There are two very strange question that comes up from year 11 and 12's to people they knew from grades above. Maybe you played on their soccer team and walk past them at the shops, or you sang in choir with them, or you're dating their sister. Whatever the reason, when the opportunity comes up senior students will ask you "What's uni like?" and sometimes the follow up "Was it worth it?" There are some obviously implicit questions being asked here, beyond the simple curious or polite question about your new vocation as a coffee devouring university student.
And every time I've heard the question asked the answer from my mouth or anyone else is "Yes. God yes. You're going to love university." And this unequivocal answer is delivered without pause and pretty much without consideration for the person you're addressing because tertiary education, you feel, is indefinably better without having to worry about what degree the questioner wants to study or whether they are introverts or the life of the party.
These students want to know that all the things that they put up with at school are dealt with: that teacher they can't stand; uniforms; but most importantly, they attribute university as some kind of promised land, from brothers and sisters who have graduated before them to bring home stories about how much they enjoy it, older students who graduate before them, even a few teachers who relive their old glory days to students who want to know about where they're going next on what feels like rails.
And I hate it. Why shouldn't I? I detest the concept that the future should be better than the present, why not make what you're doing now worth telling people about rather than dreaming of going off to uni. I can only talk about the Queensland school system, but it has always felt like by the time I got to year 11 it was simply the last gate before the hallowed grounds of university. A final hurdle to be jumped, not TWO WHOLE YEARS of time to learn things. The teachers would warn me that if I didn't work a bit harder I'd find to hard to get into my degree but the warning doesn't make sense. Shouldn't I be being warned that I was wasting their time and that these people know lots of cool things worth learning?
I don't want to spend the entire time talking about what I feel is an error in direction, in mindset for students, teachers, parents the whole high school ecosystem that has students sitting in the back of class biding their time to get out of school again. Students stuffed into uncomfortable uniforms sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening uncomfortably to teachers who are uncomfortable with the idea that 70% of these students would rather not have to listen and 10-15% have already taken up that idea. These children are present at school for 6-7 hours five days a week, it's two hours short of a full time job for them.
So what I'm urging is to have a look at when students come out of school, many go straight into university and they come back to school saying, by George university makes this school look like a nursery. Tutorials at university (which are the smallest class sizes) are the size of school classes, so we can rule out reducing class sizes to aid in learning (at least it isn't the most economical choice because smaller classes means more classes means more teachers and wages and classrooms and things).
What I think is needed is a change in the mindset I was harping on about before, I think students and teachers need to understand that they are there to learn things, to be educated, to have knowledge and curiosity shoved into their heads and be asked to go find out some things for themselves. Just like university, you aren't paying for and attending classes for the paper at the end, you're paying for the thing that happens in the middle, the learning bit.
That change in mindset would inform other changes in the school, professional sectors used metrics (evidence returned from clients about how they use products and whether a change in advertising or packaging or manufacturing increases sales and satisfacction) to inform their business approach for many years. Schools could do the same thing, if something isn't working then you change it, and if you don't know what isn't working but you can see there's a problem (yes, there's a problem if I laugh when people ask me what I liked most about school) then just change random things and see what happens.
Yes, I understand parents would object if you told them you're experimenting with their diddums but seriously would you rather tell them you don't care that no one likes school and everyone consigns 12 years of their memory to oblivion? Twelve years is a really really really really really really really really really really really long time, that was only 11 really's can you imagine what twelve years is like? (you didn't even read them all you just scanned them because of how bad it was) Rather than employing some more science and education graduates talk to some psych majors, I bet they have to read a hundred articles about learning methods for every one that the education guys read.
To get you, the people who make decisions at schools (I don't know if you're the ones with the titles and such or if you're the one standing behind that person) I have a crazy suggestion for you, I talked before about tutorials at university where students who are a year or two ahead who did well in that subject are asked to hold a class, and it seems to work because the students can get to know people one year older than them far easier than an adult who has twenty or fifty years on them. I've been on both sides of that scenario and I know that teaching a subject reinforces everything you know far better than when you take the subject.
So my proposition is this: take students, I don't care if they are your best student or the one who has just struggled through the year, take them to a class one or two years below and ask them to take the class. They'll know their stuff by the end of the lesson if they didn't before and the students may well pay more attention if the "teacher" is a grade 11 student. Because I have anecdotal evidence that students are passing grade 11 maths B without being able to add fractions properly. Which is something that is pretty well cemented in year 9 and you don't come back to it because as a teacher you don't have time to keep covering basic maths.
Let me be clear, this is not an attack on teachers or educators who have my utmost respect for spending time with children which is something I have spent my entire life avoiding. This is an attack on the institution of education which needs more of an update than the funding from the ever topical Gonski reforms. Thanks for reading and if you're in the position to change part of this, as a student, teacher, government worker, secretary, principal, head of school or parent then I'm urging you to give it a go and re-evaluate what you're asking for from the school and be understanding if the school looks like they are making a change.
Jumpy dance music to help you forget all about what I just said.
No comments:
Post a Comment