Education:
The System Is Too Academic!
Most kids are not on the same wavelength as the tuition they receive.
Every 12
year old British kid is taught that in a right-angled
triangle, sine = opposite/ hypotenuse, cosine = adjacent/ hypotenuse, and
tangent = opposite / adjacent.
Fascinating.
But how many of them ever need it for anything? I'm a math tutor myself, and the
only time I ever needed it was to get money by teaching it to others who also
won't ever need it.
They
are taught Shakespeare, Milton , Byron
and Keats, Latin and the Greek Classics,... and the very next time we look
around, all the delinquents and truants are choosing to remain delinquents and
truants by ducking off school.
I
can't think why....
And
then, when they are compelled to attend school, all they can do is misbehave. (Oooh..er...mystery,
that)
It
is a profound truth about the education system in the UK, that apart
from the three "R"s, the great mass of the people don't even
begin to learn what they need to know to make their way in the world, until they
have already left school.
I'm
not suggesting by this that we should only teach them the basics; but I am
suggesting that for many kids, the system is simply too academic and needs to be
re-tailored to suit not only their realistic down to earth needs, but also their
intrinsic, mostly practically orientated abilities and aptitudes.
A
large component of delinquency at school is due
to the fact that the kids just do not want to
be there. But in turn there are some fairly
obvious reasons why they
don't want to be there. Can you imagine for example the psychological reaction
of a rough delinquent kid who was barred from English Literature classes? Why,
he'd* laugh; he'd even breathe a sigh of relief and the teacher would accuse him
of being shamelessly incapable of embarrassment. Now picture the reaction of the
very same kid barred from a lesson in which they have
to build a motorcycle or a car from scratch. He'd be
embarrassed. He'd feel humiliated, belittled and
socially rejected.
Same one kid
, same one personality!
On
the academic spectrum the existing system is simply nowhere near the wavelength
of these more practically orientated kids and makes them feel like alienated
fish out of water. And the more they are threatened by staff, to the effect that
they'll never "succeed" in life unless they toe the line and achieve
good results, the more they are reminded of just how alien a system they are
being subjected to. And this in turn hardly does anything to reduce the
likelihood of their venting these induced frustrations with misbehaviour, violence and
crime.
In
addressing these problems we
do not need to return to the old Grammar/Secondary Modern system as has been
suggested by some; all we need do is re-tailor the existing Comprehensive system
so that it becomes less academic for those whose best abilities, although
perhaps as extensive -- and more useful -- than those of some of us, are not
academic by nature.
Consequently
--for those people-- out should go English literature and Latin, and in should
come automotive engineering (fixing cars), plumbing, hairdressing, electronics,
the practicalities of running a small business, and all the rest.
And
watch the truancy problem cure itself!
Further,
it is also the democratic duty of the state to supply the needs of the people.
Clearly, as we have seen, its education chiefs are not doing that. Instead, they
have inherited an archaic, Victorian system where the notion of
"betterment" necessarily meant excelling in the Literature and the
Arts, or (note, to a lesser extent i.e. it would be considered less
"excellent") in Science, in other words departing from the mundanity
of everyday life in a spiritually elevating way; and they have simply peddled
that system on to successive generations with only a superficial amount of
reformation in that sense, without ever realising that most kids do not need, or
want, to depart from the ‘mundanity’ of everyday life; on the contrary they
need to harmonise with and become better at it!
And
in this, we are effectively defining the need for a more realistically
orientated education system.
---
Michael Alan Marshall
* The vast majority are male.