From Crisis to Conversation: A Quickfire Q+A with Dave Clements

Join us as Dave Clements, author of The Crisis in the Classroom, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!

What is a quick-fire Q&A?

We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.

Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.

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What inspired you to start writing a book?

There are two answers to that question. One is that a teacher friend of mine, Kevin Rooney, got in touch with me basically to suggest that I write a book. And the reason he did that was because I'd been writing a Substack for the past year or two and I think he was interested in the positions I was taking on the special educational needs and neurodiversity discussions. I was taking a different perspective to him, I think, because my understanding was very much informed by having a child with special educational needs – autism and ADHD. He was coming from the perspective of teaching children who had those conditions and other problems in the classroom; and so, he was trying to deal with the difficulties of that and I was arguing from a parent perspective that I wasn't happy with some of the ways in which children with these needs were being taught or supported in school. So that was the inspiration in terms of the book. I suppose more broadly the inspiration was kind of my own experience of raising a child with these needs and just observing the discussion and having my own initial thoughts on that. So, it was those two things really.

What's a life lesson you learned recently?

One life lesson I would have is that everything always seems to take longer than I intended including writing this book. Funnily enough it’s an ADHD trait ,I think, so I'm not sure where I fit with the diagnosis for that condition! But certainly, I tend to be overambitious, so I try to do a lot with this book and cover a lot of ground and I think I was pulled back a number of times by who I was speaking to in the course of writing it. So, I think a life lesson I may have learned, or perhaps I haven't, but I'm aware of it certainly, is that I do tend to try and do too much. I do overestimate what I'm capable of doing in a given parcel of time. So, it was an ambitious book and I hope that I pulled it off. It wasn't just going to be a book about me and my personal circumstances, it was much more about the broader discussion about the topic. And so, I hope that I've successfully done that. But it is an ongoing issue that I'm always aware that I do tend to try and bite off more than I can chew!

Was writer's block ever a problem for you? And if so, how did you overcome it? 

I'm not sure if I had writer's block or if I've ever experienced that. I think what perhaps sometimes happens is that I will put off the actual business of writing. I will spend too much time working around the issue, I'll be reading, I'll be thinking and I'll put it off. Then when the time comes, I'll suddenly realise that I need to actually get on with it and write. Sometimes the pressure forces you to kind of boil down your ideas and just attempt to get across whatever it is you want to get across. Actually, right now it only really occurs to me that I really need to be preparing for the launch of the book a little more than I am. I need to get some thoughts together in preparation for tomorrow. But no, I don't sit there and I’m blank and I’m not able to write. I think sometimes if you lack confidence in your own ideas or if they're not developed enough, what I have a tendency to do is to review what the discussion is rather than rethink it and rework it. So, it's not so much writer's block for me, it's more putting off the business of getting across what it is I think.

What was your favourite book as a child?

That's interesting because I mention in the book that when I was, I don't know how old I was, I didn't really like reading. I really didn't. My cousin, who worked in education, at the time she was a student, she worked in special needs and with gifted children. She used to babysit me. She described me as her first student. And would turn up to babysit me, and discover that all of the books that I was supposed to be reading at school, I hadn't read them, and I didn't want to read them. She knew it wasn't because I wasn't able to. She felt like I was intelligent enough to do that. So, she started being quite playful, I suppose, with her approach to getting me to read. She got me to read the books backwards. She clearly took a very proactive approach to try and engage me and recognised I was capable of doing it but there was something blocking it. I reflect in the book that if that was now, I do wonder sometimes whether not necessarily her reaction but others' reaction might have been different. They may have said I have ‘pathological demand avoidance’ (PDA), which is an increasingly common term that's used today and associated particularly with autistic people. My son has been diagnosed with a demand avoidance profile. So, I do wonder whether that would have been different.

I developed an interest in reading as I grew older, as I became more independent and as I was at college and university and getting involved in politics. That was when my interest in reading started, I guess. And I kind of just took it on myself then. I think that's perhaps what a lot of people do; it's when you get that bit older and you take an interest in the world that you start reading about it.

Was there anything surprising or unexpected you discovered in the process of writing this book?

I changed my mind on a number of things as I was writing the book. I think it tends to be quite a tribal discussion. You're either one of those people who are quite cynical and think that a lot of these conditions such as autism and ADHD and the needs that kids have in schools, special educational needs; that they're either made up or that parents are just trying to get hold of some resources or that perhaps schools are just hungry for a bit of money and they're just using this as an opportunity to do that. On the other hand, there are those who would argue that these needs are very real and they just haven't been recognised in the past. We have more of an understanding of them, we're more aware of them and that's why there are more and more people, children in particular, who are being diagnosed with these conditions and being recognised as having these needs. I have kind of been swinging from one to the other quite a lot perhaps because of my position as a father of a child with these needs. I recognise a lot of nuances in some of the arguments that people make and I think I say at one point in the book that what both sides seem to have in common is this desire to take control of their lives, or to support their kids. Those who argue against what they would describe as the over-diagnosis of these needs, they would say, well, if you label everything, you lose control because it's no longer something that you're responsible for or that you can change. You've just given it a medical label. Whereas those who are seeking out those medical labels argue that, well, this is how we found out what the problem was and this allows us then to move forward. So I think I just found myself being a lot more open to those arguments and, in the end, writing a book that perhaps frustratingly for some didn't always come down with a definitive answer one way or the other, but simply suggested that perhaps we need to debate this more and be open to discussing it.

How do you feel now that the book is finished and out in the world?

I feel both excited and terrified. That is probably the best way of explaining it because it's quite personal. Even though I don't talk a lot about my personal situation I say enough to make it clear I have experience and understanding of some of the issues. Even so, it is quite exposing and I'm also conscious that it's quite a controversial topic and I don't know what the response is going to be. I've had some good responses from folks that have written endorsements which is great and that's been really encouraging; it gives me some confidence in the book itself. I'm also excited by the opportunity to continue the discussion and to have that debate with people. A lot of people are intrigued and want to learn more and want to talk to me about it so that's great. I've really enjoyed those aspects of finishing it.

But, like I say, I'm sort of anxious, but pleased to have finished it because it's quite a long process and it does take quite a lot out of you, especially when you're also trying to make ends meet and bring up the kids. So, it's been a long process and I'm glad that's come to an end and I'm able to now just hand it over and see what happens.

How long has this book been in the works for?

I think it was the beginning of last year when I first started trying to frame what the book would look like and set out the layout for the book. I discussed that with Kevin (who initially suggested I write the book) and that then became the basis for the discussion I had with Luath. There was a lot of to and fro trying to get the framing of the book right, trying to pitch it right. I had an initial event where I met with a group of teachers and went through the initial ideas that I was going to explore in the book. The actual writing itself took a few months to put together, but there was a lot of thinking and reflection going on and a few pints of beer as well as I discussed it with a couple of people who work in education. There was always a danger that I was going to be a bit too involved in my own situation to actually appreciate the broader picture, so hopefully it benefited from spending that extra time discussing what the book needed to achieve that balance.

How do you see the conversation around this topic evolving in the next few years?

It's difficult to say because I don't think there is much of a discussion yet. There are two sets of positions, essentially. Those who are cynical and those who regard themselves as very sympathetic to people and children who present with these needs. I don't think there's much conversation between the two of them. So, I'm hoping that this will maybe help change that. There's a lot of parents out there who are perhaps somewhere in the middle, and they're not really part of that conversation at the moment. So I'm hoping that there's an opportunity now to try and bridge that gap and recognise there are good arguments on both sides, actually. I think there is a need to be more nuanced.

In my view, we are at a crisis point, as the title of the book suggests. And I think those who are sympathetic to people and children who are presenting with these needs also need to acknowledge that there is a problem and that we must at least think about what's causing it. And I don't accept that it's just a matter of us being more aware of the problem. It has grown in terms of diagnoses and in terms of special educational needs at such a rate, and at the same time as a number of other issues have been happening in schools around absences, around exclusions and behaviour. I think there's something else going on in our culture and in society more broadly where we're reluctant to talk about certain things.

We're reluctant to talk about the raising of children, about families. We're also perhaps not acknowledging the role that adults play in children's lives more broadly. I think there's a tendency to not have the discussion about our communities, about where we intervene in children's lives. So, I'm hoping that this will encourage a broader discussion. It's not just about special education. It's about putting it in the context of other things that are going on and the need to address those things. I think the only way we're actually going to reduce the rates of referral and the rates at which some of these needs are being generated is by actually looking at other ways of tackling them.

There's a lot of debate about ADHD - whether it exists or it doesn't exist - which I don't get into because I don't know. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a specialist, I'm not a clinician. But we do need to be able to explain why there's been such a huge ‘needs explosion’ as I describe it, and in such a short time. We're not doing that at the moment. Once we do that, we will find that we can start thinking about how we address the problem.