Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
‘A’s are for losers…
I have had to abandon this blog for a while to meet a deadline, however, normal service is now resumed. I shall be looking in the next couple of days at the idea of compulsion, which seems to be so baffling to at least one reader; compulsion in her mind being associated only with punishment or physical force! Before that, I want to talk about the awful situation at British secondary schools, with reference to what are known as grade boundaries. These have a pernicious effect upon children unfortunate enough to attend school.
When my daughter was studying for both GCSEs and A levels, I had a saying that I used frequently with her. This was, ‘A's are for losers!’ I meant to convey by this that if she gained only an ‘A’ in an examination, rather than ‘A*’; then as far as I was concerned, she would have failed that particular examination. Nothing less than 100% was satisfactory, whether she was working at home with me or sitting an IGCSE. There are a number of possibilities for this attitude on my part. One would be that I am a man obsessed with GCSEs and their importance in life. Another might perhaps be that I am a male, Caucasian version of the notorious Chinese ‘Tiger Mothers’. A third and, to me at least, more likely explanation would be that I am not a bloody fool and that I know how the world actually works outside of school and examinations. Let me make this a little clearer.
In a deplorable lapse of judgement, I allowed my older daughter to be registered at school. Apart from a spell of flexi-schooling, she was at school all the way through until leaving at sixteen. When she was fifteen, a year or so before she was due to take her GCSEs, I noticed that her maths was atrocious. She was getting around half the questions wrong and yet her teacher was marking the work with things like, ‘Well done’. When I spoke to this woman she explained that from her point of view this was fine. It was not because my daughter was unable to do any better, it was that there would have been no point. In the GCSE, which mark you get depends on the percentage of marks you score. These are the grade boundaries. Incredibly, if you get over 50%, you get an ‘A’ in mathematics for GCSE. Over 70% and you will have an ‘A*’ Because my daughter was in line for at least an ‘A’ and possibly an ‘A*’, she was doing as well as could possibly be achieved. What purpose would have been served by trying to get her to get three quarters of her work right? It would have been overkill; way over the grade boundary for an ‘A*’. I resisted the temptation to slay this idiot on the spot; in retrospect, a matter of some regret.
Let’s forget for a moment about schools and GCSEs. I have only recently, after a long struggle, resolved the problems I have been having with the Student Finance people over the loan my daughter is getting for university. I sent in almost everything necessary. The only problem related to an income of £60.75, for which I provided no documentation and had overlooked when filling out the form. You might have thought that they would have given me a gold star for this, or at the very least congratulated me on getting over 95% of the calculations correct. Even a ‘Well done’ would have been nice. They did none of these things, because of course this is real life. Anything less than 100% accuracy means that you fail. It is the same with my tax returns. It is not enough for me to get 70% of the answers right. This will not earn me an ‘A*’ with the Inland Revenue. Not even 80% will do, nor 90% or even 95%. Every figure and all calculations must be 100% correct.
This principle, that of getting 100% all the time in maths is how we have to live our real lives. Whether we are looking at out bank statement, measuring the room for a fitted carpet or working out the change from a £20 note; nothing less than 100% will do. Saying ‘Well done!’ to a child for getting a third of her sums wrong is a false kindness. It does not matter a damn if that will be enough to get her an ‘A*’ at GCSE; getting a lot of sums wrong in real life will be a disaster for her. The same is true of practically every other aspect of life. If I write out a job application and only make errors in spelling a quarter of the words, this will not earn me an ‘A*’ from the potential employer. He will probably dismiss me as illiterate.
Real life is very unforgiving. Most of the time we need to get things right. The penalties for getting things wrong can be pretty severe and you are not awarded marks for effort either! Anybody who does not expect a child to get things 100% right in maths, English or any other subject is leaving the child ill-prepared for the real world. Real life is not about GCSEs or A levels. It is about getting figures 100% right, making sure that not one word is misspelled nor a single capital letter or full stop omitted. Teaching children this and being ferociously demanding about it is the only strategy that will fit them out for the adult world in which they will all too soon find themselves.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Smoke and mirrors in school-based education
Somebody commenting here suggested yesterday that I am prone to ‘bashing autonomous education’; a preposterous notion! To even things up a bit, we shall today look at the phenomenon of parents working away hard at their children’s school education and then forgetting that they have done so. As Old Mum correctly divined, the aim of this stratagem, both for schooling and home educating parents, is to make their children look more clever than is actually the case.
We looked yesterday at a couple of home educators who made great efforts in getting their children to read or take the necessary qualifications to get a place at college and then forgot what they had done. This kind of thing is by no means exclusive to home education; although there are certainly some stunning examples in that field. As a matter of fact, most of the parents I have known who have engaged in these games have had children at school. Before we look at how this works for those who are not home educating, I want to look at the motive for these deceptions. I say deceptions, but in many of the cases which I have known, the parents had actually managed to take themselves in as well; in fact they had come to believe their own myths! I rather suspect that the parents at whom we looked yesterday fall into this category and were not setting out deliberately to deceive others.
So what is the motive behind all this? It is pretty simple. Look at my own activities. When my daughter was two and a half and reading English fluently, I decided to teach her to read Chinese. This was very successful and she was making great progress until my wife put her foot down. Now as this stands, it is not much of a story. It simply shows the child’s father in a poor light as an insanely pushy parent. Let us imagine though that I made the same claim that the parent in yesterday’s post made to a newspaper about the kid reading English. Suppose that I told people that my daughter had learned Chinese herself; just picked it up, without any help from me at the age of two. You see the difference? This is much better; I have been transformed from a pushy parent into the father of a genius. A great improvement indeed! Telling people that we as parents have done little to encourage and help our children makes their achievements look much more impressive. They become very bright kids and we can portray ourselves as laid back parents without a pushy or ambitious bone in our bodies.
In the last few years, my wife and I have seen the children of friends get places at good universities after passing tough, academic A levels with As and A*s. Every one of their parents has claimed that the children didn’t study hard or revise, as well as making out that they themselves never bothered much about their children’s education; just leaving them to it. This is simply another version of the autonomous educating gag. What is astounding is that these people seem genuinely to have forgotten all that they did to get their kids to this point. The best local school is the Davenant Foundation. To get in, you need a ten year record of church attendance. Some of these parents spent a whole decade feigning belief in the Deity in order to get their kids to this school! How’s that for dedication, ten years pretending to be religious and all for the sake of your kid’s schooling? Once there, they paid for tutors to push the children academically, shouted and argued with the children to make sure that they took the right options at GCSE and A level and arranged a hundred different leisure activities and hobbies; to all of which they drove their children. In most cases, it would have been surprising had the kid not done well at A level.
Despite all this, the parents pretend to have done little or nothing to help their children’s studies. They tell everybody that their son or daughter never did any homework, didn’t pick up a book until a week before the exam and so on. This makes their children’s A level results look all the better, which is the aim of the gambit. Returning to home educators, we saw a marvellous example of this last year when a parent whose two children are famous for being autonomously educated claimed that her daughter had passed a science GCSE with flying colours, despite never having studied the subject and just flicking through the textbook a fortnight before the examination took place!
Speaking for myself, I have not the least objection to people claiming that their children gained GCSEs or A levels without any input from them, any more than I disapprove of parents making out that their children taught themselves to read. It is human nature to wish to present both your children and yourself in the best possible light. These tactics have the dual effect of both making you look like a relaxed and confident parent, while at the same time casting your kids in the role of infant prodigies. It’s a great game to play, as long as you don’t lose your sense of humour and start getting tetchy when others take your claims with a pinch of salt.
We looked yesterday at a couple of home educators who made great efforts in getting their children to read or take the necessary qualifications to get a place at college and then forgot what they had done. This kind of thing is by no means exclusive to home education; although there are certainly some stunning examples in that field. As a matter of fact, most of the parents I have known who have engaged in these games have had children at school. Before we look at how this works for those who are not home educating, I want to look at the motive for these deceptions. I say deceptions, but in many of the cases which I have known, the parents had actually managed to take themselves in as well; in fact they had come to believe their own myths! I rather suspect that the parents at whom we looked yesterday fall into this category and were not setting out deliberately to deceive others.
So what is the motive behind all this? It is pretty simple. Look at my own activities. When my daughter was two and a half and reading English fluently, I decided to teach her to read Chinese. This was very successful and she was making great progress until my wife put her foot down. Now as this stands, it is not much of a story. It simply shows the child’s father in a poor light as an insanely pushy parent. Let us imagine though that I made the same claim that the parent in yesterday’s post made to a newspaper about the kid reading English. Suppose that I told people that my daughter had learned Chinese herself; just picked it up, without any help from me at the age of two. You see the difference? This is much better; I have been transformed from a pushy parent into the father of a genius. A great improvement indeed! Telling people that we as parents have done little to encourage and help our children makes their achievements look much more impressive. They become very bright kids and we can portray ourselves as laid back parents without a pushy or ambitious bone in our bodies.
In the last few years, my wife and I have seen the children of friends get places at good universities after passing tough, academic A levels with As and A*s. Every one of their parents has claimed that the children didn’t study hard or revise, as well as making out that they themselves never bothered much about their children’s education; just leaving them to it. This is simply another version of the autonomous educating gag. What is astounding is that these people seem genuinely to have forgotten all that they did to get their kids to this point. The best local school is the Davenant Foundation. To get in, you need a ten year record of church attendance. Some of these parents spent a whole decade feigning belief in the Deity in order to get their kids to this school! How’s that for dedication, ten years pretending to be religious and all for the sake of your kid’s schooling? Once there, they paid for tutors to push the children academically, shouted and argued with the children to make sure that they took the right options at GCSE and A level and arranged a hundred different leisure activities and hobbies; to all of which they drove their children. In most cases, it would have been surprising had the kid not done well at A level.
Despite all this, the parents pretend to have done little or nothing to help their children’s studies. They tell everybody that their son or daughter never did any homework, didn’t pick up a book until a week before the exam and so on. This makes their children’s A level results look all the better, which is the aim of the gambit. Returning to home educators, we saw a marvellous example of this last year when a parent whose two children are famous for being autonomously educated claimed that her daughter had passed a science GCSE with flying colours, despite never having studied the subject and just flicking through the textbook a fortnight before the examination took place!
Speaking for myself, I have not the least objection to people claiming that their children gained GCSEs or A levels without any input from them, any more than I disapprove of parents making out that their children taught themselves to read. It is human nature to wish to present both your children and yourself in the best possible light. These tactics have the dual effect of both making you look like a relaxed and confident parent, while at the same time casting your kids in the role of infant prodigies. It’s a great game to play, as long as you don’t lose your sense of humour and start getting tetchy when others take your claims with a pinch of salt.
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