Why the greatest success-stories of schools today are, perhaps, their worst victims
nick cowen, 19 August 2008
So much is wrong with the present state education system. Falling standards masked by ever-rising examination grades. Ever more ‘teaching to the test’ leading to an ever more constricted curriculum, and, in consequence, duller lessons. These in turn, perhaps, are a major contributory factor behind the very real recent large increase in bullying at school and very high levels of truancy.
The list of maladies that afflict the present educational system is seemingly endless. No wonder increasing numbers of parents are choosing to spare their children the ordeal of schooling, by choosing to ‘do it themselves’ at home. Often, these parents seem willing to leave their off-springs’ education to the vagaries of chance, with surprisingly little, if any, apparent ill-effect if recent reports are to be believed.
Perhaps, however, the worst victims of the present state educational system are not those forced to flee it to escape bullying or boredom. Nor even are they those destined to leave school with nothing to show by way of qualifications save, perhaps, for the odd ASBO or two picked up on the way.
The greatest of all victims of the present educational system are, perhaps, its greatest nominal successes. These are the many young men and women who today leave school brandishing a handful of A grade A levels which serve as their passports to university.
Whilst true that, in general, the more formal education an individual receives the more will they be likely to earn later in life, there is an enormous unquantifiable spiritual opportunity cost incurred by receipt of such an over-assessed, modularised, and over-regulated form of education as all too many of our schools and universities supply today.
The true spiritual price of those precious A-level A grades was well described in an article in last week’s Independent by one of their recipients. Bound for the study of medicine at University College London this autumn, this former pupil of a South London comprehensive described so the ordeal she, and doubtless countless others like her, had suffered for the last two years:
‘Every lesson of the past two years – in my chosen subjects of Biology, Physics, Chemistry, French and Philosophy – has been focused on examinations.… Our courses [we]re spoon-fed to us in bite sized chunks of what we “need[ed] to know” in order to pass the exam.’
The young lady went on to conclude her piece by rightly remarking that:
‘The aim of education should not be to produce “candidates” with high but meaningless exam results, but to encourage in the next generation a love of learning that will follow them in whatever they do…. Education must be about education – about looking at the world and struggling to understand it. That’s what I’ve been lucky enough to learn from my teachers, and it most certainly was not on the syllabus….’
Not only was this rightly elevated view of the purpose of schooling missing from the syllabus of the school attended by the author of this piece, although her teachers managed to purvey it at least. The view seems altogether missing from the outlook of the entire official educational establishment.
As former university lecturers Duke Maskell and Ian Robinson observed in their very acute analysis of what is wrong with higher education today, The New Idea of a University:
‘The real crisis in British education today is not at the bottom, amongst an underclass, but at the top, amongst those in charge…. The trouble is, in this country today, that many supposedly educated people aren’t, and that they occupy positions for which education is necessary. The “educated” need educating first.’
How can they be assured of having had one? That is the 64,000 dollar question in education today. The problem is that no manner of degree qualifications, let alone of A levels at whatever grades, is any guarantee of having received one. On the contrary, it seems that the very programmes of study that lead to them are almost designed to prevent those who follow them from obtaining any genuine form of education.
How can this situation be turned about? All suggestions gratefully received.
Two brief points in reply to another excellent posting: first, teaching to exams is the old charge made by the left against selective, competetive schooling. You still hear it bruited about in debates about falling standards. One man will aver that exams are now easy and another will say that the old successes were simply the result of “knowing how to cope with tests” – as if such a skill could be separated from genuine knowledge or intelligence. The fact is, with the right sort of examinations in place, “teaching to exams” becomes a virtue, for they mimic the sort of challenges and ordeals to be faced in real life. This is especially important when it comes to medicine, in which calculations of volume or quantity can cure or kill.
As to your point about formal education leading to higher salaries – this will only hold so long as the formal education in question is trusted. Once employers begin to rumble qualifications as eye-wash – and there is ample evidence that now they do – they will either impose tests of their own or try to gain information about prospective employees from other sources. Alternatively, they will recruit from overseas or go overseas themselves. Britain will be ultimately bereft of talent by policies which fail to recognise or cultivate it.
These are the points which we should recall and repeat at all times. In their absence there is a distinct danger that high flown talk of education and its wider purposes will once again serve to disguise malignant egalitarian corruption.
Turn it around? The starting point is to make Oakeshott’s essays on education compulsory reading for those involved in education.