seventh bullet
sovietwave
Kids are smarter than that.
The Michael Gove File
- Thread starter Balbi
- Start date
teqniq
DisMembered
Well yes I like to think so too but I do think thats what is to some degree going on here. A bit like that creationism bollox in the states.
indeed. you can only imagine the kind of hippie scum who would end up moving in and monopolising any such school.
Or can you imagine a highly organised leftist movement created from reception class dedicated to the principles of overthrowing capitalism, and reggae music.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Yes, they are, but they aren't always as smart as they (and we) think.
And by pushing something at them that is so slanted to a particular agenda, even if they do see through it, we risk failing to offer them other things that are less agenda-laden and more useful.
One thing that troubles me about Gove's agenda is that, even though I think he has a point about the tendency to which education has rowed back from core literacy and critical thinking skills, his solution is not really a solution, but is instead a kind of warm-fields-of-the-past traditionalist attempt to claim that we can achieve critical thinking and core literacy skills by rote learning and "old-fashioned" educational techniques. To me, this is throwing away the baby with the bathwater: while some of the progressive approaches to education have meant a neglect of useful core skills, we've also come a long way in engaging and holding children's interest. I think we can keep the best bits, but improve the content, without having to wind the clock back to 1950s grammar school approaches.
1950s grammar school approaches were tolerable then, as there were roles for people who had been failed by the academic-oriented education system: we had a manufacturing industry, and non-academic jobs that didn't require high levels of literacy and numeracy to do, so we could afford to waste educational opportunity by creating an underclass of children who couldn't thrive under the prevailing system. We don't have that capacity for waste any more - we need to be able to find better ways of delivering skills that children need to be able to work in a technological and service-based workplace. And that isn't going to happen by standing kids on chairs and humiliating them into learning times tables, expecting them to read Shakespeare plays, or forcing them to learn historical facts and figures which they will see as being irrelevant to them.
The biggest threat to teaching these things is the exam agenda. Children are constantly having to be taught how to pass these rather than real learning. Gove's agenda is to bring in more exams in the face of worldwide research about the negative impact of these on teaching and learning.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Just clicking "Like" didn't seem enough for this.
I agree, absolutely, and unreservedly
I've been visiting primary schools for the last month to meet students coming into our year 7 in Sept. This is a typical conversation with the year 6 teacher.
Me: So what level is he?
Teacher: Well he got a L4 in his SAts but really he's a L3.
Me: How does that work?
T: Well you know we work really hard on practicing and practicing and giving them loads of opportunities to get it right. So he really did get a L4 but he will probably be a L3 again by the time he gets to you.
Not the fault of the teachers, it's the system that's fucked. We do it for GCSEs too.
Me: So what level is he?
Teacher: Well he got a L4 in his SAts but really he's a L3.
Me: How does that work?
T: Well you know we work really hard on practicing and practicing and giving them loads of opportunities to get it right. So he really did get a L4 but he will probably be a L3 again by the time he gets to you.
Not the fault of the teachers, it's the system that's fucked. We do it for GCSEs too.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Yup, the law of unintended consequences at work there. It's what happens when you put in pretty much any measuring system - unless you are VERY careful, the measuring system becomes the tail that wags the dog.
not unknown, there were radical free schools in London in the 70's, Davey Graham of VOHAN was involved in them.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I think it's a lot more than that. The above was me but in the 1990s in a different educational environment, and I don't think that had anything to do with a lack of ability. People don't 'thrive' in school and a wider society skewed in other peoples' interests for a wide variety of reasons.
And there were plenty of people working in the old manufacturing industries either as unskilled or skilled manual labour who were highly literate and had a serious attitude towards education. I don't think a society at any period can afford to create an 'underclass.' And I think you're using that term too broadly indeed.
I am not some social flotsam and nor are most of the people I know. There are people who do indeed think that, though. They're ruling us now.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Grove doesnt appear, much like both political partys big ideas to have anything to back up his apprantly crackpot ideas.
I may be wrong but if your going to attempt radically change the way things are. isnt the idea to have some data to ack up your idea?
Or launch a pilot study of several diffrent appraoches to actually see what works in practice and have enough balls to go " we thought this was a good idea turns out it isnt back to the drawing board"
But then that approach rather ruins it for people fixed to any idology as the real world rather tends to ruin good ideas?
I may be wrong but if your going to attempt radically change the way things are. isnt the idea to have some data to ack up your idea?
Or launch a pilot study of several diffrent appraoches to actually see what works in practice and have enough balls to go " we thought this was a good idea turns out it isnt back to the drawing board"
But then that approach rather ruins it for people fixed to any idology as the real world rather tends to ruin good ideas?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Yes, I agree. But, since we're talking about Gove's reductive and ultra-traditionalist approaches here, I felt it wisest to stick to that aspect!
Ah. I had hoped that I had conveyed the idea that it wasn't that people were necessarily illiterate or negative about education, but that there was a tendency for an education system based on rote learning and rather narrowly-defined criteria about what should be taught and how it was taught to fail otherwise capable pupils who didn't necessarily thrive under that regime.
To some extent, I include myself in that category - I didn't "thrive" in my education, even though I was bright enough to get a free place in a grammar school. It was only quite recently, when doing some training of my own on teaching, that I came across Gregorc's work on "learning styles" (http://www.ieslearning.co.uk/mind.html) and realised that much of my own learning challenges arose from the fact that, while my learning style is an "abstract random" one, most of my traditional teaching was done on a "concrete linear" basis, leaving me rather more confused and discouraged than I needed to be, given my latent ability. For many years after I left school, I carried with me a sense of inferiority at my apparent bafflement about so much of what I had been taught, especially when I discovered that when I revisited some of that material and studied it on my own terms, I found that I had "got it" all along! We have come on some way in recognising different learning styles, but I fear that Gove would have us wind back the clock on that, and return us to the old-fashioned styles which, for no good reason, disadvantage those who don't happen to fit the rather narrowly-defined criteria and, as you say, favour those who think in a particular way - generally a not-particularly-creative or intuitive way, but one that's based on conformity and regurgitation of learned facts.
I've worked with and known people who had left school thinking they were "thick", and who were capable of doing far more, far more creatively, than they were doing, but who were clearly anything but thick - they had just not responded well to the ways in which they were being taught. My fear is that we will lose much of the progress we may have made in that direction.
Nor was it ever my intention to suggest you, or anyone else, was. I was, I thought, speaking from the voice of those who see Gove's approach as valid, rather than advocating it or endorsing it.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I get you. I think we have the same learning style.
I was also interested in the underclass aspect specifically. What do you mean by the term? I think we may have different understandings of it.
I'm using a phone right now, so tedious (for me at least) to post on forums.
I was also interested in the underclass aspect specifically. What do you mean by the term? I think we may have different understandings of it.
I'm using a phone right now, so tedious (for me at least) to post on forums.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
A man who will never chew again without pine dentures is in no position to mock woodcraft.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I suppose, reading back, that what I was thinking of when I wrote "underclass", was that group of people who end up becoming excluded from the opportunities that education brings. The word "class" wasn't meant to have the connotations of, say, "class system" - it just meant "group".
Actually, my terminology is probably even more indistinct, as what I was really referring to was that group of people who might have been educationally engaged, but are going to be put off by Gove's reforms, as opposed to the (smaller?) group that always exists who are unlikely to fully engage with education regardless.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
i told my gcse group today that i'd like to smash Gove in the face with a big, rusty, iron spike. at this point i'm past caring as to whether i get sacked for that.
Combustible
Well-Known Member
It's because nobody with an ounce of sense believes there is any sort of free market solution to the climate change problem. So the only answer for a free marketeer is that climate change is false.
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
Ah... no... actually, I think you'll find that the market system is fine. This is just a small externality that is contaminating the results. We simply have to re-adjust reality to correspond with the model and everything should be back to normal. Move along now! Nothing to see. etc.
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Nylock
I hate 'these days'...
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
I'd rather see his intestines used to strangle IBS first.
Gove has removed the speaking and listening component from the GCSE English grade, it was about 20-30%. Hurried it through over the summer with no consultation. So now ability to communicate effectively is no longer good enough because it's not a written exam. What an absolute arsehole.
BlueSquareThing
With chips
And with the current cohort of kiddies as well I think isn't it? Which means our English department have "wasted" shed loads of teaching time getting the kids to be able to jump through the hoops which were in place.
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