Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

[NorthSouthEast]

This is a sobering, thoughtful, harrowing, blood-boiling read. What Kate Clanchy went through 😡. I’ve put this in FWR as it’s yet another story of a woman being cancelled on the basis of rumour, supposition and hearsay with self-righteous people scrambling to jump on the “be kind” wagon as it rolls another human being and their career into the mud.

Kate Clanchy: I was cancelled. It made me contemplate suicide

www.thetimes.com/article/7681d5ec-3773-4b36-ab95-e4ab409d7899?shareToken=e76def471fd13ded750d7295fd554675

Well yes. Of course. There are trained professionals who deal closely with this.

You may have training. It doesn't mean you have sound judgement, especially when it comes to a case you know almost nothing about.

Yes - I know what is in the book, the child’s tutor told her to stop - she knew better! She even says she knew she would be in trouble, but carried on. If this did happen in real life, a safeguarding lead would need to be involved- so hopefully they were.

Like I've said, you have absolutely no idea what else was going on in the background and who else was involved. Why would you? It wouldnt be relevant or appropriate to the story being told and you dont know any of these people personally,

What a funny way to simplify what I’m saying.

yeah go on then - we don’t let them write about their feeling at all.

Ok cool

You don’t know what’s in the book because you haven’t read it.

I think you’ve proved repeatedly that whatever it is you do in education is pretty worthless. Certainly nothing to the good Kate Clanchy did during her 30 yers of teaching.

Why are you so sure that the other teacher was right and that KC was wrong?

You are so determined to paint KC as the wicked white witch that you can't see your own bias.

alrighty!

I don't understand the hostility of your response.

I'm curious what this means in practise:

'students are supervised and protected by ethical frameworks to protect them when working creatively on something, such as a traumatic experience, which might cause them undue harm. They are discouraged from doing so'

Are students discouraged from working creatively on 'traumatic experience'?

Because trauma unfortunately isn't that straightforward. I'm sure you're aware that PTSD triggers, for example, are often tied to specific details that may have been involved at the time of the event. That might be a strong smell, certain song, etc. It's almost arbitrary. How does one avoid those?

And I'm honestly not trying to do a 'gotcha'. I think these are important questions. How do teachers handle trauma in students?

If this did happen in real life, a safeguarding lead would need to be involved- so hopefully they were.

This is the crucial point, I think, that many seem to skip over.

This book is fictionalised. Much will be omitted and much will be changed.

It's good to discuss the themes that it maybe provokes, but I don't know that suggesting the author be held to account for fictionalised events is reasonable.

not hostile at all

they are very carefully supervised by a professional in the field, as well as a professional student support practitioner

it is negotiated on a case by case basis, with careful risk management. But yes, if the trauma is very recent and raw (such as your siblings being recently killed in an airstrike as in Kate’s book for example) then centering this would probably be advised against, due to the risk of a student becoming overwhelmed, further traumatised, or at least unable to submit.

These are adult students, on a degree course. Not young, inexperienced secondary or primary school children.

I have already answered this.

It’s about managing risk. Of course it is difficult to avoid triggers, you just don’t push the students toward them.

Crikey. And this isn't a course specifically for traumatised people? Just a straightforward arts course?

That wasn't aimed at you, sorry. Just a rhetorical question.

Hmm, I’m wondering what kind of a university course would just be for traumatised people.

the last few years of teaching in higher and further education have been very difficult- it’s well documented, not just in the UK. Mental health concerns have had a significant impact on student engagement, attainment and outcomes. As a result, we have to make more effort to monitor and protect students.

Ok sure!

It just sounds wild.

'...very carefully supervised by a professional in the field, as well as a professional student support practitioner
it is negotiated on a case by case basis, with careful risk management.'

Sounds like no art course I've ever encountered, other than ones that were specifically tailored for certain demographics, i.e. where trauma was expected and prepared for.

It sounds like students are treated as if they are terribly fragile.

To be clear - I am not discounting your experience! It just sounds very strange that arts ed is now treating students like this. I hear you that mental health has been difficult. I'm also thinking of research that suggests that our pathologising of mental health issues tends to worsen, not improve, outcomes.

Are you in a teaching role?

You cannot pursue a child (vulnerable or otherwise) over and over again, going against the authority of a child’s key worker/main responsible adult, just to get them to write a poem about their trauma.

If that is your take from reading that amazing account of her time with her students and their stories, I fear for your humanity. You clearly have a serious issue with her but not for good reason.

Thanks for sharing though, she writes so vividly and illuminatingly about her students - I am off to buy her book.

Exactly. And here, the proof seems to be in the pudding as they say. Her students recognise and value their relationships with her and that she did for them.

I wonder if the more vicious posters on this thread would put so much time and effort into working with such children.

To be fair, these women were not powerful at the time. They, like Damian Barr and many others vaguely adjacent to the literary sphere, built careers off being on twitter constantly, stoking the fires for the Great Purge and jumping onto any RSOH bandwagon. Very bad actors in the whole thing, but I'd still debate now if any of them were powerful.

They're just more of the deafening loud voices on social media that become immediately drowned out when you talk to normal, offline people in the majority of the UK.