Thursday, November 10, 2005
Gifted and Talented
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.
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.
