Love learning, hate schools

03-November-2005

Secondary schooling is profoundly dysfunctional in western countries. Reform is not the answer - we need a fundamental rethink of the role and purpose of education in society.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Teaching of 3 Rs in 'crisis', says CBI:

I have got bored with this sort of article and have stopped commenting there is a real issue which needs addressing.

"The number of pupils leaving school without mastering the three Rs has reached "crisis" proportions, the CBI warned today.

Sir Digby Jones, CBI director-general, called for schools to be better funded so children could be taught in smaller classes.

In an interview with Teachers' TV News, Sir Digby said: "We've got something like a fifth of the adult population in this country who can't read, write or count.

"We've got half the kids who do a GCSE in the summer not getting grade C or above in English and maths.

"This is a crisis. We're the fourth biggest economy on Earth, we're one of the greatest trading nations on the planet and we haven't even got half the school leavers equipped to deal with the world."

Interesting that 'Sir' Digby from the CBI (which for non UIK based readers stands for the Confederation of British Industry is more concerned about the UKs trading position and economy than he is about the young people.

The government has made the predictable reply that it is spending more, doing more blah, blah blah.

Digby has called for more to be spent, done blah, blah, blah

No-one addresses the real problem which is the profoundly dysfunctional nature of secondary education in western societies. Why secondary? because I think that education sort of works up to the age of about 10 or 12. Kids learn to play, to socialise, to work together, to read, to write and in some countries to handle information and knowledge using computers. All very useful for living in this world.

What do kids learn after that age? That learning is boring. that they have to absorb a whole curriculum of largely randomly selected information and 'facts'. That learning has little relation to the real world outside the school. That learning is a core to be pursued in the name of testing and qualifications - you have to put up with it to get on etc.

So kids rebel. But in the Uk at any ate we stop all that nonsense by putting fences round the schools and by employing kidcatchers (sorry educational welfare officers) to round them up and get them back to school. And if they still rebel we prosecute their parents for failing to ensure their kids attend school.

And we know the system does not work so we embark on endless reforms, publish tables of 'good' schools, develop new curricula, new exams, alternative programmes and so on and so on.

Tinkering with the system will not work and sadly I suspect throwing money at it will not work either. We need a fundamental rethink of the purpose of education and its roles and relation to the wider society. personally I think school has no future. That does not mean I am opposed to education and learning - far from it - but I think schooling does a pretty dammed job.

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Graham Attwell; 03-November-2005 14:18:49;