as being pretty active in the bedroom department – they are also one of the most intelligent troupes of monkeys on the planet.
After forty-five minutes, the mating season was finished and the documentary seemed to be winding down. Instead of packing up and heading home, though, the filmmakers had decided to put together one of those ‘behind the scenes’ segments, and within this was a moment that made the entire ordeal worthwhile.
Interested by just how intelligent the capuchin monkeys were, the scientists had decided to set them a test by creating a monkey-proof box. Inside the box was the monkeys’ favourite snack (nuts), and to get at them they needed to press a lever on the front that released the nuts from a chute. Now, the monkeys were clever – they could use tools like sticks and rocks – but they’d never seen or used a lever before. With the box primed and ready, the scientists backed off to a safe distance and watched.
At first, what seemed like the whole troupe descended from the trees. The box was new and interesting and they wanted a look. Before long, the monkeys were attempting their tried-and-tested techniques for getting the job done. They sniffed, licked, nibbled, poked and smashed at the box with rocks. Nothing happened. After a while, they gave up and drifted back into the forest. Whilst all this was happening, one member of the troupe had been sitting to one side just watching. When the others had gone, he got up and went over to the box. After a few sniffs and a poke or two, he settled down in front of the box and looked at the lever. With his head cocked to one side, he reached out his hand, placed it on the lever and pressed. Immediately, the nuts tumbled down the chute. He couldn’t believe his luck, and after a quick check to see that no one was looking, he ate them, and then pressed the lever again and again, each time getting more and more nuts.
When he’d had enough he toddled off into the trees and emerged a few seconds later with a friend. He brought him over to the box and showed him how it worked. After the excitement had died down, the friend was also at it with the lever, stuffing his face with nuts. Along with the entertainment factor that goes hand in hand with any animal-related problem-solving activity, what really stood out was the way in which the scientists summed up the success of this particular troupe of monkeys. They described them as having ‘insatiable curiosity and the ability to learn from each other’.
As a teacher, this phrase struck me instantly, and hearing it made me think about my own two little monkeys, sitting either side of me on the sofa, still trying to get their heads around exactly what it was their dad was making them watch. They are both insatiably curious, but then most young people are.
In the Early Years, our youngest children get to have a go at the monkey-proof box on a daily basis. But as they get older, and as learning becomes more formal, we ditch the monkey-proofing for the path of least resistance – the clearest route from A to B – and their curiosity and creative thinking begin to fade. But what if it didn’t? What if we kept hold of some of that monkeyness? The scientists didn’t teach the monkeys to be curious or to think creatively, they just created the right conditions to draw it out. They could have simply put the nuts on a plate and left it in the clearing. The monkeys would have rolled up, eaten the nuts and then shuffled off home again. The outcome in both cases would have been the same. But thanks to the monkey-proof box, the journey to get there was harder, and the monkeys were pushed to test their curiosity and apply their creative thinking.
The box inspired curiosity because it was unusual. The challenge had purpose because it was real, and the process of learning was challenging. The curriculum we’re generally faced with is nuts on a plate, but if we really want our young people to become the insatiably curious, independent, creative thinkers of tomorrow, this can’t be the only thing we offer up. To give us a chance, we need a blended pedagogy – a range of strategies that allow us to create the conditions we need.
Before we get to the detail, it’s worth defining exactly what approaches we’re discussing:
You could view these two methods as being at either end of a spectrum, but as with any spectrum, there are always things in-between. An example of exactly this kind of in-betweenness would be the idea of nuts scattered in a clearing. You’re probably getting fed up with the nut analogy by now, but I need you to bear with me for just a while longer.
A nuts-on-a-plate approach can help us to efficiently build knowledge and skills (it’s not the only way, but it’s a good way). The monkey-proof box can help to elevate this by creating the conditions that will encourage the children to think differently. The last piece in this nut-themed jigsaw is to do with building independence. If we can scatter the nuts out there in the classroom, then the responsibility for finding them lies with the children – what I’d call facilitated learning. We need to make sure that the structures and means to learn are accessible, but the children have got to do it for themselves.
So, in a nutshell(!):