I'm not good at writing

And why I'm going to do it anyway.

I’m not good at reading and writing. I feel like this has been my inner voice forever. But reflecting back, maybe it wasn’t forever. I remember a time when I loved writing. I wrote a story and felt proud. 

My writing age 5

At age 7 I wrote a story about The Purple Post Box, a place where you could post your dreams and go on magical adventures. I have a vivid memory of being in the school classroom writing, feeling excited. This memory has stuck with me because I felt so proud. I thought my story was good and that was all that mattered.

Maybe there have been times since then that I have felt proud of my writing, I’m not sure, but slowly, throughout my life at school, being judged, tested, graded and told I wasn’t good at reading or writing, this became my inner voice. I remember at age 8 having to walk across the school on my own to borrow books from the reception library because I wasn’t good enough to borrow the books that the rest of my class could read. At age 10, there was a ‘remedial reading’ list on the classroom wall. I was made to go out of the classroom and read to a parent, if I did well, I got a star. I had to get 10 stars before I could be removed from the list. I tried really hard but my name never left that list on the wall. At age 13 I had to read aloud in front of the class, I recall my heart pounding and the growing dread that it would be my turn next. My nerves made it worse, I stumbled, faltered and couldn’t read the words. People laughed. I remember at age 15 struggling through reading Hard Times by Charles Dickens, the prescribed text for our English GCSE. On finishing the book I felt a sense of accomplishment. I felt I had gained some insight about the meaning of the book and wrote it in my essay. I was told I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong, but the process of being judged and graded killed any enjoyment and sense of achievement I had felt at reading the book. These are just a few of the multitude of ways, throughout my school experience, that I was told I am not good enough.

It took me well into my twenties to read a book for pleasure. The first book I remember enjoying reading to myself was Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, lent to me by my now husband, who is an avid reader of all things. (He was always told at school that he was good at reading and writing!)

In 2021, I published a children’s craft book and still didn’t feel I was any good at writing. To be fair, it doesn’t include that much text!

My book - Adventures in Cardboard

Unschooling parent and writer, Lucy Aitken-Read often writes about ‘school wounds’ on her blog and Instagram account. She describes school wounds as ‘the shame from specific incidents that happened at the hand of the teachers or students who were cogs in a toxic system. It’s the oppression of your character and choices because of the long term and systematic messaging from your school days…’ I feel like my schooling wounded me and had a lifelong negative effect on my self esteem around reading and writing. Through my years of attending school in the 1980’s and 90’s in the UK, I feel my experience being taught to read and write was pretty standard teaching practice, one filled with rewards, punishments and a heavy dose of shame. I’m not sure if it has changed all that much today, we have just dressed those rewards, punishments and shame up in more child friendly language and digital classroom point scoring apps. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are some wonderful teachers who truly care and support young people throughout school. My issue is with a system that tests, grades and pits us against each other from an early age. It’s a system based on extrinsic motivation; you learn to get the gold star, the grade, the good job, rather than learning because it’s interesting and joyful. It’s a system that eroded my confidence in reading and writing for a long time. 

In the essay Children, Learning and the Evaluative gaze of School, Carol Black writes, ‘The kids who grow up under a negative gaze, the ones who day after day, year after year, feel themselves appraised and found wanting –– these kids pay the greatest price, their psyches permanently damaged by it, their futures irrevocably harmed.’ I have felt this. 

Even those who get the grades, the gold star or the good job, are altered by the system of assessment; that constant ‘evaluative gaze’. In his books Punished by Rewards, and Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn writes extensively about how praise and rewards diminished intrinsic motivation and enjoyment in learning. Through reviewing multiple studies on motivation, Kohn concludes that ‘students who are told that an assignment will be graded are less likely to enjoy what they are doing’.  He continues, ‘Even a terrific story, or an exciting science project, quickly becomes less appealing when it is constructed as something you have to get through to snag the A or 100 or gold star. The more a child is thinking about grades, the more likely it is that his or her natural curiosity about the world will start to evaporate.’

Constant assessment and grading against your peers can do worse than diminish motivation and joy in learning, it can have long lasting mental health consequences. ‘Some make themselves sick trying to meet or exceed the "standards" that it sets for them. Some simply vanish into those standards until they don't know who they would have been had the standards not been set.’ states Carol Black in their essay. 

Sure there are times when passing an exam or demonstrating that you are competent in a subject to gain a qualification is necessary, but does that process need to start at age 5?

For you it might be something different, maybe your inner voice says ‘I’m not good at math’ or ‘I’m not creative’. So often I hear that voice echoed by parents at the craft workshops I run, they are so worried about not being good at art, that they won’t try. The thought that someone might judge them is so powerful it prevents them from sitting down to draw with their child. They miss out on a beautiful moment of connection because their inner voice is telling them that they are not good at art. I see this fear in children in my workshops too as they get older. Preschool children throw themselves into their art making wholeheartedly, without questioning or second-guessing, they are fearless and unencumbered by how art ‘should’ look. As children get older, most of whom attend mainstream school, they begin to restrict themselves for fear of making ‘mistakes’. They are less inclined to take risks or be experimental. They are also more likely to look for affirmation from me or another adult. They seek the ‘good job’ or gold star to validate what they have done, rather than feeling their own innate sense of satisfaction and pride in their work.

Beautiful embroidary created by kids

If assessments and grades were removed from school, I don’t believe everyone would suddenly be great at everything, we all have different skills and interests, but being constantly assessed as a child can stop us from trying and more importantly enjoying learning. I believe, rather than being a useful teaching aid, what constant testing and public evaluation teaches us is to grow up comparing ourselves with others and to equate the idea of success with being better than someone else. It is an idea that is both a product of and produces a culture of individualism and fits very nicely in with capitalism. It teaches us that having more than someone else, be that more points for your classroom avatar, gold stars, better grades, a higher paying job, lots of shiny consumer goods; this is what makes you successful. As a parent it is easy to think ‘I want my children to have a good life and be sucessful’, the problem is, when we view sucess in this way, within this capatilist system, for you to be sucessful, it means someone else has to fail and to have less. I’m not OK with this idea of sucess.

These are my opinions based on my experiences, observations and research. I would love to hear your opinions. Was there a time when being assessed had a positive effect on your relationship with learning? If you are a teacher, do you feel that testing in the classroom benefits children?

After 12 years of mainstream schooling, being tested, graded and judged, I felt so much anxiety around literacy that it has taken me 35 years to get back to that point of my 7 year old self, enjoying writing. I refuse to be defined by that ‘evaluative gaze’ any longer. Maybe I’ll write some more Purple Post Box stories 35 years later.

I may never be a great writer but it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, I’m going to write and enjoy it. The process of writing is helping me untangle all the thoughts that swamp my brain. It is helping me to think clearly and develop coherent opinions and ideas. And in the process of writing, that inner voice is getting quieter. I hope my little story may encourage you to try something new, something that brings you joy, connection or clarity of thought, without worrying about being ‘good enough’ and in the process heal any ‘school wounds’ you may have.

Me trying wheel throwing for the first time

* Just a note, I never give out gold stars in my workshops and try hard to refrain from using the ubiquitous ‘good job buddy’, choosing to reply with a less judgemental comment like ‘I can see you (insert observation like) filled the whole page with colour (or) worked really hard on your artwork’.  Or I will turn round the question and ask ‘how do you feel about your artwork?’, after all that is what really matters, not adult praise or comparison to peers.