When did we decide education had to be difficult?

Aug 15, 2013

—

I do a lot of thinking about education. And talking about education. And reading about education. It’s kind of a hobby of mind, as well as a way of life.

I’m forever either strewing, cajoling or coercing my kids into exploring subjects outside their safe boundaries. I negotiate, blackmail, offer and sometimes, just give up and spend my time on twitter instead.

I’ve got a plan. It’s to turn out children who can support themselves, who are pleasant, polite, capable, but also strong, and independent minded. I challenge their preconceptions at every possible step, and hopefully mine too. I don’t think that being 42 means I know everything, or that I should.

And the more I learn, the more I wonder about the school system. The amount of apologising, explaining and criticism I come across, I do wonder why people are standing for it. The drawback is that if you home educate, it seriously impedes the undertaking of earning activities – being available for your children round the clock means holding down a job becomes beyond challenging. We’ve done it – at one point we did opposite shifts while also using a childminder or flexi schooling, but when it comes down to it, particularly with young children, I want to be there for them.

So yes, home education can be difficult. But parenting is difficult. And there are no do-overs. You don’t get to the end of it and get to say I’ll try that again, but do this bit differently, it just doesn’t work that way.

What is it about schools that puzzles me?

The first bit is simple. Education as governed by the law must be suitable to age, ability and aptitude, and fit a child for a life in the community of which he is part, without closing off other options (to condense and paraphrase case law). To me this means what I said above. My children must be able to support themselves, and be reasonable members of society. So they need to be able to earn a living, but also cope with technology, feed themselves, keep clothes on their backs, manage a budget and so on. Most of those aren’t static skills – and very few of them are explicitly addressed in schools. We are forever being told that school leavers aren’t suited to the world of work, which seems peculiar as the hidden aspect of compulsory schooling is to turn out good compliant worker/consumers. (Don’t believe me? Try the works of John Taylor Gatto, a massively experienced and highly lauded teacher if you want another opinion.)

The other day I had a conversation on twitter about whether schools should be teaching children about keeping safe on social networks. I’m not convinced. I don’t think parents can abrogate their responsibility in these areas, and schools don’t tend to keep up with this stuff. I know a lot of parents don’t either, but they are their children’s first and best teachers, and it’s the school system that has got in the way of that, broken down parents’ confidence and, to my mind, actively damaged society.

I know that’s a challenging opinion, and I’m very happy to discuss it further in the comments – do you think I’m right? wrong? what is the purpose of education? Do schools do it well these days? What do you really think?

It’s where it is

Home Ed Inspiration, Ideas, and Activities

Click the links below and scroll through my collection of ideas, workshops, excursions, and more to discover practical everyday activities you can do together in and around your home classroom.

Home Education Inspiration

Home Ed: Ideas and Activities

Home Ed: Topics and Discussion

Exploring Neurodivergence in Children

Comments

11 responses to “When did we decide education had to be difficult?”

Tasha Goddard
16 August 2013
I think schools do it a huge amount better than they did when I was home-educated (though Mr Gove is doing his utmost to change that and bring it all back to the rote-learning one-size-fits-all system that I chose to leave all those years ago – which is a whole other issue. But I think there is always a difficulty in a class of 15 or 20 or 30, to really concentrate on the individuals. Again, it is definitely much, much better than it used to be – the use of TAs, for example, to enable different activities to go on at once, rather than whole-class activities as it used to be. And one of the best things that really good schools are doing is helping the children who need it most – those who with disengaged parents – to progress so much further than they would otherwise. And that is something I am, as a school governor, so very proud to be a small part of.
And, certainly in primary schools (and good ones) they do teach a lot of life skills – I’ve certainly been impressed with how much. I don’t really know anything much about the secondary system at the moment, but will need to find out in a few years!
The trouble is, I think, when the very engaged parents have ideas and plans for their children’s education and the schools don’t necessarily have the same ideas or aren’t necessarily compatible. We try to provide extra outside of school, but there is always a little niggling doubt (even though I think primary school in general, and our school in particular, is doing wonders to improve the majority’s chances).
I also think a lot about education, though perhaps from a slightly different angle. I have huge concerns about where it is going now, when it was actually getting closer and closer to being really good – for everyone. I’m not sure, if Mr Gove succeeds in all his visions, how long and how easy it will be to get it back to a good state again. And it’s the children who need it most who are going to lose out the most – again.
Reply
1. Jax Blunt
  16 August 2013
  That’s a really interesting comment and somewhat at odds with a lot of what is being said about education. Does make me wonder about a few things though. Lots of my primary education was child led and project based, in mixed age classes of between 20 and 30 with no TAs. Why was that possible then and not now?
  Reply
  1. Tasha Goddard
    16 August 2013
    Goodness, that totally wasn’t how it was at my school. In fact, it’s far more project-based and child-led at the girls’ school than it was when I was there. My experience was having set tasks to do for half-hour to one-hour blocks and, when I’d completed mine having to sit there for the rest of the time, silently, waiting for everything to finish. These days, extension and challenge activities are provided for children who are ahead, and even the opportunity to work with other classes (at least at our school – we may just be very fortunate). My friend, who was dyslexic, had the opposite problem, where she was consistently not finishing her work and was getting no support or guidance from the teacher at all. She excelled when she moved to a different school where they understood and supported dyslexia, thankfully. (Actually, I wonder if your school might have been more like the one she moved to – it was a very small school with just two classes and so a variety of age ranges.) Again, there is a huge amount of support for people with learning disabilities of varying kinds (though, I do know some still founder). When I was there, it was the average students who got the most from school and I think, perhaps, they are the ones more often let down these days.
    Personally, my experience of education then (I’m turning 40 this year, so was at primary school in 78 and 79) was that it was awful, rigid and very very dry.
    Reply
    1. Jax Blunt
      16 August 2013
      I’m 42, so we were at primary school at a similar time. Mine was a small rural school – 4 classes, around 100 children. Quite musical and creative, although also strong on academic subjects. Did well for me, but didn’t set my sister up nearly as well, so I think it was already beginning to fail the average child, while managing quite well with the two ends of the scale.
      Reply
zooarchaeologist
16 August 2013
I think a lot of it depends on your childs individual school, since my social media activites are monitored by the school I cant say anything explicit about our circumstances but I do have grave misgivings that the system is good at the moment. I think its more a case of trying to do something for everyone and failing all. I’m personally concerned about TA’s in classrooms who do not have the level of training and expertise which I would expect and feel very much that I dont know who is teaching my children and has influence over them. My children have come home with some ideas which are so at odds to my own beliefs that I have been utterly shocked. I’d much rather it went back to the days when I was at school where one teacher taught the class and the children who needed additional support were dealt with in another class.
As to whether they teach social media safety and various life skills, i’m very much of the opinion that this should be down to the parents. This is because in my experience that school does not have as much of an idea about these things as I do and I’m keen for my children to have the best possible education.
As you know I’d rather Home Ed, but my children want to go to school. When I question them its basically because they have an easy ride at school and feel that they will have to learn stuff with me. Its easy to do nothing at school and be lost in the crowd and some children are frankly lacking in personal motivation. I think that says it all and demonstrates where schools are going wrong. I’m not a fan of Gove at all but in some ways he may actually improve the overall ethos and attitude in schools and maybe, just maybe this will be a good thing.
Reply
1. Tasha Goddard
  16 August 2013
  A lot does depend on the individual school, for sure, and I really do think we are very lucky there. I think we’ve managed to find ourselves in one of the best schools in our town, and that’s a town where the vast majority of schools are pretty decent. (I am probably somewhat biased, but I don’t think I would choose to be quite so involved with the school if I was unhappy with it – except perhaps to bring about change, I suppose.)
  I think social media safety and other life skills should absolutely be taught by parents, but I think they are needed in schools, too, because a lot of parents can’t or won’t do this. We actually have sessions to teach the parents, too, which is beneficial, though again not everyone will go along. Thinking that parents should be responsible for any kind of education is all very well (and, yes, of course they should) but if you don’t provide some alternative then the children most in peril fall further into peril. Which is just not acceptable. It shouldn’t be the case that schools have to provide parochial and pastoral care and all kinds of extra education on top of the ‘standard’ education, but if they don’t there are children who will lose out immensely through no fault of their own. Doing so now, will hopefully help those children’s children have a better chance and they will be engaged children for their parents.
  Reply
2. Tasha Goddard
  16 August 2013
  Oh, and also… If you really want to do it (home ed) and believe it will be good for them, then do it! It’s probably a bit like the whole getting rid of a TV – there will be screams and tantrums for a few hours, but they forget about very quickly, when they discover all the other wonderful things they’ve been neglecting/missing out on. (Of course, I was given the choice and chose it, so maybe I’m not the right person to offer that advice.)
  Reply
Kirsty
16 August 2013
Interesting post – it certainly gets to the big questions! I think the answer to your comment in your reply to Tasha – why isn’t it possible to have child led, project based learning any more – might have something to do with the performance indicators that schools are judged on. For primary schools, KS2 SATS are their most important indicator at the moment. Getting as many children as possible above the magic level 4 in English and maths tests has to take priority for schools because this is the way their overall effectiveness is measured. Ofsted is the other indicator that schools are very driven by, and KS2 results are one of the things Ofsted will look at. ‘Adding value’ is also becoming increasingly important.
The difficulty is that we have to hold schools accountable in ways that the general public can understand, but using test results as the main accountability measure forces schools to focus on them to the detriment of lots of other things.
Reply
1. Tasha Goddard
  16 August 2013
  I think it is a shame that Ofsted and tests are so high on the agenda. At least it has now changed to looking at individual progress made and not just everyone getting the top mark/level. And helping children to progress is incredibly important. With good, engaged teachers and a welcoming and inclusive school ethos, you can get a lot more than test results, though, but still manage them. Sadly, not all schools have this and maybe less of an emphasis on the figures, might help them improve overall. It’s difficult to know how, exactly, though!
  Reply
  1. Jax Blunt
    16 August 2013
    I think the biggest question of what schools are trying to achieve still hasn’t been asked properly, and therefore can’t be answered. While we don’t know what we’re aiming at we don’t know whether we’re succeeded.
    Reply
Ross Mountney
17 August 2013
I believe you’re right! I think schooling dis-empowers both kids and parents and that’s in the governments interests isn’t it? For, after all, dis-empowered people do as they’re told, and don’t question idiot policies or downright corruption. And keeping people poor both in money and in mind keeps them dis-empowered! Great post!
Reply