The hedumacation system in modern Britain

jenks

thread death
Lots of differnt ideas coming through here.

There is skill in constructing an argument rather than just leaping to the first thing you think of - the art of rhetoric certainly has its place. Too often argument turns into a might is right event - witness he (and it usually is he) who shouts loudest as the default method of debate. If a teacher brings in an element of constriction i.e. arguing from a unusual pov - that's good isn't it?

i'd suggest despite the wailing to the contrary that most contributors here have had some good teachers - nearly everyone is able to construct their arguments soundly

Most, if not all of the people contributing here are winners (if dissatisfied) in the educational sysytem - you have choices, they may seem invidious but they are choices. The boy in my class who cannot read the word 'moon' at 14 seems to me to be a person for whom the system really does not work. It's not about teaching towards some illusory examintion but instead giving him some kind of skill to get through life.

Finally, I don't see what's wrong with a learning objective, I'd rather a teacher had some idea of what it is that they wants their class to learn than the vague mumblings and 'get on with it yourself' education that i suffered in the 70s and 80s.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Finally, I don't see what's wrong with a learning objective, I'd rather a teacher had some idea of what it is that they wants their class to learn than the vague mumblings and 'get on with it yourself' education that i suffered in the 70s and 80s.

I agree that having an idea of what you are supposed to be learning can be empowering for students and serve to focus the teacher's efforts.

However, learning objectives can be too prescriptive and, as the teacher tends to be 'working towards' them, can restrict the scope of some lessons. LO-driven teaching - teaching that has greater designs (ie the predicted 'learning outcomes') on the learner than the errant rambling of yore - can sometimes be particularly irritating for the more creative, intelligent student. They might disagree with the Learning Outcomes: for example, if they are something like: 'by reading passage X, we can see that technique Y lets us see Z about character A' (which, granted, would be a decent challenge for many students), or, if they do agree with the Outcomes, they may spot them coming a mile off and, feeling that their responses have been second-guessed, contribute only half-heartedly for the remainder of the lesson.

It was amusing (and depressing) seeing the less nimble tutors at University struggle when confronted with useful, correct but 'off-message' points that they could neither integrate satisfactorily into their objective nor dismiss convincingly - this is stressful for the teacher as the lesson can then be a 'failure,' even if the class has actually learnt more than they would have otherwise - by taking a longer, more scenic route, but ending up at the 'wrong' destination.
 
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Pulchritude

Active member
Finally, I don't see what's wrong with a learning objective, I'd rather a teacher had some idea of what it is that they wants their class to learn than the vague mumblings and 'get on with it yourself' education that i suffered in the 70s and 80s.
From what I’ve read, I don’t believe anyone in this thread has any argument with that, it’s just that it’s escalated to suffocating levels of control; there’s a difference between having teaching objectives and force-feeding students all the information.

I definitely wouldn’t knock my teachers because, on the whole, my experiences with them have been quite positive. For the most part, I’ve had teachers who have been willing to allow us to discuss issues, and introduced different views, whilst still being able to correct the ideas of a student who is clearly wrong. I just think that, if given more scope within the teaching guidelines, they could help to develop students into something much more than a robotic exam-taking machines since, at the moment, the only chance we ever used to get to discuss a world outside of textbooks was in PSHE lessons, and they're generally renowned for being total doss lessons.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I'm going to pick on Vimothy because I don't agree with these posts.

Your choice is poverty or make a positive contribution to society and earn a living from that. It's the same choice for everybody pretty much throughout history. Nobody said you will enjoy it!

Lots of things people (have to) do to earn money might make a positive contribution to their boss's / company shareholders' bank accounts, but not necessarily to society.

Poverty would probably be the default option. Making a living and surviving is the choice, the active solution. Even hunter gatherers are faced with the possibility of either bumming around all day or going out and getting some food.

Society shouldn't need to solve your problems for you

Would hunter-gatherers really have to work 40+ hour weeks to survive in most places?
Even if they did I bet they wouldn't be anywhere near so alienated from what they are doing as huge numbers of workers are today.

Society shouldn't need to solve your problems for you

What if, just maybe, those problems had something to do with deficiencies in the structure of 'society'?

More topically, I think there should be much more emphasis in education on discovering the individual aptitudes and passions of students, helping them to find out where they can make the best contribution.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Et Tea too.

But this is - or should be - completely irrelevant at the university level, and (ideally) even at A-level: no-one's made you study the subject ("given you the job"), you chose it yourself!
If you don't like it, it's your own fault for not choosing better in the first place.

What about those students choosing absolutely the correct subjects only to find themselves at the mercy of institutions run by jaded staff whose only interest is in ticking the boxes and maintaining their tenures? Not to mention then being surrounded by cynical students who have a similar level of disengagement with the subject and paradoxically end up more easily fulfilling the box-ticking learning objectives (and troubling the tutors less)?

K-Punk has been very good on this stuff recently btw. Especially re. the nature of privilege and the way class structures maintain themselves in education.

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009421.html
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009383.html
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
More topically, I think there should be much more emphasis in education on discovering the individual aptitudes and passions of students, helping them to find out where they can make the best contribution.

What changes would you make to do this more effectively?
 

thraiped

New member
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2099635,00.html

Call to ban all school exams for under-16s

· Damning verdict on culture of testing
· Stressed pupils 'in state of panic'

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday June 10, 2007
The Observer

All national exams should be abolished for children under 16 because the stress caused by over-testing is poisoning attitudes towards education, according to an influential teaching body.

In a remarkable attack on the government's policy of rolling national testing of children from the age of seven, the General Teaching Council is calling for a 'fundamental and urgent review of the testing regime'. In a report it says exams are failing to improve standards, leaving pupils demotivated and stressed and encouraging bored teenagers to drop out of school.
....
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What about those students choosing absolutely the correct subjects only to find themselves at the mercy of institutions run by jaded staff whose only interest is in ticking the boxes and maintaining their tenures? Not to mention then being surrounded by cynical students who have a similar level of disengagement with the subject and paradoxically end up more easily fulfilling the box-ticking learning objectives (and troubling the tutors less)?

Well what about it? It's obviously very unfortunate for any students who end up in that situation, and ideally all universities would employ only excellent teachers who love their subject, love imparting their enthuisiasm for it in their students and teach it in an interesting and dynamic way. Of course this isn't always going to be the case in real life.
On the other hand, students are meant to be responsible for taking charge of their own learning at least to an extent by the time they get to university, so if a particular course has a crap lecturer it should still in principle be possible for you to buy a good textbook and teach yourself enough material to at least pass the exam.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
On the other hand, students are meant to be responsible for taking charge of their own learning at least to an extent by the time they get to university, so if a particular course has a crap lecturer it should still in principle be possible for you to buy a good textbook and teach yourself enough material to at least pass the exam.

In the sciences maybe, but not so easy with subjects that are marked on a more, subjective, basis.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In the sciences maybe, but not so easy with subjects that are marked on a more, subjective, basis.

Yeah, I guess. What more can you say about this situation? Not all lecturers are inspiring; c'est la vie. You'd have to be pretty unlucky to end up in a university where they were all crap, though - or have performed so badly at school that you could only get into somewhere really rubbish, in which case you probably shouldn't be at uni at all.
 

don_quixote

Trent End
i completely disagree. if im going to pay £3k a year it's not naive to expect the university to do something for me as well. failure can't simply be blamed on a lack of industry.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
if im going to pay £3k a year it's not naive to expect the university to do something for me as well.

Ach - stop complaining. For only three grand a year you get to sit in on irrelevant lectures, be patronised by jaded academics and alleviate the ennui that comes from the sudden absence of direct teaching and a healthy workload by sedating yourself with alcohol in a grothole student bar.
 

jenks

thread death
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2099635,00.html

Call to ban all school exams for under-16s

· Damning verdict on culture of testing
· Stressed pupils 'in state of panic'

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday June 10, 2007
The Observer

All national exams should be abolished for children under 16 because the stress caused by over-testing is poisoning attitudes towards education, according to an influential teaching body.

In a remarkable attack on the government's policy of rolling national testing of children from the age of seven, the General Teaching Council is calling for a 'fundamental and urgent review of the testing regime'. In a report it says exams are failing to improve standards, leaving pupils demotivated and stressed and encouraging bored teenagers to drop out of school.
....

I think it's interesting that this is coming from the GTC - a body set up by the government that almost no teacher i know thinks is relevant - it seems to spend most of its time berating teachers and disciplining them for a range of offences (some as hienous as taking kids to the beach on a school trip but not mentioning it on your risk assessment).

Even the GTC can see there is a problem but the governement response is that the tests are going to be kept because...parents like them!

Nonsense, most parents don't understand what they are and would probably be relieved if their children didn;t have to do them.

When the GTC starts criticising the government :eek:
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I think the pre-16 SATs tests are quite useful:

- As a dependable assessment tool for teachers, especially if students have suddenly turned up from other schools.

- As a way of holding teachers accountable if a particular child regresses (teacher assessment could mask this) or identifying teaching that is working particularly well.

- To ensure that the entire syllabus is treated and that teachers do not avoid topics that they find dull or difficult to cover (this especially applies to primary school, where some teachers would happily dump tricky things like fractions or unpleasant things like PE in winter if not for the National Curriculum)

- To give children practice for 'more important' tests - working under time pressure; keeping concentration levels up; checking work thoroughly.

- To allow children to prove themselves - especially if they find it hard to work diligently every lesson but have talent.

- To correct some of the bias in teachers' own assessments. Children armed with airs and graces are over-rated; troublesome students are under-rated - largely because the former make their successes more obvious to the teacher.

I find that the 'state of panic' is usually due to parents' anxieties - most kids are pretty
clear-headed about tests, or just uninterested.

To ban all exams pre-16 would be idiotic.
 

jenks

thread death
Testing for pre-16s is not necessarily the problem.

Having the right kinds of assessment is - the SATs for KS3 English have to be the most widely discredited system for assessing pupil progress. Regularly marked poorly they prove little about how a child's literacy skills have improved (or not).

The Key Stage tests do not follow seamlessly from one to the other - there is nowhere on an English GCSE paper to demonstrate skills gained for doing a Reading paper at KS3. There is almost no requirement for essay writing at KS3 but it is pretty much all that is done at GCSE and A Level. Coursework doesn't exist for KS3 SATs but is hugely important at GCSE (at the moment)

Students are reduced to explaining the importnace of the third palm tree on the island rather than being allowed to actually discuss Stevenson's Treasure Island. The Tempest is reduced to two tiny passages. There is no sense that Literature is something to enjoyed but something instead from which we extract stuff.

There are many other assessment models out there but over and again QCA baulk at actually giving teachers something genuinely useful.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Testing for pre-16s is not necessarily the problem - having the right kinds of assessment is.

Students are reduced to explaining the importnace of the third palm tree on the island rather than being allowed to actually discuss Stevenson's Treasure Island. The Tempest is reduced to two tiny passages. There is no sense that Literature is something to enjoyed but something instead from which we extract stuff.

Yeah, from what I've seen of the literature SATs they seem to have too much of that kind of thing. The marking schemes I've seen are also very prescriptive (although I can see why this is required to try to ensure consistency).

You can enjoy literature outside of school - at school we pick it apart to see how it works! ;)

I assume that there is more assessed essay writing and coursework once out of KS3, as students gain confidence in writing and reading longer pieces.

I'm a maths teacher, so perhaps can profit more from regular testing - as the subject is intrinsically clearly structured and micro-manageable.

There are many other assessment models out there but over and again QCA baulk at actually giving teachers something genuinely useful.

Which assessment model would you use?
 

vimothy

yurp
I'm going to pick on Vimothy because I don't agree with these posts.

Cool

Lots of things people (have to) do to earn money might make a positive contribution to their boss's / company shareholders' bank accounts, but not necessarily to society.

That would be a positive contribution. I don't mean positive in a moral sense, I mean positive in an active sense.

Would hunter-gatherers really have to work 40+ hour weeks to survive in most places?
Even if they did I bet they wouldn't be anywhere near so alienated from what they are doing as huge numbers of workers are today.

I'm not interested in romanticising the past, but even hunter gatherers would have to go out and hunt and gather to help feed their community

What if, just maybe, those problems had something to do with deficiencies in the structure of 'society'?

Deficiencies are always persent in any real, non-idealised society. What happens whern the crops fail? You figure it out or starve.

More topically, I think there should be much more emphasis in education on discovering the individual aptitudes and passions of students, helping them to find out where they can make the best contribution.

More choice! (Not very left wing though)!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm marking some GCSE physics papers for pocket money while I look for a proper job.

It's worrying. Very worrying. And the stuff the kids are writing down - as nonsensical as some of it is - is worrying me less than some of the nonsense they're meant to be writing down according to the mark scheme.

And this government bangs on and on about the importance of STEM subjects!
 
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