Things I Learn From Teaching

  It is my job as a teacher to teach, and the duty of the student to study.
  Or: It is my job as a teacher to teach the specification, and the duty of the student to study what is in that specification.

  Just because the requirements of the post, however, are set for me, I struggle to realise, does not mean the methods are set. I have accepted the dominant practice, one of survival, of getting the student to make notes and learn and study independently, and for me to mostly fuss about them and prod and poke them and set questions and exams to demand from them.
  But what if I meet them somewhere, in a middleground between their working hardest and my working hardest, so we can be truly beneficial to one another? I want them to succeed, often even more than they do. They want me to teach them, much more than I want to or can teach them. So, where is this point?

  I declare that I must teach with an unbending passion. Not with unswerving dedication to the examining board's decision, for I may not agree with them. And not with apology, for the students must not lost heart. But with a passion. I must start from and end with a consideration and assessment of the student's understanding, and nothing else.
  The student must be privileged, and their knowledge nurtured. They must be asked to inquire for more, to question themselves, and to find out more. They must both be confident and bashful at once, in order that they may work harder to prove the former and calm the latter.

  In a sense, we must strip away considerations of the exam and the social expediencies of learning and get back to the root - simply to learn for its own sake. Who is not interested in learning about the person? Who is not interested in finding out more about why we are what we are? So I will pose these questions, I will expose my students with answers, we will understand and assimilate these answers, and we wil have learned. When we come to examining this knowledge, they will care personally about what is going on, not instrumentally, not merely for the benefit of the grade.

  Today I am off ill, and I am somewhat aware that one of the reasons I may be off ill is the pressing need to think and to write something. As well as the snot and coughing. I am here, just so we know, in order to log my thoughts and actions before the next intended step in my life. I wish to progress to academic study and action within education and teaching at a higher level - for example, educational psychology.
  A number of events have caused the dust-storms of questioning to raise themselves in me again: and as Matt recently reminded me on togivemeaning, asking questions is the important thing to be doing. Why accept the world, why make an exception for it? It must be studied, you must be studied, actions and beliefs must be interrogated. We cannot be complacent. Neither may we lambast 'relativism' and 'postmodernism' in order to censor awkward questions (which I believe may be an intentional or otherwise side-effect of the continuing movement against it, which admittedly is hard to spot because so much idiocy is committed in the name of the 'movement'), and nor may we allow ourselves to submit to the comforting idea that we can all just get along and do our own thing. Unlimited freedoms to do and be anything we want worsen us, as Plato points out in the Republic, and are also always at the expense of others who must have less freedom in order that we may be comfortable enough to indulge. We must doubt and look for better ways.
  And this is what vexes me - my doubt, and my wish to find a way to improve education. Recently, I have been reading about provision for the 'Gifted and Talented', or G&T. If you are gifted - which I believe means good exam results - or talented - have a specific sport or art skill, you must be stretched, and things are being done to ensure this.
  All well and good. I believe that such provision is in essence exactly right. I also believe that such provision is in essence exactly wrong. What is right about it is that education is not offering enough to students, and many are bored and complacent and feel like it is a waste of time. What is wrong is that you cannot just identify "5-10%" of students who feel like this and give a bit extra to the A students. Almost all students feel this way, to varying degrees, and almost all could be stretched to their and our and everyone's benefit.
  Mainstream education has focussed more and more, since the national curriculum especially, on various areas and targets and objectives within these areas. This might work when you are trying to do something - set up economic measures, streamline the HR dept., publicise a new radio station, and all sorts of other practical modern things. But how can you set targets and objectives for people's learning and not miss something out? I believe enough things are missing that the value of education to the students (and many teachers) is little.
  Surely, to be alive and be a human is more than attainment in core areas? Should we not concentrate on school as the education of the 'whole person', and look to improve all sorts of talents and gifts, and not miss things out in a demented drive to make an identikit workforce? There is more to learning, afterall, if you are learning about anything less than everything. You must learn about how to count and read, and think and talk, and act and do, and believe and know, and how to be human and how to live and how to understand yourself and others. There is so much that is necessary to being alive that tight focus is harmful.
  These are very old ideas, and are recurrent, and this is why I believe that they may be quite self-evidently true, at least at this moment. I am sure that there are arguments against this. To trespass on the person by attempting to teach about too many things is no doubt an ideological endeavour, and I can make no secrecy of the fact I would like to see everyone brought up in a quite a left-wing and secular way, which marks me as evil enough to be slandered in many eyes.
  What we have now, though, is a streamlined education devoted to nothing but passing exams, which leaves students with a brace of grades and little else. What does it mean for them?
  The most 'G&T' students at college are, undoubtedly, prone to sadness and depression. I see it darkening the vision of many eyes: I can tell when my students did not come in because of a total suffusion of sadness, I can tell when they do not do well on a mock because something bad is happening and they can barely cope, I can see them asking the question: 'why am I doing this?'
  If they are G&T, they get such things as music and chess classes, prone to end up as 'nerd socials' if anything. And they get to learn about critical thinking, a laudable thing, except that rather than question the world and come to new conclusions, they mostly examine the veracity of media sources. To confidently assert that the Telegraph supports the Conservative Party and the Guardian is often sympathetic to New Labour is not exactly the most critical thinking I can imagine.
  What do our children need? They need lessons that allow them to work on projects with freedom, so they may stretch their own abilities and research their own interests - coursework is often very prescriptive, about making sure you observe the rules. They need critical thinking courses that allow them to ask: why do I feel like this? Why do I not like the world? Any fragile emotional states, any fears, any worries must be allowed, so that students can understand each other and feel understandable. We need to discuss personal experience, not deny it.
  In short, students need to come into school and find that it is a place to examine their life and interests, where they have a large amount of control over themselves. Instead, they come in and find that everything has already been done for them - now the knowledge must be transmitted, and if they do not understand it or work hard enough in swallowing it, they are faulty in some way. How can we not expect this to disabuse the students of any notions of freedom and self-control? We instill in them the horrific desire to work uncomplainingly and hard until they can get home, then to turn off and drop out. Do not question things, just do as expected, and then you may use your own time for what you wish.
  A small number of my students have begun to tell me how difficult things are for them - home lives have been or are being disrupted, and they do not know who to trust. They have few hopes for the future, only a grim acceptance that they must keep going in college: I presume it feels like some benighted treadmill for them. They plainly want to learn about themselves and what is going on in their lives, that is why most of them have chosen psychology. It is what comes up in class most of all, when a question is asked.
  We attempt to structure the learning experience - giving them a precise channel to travel down. It is easy to teach what is on the specification (not to say I want my job to get harder, but what we are given to teach IS very easy to pass on, it is the other aspects that are difficult), and, yes, it is easy to learn, and many students do well. But considering how easy it is to do well - turn up to class and revise, because the possible exam questions you can be given are so very limited and so endlessly signposted - there must be some massive problem somewhere to account for the levels of failure. Simple - they are bored, and couldn't give a hoot about it. Why revise these big blocks of knowledge? Why sit down and make notes, and highlight them, and read it, and play revision games?

  We are failing our youth. Students aim to work in mobile phone shops. They expect university to be some big booze factory. They are horrified to find that lectures start before noon and you have to get books out of the library. They do not want to learn, on the whole, and I suspect they have little idea of what they do want. If you look at most people in rich societies, what are they doing? Are they happy and content?
  France has created an underclass of second-generation immigrants by imagining that by acknowledging them through government and law as French that there will be no racism. And we create an entire underclass of ourselves, simply by teaching our young that learning is a sad and boring thing which must be escaped. But to where? What awaits our young charges as they come into the world, and they still have questions, and they cannot begin to answer them?

  All students are gifted and talented, at least potentially, that's why we bother to teach them at all. Let us acknowledge this, and prioritise their expression over our controlling, there freedom over our convenience, and their life over our plans.

  It is a tricky thing, to teach. Although I do not think that teaching is the profession it should be - first off, I do not think it should even be seen as a profession, an argument that goes back to disgust over the Sophists getting paid for knowledge, a state of affairs that those such as Socrates were sure that would lead to the abuse of truth - I am still captivated by the possibilities of improving the lives of my students, and therefore disheartened by the equal and opposite possibilities of failing them.
  What, really, am I there to do? I must transmit the syllabus to the students, so they may get their grades and go to university. Education, 'the key to better things'. Is that not a grand and worthy sentiment?
  And how might I do it? The tried-and-tested methods are exposition through the mouth and visual aids, worksheets, workbooks, textbooks, exercises. And the students will, as they work on these things, take in the knowledge. And as they practise exam questions they will get better at answering the questions. And their skill will be rewarded, and off they go, to learn more!
  Is this not also grand and worthy?
  I am, sadly, not so sure. To say that education merely facilitates getting to the next stage of education gives it no intrinsic value, merely a simple instrumental value. What if we say that the purpose of going to university is getting a job? Then the whole of education is to fit into the world, gain a skill and then a profession or expertise. Is this really what we wish to see of knowledge and learning, just means to make a living?
  There is something more to it than this. We have always seen knowledge and learning as special, and I reckon that most people will admit that a definition of education as 'getting a good job' is not the whole picture. And my problem is how to gently expand the world of my students, to make sure that as well as good grades they are getting a good education.
  "But don't grades mean learning and education?" Grades show how well you do on a test. And is learning not about what you can do, who you are, who you can be? Is it not more emancipatory than merely passing a test? Does it not fulfil you as a person in a way that merely passing a test does not?
  I believe feverently in the need to learn, in the importance of knowledge, in how it makes us more than just 'a person'. It makes us into a receptacle for greater things, and then a creative force for greater things. Learning and education and a love of knowledge did not lead to Einstein passing a test, but to create and invent and think. (And also be a socialist).
  So, expect me to wrestle with this problem. I will update you with my ideas of how to introduce psychology and A-Levels to my AS students, and my experiences in carrying out these ideas. My syllabus aims are to stress the difficulty of the subject, warn students it is not an easy option, tell them what they will be learning about, and to give the students a programme of the first part of the course. All important in picking up strictly syllabic knowledge.
  My wider aims include provoking the students to question what psychology is, for themselves, and to attempt to form a preliminary concept. What is the definition of psychology, or what are the definitions, used in normal life - in magazines, on TV, in explanations of human behaviour and thought? What does it mean to say "I have to look good and buy expensive clothes to fit in", for example? And what do my students expect the academic definition to be?
  It is important for me to find out what the students think, so that I may teach, and it is also important for them, so that they can learn. We will map out our expectations of each other and try to meet them - to aid this I will also draw up a code of conduct for the class,
  And we will, finally, play some silly games and look at what Cosmopolitan magazine has to say on psychological issues. with the class. Because learning is a very entertaining enterprise if you do it right, the implications of knowledge are vast enough to include all types of fun.
  And that is also a good reason why seeing education as passing examinations is not fulsome enough.

I am a teacher, responsible for the learning of young adults. And, perhaps, I am expected to also mediate their behaviour and inculcate a 'socialisation' within them, to limit those actions deemed unpleasant, and reward those good.

What does it mean to be a teacher at the start of the 21st century in the UK? How do teaching and learning work? What sort of things happen to teachers and students, and what can we learn from them?

This blog is simply about these thoughts, because they are important in my own development. We understand all too little about any of these topics, and all I want to say that I am aiming to do is to begin to map out the extent of our ignorance in these matters.