In defence of education
I saw a woman on C4 News on Saturday night talking about the English schools going back next week. She's not sending her 6 year old daughter to school just yet. She'll wait to "see how it goes" and may send her later. It occurs to me that this woman is happy to use other people's kids as sacrificial
lambs: send them in, see if they catch the virus and if they don't, send your own kid in. Sadly, she wasn't challenged on this attitude. I'm not a particularly moral person but I find that view quite offensive.
She was asked about parents who have to work and can't be at home with their children. She was, she said, "between jobs". She looked uncomfortable at being asked about this and she wasn't pushed on it. Me, I wanted to know: what are she and her daughter living on? A partner's income? Savings? Benefits?
But it was what she said after that that really offended my teacherish heart: she thought her teaching of her daughter for the last 5 months had been "exceptional". I'm pretty sure she meant exceptionally good. I thought I saw a kind of arrogance in her answer. Certainly, in this interview there was no real understanding of what school education is about and the interviewer lacked the knowledge to explore this with her.
A lot of parents worked hard with their children when they were in lockdown. Some managed fine and others struggled, just as you would expect. Some discovered there's more to school education than putting on BBC Bitesize on the telly.
Going to school is about learning to be part of an organisation. Not everyone wants to be part of an organisation, but for most people life will consist largely of being a small part of a larger machine, whether you're in a family or at college or university or in the workplace. It's not easy. But you learn to handle that at school.
School is about socialising children and young people. Myself, I think this is the most important element of education: from play group and nursery on, we teach children to share, to be fair, to treat other people well (and to understand there are consequences if you don't). If children get to the end of their primary education without learning these lessons - for whatever reason - the school, the child and the family need help because life in secondary is not going to be easy for them.
Sometimes, children struggle because there is academic work to be done and it gets harder as they progress though primary and secondary. They too need support.
School is about separation. I was once told by a mother that she hated the school her 12 year old daughter went to because it had separated them. "We used to be so close". It was very difficult to persuade that woman and others that this is part of what school is about: as children and young people develop, they need to separate from their parents (and their teachers) and become their own
people. There are teachers who find this hard to handle, not just parents: I've had colleagues who couldn't cope when faced with a young person who was brighter than them, a faster learner, liable to ask questions the adults around them couldn't answer.
School is also about integration: community fun. I'm not talking about competition. The school sports, the nativity play and all that are only for a small number of children. But most children and young people get to enjoy music together, take part in school shows and go to movies and concerts. They learn the kind of behaviour expected of them at these events. It's no lie to say that a lot of children and young people will later remember these events when they've long forgotten what they did in the maths class.
School is an adventure. It's where children and young people get to find out about just about everything: music, art, drama, computers, science, geography, history, literature, business, technology. A good school and good teachers don't shove kids in any one direction. One of the strengths of Scottish education is the range and the choice we offer our young people. Young people may still reject everything the school offers, and sometimes with good reason. I've worked with a lot of young people who tolerated school but really just wanted to be working on the family croft or learning to be a mechanic in the family garage. That's okay but at least they've had the options shown to them.
School is about friendship. Or it should be. The saddest person I've met recently was a man who attended a very nice school in Wales but was subjected to a life of hell by the sound of things, with constant bullying. He became a teacher (I can't think why) and found the schools he worked in were just the same. When I told him about anti-bullying policies, having community police on campus, etc, he refused to believe me. But having pals at school is crucial to children of all ages. Seeing their pals is what children and young people missed most in lockdown. If you're lucky, school is where you make a few pals you'll keep in touch with all your life.
Finally, school is about role models. There are still too many people who tell us "I hated school". If you take the time to talk to them, it usually turns out they didn't hate school. There were teachers they remembered fondly and subjects they enjoyed. They were just in that group - the middle: not that good at sports or music, not that academic but not needing learning support. How much better would these people have done at school if they'd had teachers with time to spend on them? In classes of a manageable size.
But that would involve a massive injection of cash. And we are not good at prioritising that need. We're also not that good at making sure teaching is an attractive job. It's political, of course. Central government holds the cash. Local government runs the schools. Maybe we need to start looking at how other countries do things.
lambs: send them in, see if they catch the virus and if they don't, send your own kid in. Sadly, she wasn't challenged on this attitude. I'm not a particularly moral person but I find that view quite offensive.
She was asked about parents who have to work and can't be at home with their children. She was, she said, "between jobs". She looked uncomfortable at being asked about this and she wasn't pushed on it. Me, I wanted to know: what are she and her daughter living on? A partner's income? Savings? Benefits?
But it was what she said after that that really offended my teacherish heart: she thought her teaching of her daughter for the last 5 months had been "exceptional". I'm pretty sure she meant exceptionally good. I thought I saw a kind of arrogance in her answer. Certainly, in this interview there was no real understanding of what school education is about and the interviewer lacked the knowledge to explore this with her.
A lot of parents worked hard with their children when they were in lockdown. Some managed fine and others struggled, just as you would expect. Some discovered there's more to school education than putting on BBC Bitesize on the telly.
Going to school is about learning to be part of an organisation. Not everyone wants to be part of an organisation, but for most people life will consist largely of being a small part of a larger machine, whether you're in a family or at college or university or in the workplace. It's not easy. But you learn to handle that at school.
School is about socialising children and young people. Myself, I think this is the most important element of education: from play group and nursery on, we teach children to share, to be fair, to treat other people well (and to understand there are consequences if you don't). If children get to the end of their primary education without learning these lessons - for whatever reason - the school, the child and the family need help because life in secondary is not going to be easy for them.
Sometimes, children struggle because there is academic work to be done and it gets harder as they progress though primary and secondary. They too need support.
School is about separation. I was once told by a mother that she hated the school her 12 year old daughter went to because it had separated them. "We used to be so close". It was very difficult to persuade that woman and others that this is part of what school is about: as children and young people develop, they need to separate from their parents (and their teachers) and become their own
people. There are teachers who find this hard to handle, not just parents: I've had colleagues who couldn't cope when faced with a young person who was brighter than them, a faster learner, liable to ask questions the adults around them couldn't answer.
School is also about integration: community fun. I'm not talking about competition. The school sports, the nativity play and all that are only for a small number of children. But most children and young people get to enjoy music together, take part in school shows and go to movies and concerts. They learn the kind of behaviour expected of them at these events. It's no lie to say that a lot of children and young people will later remember these events when they've long forgotten what they did in the maths class.
School is an adventure. It's where children and young people get to find out about just about everything: music, art, drama, computers, science, geography, history, literature, business, technology. A good school and good teachers don't shove kids in any one direction. One of the strengths of Scottish education is the range and the choice we offer our young people. Young people may still reject everything the school offers, and sometimes with good reason. I've worked with a lot of young people who tolerated school but really just wanted to be working on the family croft or learning to be a mechanic in the family garage. That's okay but at least they've had the options shown to them.
School is about friendship. Or it should be. The saddest person I've met recently was a man who attended a very nice school in Wales but was subjected to a life of hell by the sound of things, with constant bullying. He became a teacher (I can't think why) and found the schools he worked in were just the same. When I told him about anti-bullying policies, having community police on campus, etc, he refused to believe me. But having pals at school is crucial to children of all ages. Seeing their pals is what children and young people missed most in lockdown. If you're lucky, school is where you make a few pals you'll keep in touch with all your life.
Finally, school is about role models. There are still too many people who tell us "I hated school". If you take the time to talk to them, it usually turns out they didn't hate school. There were teachers they remembered fondly and subjects they enjoyed. They were just in that group - the middle: not that good at sports or music, not that academic but not needing learning support. How much better would these people have done at school if they'd had teachers with time to spend on them? In classes of a manageable size.
But that would involve a massive injection of cash. And we are not good at prioritising that need. We're also not that good at making sure teaching is an attractive job. It's political, of course. Central government holds the cash. Local government runs the schools. Maybe we need to start looking at how other countries do things.
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