Marshmallow claps and frozen children: sitting on the carpet in the modern ‘on-task’ primary classroom

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how young children experience the moral and bodily discipline of the modern English ‘on-task’ primary classroom, in which they are expected to sit quietly and still for long periods on the classroom carpet, listening to what teachers know. It details the conditions of the classrooms, a performance-focused environment centred on delivering a knowledge-based curriculum, rooted in educational legacies emphasising social order and conformity. Staff employ different strategies to ensure compliance, including controlling the physical and sonic environment, and children’s bodies themselves. The paper details how this leaves children feeling physically uncomfortable and vulnerable to difficult emotional experiences, as well as how they find ways to move and speak their critique of this education model. The study draws on a multimodal ethnography of a Year One classroom, within an ordinary English primary school, and a week-long ‘rapid’ ethnography in a Year One class in an ‘outstanding’ teaching school.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• primary
• school
• children
• carpet
• sitting
• silence
• conformity
• on-task

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Dr Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Professor Colleen Mclaughlin and Mary Jane Drummond for their ongoing insight and support throughout the research, and to Professor Pat Thomson and the reviewers for their valuable comments. I am grateful to the children and staff who welcomed me into their classrooms, and shared their thoughts, feelings and humour.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘Hello Song’ by Peter Weatherall, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcTZ9Km7kCQ.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/J5001731/1].