Wrestling with SUMO
Anastasia De Waal, 14 August 2009
This week the Times Educational Supplement has produced a baffling report on the nascent changes to emotional skills programmes at primary level. Modelled on ‘the straight-talking business world’ this incentive is dubbed SUMO – ‘Shut Up and Move On’ – and is fast becoming a permutation of the government’s ‘Personal, Social and Emotional Education’ directive. Currently at its inception stage at primary level, SUMO is set to reach secondary schools before long.
Apparently SUMO is a more appealing alternative to ‘wishy-washy happiness classes’ and it refers to the quashing of ‘voices inside your head that highlight weaknesses and undermine confidence’, according to its co-creator, Gill Hodgkinson. SUMO is nothing, it seems, to do with the ancient Shinto practice of grappling with a mutually colossal opponent in a loincloth, in the name of sacred ritual. (Some of the parallels can surely be drawn however? That omni-present internal voice within the mind of the primary-schooler can be mighty tricky to overcome).
At face value this seems at odds with the bordering-on saccharine, coddling environment of the primary school classroom we look back on so fondly; less of the soothing tones of the guitar-playing, maternalistic form teacher and more of the hardline pop-psychology.
On closer scrutiny however, it appears that SUMO is divided into 6 ‘guidelines’, each with equally ambiguous titles:
1. ‘Change your t-shirt’: not an issue with personal hygiene, but a method of encouraging students to take responsibility for their lives and to reject labelling, such as ‘victim’.
2. ‘Develop fruity thinking’: a way of convincing children to think positively.
3. ‘Hippo time is ok’: children are allowed to ‘wallow’ and take time out
4. ‘Remember the beachball’: students are taught that different views are equally valid, drawing on the neat coexistence of many colours on a ball.
5. ‘Learn Latin’: introduces the idea of ‘carpe diem’.
6. ‘Ditch Doris Day’: children are urged to be the agents of their own destinies and to object to Day’s ‘Que Sera Sera’ philosophy.
These rather random terms may sound like something Spike Milligan conjured up, but the principles do contain grains of useful wisdom.
The TES comments that these values are ‘percolating through’ to parents via their children. This, it has to be said, adds a further dimension of the surreal: why didn’t the parents instil these ideals into their children? The six core concepts are all intrinsic to personal well-being and social cohesion; something that hopefully the child absorbs at some level prior to being taught them at school as part of a bizarre Alice In Wonderland’-esque ethical code.
When literacy and numeracy rates are so alarmingly low at primary level perhaps we should adopt the practices of the ‘straight talking business world’ in the teaching of these crucial subjects? PSE (personal and social education) becomes part of the statutory curriculum in 2011, which seems like a step away from addressing pupil competencies in core subjects by adding yet another flimsy mandatory aspect.
The values taught in PSE through simple activities such as circle time are easily embedded into the routine of any normal lesson. Dovetailing standard subjects and PSE is the answer to a rounded education, as Marilyn Tew, chair of the National PSE Association for Advisors, Inspectors and Consultants rightly states that it is vital to create ‘the right climate in which to work’.
As for the proposed induction of SUMO at secondary level, I defy anyone to ask 30-odd sixteen year old boys to ‘develop fruity thinking’.
By Kate Pretsell