I didn't particularly enjoy school - well, not the social side, anyway. I did like learning things, but I always felt uneasy, as though I didn't quite belong, and that I had nothing in common with the other kids. Even as a twelve year old I can remember reflecting on this, and wondering what exactly was wrong with me. I know now that there was nothing wrong, and that this had a lot to do with the fact that I am an introvert. It's not that I don't like people - I do - but I, like approximately a third to a half of the population - find social interaction draining, as opposed to extraverts who feel perked up and energised by being around people. I best recharge by spending time alone. I like to think and reflect, and take a bit of time to come up with my ideas. I'm not keen on spending a lot of time in crowds, or having to come up with on-the-spot answers. I find small talk exhausting, and when whoever is leading a service at church says 'find someone you've never spoken to before and say hi to them!' I feel like someone has reached down my throat, grabbed my intestines and attempted to make balloon animals with them. Introversion is
not the same as being shy, or socially anxious. The same me who finds chatting at church hard is not at all shy about getting up on stage and singing into a microphone. It's just a preference for a certain way of functioning. As introversion and extraversion are at each end of a continuum, we might be more extreme in our preference, or we might find ourselves more towards the middle.
The thing about mainstream education in western culture is that it is largely built by and for those with extraverted preferences. I read a great article recently by the author Susan Cain. In it, she discussed the need for schools to function in a more introvert-friendly way and although the context for her article was American, much of what she wrote about was applicable to the UK, too. She pointed out that schools are often set up, both in terms of physical layout and ethos, in such a way as to favour extravert learning and working styles. Culturally, the tendency is to think that it is the loudest, most outgoing, most outwardly energetic who have the best ideas, who make the best leaders, and who are the most successful. The best ideas come from people collaborating with each other at every stage of the creative process and there's something not quite right with those who wish to work alone. We need to share! Share everything! Now! I've often encountered evidence of this thinking, but two examples that I've come across lately stand out: first of all, while chatting with a mum who wanted her child to 'come out of her shell' - I'm all for children gaining confidence socially but this mum seemed to want more than that: she wanted her daughter, who seemed a perfectly lovely introvert, to become what she wasn't. The second encounter with this thinking came when I noticed a 'What Literary Character Are You?' quiz appearing all over Facebook. Liking books, I thought I'd take the quiz for a bit of fun and there, in the middle of it, was a question that asked what I felt my biggest flaw was. It gave me a choice of answers, one of which was 'I'm too introverted'. How, may I ask, is extreme introversion a flaw? If you think I'm just being a bit sensitive about the wording in a daft quiz, it's worth pointing out that just a year or two ago, there was debate amongst American healthcare professionals over whether or not introversion was an indicator of mental health issues. Thankfully it was decided that the wording in the fifth edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should be changed to reflect the fact that introversion is not a condition.
If it is true that there's a cultural bias - certainly in the western world - and if this cultural bias extends into our education system, then we're not doing up to half of the nation's children and young people any favours. Experience as a child, a teacher and a parent persuades me that this is the case. When OFSTED come calling, what they're wanting to see is pacy lessons, with children responding to questions more or less instantly. Take a look in my daughter's new student handbook and you'll find pages of writing impressing upon children the importance of collaborative work, and the rewards that shall be theirs should they be able to show everyone just how collaborative they are. My Dad, an extremely intelligent introvert, hates conferences and training sessions he has to attend for work, because he knows that at some point someone will say 'and now let's get into groups'. And yet, that's a practice enthusiastically encouraged in professional development events, and often the accepted way of judging competence. I've had to take part in more than one group interview before. At a certain university local to me, it was part of the selection process for admission, and it was hideous. I said one thing. It must have been OK, because they offered me a place, but I didn't take it. So there. But it's a point to ponder: how many potentially amazing teachers or doctors or managers or whatever have been lost because society favours methods of selection with which only a third to a half of the population are comfortable?
So, apart from moaning about extraverts, what am I trying to say here? Actually, I'm not moaning about extraverts at all. I even have some as friends, and between us two introverts, my husband and I have managed to produce one. What I am trying to say is that if you're a teacher and you're not already doing this, it's vital that you consider carefully how you can set up your classroom and plan your lessons so that you're enabling individual learners to work in the way that is most helpful for them. Don't have every desk arranged into tables of four or six. Offer the option of working in ones or twos to those who may do better that way, and be careful about using working alone as a sanction. Don't make all your whole class teaching oral and quickfire. Seek out the quieter kids and find out what they're interested in, and what they think. Offer them leadership opportunities. Look at how you can enable your introverts to develop skills which come more naturally to extraverts and vice versa, in ways that don't take them way beyond their comfort zones for extended periods of time.
If you're parenting an introvert, how can you help them navigate their way through school without it becoming an exhausting ordeal? How can you help them to see school as a place to thrive, not merely survive? Here are a few thoughts. Firstly, accept their preference and help them to understand how they function. If they feel as though there's something wrong with them, help them to see that this isn't the case. Do offer lots of praise when they decide to do something that isn't normally 'them', like take a speaking part in the drama festival or whatever, but don't (as I have been guilty of doing in the past, for fear that my children would be like me) tell them that you wish they'd join in more, or come out of their shell, or have more friends. It's not that you don't want them to be socially confident in lots of different settings, but building their confidence in who they are is a far more successful way of achieving this. And anyway, you can be perfectly confident on the sidelines. Understand too, that they may well feel as though they don't quite belong in school, that they aren't on the same wavelength as everyone else. Psychologist David Keirsey pointed out that introverted children often feel like this in school, but find more people like them as they move into higher education. That, to a degree, has been my experience.
Secondly, be their advocate. If teachers bring up your child's apparent reticence, or their lack of input in class, ask them how they make provision in their planning and teaching for those with a more introverted working style. They'll love you. But seriously, allowing for introverted preferences in the classroom not only benefits the introverts, who are often forced to work in an extraverted way that doesn't come naturally, but gives extraverted kids the opportunity to develop and practise skills which become increasingly important as they take more responsibility for their own learning.
Thirdly, encourage strategies for coping with that extraverted world out there. Whether we love it or struggle with it, most of us spend time with people on a regular basis, and need to interact in all kinds of ways. Depending on how much of an introvert your child is, recognise that they may well need a period of recovery when they get home from school: try to resist the urge to ask them about their day straight away, unless they want to tell you. Allow them some time to decompress. I know, for example, that I will get very little out of number two child until teatime. He needs to watch some TV, or play with his Lego, or do something else by himself because he's spent the whole day being with other people. I've realised recently that I probably allow my older two (the youngest isn't really a computer game fan) a far greater amount of screen time than many other parents, which I'm sure will horrify some. But when your head is buzzing, and you're craving solitude, it can be great to disappear into a Minecraft world and be creative, or trawl through loomband tutorials to find something new to make. Screen time isn't necessarily wasted time.
Another thing with which introverts can struggle is talking to people they don't know. I find this particularly hard, especially when I have a specific query, or I have to give information about something. I know what I want to say, but I lose the power of intelligible speech, and sound like I've left my brain behind under my pillow. Communicating in this way is a skill, and like every skill, some people find it comes more easily than others. Talking to people you don't know happens a lot in large secondary schools, especially when you're new, and encouraging your child to rehearse what they might want to say in a particular situation can help. Having a mental stock of smalltalky phrases can be useful too, when meeting new people. Asking a question is a good thing to do, because you can then listen while someone else does all the talking. Of course, you might discover that you're talking to a fellow introvert, and that you have all sorts of things in common.
To some people, it may seem as though I'm asking for special treatment for introverts. I might have introverted preferences, but I don't think I deserve any better than my extraverted friends. I do think that there's more riding on this than we realise, though. It's not just about placating a particular group of people for the sake of it: both introverts and extraverts need to feel confident in their preferences, and they both need particular things from a school or workplace setup to be at their most productive and creative; surely society needs people to be both of those things. It's a matter of recognising the value in different ways of functioning, and demonstrating this recognition in practical ways.
What do you think? Do you have anything to add? I'd love to hear from you.
