Category: #21 – DEC, 2016

Escape and Evasion – Randy King

Every self defense program I’ve seen so far has an escape protocol to it; it has some part in the curriculum that mentions that escaping is a great idea, how to escape, where to escape, and what to do. I find, though, that most people don’t actually train to escape, and this becomes quite the issue when it comes to conditioning-type training. If you are part of the relatively new school of conditioning-based training, operant conditioning, or response-based training to stimulus, it is very important that you give your students the opportunity to escape, and reward them for escaping when you’re training the drills. A lot of instructors pay lip service to escape drills – they say that you should have an escape plan, you should have an evasion plan, you should make sure you know what’s going on, you should be able to de-escalate – but then no training time is devoted to the skills of escaping, evading, or de-escalation!

What I find in of a lot of self defense programs is that they are still just a fight program. To use the paradigm that Rory Miller set up in his book Facing Violence, there are seven things that must be considered for self-defense. You need to understand the legal and ethical ramifications, you need to understand violence dynamics, you need to understand escape and evasion, you need to understand operant conditioning, you need to understand “the freeze”, you need to understand the fight, and then of course, the aftermath of all these things. On this paradigm, which I find is the best I’ve seen so far for self-defense, escape and evasion is in the first three things you need to learn! Everybody talks about it, but it seems nobody actually does it. So, when training with your students, you need to make drills where escape is the best option, and it is a rewarded option – running away is okay! Redefining a win becomes very important.

I want you to understand that most of the time, when people come to a martial arts/self-defense class, they expect to learn the fighting part of the situation. But if they’re only learning the fight part, it’s just martial arts, we’re just passing a system down. We’re just showing them that there are ways to deal with violence, but when people get into violent situations, there’s always a lead up, and then a follow up portion. Understanding the lead up to self defense situations is far more important than the self defense techniques themselves. Saying this, you might do every single thing right, you can pay attention, you can follow all the rules, you can know who the bad guys are in your neighbourhood, you can plan escape routes, you can know where the fire escapes are, you can understand where to run and how to run, you can have a great sprint time, and you can still get attacked. I’m not saying that this is going to make you invincible. Understand that there are times when the fight has to happen, but that’s not always the case, and in fact it’s rarely the case.

Getting your students familiar with the mechanisms ahead of time, making sure they understand how people attack, making sure they understand violence patterns, making sure they understand how to run, and where to run, is hyper important. It can be really hard to add this aspect into your curriculum, especially if you like the kicking and the punching and the choking and the throwing. It can be very hard to add some kind of escape drill, because maybe you feel like it’s not fun for your students, maybe you think just paying lip service to it is okay. I’m here to tell you that it’s not okay. It’s your job to build drills that use escape, or that give your students the opportunity to escape.

Something we talk about all the time is that 60-80% of human communication is body language. That includes task-based stuff, so if you say every day “Oh, and don’t forget to escape” but you never let your students physically escape, and you never wire their brains for escape, they won’t believe that escaping is a proper option. When the brown matter hits the fan, they’re going to have trouble going to an escape pattern, as opposed to an attack pattern. Attack patterns are important, but I think escape patterns are even more important, especially in the real world. Yeah, it’s great to be Rambo and beat the bad guy up, but almost every fight comes with hard-won knowledge. Every single fight you’re in, you might hurt yourself, you might break a bone, you might twist an ankle. All these things can happen, and they will affect your life outside of that fight. Most people focus on the thirty seconds to a minute of most violent encounters, where the outside surrounding part of it is much more important. So – how do you teach people to escape and evade? By building escape drills into your curriculum.

There’s only really four things you can do in a fight. You can escape, you can control them, you can disable them, or you can lose. Obviously losing is not on the table – you don’t want to train your students to lose, there’s no point in putting reps into losing. You can choose to lose, you can choose to submit, you can do that, that is fine. You can choose to curl up in a ball and get kicked, you can choose to let people do what they’re going to do to you, and that also can be a viable strategy. You may have been training them in disabling an attacker, you’ve been training them in kicking and punching, you’ve been training them how to restrain people, but you’re taking one-third or one-fourth of their options off the table if you’re not teaching them to escape.

You need to teach your students where to escape and how to escape, and how to map a pattern in time and space to get away from the attacker. You could build a drill where it’s “all right everybody, you’re going to do your counter ambush drill, you’re going to do your favourite setup and instead of going to your follow-up I want you to escape, and I want you to escape to a doorway.” The problem with this is, setting a fixed position for an escape is beneficial for the first one or two reps, but the human brain is lazy, it’s a pattern recognition machine. Its job is to create the most efficient pattern possible. As soon as you create one static place in your gym to run to, after two or three reps the brain is just going to have a pattern to do that and they’re no longer developing the skill set to escape.

You also need to define the parameters of escaping. If we’re escaping from asocial violence, we obviously want to run towards lights and people. More people means more witnesses, and more witnesses usually prevents asocial violence. Lights also mean more people that can see you. If you are trying to stop social violence, you are going to try and escape away from crowds, because if it’s social violence and I run into a crowd of people, and the other person’s trying to fight me and they’re trying to gain status in their group, the more people that watch, the better it’s going to be. So for social violence, you need to get away from the surrounding people, you need to create an environment where they’re not going to gain the social standing they need. Identifying the type of violence is a whole different article – there’s already a number of them in this publication about that. Just understand you need to define the parameters of escape, what escaping is, lights and people, or away from the people who are trying to fight you.

There is a drill I have created that rewards escape, and this is by far the drill that is most stolen from me by every other instructor who meets me, so I definitely want to give this drill to you. I call this drill the “High-Five Drill”. This is a great solution to the problems mentioned above.

For this drill, we start with a person attacking you, and you do whatever movement pattern you’re working on that day, if you’re working a pass or a sweep or a throw or whatever, doesn’t matter. After the student has done the technique, I want them to run, and they’re going to run to an instructor. Why we call this a high-five drill is very simple – the instructor is going to walk around the room holding up their hand in a high-five position, and they’re going to keep constantly changing position and moving around. This forces the student to actually look and find the person, to scan the environment so they find the safe path, and then they have to get to it. The bigger the group you’re in, the better this drill gets. The reason is you get every single person in the room doing the drill at the same time – it’s a “you go, I go” drill. So, my partner attacks me, I do whatever technique I’m working on, I put them on the ground, I do my counter ambush, etc. Then I have to scan the room and find the person who has the high five, and I have to get to that person as fast as possible in the safest way possible.

The rules of the game are simple. I have to find the quickest, safest way to get to the high five person. I have to do the high five from the front, not the side or the back, and this is for the safety of the person doing the high five, and I cannot bump or smash into any other person in the room. In this game, the other people are barriers, rather than people. In real life, you could obviously smash your way through people to escape, but for this drill these people are barriers, corners, alleys. We need to move around these “human pylons” in order to map a safe escape path.

In closing, what I want you to do is make sure your students have an escape pattern, have the parameters and goals of where to escape, and then have a training regimen that rewards the fact that they can escape, and then you’re teaching a true self defense program.

 

Blame, Responsibility and Agency- Tammy Yard-McCracken, Psy.D and Rory Miller

Vctim blaming. Taking responsibility. In assault, especially sexual assault, these are buzzwords that get people to quickly silo into prescribed emotional positions. We rarely find that useful.

In this article we will explore one tool for managing the aftermath of being a victim of violent crime. Our intent is not to present an emotional or political “truth”. This is about taking a situation that many people want to define by a set meaning and adapting it for the benefit of the survivor.

There are some truths we have to explore first:

1) All violent crimes happen within an interaction between the perpetrator(s) and the intended victim(s). Stranger assaults in remote places are relatively rare. Most people are victimized by people they know. There is a relationship. There is communication. The central crime is not the only piece of the interaction and the person cast in the victim role has a degree of control over the antecedents of the crime.

2) Events become violent crimes because of the intent of the bad guy. Looking at point 1— all interactions between any two or more people are interactions. Your morning talk over coffee. The stranger who struck up a conversation on the train. Your waiter taking your order. Any of those events that didn’t become violent stayed peaceful because someone lacked the intent. Bad events are bad events because bad people had bad intent.

3) The agency to affect the world exists. It is inherent in all humans. The perpetrator wants someone to play the victim role. Sometimes the disparity of power is so great that there is no way to evade the victim role. But one can choose the type of victim to be. Sometimes there is no good choice, but there is always choice.

4) Just as violent events have antecedents, they have aftermath. How the aftermath is managed has profound effects on the future of the individuals involved.

5) Mentally, humans are almost infinitely plastic. They have the power to change their views of the world and in doing so, actually change the world in which they live.

Blame, responsibility and agency.

“The person cast in the victim role has a degree of control over the antecedents of the crime.” One emotional response to this idea is that it is victim blaming. If the victim had control, he or she could have prevented it. Having failed to prevent it, the victim caused the crime. The cause of the crime is to blame. The victim is blamed. QED.

We used “QED” (quod erat demonstrandum) so the stance must be at least valid. Truth is another matter.

Our concern is not whether this statement is true or false. Our concern is that the statement is not useful, and this is key. When pointing out a person’s inherent power and agency becomes described as victim blaming, the net effect on any potential victim who listen is a decrease in agency. A decrease in personal power.

And an increase in the likelihood of future victimization

When the impact of violent crime is fundamentally a blow to the Target’s experience of control, decreasing this individual’s experience of agency and power by way of blame serves no one. Except future perpetrators preying on primed Targets.

In the aftermath of a violent encounter, you will play it over and over again in your head. You will wonder if you could have done anything different, if you could have changed the outcome. Here is the tool:

The more responsibility you take, the more agency you will have in the future.

People who have a violent emotional reaction to anything with even the whiff of victim blaming tend to have a strong reaction to this. But think it through. If someone says, “There was nothing you could have done,” this person is telling you, “There is nothing you can do in the future. If you are faced with the same circumstances again, the outcome will be the same. You might as well curl up and give up.” The message runs deep. If there is nothing you could have done, then there is nothing you could ever do. Nothing you can learn, no skill, no training, no wisdom will help you. The power belongs to the bad guys. Now and always. The statement profoundly destroys any chance at future agency, if it is internalized.

Aftermath or not, anywhere in your life, beware of anyone who discourages you from learning, growing, or training. The purpose of training is to become smarter, more aware, stronger, more powerful. If someone discourages that, they have a reason for wanting you ignorant and dull, weak and powerless. Why would anyone want you weak if they cared about you?

The opposite extreme: “It’s all my fault!” can be equally paralyzing. Fault becomes blame and blame becomes punishment. Self-flagellation is not a good place to grow from.

Mentally, humans are almost infinitely plastic. The words people use change how they perceive their choices and from the choices, possible actions. “My fault” breeds blame and self-punishment. “My responsibility” becomes an incentive to understand the variables in the precedents and increase the skills to deal with those variables. It increases agency and personal power. Pause. Breathe. “Responsibility” does not mean fault, does not mean for example, that the target of a rape wanted it, asked for it, or any other reflexive comment you might equate.

Look at the word. Responsibility. At its Latin root, it means to respond. It is on us to choose our response. In this choice there is strength.

We can state categorically that the greater the responsibility one takes in the aftermath of a violet encounter, the greater the possibility of strength. The greater the likelihood that one experiences Post Traumatic Growth instead of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But —

To push any agenda, to tell any survivor what he or she is supposed to do or supposed to feel or supposed to experience is to once again deny them agency. It is a second layer of victimization. Seeing the possibility of reframing blame to responsibility to agency is a tool, not a weapon. Something that a person can choose to use. But it must be a choice.

 

Situational Awareness – Toby Cowern

Situational awareness is mentioned frequently in Self Defense circles. As it should be, it is a vital part of self defense strategy and training, and used correctly can help avoid confrontations outright or significantly reduce their impact.

Unfortunately, many pay mere lip service to Situational Awareness, and barely ‘mention it in passing’, not lingering to look at the details of the subject. For me Situational Awareness is a term which has both breadth and depth, and warrants much more investigation. One of the things I will briefly touch on today, one of the ‘deeper’ aspects of Situational Awareness is what I refer to as Environmental Awareness.

Environment is defined as; the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates. In contrast to ‘Situation’, where we are identifying and assessing the (potential) impacts of unfolding activities, Environmental Awareness is looking at the threats and impacts of the physical space we are occupying.

Living in an extreme environment, as I do, is one of the reasons I address this area in detail. Understanding copious quantities of ice being present on the ground for 1/3rd + of the year has a significant impact on being able to ‘stay standing’ during any type of altercation.

Also noting temperatures can drop to -40c have a profound impact not only on managing bleeding and other injuries, but even being ‘knocked out’ and left for a short time unattended takes on far more serious connotations.

Being without sunlight for up to 22hrs a day, greatly lengthens the preferable time for criminal activity AND means EDC items such as flashlights need to be used with much greater frequency, but also can be more susceptible to damage (A result of such cold temperatures)

Dealing with the cold also means dressing for the weather, having profound impacts on where, what and how you carry items on or around your person.

While I look into cold weather impacts, any other climate will yield it’s environmental specifics that need to be addressed (As I was VERY clearly reminded on a recent trip to Delhi, India)

I will be addressing this subject in much more detail, along with other ‘sub sets’ of Situational Awareness in future articles, but for today, wanted to introduce the basic concept to you.

What are some of the deeper ‘layers’ of Situational Awareness you give consideration to? If you have ideas be sure to share them in our Facebook discussions here

 

Back To Life: Back To Reality, Part I – Dave Wignall

The Martial Arts industry is many things. For a start it is very political. No news there really. It is also very changeable and, at times, even fashionable. A bit like the latest ‘Keep Fit’ download or DVD. “Train like celebrity X, you too can be like (insert name)” and all that hyped nonsense. That said, Martial Arts training is also very rewarding, educational, inspirational, confidence boosting, can help improve self esteem, improve on general health and fitness, instil a great sense of achievement and push us to our physical limits. There is indeed an abundance of good stuff that Martial Arts training can give us that would be hard to dispute.

However, sadly, it also breeds bad stuff. Bad stuff that welcomes greed, massages egos, produces inexperienced instructors, encourages ‘untouchable’ and unchallengeable individuals sitting high on usually self appointed pedestals, or offers a second income once you have taken a quick instructor course if you have the cash ready. Naturally there’s no experience necessary. In fact if you don’t have the money to hand, or maybe you don’t even want to put in any amount of work to achieve this superficial instructor level, you can always go online and buy a black belt certification of your choice with a shiny new black belt to match. You can buy a Karate 4th Dan, Ju-jitsu 5th Dan, or even an (ahem) Expert or (ahem) Grand Master level in Krav Maga and Voila! You are ready to teach anyone who wants to pay you their hard earned cash. No questions asked of course. I mean, what’s the point of credibility in an industry that has few governing bodies that rarely investigate, check and ensure that what is being taught to students is safe?!

The quite shocking and dangerous thing with these clubs and organisations is that once the metaphorical smoke and mirrors clear and break, what is left is the stark belief by many that what is being taught, inexperienced or not, is a self protection system that – when transferred to the street – will work. The harsh reality is, of course, it won’t. Well ok, it could have some level of success, but this is generally down to the individual resorting to their own ‘default’, which could be simply lashing out at the attacker and running away at pace. No skill in that and training is hardly needed, huh? Effective? Yes. Looks good? No. So why then do we see so much convoluted, fine motor skill based defences being taught when, in all honesty, they haven’t really got a chance of being successful? The answer? I believe it is because ultimately, very little is challenged. Techniques and concepts are just accepted and it is taken for granted they will work without question, and therefore the ‘parrot fashion’ learnt technique is duly acknowledged by all that ‘x’ is what you do when ‘y’ is presented. No margin for failure, no margin for error, no tactical application, no strategic implementation, just learn by rote.

I’ve found across my many years of teaching in this industry that challenging instructors is something that aggravates them and, to some degree, the students of these instructors can also be equally touchy. This shouldn’t be the case at all because we are all here to learn, right? Why they react in the way they do can be for a whole host of reasons. Challenge or suggested change can be viewed as a direct attack on their teaching ability, their Martial Arts prowess, or their precious discipline. In case it is overlooked, I will mention at this point that I don’t go in for the hero worshipping nonsense. We are all human beings and some of these people were in the right place at the right time. Years of training along a certain ‘pedigree’ does not automatically make that person right in what they say or do. Yes, they may be extremely good at what they do within a safe and controlled environment, but if it were possible to take what they are teaching out of the Dojo, place them in a violent, real life situation, and see how they fare, I think most would be shocked. All theoretical of course but to know what ‘reality’ is, you have to experience it or at least talk to people who know what they are talking about. You can’t beat experience. Mike Tyson once said “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. I tend to agree.

So whatever the reason may be for these challenges being taken the wrong way, there should never be anything wrong with being asked a question. I advocate it in my club. Are we not all here to learn together, grow together, develop together and in doing so, all remain that little bit safer? If a student of mine presented me with a defence/technique/response that seemed more effective, more efficient than one I was teaching, I would willingly break it down, work with it under pressure and if it proved to be a more practical approach than something I currently taught, I would introduce it into the club. No ego, no feelings hurt, no embarrassment, just being truthful and open. By not taking on board the views and opinions of others, by not even opening the door for discussion, we end up building a very closed and insular environment and culture in which we train. This has no benefit to the student or instructor alike yet sadly, experience has shown that when questions are asked and challenges put out there, illusions are disrupted, dents are created in fragile egos and comfort zones breached. Possibly the worst of all is that when a more efficient method is actually presented, and the instructor knowingly continues to teach the less effective option, the teaching becomes dishonest and as a result, is short-changing the student. “My bat, my ball, my club and I teach what I want to, even if my students are being lied to” is an attitude I have seen adopted by far too many people. It fast becomes more about the instructor than it does the student.

I’ve been actively involved in Martial Arts and Self Protection for 34 years now and have been teaching for around 20 of those years. During that time I have been privileged to have met and trained with some wonderful, experienced people who have been at the top of their game and who, as individuals, have taught thousands of students across the world. The thing is, as a student or a teacher, we have to be clear about the nature of our training. Is it a traditional Martial Art, for example, like Karate or Ju-Jitsu, or is it a sport like Mixed Martial Arts? Certain aspects of each of these can of course cross over into the street arena, but it is a dangerous path to tread if the training processes of the student instil a false sense of ability and security. There are exceptions to the rules, of course – there always are – but these are generally few and far between. When, within the realms of regulated competition, even professionals find it difficult to secure an arm bar or a choke, what hope would your average student – training once or twice a week – have against a committed attacker? If, when training in the Dojo, your fast, pressure-tested knife defence works perfectly against your partner – who helps your defence succeed by attacking half heartedly and then stops mid-flow to let you perform your well rehearsed defence – then I’m afraid that you, your partner and whoever is teaching you in the belief that what you are doing is ‘real’ are all being dishonest and naive.

If you are teaching or being taught Self Protection, you need to identify where the flaws are. If you don’t do this at all and simply accept that in ‘real life’ it will work, you are treading a very dangerous path and false train of thought. Imagine, if you will, trying a roundhouse kick against an attacker in the street. (I never teach these kinds of moves but for those who are not aware, it’s one of those kicks to the head you see in all Martial Arts films.) It works fine on a shiny polished floor with or without training footwear, but this time you slip over on a puddle of alcohol or something equally as slippery – vomit, grass, mud, gravel, urine, you get the idea. That kick could be the last mistake you make as you hit the floor and your armed assailant closes range and bears down on you for the kill. It works a treat in the Dojo, wins points in competitions, helps towards earning your next level for your grading, and looks great on your promotional videos. How on earth did it fail?

Well, the reality is that you have been negligent in your considerations. You have not realised the stark differences between the environment in which you train and the environment outside. You finish training, pleased that you have just learnt a certain technique, strike, weapons defence, lock, choke, takedown, whatever it is, but then open the door and walk back onto the street to make your way home. Back to life and back to reality. Your Dojo is a cocoon of like-minded people who don’t want to hurt you (well, not too much) and will aid you, unknowingly most of the time, in helping you succeed. That is a great and wonderful thing of course, and something to be welcomed. I am proud of all of my students, the mutual respect they show for each other, the understanding, the stories, the insights, the questioning, the laughs, the fun – mostly the fun – but we never lose sight of the fact of why we train like we do and why we train at all.

 

Dave Wignall

Chief Instructor – Simply Krav Maga Ltd

CT707 Israeli Krav Maga Systems Instructor

UK Representative CT707 Krav Maga Systems

www.simplykravmaga.com

train@simplykravmaga.com

Contact: 07971 838338

 

Benidorm and Social Reproduction, Part II – Garry Smith

The most powerful agency is the family, it is our earliest exposure to others and for most the bond is strong. Social reproduction takes place primarily within the family, here language, verbal and non verbal is learned and practised, behaviour observed and copied, attitudes and opinions formed and experimented with and all of these subject to positive and/or negative reinforcement from those who hold the power. In the family or tribe stepping outside shared values, norms and beliefs is a risky business.

We are no different than other families, I witnessed traits in my grandsons that I recognised from my granddad, little behaviours that have passed down through the generations. Perhaps the best bit of our holiday was the time we sat at table to eat, when our kids were at home we always had meals at the big family table, same here. Coming together to eat and talk is quality bonding time and it was wonderful to see our eldest grandson’s excellent table manners and the way he converses with confidence. Sustaining conversation needs a large vocabulary and the skills to use it.

How we talk, what we say and how we say it is usually a good clue to our personality and level of education. In his classic work, Class, Codes and Control 1971, 1973 & 1974, Basil Bernstein pointed out how linguistic differences work. He set out how different social groups use different modes of speech which he called codes; he divided language use into elaborate and restricted codes. I loved his work when I discovered it as an adult student in further and higher education, particularly as I could speak both codes. I felt my world expanding as I was exposed to ideas and knowledge that had hitherto been hidden from me. A couple of years ago I was asked on our local BBC radio to explain my love of Shakespeare as a working class man, Shakespeare being the cultural property of the educated chattering classes, I did so. A women who came on after me claimed I could not be working class because I was too articulate. Get that, an articulate member of the working class is not possible because my working class Sheffield accent was not expected to have a wide vocabulary and the ability to use it elaborately. The middle classes can be quick to shut down something they are not familiar with.

Bernstein was a pioneer in the work of sociolinguistics; he examined the relationship between social class and children’s acquisition and use of language in the family and school. He defined the restricted code of the working class and the elaborated code of the middle classes. Yes he stoked up a political shit-storm and was vilified by many more because he upset their beliefs and emotions and their political leanings. Well I loved his work, it explained my emerging bilingualism, as my wife said early in our relationship, you write middle class and talk working class, I still do, my friend Rory Miller has commented that I hide behind my working class accent or dialect as I prefer.

Most debate on the two codes gets bogged down in the detail and the political arguments, for me I am interested in how language, and the way it is learned and used, continue to produce and reproduce our social identities and the power structures this maintains. I follow where Bernstein led.

For clarity the two codes are both sophisticated, the myth that this is a deficit model has been countered, at the time of publication the identification of two codes and their cultural, social and political roots was a regressive step as seen by the left but as I stated earlier more for political and emotional reasons. Restricted code is particularistic in that it relies heavily on shared understanding between group members, much is not said, it does not have to be. A complex and subtle myriad of shared understandings underpin the use of restricted code. Partial sentences, often very short are all that are needed for participants to communicate fully and effectively.

Elaborated code is universalistic in that it is explicit and comprehensive, full not partial sentences are used so that hearer’s can quickly understand the speaker’s intentions. No opportunity for misunderstanding is allowed, explanations are included where necessary and clarifications of understanding obtained verbally.

Users of elaborated code listening to a user of restricted code will likely not understand what is being said as they do not possess the required shared meaning that underpins it, it is common they will perceive the user of restricted code as having a lower educational ability. Likewise a user of restricted code will likely not understand the speaker of elaborated code, it is possible they will perceive the user of elaborate code as having a higher educational ability.

Bernstein explains how this is brought about by the complex process of socialisation.

“Two general types of codes can be distinguished: elaborated and restricted … In the case of an elaborated code, the speaker will select from a relatively extensive range of alternatives … In the case of a restricted code the number of these alternatives is often severely limited … On a psychological level the codes may be distinguished by the extent to which each facilitates (elaborated code) or inhibits (restricted code) an orientation to symbolize intent in a verbally explicit form.

[W]e can expect … to find … elaborated code within the middle class … In the lower working class we could expect to find a high proportion of families limited to a restricted code” Bernstein 1971.

This was written in 1971 but still describes many communities in contemporary Britain. So as humans we are produced and reproduced in the social groups we are born into, we inculcate the values, norms and beliefs of those closest to us, for most of us this is our parents, we literally soak up our culture, beliefs, emotions and all like a sponge. We inherit our feelings, emotions and a huge raft of scripts for dealing with everyday life. These scripts and the underlying emotions that trigger them guide our actions.

“Language skills are a critical factor in social disadvantage and in the intergenerational cycles that perpetuate poverty. Poor language skills are the key reason why, by the age of 22 months, a more able child from a low income home will begin to be overtaken in their developmental levels by an initially less able child from a high-income home – and why by the age of five, the gap has widened still more.

  • On average a toddler from a family on welfare will hear around 600 words per hour, with a ratio of two prohibitions (‘stop that’, ‘get down off there’) to one encouraging comment.  A child from a professional family will hear over 2000 words per hour, with a ratio of six encouraging comments to one negative (Hart and Risley, 2003).
  • Low income children lag their high income counterparts at school entry by sixteen months in vocabulary.  The gap in language is very much larger than gaps in other cognitive skills (Waldfogel and Washbrook, 2010).
  • More than half of children starting nursery school in socially disadvantaged areas of England have delayed language  – while their general cognitive abilities are in the average range for their age, their language skills are well behind (Locke et al, 2002)
  • A survey of two hundred young people in an inner city secondary school found that 75% of them had speech, language and communication problems that hampered relationships, behaviour and learning (Sage, 1998)
  • Vocabulary at age 5 has been found to be the best predictor (from a range of measures at age 5 and 10) of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood were able to ‘buck the trend’ and escape poverty in later adult life (Blanden, 2006).
  • Researchers have found that, after controlling for a range of other factors that might have played a part (mother’s educational level, overcrowding, low birth weight, parent a poor reader, etc), children who had normal non-verbal skills but a poor vocabulary at age 5 were at age 34 one and a half times more likely to be poor readers or have mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be unemployed as children who had normally developing language at age 5 (Law et al., 2010).”

Jean Gross, Communication Champion, September 2011, www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/

Over 20 years ago I used to teach a class in adult education called ‘Aspects of Social Inequality’. The root causes of inequality are multilayered and inter-related, they result in the continuation of virtuous and viscous circles of social reproduction. Erik pointed this out and then we have all the other issues around gender, race/ethnicity etc. However, the thrust of his article was how this leads to miscommunication and conflict mismanagement.

This article is seeking to tease out some of the intricacies and theoretical explanations to what are effectively tectonic plates of miscommunication that continue to rub up against each other causing continual friction and occasionally massive eruptions of conflict.

This article will be completed in the New Year, and on that note a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.