Teaching, for me, is not the passing on of technical knowledge from one vessel (me – who frankly feels quite lacking in technical knowledge. Indeed, quite lacking full stop right now) to another (the student). However, I appreciate for some learners that is what they feel they have signed up for. Indeed, that transactional process is exactly why they are there. I give you my time for 12 to 36 months, you give me knowledge and skills that will allow me to a) get a job or b) move on up to the next qualification. We’re rungs on the ladder.
If that is the view of some learners, we still owe it to everyone in our classroom to practice teaching in a way that offers them much more. Whether they choose to actively engage with it is a decision only they can make. But we should not approach education even at just Level 2 as pure transfer of information and skills. I have been engaging with hooks’ work recently. Her point isn’t that every learner must want emancipation or transformation. But that even if the learner’s stance is purely transactional, the teacher’s ethical position can’t be (hooks, 1994). While hooks focuses on Higher Education (HE) in her work, to me it can be applied in any educational setting where learners find themselves working within unequal systems of power. I would argue that this description defines FE.
Yes, of course, knowledge and skills need to be taught. But so does socialisation into the craft, heck, into life. And what I mean by that is probably very different to what you may think.
I am privileged to teach to cohorts of (predominantly) working class young men at our centre. This means I have the opportunity to give them the tools to disrupt the narrative. To show them that the path that may be presented to them as inevitable or the only way, is in fact just one path of many. It’s not that these young men don’t have aspirations, as was the discourse prevalent during the Blair years. It’s that they don’t have opportunity. More than that, they often don’t have the cultural capital to neither recognise something as an opportunity nor harness it when it comes along. Worse, and most telling, is that they often don’t believe they have the right to occupy spaces where opportunity exists. We must take responsibility for enabling our learners to achieve their goals, not just write them down so we can say they are in fact ‘aspiring to better’ while in the next breath telling them to be realistic. Because what does that mean? Dream big but expect less …? No, not on my watch.
I am an advocate for strengths-first approaches when it comes to students. And in recent supervision talked about the need for the government to use this same strategy when it comes to the reforms they are looking to introduce in FE Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Ensuring the same quality of provision in Vocational Education and Training (VET) as is seen in academic pathways i.e., sixth forms which deliver A Levels.
Just making the statement in this way further entrenches views about a two-tier FE system. Saying in effect that one is better and for the other to improve it should become more like the first. I found myself saying that this approach will make people bristle and disengage (not the words I used, I was blunter than this), because nobody likes being told 1) they aren’t doing a good job or 2) that someone else is doing a better job. Especially when it feels like they are drowning in work, expectations, pressure to perform. So, I argued to come at it from a strengths-first approach, talk about all the good things we’re doing and lead in from there.
However – and this is the crux of it – what if actually what is needed, rather than tweaks and changes to the current system is recognition that we cannot create a fairer more equitable society by tweaking systems which are designed to maintain it?
What if, instead, we recognise that a two-tier system exists to filter people, based on differences that are in place preschool and then reinforced and embedded through early years, primary, secondary and eventually further education.
If we admit this. If we name it. Then what we accept is that it’s not that we need to extend, modify or renovate current establishments, it’s that we need to demolish and rebuild. Otherwise, we will continue doing the same harm, just more gently, using slightly softer language.
Is there a situation, a political party, a government that would even allow such a revolution in education to erupt? No. I don’t believe there is.
To recognise that doing your best in a system that will produce the same results regardless, feels like teaching is an act of futility. None of us want to see ourselves as part of a qualification or outcomes factory. If we do then it’s difficult to get out of bed in the morning and turn up to class, because what’s the point, if through all my resistance and disruption the same inequalities will persist? How do we continue then?
hooks doesn’t offer us a template for systemic overthrow, for the kind of thing we envisage when we think of revolution. Instead, she offers a practice of refusal. If we evaluate our own practice, put it under a microscope and really interrogate it – are we offering our students the opportunity to develop their whole self? Or are we trying to separate who they are in the classroom from their identity, pretending there is neutrality and equality? Get bums on seats, qualifications in hand and then labour into the pipeline. Or are we encouraging them to challenge us, to express their opinions? Are we prepared to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations and importantly, arguably most importantly – are we prepared to listen? Really listen? Because “How young men and boys are seen and engaged with today will shape the men they become tomorrow.” (King-Hill, 2025)
Much of the conversation about masculinity and what it is to be a boy or man in society today uses damaging deficit language. I have seen a number of people wearing hoodies sporting the “Boys get sad too” logo, and while I am pleased to see men’s mental health being championed, I think it is important to ask ourselves why. Why do boys get sad? Not just how can we support them when they are, but how can we stop it in the first place? Perhaps we could start by accepting that boys and young men are not an ‘homogeneous blob’ (King-Hill, 2026) without agency, who are a problem to be managed. They are individuals whose lived experience is valid and directly impacts the way in which they interact with the world, including you – in your classroom.
Because if we are not listening, there is a whole community of misogynists out there who will willingly scoop up the young men we have discarded, welcome them into their flock and make them feel seen and heard.
We mustn’t look at hooks’ approach as only being relevant to HE. If we do, we are saying that critical consciousness, wholeness, freedom, voice are only appropriate for those who have been filtered through a system that was rigged from the get-go. 55% of the population of 18-year-olds. When you break that 55% down further you are denying up to 86% of working-class men from low socio-economic backgrounds. (Department for Education, 2025)
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, the system is not broken. It works exactly as those it serves the most want and need it to. So, what are you going to do about it?
References
Department for Education. (2025). Widening participation in higher education: academic year 23/24. Westminster: Department for Education.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Abingdon: Routledge.
King-Hill, S. (2025). We’re in this together: Reframing masculinity for young men and boys. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
King-Hill, S. (2026). Reframing Masculinity for Young Men and Boys: We’re in This Together. Boys’ Impact.
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