“They should teach that in school….”

One of the academic studies I haven’t had time to pursue (so only blog about) is a thematic analysis of editorials in medical journals – with a focus on the many many “musts”, “need to s”, “shoulds” and “have to s” imposed on doctors, “policymakers”, and so on.

Education is more prone to this, and from a wider group of people. Everyone has their idea of what “they” should teach, ascribing to schools magical powers to end social ills by simply putting something on the curriculum.

Much of this is very worthy and well-intentioned. People want their children to be prepared for life. That the things suggested may not lend themselves to “being on the curriculum” with any degree of effectiveness is rarely considered.
That curricula are pretty overloaded anyway is rarely considered.

Anyway, the UK Organisation “Parents and Teachers for Excellence” has been keeping track of these “X should be taught in schools calls” in 2018 so far.:

How often do you hear the phrase “Schools should teach…” in the media?
We’ve noticed that barely a week goes by without a well-meaning person or organisation insisting that something else is added to the curriculum, often without any consideration as to how it could be fitted into an already-squeezed school day. Obviously the curriculum needs to be updated and improved upon over time, and some of the topics proposed are incredibly important. However, there are only so many hours in the school week, and we believe that teachers and schools are the ones best placed to decide what their students need to know, and not have loads of additional things forced on them by government because of lobbying by others.

So far, as of today, this is the list:

So far this year we count 22 suggestions for what schools should do with pupils:
Why We Should Teach School Aged Children About Baby Loss
Make schools colder to improve learning
Schools ‘should help children with social media risk’
Pupils should stand or squat at their desks, celebrity GP says
MP’s call for national anthem teaching in schools to unite country
It’s up to us: heads and teachers must model principled, appropriate and ethical online behaviour
Primary school children need to learn about intellectual property, Government agency says
Call for more sarcasm at school is no joke
Schools should teach more ‘nuanced’ view of feminism, Girls’ School Association president says
Schools ‘should teach children about the dangers of online sexual content’
Schools should teach children resilience to help them in the workplace, new Education Secretary says
Government launches pack to teach pupils ‘importance of the Commonwealth’
Schools must not become like prisons in fight against knife crime, headteacher warns
Schools should teach all pupils first aid, MPs say
Call for agriculture GCSE to be introduced as UK prepares to leave the EU
Councils call for compulsory mental health counselling in all secondary schools
Set aside 15 minutes of dedicated reading time, secondary schools told
Pupils must be taught about architecture, says Gokay Deveci
A serious education on the consequences of obesity is needed for our most overweight generation

Teach girls how to get pregnant, say doctors
Start teaching children the real facts of life

I am confident there are a lot more out there PTE haven’t been linked with. From sarcasm to “how to get pregnant” to first aid to intellectual property to resilience.

I do wish someone would do my study on medical journals’ imperatives for me!

The imperative voice in medical journal editorials

I’ve long wanted to do a little study – though in my experience no study is ever “little” – which is available to anyone in the entire world to do if they have the time and inclination (and resources)

Essentially I wished take a year or so of editorials from various medical journals and assess how much imperative language used. The seemingly endless “musts” and “shoulds” and “needs” that tend to be as inescapable a feature as the words “more research is needed.” I would like to assess exactly who “must” do this-or-that, and what the this-or-that tends to be. Often the subjects of this imperative language are those old standbys “stakeholders” or “policymakers”, adding to their holding of stakes and making of policy duties. Often it is rather specific bodies, often it is more generalised groups (“doctors”, “consultants”, “junior doctors”) It would be interesting to have the benefit of some kind of empirical study of this phenomenon.

For all the status of the medical profession, doctors do not seem to be a terribly happy bunch.   In the piece I just linked to I originally had a section in the opening paragraphs more explicitly exploring how much of this was contextual – related to working patterns, social attitudes, etc. – and how much was something inherent in the profession of medicine itself, either in the practitioners or in the practice. As I wrote in that review:

Lewis Terman’s classic study of “gifted” individuals, published in 1954, found that physicians tended to feel inferior relative to those of comparable attainment in other fields, and the Grant Study, George Vaillant’s epic survey of adult development, following the Harvard Class of 1944, identified self-doubt as the feature distinguishing physicians from control subjects.

In Myers and Gabbard’s highly readable The Physician as Patient we read of the physicians ultimate impotence in the face of death and much disease, and discussion of the defence mechanisms used to manage this. There is also a tendency to conscientiousness that can easily tip over into obsessionality.

Of course, there are non-conscientious doctors, and no doubt plenty of very happy doctors, and doctors who lack of the feelings of inferiority identified by Terman and Valliant (although Myers and Gabbard write that to a certain degree the oft-purported medical narcissism is a defence against the unknown and uncontrollable)

The essential point remains however. It has always struck me that – admirable as it is – the culture of audit and of quality improvement can all too easily tip into a kind of self-flagellation. There is no end to the potential improvements would could  make to one’s own practice. It can be difficult to separate out the individual from the role, especially the role of the individual within a system, and to over-personalise the findings of an audit.

I wonder too about the endless imperative language of editorials feeding into this tendency. With a certain amount of irony, a recent Lancet editorial “When the doctor is sick too” illustrates the style perfectly in its closing paragraph:

The Academy, the RCP, NHS England, NHS Employers, and Health Education England need to work together to provide solutions without stifling individual actions. Junior doctors need to lead on actions, supported by their organisations. But overall, family structures and small groups work better than huge multidisciplinary teams in supporting the health of junior doctors. Consultants and managers, please take note.

I am not disputing anything that is being said – indeed (perhaps more than most editorials) I would fully support what is being said, especially about the relative benefit of “family structures and small groups.” Yet it is more the tone of the imperative language used that struck me as typical of a certain kind of editorial.
It can be easy to spot the point in an editorial where the author switches from descriptive or evaluative language into something-must-be-done mode.

I find the issue most acute in papers with an educational bent. Surveys of the degree to which topic A is taught in medical schools will almost always find that topic A isn’t taught enough, or taught properly, or taught in a way that students feel emboldened to fill out a Likert scale self-assessing their competence with “Very Competent.” Topic A therefore needs to be, must be, or should be more integrated or even included in the curriculum. In papers on medical education published outside the specialist medical educational literature, rarely if ever is there much discussion beyond a few cursory words on that fact that curricula are already quite overloaded as it is, and while Topic A is no doubt wonderful if not life-saving, not all goods are reconcilable.