The prospects for a radical transformation of state schooling are incredibly limited. In the UK a National Curriculum holds teachers to the will of the state, and young people are still trapped in miserable authoritarian schools, the vast majority with very few choices open to them about what and how they learn. Examinations, timetables, uniforms, discipline- all these institutions define the school of today.
Another school is possible- a place where students and teachers could freely associate as equals; where young people could take an active role in defining the culture of the school by organising lessons, projects, clubs and events; where lessons are voluntary; where disputes are resolved by the community in a way that fosters understanding and growth; where important decisions are made by a democratic process involving students and teachers; where education is for life, not just for employment.
Propose this kind of school and you might be called crazy. In fact, many young people would argue against it, despite already denouncing their education as a miserable waste of time. If students decide they prefer an authoritarian education, they should be free to enrol in it. But the choice of an emancipatory education is not open to most children and their parents today. Our task should be to bring that alternative about.
With so little common knowledge about non-authoritarian education, then, it seems it is not time yet to put our bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels of the machine. The first thing we should do is to try to challenge its fundamental assumptions- to get people questioning the necessity of authoritarian schooling, and discussing what an alternative might look like. Start discussion groups, organise film screenings and debates. Do things which question authoritarian schooling, but most importantly do it in a voluntary, non-hierarchical way. Do not give people immediate answers. Provide them with situations in which they are free to question those assumptions. Let the end- a freeing education- be the means to creating one.
Any project that is student-run can do part of the work of de-legitimising school, because it will show that people learn and contribute without being forced, and when they do so, they enjoy it more.
We have a long way to go before we have de-legitimised this system and rallied enough people to create a better one, but we must start now. The future is not here yet- it is something we must create together, beginning small, by non-exclusive, open discussion.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Monday, 19 July 2010
Schooling and Unhappiness
State education today is focused on performance measured by exam results, as preparation for employment and university, rather than catering for individual happiness and freedom.
Obvious provisions, varying from school to school, are made for the happiness, guidance and wellbeing of students, but this is not assessed by the inspectorate in as thorough a manner as are attendance and exam results.
Whilst Ofsted reports, for example, attempt to appraise enthusiasm and co operation, this is done by inspectors observing lessons, rather than listening to the views of students. Ofsted simply doesn’t know how students feel about their education, and is not making a realistic effort to do so.
Perhaps this is a matter of practicality. Exam performance is a lot easier to measure than such abstractions as ‘happiness’ and ‘freedom’.
It may be true that happiness and wellbeing are difficult to quantify, but many things which our education system has already thought worth measuring it has managed to. Creativity, for example, is a similarly abstract quality, and yet it has been graded.
For example; in assessing ‘creative writing’ in the English Language GCSE, Exam Boards have interpreted creativity through criteria as the soulless use of similes and adjectives. This is a creative world in which the adjective “crimson” is objectively more effective than “red”, regardless of meaning or context, and in which similes and metaphors are used to prove intelligence to an examiner, rather than to enhance the content of the writing.
This is perhaps useless as a measure of creativity, and does nothing to aid real learning. However, the money and bureaucracy to do it were not in short supply.
Couldn’t we direct money and bureaucracy towards finding out how students really feel?
A 2004 study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) of Nottingham schools revealed that only 27% of children rated their experience of secondary school as ‘positive’, compared to 65% in Primary schools. Only 12% said they found it ‘interesting ‘.
Hetnah Shah, the NEF's programme director for wellbeing studies said, "We need to look not at just vocational teaching, in terms of achieving an end like employment or exam success. We have to ask what is school actually preparing people for." 1
It also found that “the academically top-performing primary school has significantly lower well-being than other primary schools surveyed. This raises the question of whether there are trade-offs between academic success and promoting curiosity and personal development.”2
The study implies that with an increase in examination, curiosity and wellbeing goes into decline. It thus condemns the growing pressure of league tables and targets for its effect on happiness.
If this conclusion is confirmed in further studies, could it be used as the basis for reform?
Some in the U.S., such as educator Susan Ohanian, have called for a ‘Happiness Index’ in schools, to inform policy which would make schools happier places. She writes, “Why don't we ask high schoolers this question: What do you really want? Ask that--and shut up and listen to the answer.”3
It appears, in the UK at least, that the idea of listening to students as a crucial part of educational reform is unlikely to gain support from the government.
Michael Gove, education secretary, has made clear where his emphasis lies. In speaking about how we appraise schools, he said, “when Ofsted, the body which should be concerned with educational standards above all, is given 18 areas on which to judge a school and only a handful of them relate explicitly to educational attainment, then we are clearly not concentrating our energy and resources on education, education, education.” 4
Michael Gove, then, is already concerned that Ofsted looks too much into student wellbeing and a school's social atmosphere, instead of measuring educational attainment alone. By raising the academic rigor of examination, he hopes to make exams more reliable measurements of intelligence. This may improve educational standards, but as the sole gauge of a school’s success it will reduce children to data rather than human beings. *
It is unlikely that this government will ever take student happiness seriously, and so now is the time for young people and our advocates to start moving. Only through our combined effort can education be made to mean something more than data.
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3662455.stm
2. http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/power-and-potential-well-being-indicators
3. http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=150
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrzFEyt8MvE
• Not wishing to stereotype Michael Gove, I’ll be writing a longer discussion of his views on this blog some time soon. Until then, (if you’re reading) I’d advise you to read his website or listen to the talk above to find out about his educational philosophy.
Obvious provisions, varying from school to school, are made for the happiness, guidance and wellbeing of students, but this is not assessed by the inspectorate in as thorough a manner as are attendance and exam results.
Whilst Ofsted reports, for example, attempt to appraise enthusiasm and co operation, this is done by inspectors observing lessons, rather than listening to the views of students. Ofsted simply doesn’t know how students feel about their education, and is not making a realistic effort to do so.
Perhaps this is a matter of practicality. Exam performance is a lot easier to measure than such abstractions as ‘happiness’ and ‘freedom’.
It may be true that happiness and wellbeing are difficult to quantify, but many things which our education system has already thought worth measuring it has managed to. Creativity, for example, is a similarly abstract quality, and yet it has been graded.
For example; in assessing ‘creative writing’ in the English Language GCSE, Exam Boards have interpreted creativity through criteria as the soulless use of similes and adjectives. This is a creative world in which the adjective “crimson” is objectively more effective than “red”, regardless of meaning or context, and in which similes and metaphors are used to prove intelligence to an examiner, rather than to enhance the content of the writing.
This is perhaps useless as a measure of creativity, and does nothing to aid real learning. However, the money and bureaucracy to do it were not in short supply.
Couldn’t we direct money and bureaucracy towards finding out how students really feel?
A 2004 study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) of Nottingham schools revealed that only 27% of children rated their experience of secondary school as ‘positive’, compared to 65% in Primary schools. Only 12% said they found it ‘interesting ‘.
Hetnah Shah, the NEF's programme director for wellbeing studies said, "We need to look not at just vocational teaching, in terms of achieving an end like employment or exam success. We have to ask what is school actually preparing people for." 1
It also found that “the academically top-performing primary school has significantly lower well-being than other primary schools surveyed. This raises the question of whether there are trade-offs between academic success and promoting curiosity and personal development.”2
The study implies that with an increase in examination, curiosity and wellbeing goes into decline. It thus condemns the growing pressure of league tables and targets for its effect on happiness.
If this conclusion is confirmed in further studies, could it be used as the basis for reform?
Some in the U.S., such as educator Susan Ohanian, have called for a ‘Happiness Index’ in schools, to inform policy which would make schools happier places. She writes, “Why don't we ask high schoolers this question: What do you really want? Ask that--and shut up and listen to the answer.”3
It appears, in the UK at least, that the idea of listening to students as a crucial part of educational reform is unlikely to gain support from the government.
Michael Gove, education secretary, has made clear where his emphasis lies. In speaking about how we appraise schools, he said, “when Ofsted, the body which should be concerned with educational standards above all, is given 18 areas on which to judge a school and only a handful of them relate explicitly to educational attainment, then we are clearly not concentrating our energy and resources on education, education, education.” 4
Michael Gove, then, is already concerned that Ofsted looks too much into student wellbeing and a school's social atmosphere, instead of measuring educational attainment alone. By raising the academic rigor of examination, he hopes to make exams more reliable measurements of intelligence. This may improve educational standards, but as the sole gauge of a school’s success it will reduce children to data rather than human beings. *
It is unlikely that this government will ever take student happiness seriously, and so now is the time for young people and our advocates to start moving. Only through our combined effort can education be made to mean something more than data.
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3662455.stm
2. http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/power-and-potential-well-being-indicators
3. http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=150
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrzFEyt8MvE
• Not wishing to stereotype Michael Gove, I’ll be writing a longer discussion of his views on this blog some time soon. Until then, (if you’re reading) I’d advise you to read his website or listen to the talk above to find out about his educational philosophy.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Students and the slow death of the spirit
I just wrote two As- level exams. So I’m feeling pretty brainless, as one might expect. There’s something about the ritual of the invigilators awkwardly pacing back and forth like hopelessly crumpled, middle-aged Stasi officers in a dirty strip-lit sports hall that inspires not so much melancholia as utter deadness. I sometimes feel relief, or joy at the loss of a burden, but lurking beneath it is always an odd sense of pointlessness. Or rather, the fear of pointlessness. The fear that one day I will stop being excited by the universe and will grow into a dull and functional human being, who all the same denies his functionality and thinks himself meaningless. That is to say, no one is pointless. But to think you are makes you boring. And there are certainly a lot of boring people.
The true relief may arrive on the day of the last exam; and the greater relief on results day. I remember that day’s bliss- a long coffee at my favourite cafe, a barbeque, ambling round the countryside for a game of Frisbee, and whisky as dusk drew on. But then, I had a clear notion of what to replace exams with: friends. I had found my rehabilitation.
The truth is, no real happiness exists from knowing that something boring is over. I said during my GCSEs that I would never be relieved when it was finished because I’d still be pissed off about having done it in the first place, and I stubbornly tried to keep my word. As it happens I am in no way more a believer in GCSEs now that the hurdle is jumped- the further I am from them the more stupid they seem. But I don’t want to argue about that here.
I just want to focus on something- Exams create short-term thinking. I was astonished on the day of the final GCSE to find the ground still beneath my feet, the wind still blowing and the birds still in the trees. Retrospectively, I understand that I was still a human being with my own decisions to make and my own future to direct; with much more still to learn and to see. During the exam-period, of course, I was mostly only thinking about the next hurdle to jump, counting each one down, and analysing my progress along the way. When the burden of exams is removed, I think about my entire life, not the next state-sanctioned objective. Because anyone with common sense knows that you never figure out what you want to be by stumbling through successive hoops.
And so exams, and a school-system based on exams, condition people into a tendency for objective-oriented short term thinking. It also sublimates people’s consideration of their own identity and the setting of their own goals into a centralised system which is far too brutish to handle the nuances that exist in real self-determination. And so I urge any students to try to look at the big picture after taking exams. Ask what you want to do, what you want to learn, and how you might go about that most effectively. I’m no sage on the best way to think- but it has to be better to retain your own goals against everything, and to stay self-assured about your passions; than to let an outside body dictate a predetermined future to you. Of course we should think short term- if we weren’t pragmatic we wouldn’t get anywhere.
A mixture of both attitudes is necessary- the ideal life is to pursue a short term completely in key with long term notions, but for many exams are anathemas to this because we don’t know what we want yet. So don’t forget yourself amidst all this hurdle jumping. Have confidence, and keep trying to figure it all out.
The true relief may arrive on the day of the last exam; and the greater relief on results day. I remember that day’s bliss- a long coffee at my favourite cafe, a barbeque, ambling round the countryside for a game of Frisbee, and whisky as dusk drew on. But then, I had a clear notion of what to replace exams with: friends. I had found my rehabilitation.
The truth is, no real happiness exists from knowing that something boring is over. I said during my GCSEs that I would never be relieved when it was finished because I’d still be pissed off about having done it in the first place, and I stubbornly tried to keep my word. As it happens I am in no way more a believer in GCSEs now that the hurdle is jumped- the further I am from them the more stupid they seem. But I don’t want to argue about that here.
I just want to focus on something- Exams create short-term thinking. I was astonished on the day of the final GCSE to find the ground still beneath my feet, the wind still blowing and the birds still in the trees. Retrospectively, I understand that I was still a human being with my own decisions to make and my own future to direct; with much more still to learn and to see. During the exam-period, of course, I was mostly only thinking about the next hurdle to jump, counting each one down, and analysing my progress along the way. When the burden of exams is removed, I think about my entire life, not the next state-sanctioned objective. Because anyone with common sense knows that you never figure out what you want to be by stumbling through successive hoops.
And so exams, and a school-system based on exams, condition people into a tendency for objective-oriented short term thinking. It also sublimates people’s consideration of their own identity and the setting of their own goals into a centralised system which is far too brutish to handle the nuances that exist in real self-determination. And so I urge any students to try to look at the big picture after taking exams. Ask what you want to do, what you want to learn, and how you might go about that most effectively. I’m no sage on the best way to think- but it has to be better to retain your own goals against everything, and to stay self-assured about your passions; than to let an outside body dictate a predetermined future to you. Of course we should think short term- if we weren’t pragmatic we wouldn’t get anywhere.
A mixture of both attitudes is necessary- the ideal life is to pursue a short term completely in key with long term notions, but for many exams are anathemas to this because we don’t know what we want yet. So don’t forget yourself amidst all this hurdle jumping. Have confidence, and keep trying to figure it all out.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)