There are lots of debates going on at the moment around us -- no, wait... there are lots of shouty statements of position and accusations flying and ludicrous claims, which I suppose is just another day in the World of Democracy. It passes for sensible debate these days so lets go with the flow and shout back.
Somewhere among all this yelling and posturing is the subject of education, or as many of us feel at the moment, 'edukayshun' because spelling isn't one of the aims of teaching the young any more. In fact, it is hard to determine what education -- whether you spell the word correctly or not, innit -- is trying to achieve these days.
It ought to be acknowledged that in many ways education is the root of everything we do and aspire to, yet it gets pushed behind other things in a queue of urgent matters. You could say get the teaching of the young right and a lot of other things follow more easily. I won't by the way say 'automatically' because I had a boss once who would say things in the business should happen 'automatically' but they never quite did; if someone didn't make an effort and be focussed on the task then the 'automatic' didn't happen automatically.
Anyway, let me not talk about a man who ran a publicity department in the media sector having gained a degree in geography. On the other hand, that may be part of the problem... Universities handing out degrees like confetti in subjects that no one but the tutors think is important and which have no bearing on real life can be assumed not to help. I have no problem with geography as a subject (I like it myself; some of my favourite people live in places around the world) but unless you go into a business that needs geography it is a bit of a waste for media management.
I want however to talk about education before we get to the 'Non-normative Gender Identification in Mayan Architecture Studies' degree level. We need to talk about what the younger ones are learning.
The consensus is they are not learning very much at all. Each year they seem to be asked to take in less and less and yet are praised for being able to even attend a class even if they only mess around in it when they arrive. Dumbing down is the phrase, though this ought to be 'dumming down' because the silent b can be damn tricky and if we eliminate all those awkward spelling problems we are less likely to have the kids in det any more. But then maybe spelling isn't important. Maybe being able to communicate effectively doesn't matter. Perhaps being to add up simply doesn't add up for the young any more when machines and electrickery can do it for you.
But what then is important? We really are struggling here, because a lot of people will tell us that the young are changing and we must change too.
I am not sure about this. I don't think we as humans essentially change whether there are computers and rap music or whatever around us. History by and large has shown the fundamentals that drive us are the same however we dress things up. We can see that people tend to remain people and whatever humankind does usually comes to the same sort of reaction and desire. The young have to be made aware of this if they are to have a chance. They have choices to make and the better able they are to evaluate the choices that will confront them throughout life will help. For example, we might reasonably assume that some practices like heavy drinking, drug taking and so on tends to result in problems of health so it is wise to make the young aware of them.
But I am not talking about lecturing them: I have taught and I have had to resort to lecturing and some of the kids stayed awake. Amazing, because I can be pretty boring when I get going.
No, you cannot just hand out leaflets and give powerpoint presentations. You have to give the youngsters the ability to discern matters for themselves. This requires children to learn to focus and be aware and apply themselves to a task.
If the young are taught the need to be self-disciplined and thus be able stick to a task to achieve a result then they are less likely to be distracted by the shiny things glittering in the mud at their feet. Ideally they need to be aware of others and their own evaluation processes and they need to think for themselves by examining the options and trying to foresee any consequences.
I am aware that this is very much in the 'touchy-feely' abstract realm that bedevils teaching, but in my defence I would say it has to be rooted in the three Rs. Kids need to be taught the value of being able to read, write and do basic sums.
Most of the youths I taught were mid to late teens, but they had little concept of the need to read and write and few of them had any idea of numbers and less of how to manipulate them effectively. It was painful trying to have a conversation with some of them because they could not focus their minds and concentrate on the conversation. Having a laugh with their mates while having their feet on the desk and playing with their mobile phone in lessons was more of interest to them. Oh, it happened from time to time and was better than work they thought. But please don't think that discipline was the issue here: the college I was at was very keen on this (outwardly) because it had put signs on the wall of each class saying 'no mobile phone use in class' though it may have well have been a picture of a puddle of water for all the difference that made. I did try once to demand a student hand me her phone in class but all she did was refuse. Take it higher because the college frowned on it? No, I was told to just let it go. It didn't matter. No one wanted the confrontation and anyway, why stop one when they were all doing it? Make the lesson more interesting and varied and then this girl wouldn't want to text her friend sat next to her, okay?
I could have dressed as a clown and juggled balls with the subject of the lesson in neon on them and I doubt it would have done much good here. This girl wasn't very bright even if a nice enough kid in that she wore her jeans on the right way round, but nothing much else was going on. She didn't read much (certainly not the signs on the wall of the class) and she couldn't spell (though thankfully copying and pasting from wikipedia meant her work was understandable) and adding up wasn't anything that interested her.
You will be pleased to know however she endured it all, stuck out the course and eventually got her piece of paper that showed she was a successful student. I hope the diploma helped her get a job.
But this young lady, like many others in the classes I taught, had slipped unseen through the early school levels. Somewhere, her education failed to show her the joy of reading or the value of communication or even the importance of numbers. But above all she had no ability to achieve a task. She, like many others I met, felt no urge to do anything on time. Allowances were made, deadlines extended, work corrected by the teaching staff but never really resubmitted by the students.
As one student said when he triumphally handed in a late piece of inadequate work, "You have to accept this or the college doesn't get money from the government." Smart lad: he was right because attendance was everything, keeping them there no matter what mattered the most. No matter what he did (as a colleague of mine found when she was assaulted in class sexually but told the lad had to stay in the class. She just had to make sure she didn't go near him in the lessons until he suddenly upped and left of his own free will).
The smart-if-late youth too lasted the course and got his diploma and I expect he is now earning the 30,000 a year they all thought they would get the minute they left college. Apparently my lectures on the unlikelihood of that salary materialising fell on deaf ears.
But to go back to the education issue of the young. Making it a priority to teach them, maybe with no excuses, to focus on achieving a task on time and present their work in a clear and understandable manner will do them more good than anything else in the long run. And if they still can't focus and achieve because they really are quite different to anything that has arrived on this planet before then at least they can tell us how and why they are different.
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