Supporting Educators • Promoting Learning
Written by ANDREW EALES
The other morning, while enjoying my first cup of tea for the day, our puppy Bella Bardóg decided to keep nudging me for attention, distracting me from reading the book in my hands. I rather thoughtlessly responded with,
“If you want the book, how about you read it to me?”
Bella looked somewhat forlorn, and my wife Louise chipped in with,
“Don’t humiliate her! You know she can’t read!”
This slightly daft domestic anecdote illustrates a hugely important truth: when we ask somebody, anybody, to do something we know they are incapable of, we humiliate them.

How often, perhaps inadvertently, do we do this to our students?
As well as an aspiring dog-whisperer, Louise is a clinical specialist in child and adolescent mental health, and it is only fitting to credit her for many of the thoughts which follow, emerging as they did from our discussion that morning…
Continue reading The Piano Student’s Humiliation