School league tables… January 25, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Economy, Irish Politics, The Left, Uncategorized.trackback
There are those who unkindly, but correctly, point to the role of the Irish Times during the boom in adding to the overhyping and overheating of the housing market. Their initiatives weren’t minimal, from weekly supplements glorying in ever higher prices to a direct online presence in the market that was highly questionable on many different levels. But if one thought that was where their input to matters various ended one would be mistaken because before Christmas we were treated to their ‘School League Tables’.
It was suggested in comments that these ‘tables’ were in no small part responsible for some of the growth of private education across the boom, though interesting to reflect on how the recession may be impacting. It would be difficult, if not indeed impossible, to trace a direct correlation between the tables and that growth, but it seems reasonable to suggest that as with their bolstering of the housing market some effect is possible and likely.
And while I didn’t get to this story sooner because ill-health intervened, it’s worth reflecting on as an example of the nexus between media, opinion and public policy driven in no small part by commercial and cultural (for how many of the present Cabinet went to private schools? 6 of 14 is the answer, and that represents 40% as against 7% of the general population, but it’s worth reflecting that ‘free education’ post dated many of those in Cabinet’s schooldays and that in itself represents a distinction between the general population) demands.
Which perhaps accounts for the rather defensive tone of an editorial on the tables a while back:
The publication of The Irish Times School League Tables last week drew a robust response from the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland. ASTI general secretary Pat King said it was important to recognise that these tables “do not tell us about the real performance of schools’’. It was a familiar response from the union, one of the many education lobby groups that successfully lobbied against the publication of official league tables in the 1999 Education Act.
I dislike the idea that the ASTI or teaching unions in general can be reduced to a ‘lobby group’. It seems unlikely that an IT editorial would likewise brand Ed Walshe and the cohort of educational opinion holders that he belongs to a ‘lobby’, not least because they’re more than willing to offer him space for his thoughts on a semi-regular basis, so to be quite so dismissive is telling – by the by, I’m not the greatest fan of the ASTI as was. The efforts of some within it to shift away from the union movement were misconceived and elitist and I’d suggest had long term negative impacts on the perception of teaching and teachers in general.
When The Irish Times first published league tables a decade ago, ASTI and other vested interests predicted it would have a detrimental impact on education. Ten years on, is there any evidence to sustain this charge? The league tables have become part of the education landscape, eagerly anticipated by parents and read carefully by school principals and teachers. Despite this, some in the teacher unions and elsewhere like to admonish parents who seek information on school performance. This is grossly unfair.
The choice of a second-level school is one of the key decisions which any parent will face, one which will have a big influence on their childrens social and academic development. Every parent wants to entrust their child to a school that will allow them to realise their full potential; information on Leaving Cert performance can help parents make a more informed choice.
The problem with this line is self-evident. Talk of ‘choice’ is a chimera. For most parents there is no real choice because choice is so often predicated on income [and location to a lesser extent]. And a choice that can only be exercised by a minority is no real choice at all. It matters not a bit if I have all the information in the world if I can do nothing with it. Indeed there’s a counter argument, by further weighting the scales in favour of those who already have resources this merely exacerbates an already existing injustice. Is that somehow less grossly unfair than ‘admonishments’?
And in the very structure of the tables there are inequities. For example, the Institutes of Technology which in my own professional practice I’ve been an external examiner at (and have found them to achieve outcomes on a par with ‘national’ institutions), are relegated to a sort of secondary or tertiary position – hardly worth noting. Indeed Clive Byrne of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals made precisely this point when in a letter to the IT subsequently he noted:
League tables, as published, encourage an elitist view of education and stoke artificial competition between schools. I was disappointed that your paper introduced a category of high points courses in the universities, teacher training colleges and the Royal College of Surgeons as a ranking criterion. Institutes of Technology don’t count as highly it appears and as well as fee-paying schools we also now risk having a hierarchy of third-level providers. “The Irish school system is characterised by comparatively limited accountability mechanisms” according to the OECD and “The government is under increasing pressure from the influential OECD to publish official school league tables which are currently banned under the Education Act” according to your correspondent.
And the IT editorial writer him or herself is forced to acknowledge that beyond that there are problems.
And yet no fair-minded person could argue that the tables published this week present a rounded picture of school performance. The tables take no account of socio-economic factors. And they can grossly underestimate the work of teachers in deprived communities. That said, The Irish Times’ table highlighted the two-tier nature of Irish education where large swathes of working-class communities remain locked out of college while middle-class schools send all of their pupils to higher education. Is anyone seriously suggesting this information should be withheld?
Highlighted the two tier nature and then done absolutely nothing to offer a solution away from it. Progressive or otherwise. Moreover the Irish Times letters pages have been awash with schools pointing out that the IT league tables contain significant inaccuracies in relation to the figures offered.
Anyhow. It continues:
There is a more fundamental question: Has the official culture of secrecy about schools been good for educational standards in the State? Significantly, the OECD is unconvinced. In a review last month, it said the lack of transparency in Irish education could be a factor in explaining Ireland’s faltering performance in its education rankings. In the most recent OECD rankings, Irish teenagers fell from 5th to 19th in literacy, the sharpest decline among developed nations. The OECD was critical of how “only limited data on comparative school performance is made public’’.
But there’s an obvious problem with this as well [by the by, the IT is not alone in this exercise, as has been noted here previously, the Sunday Times has a similar table’]. These tables have existed during the period of economic decline. That being the case it’s difficult to see how there’s a direct correlation between the two.
There are further issues, I think I’ve noted previously that with the demographic boom currently under way with the pressures on primary, secondary and tertiary education about to increase due to increased numbers this is precisely the time to reboot the system in a way which is genuinely equitable. But again, we’re not hearing that line from the IT.
And the IT editorial ends particularly weakly:
OECD has proposed new official tables, weighted to allow for socio-economic factors. The Government should embrace this plan and open up a new era of transparency in Irish education; it might even help to raise standards. As things stand, the league tables published in the media remain the only source on school information. Yes, they are imperfect. But half a loaf is better than no bread at all.
It’s hard to know which is worse really. The IT’s enthusiastic engagement with the housing market during the boom, or its Pontius Pilate style evasiveness as regards these tables. Or the utter glibness of that final line quote above as it attempts to pretend that it stands apart and divorced from a process which it is a player in.
The inequities in the current system are so apparent that sometimes it seems that that in itself somehow masks them from critical gaze. But that only underlines the fact that the efforts to point out those inequities and contradictions and to reform that system need to be redoubled.
I recall when I was in 4th Year (i think, 2005ish), my school, Coláiste Daibhéid, came in the top 20 of those tables, and our principals reaction was really gas. He was a marvellous man, with a really great sense of the value of real education in its fullest sense, arts sport, and promoted a real sense of community within the school. He would have been massively opposed to the use of League tables, but for our small (130 students) Irish Language VEC school to get leaving cert results better than most better funded, resourced and supported schools was no mean feat either. He was a hilarious mix of pride, embarrassment, humility and bashfulness, unsure whether to shout from the rooftops, or ignore it entirely, probably more inclined to the latter. We could do with many more teachers and principals of his kind.
But, alas, no way of finding out who and where they are.
You rightly call the IT out on it’s pretty blatant support for League Tables for schools. It’s interesting to match that support with the same journal’s attacks on fee paying schools in more recent weeks. The same paper has never been shy of poking at my union the ASTI, in fact recently the education editor wanted me to comment on behalf of the union on the announced audit of fee paying schools because the ASTI was at that stage silent on the issue.
I thank you for defending the ASTI from the charge of being ‘a lobby group’ and wholeheartedly support your description of Ed Walsh but when you say the following about the ASTI: ‘the efforts of some within it to shift away from the union movement were misconceived and elitist and I’d suggest had long term negative impacts on the perception of teaching and teachers in general’, I think we need some context.
The ASTI moved away from Congress around ten years ago because of the perception that educational issues where being sidelined at ICTU and after a difficult period of industrial action the membership felt a lack of support and solidarity from other unions was worth taking action over. Rather than the decision to disaffliate being a primary reason for the falling opinion of the ASTI, that percieved shift in public opinion was driven in part by the same newspaper we are discussing. Many teachers have never encounter that changed attitude, it is a construct which facillitates the same agenda you’ve been decrying.
Anyway, the ASTI has reaffiliated in more recent times and is very much inside the tent, as the over-riding of decisions on issues like Croke Park (which the ASTI initially rejected) has proved. The four teachers unions are exploring their common ground at the moment, we can only guess at the atitiude of the IT to that prospect!
The issue of League Tables is dealt with by the General Secretary of the ASTI in the latest edition of our journal ASTIR on pages 26 and 27.
http://www.asti.ie/uploads/media/ASTIR_Journal_January2012_Web.pdf
League Tables of the IT variety are a bad idea, but I’d like to see teaching unions start to promote some real alternatives.
The lack of accountability in Irish education is disturbing and the failure of both the Des and educationalists in general to assess the effectiveness of individuals, methods and systems in a scientific manner is difficult to understand.
This ‘lack of accountability’ is a criticism that needs updating. I’ve been inspect five times in the last six years; the latest was at short notice in December. And teachers are accountable not only to the inspectorate of course but to parents and school management who can use an agreed prodcedure to complain or explore a grievance. The fact that it’s rarely used is probably down to the quality of what goes on in our schools.
On a more general point though your use of the language of industry (‘assess the effectiveness of individuals, methods and systems in a scientific manner’) is unhelpful when applied to education. It is not easy to ‘assess the effectiveness’ of a ‘system’ that gets a student to her Leaving Certificate when none of her family have made it there previously, or indeed to account for the pride a student and his teacher might get out of a B grade on an Ordinary Level paper when everyone else wrote him off.
Education is not a machine, schools are not factories.
That’s bullshit Lev. I wasn’t using the language of ‘industry’, but common scientific terms. It is not only possible to measure educational outcomes, but relatively easy when compared to other subjects that psychologists study. Measurement of factors like pupil satisfaction or the effects of a method on literacy, numeracy or school completion is relatively simple (e.g. Project Follow Through).
As for inspections, what they measure is, from my experience, is adherence to Des policy and protocol. A poor teacher who speaks the lingo and fills out the right forms on time gets by. The fact remains that only a tiny, tiny number of teachers have ever been fired. I know of one principal who described it as being easiee to convict a person of murder than to fire a permanent teacher for incompetence when their co-workers complained. Perhaps you’re right about the usefulness of internal complaints mechanisms, but if that principal certainly didn’t think so.
That’s bullshit Lev. I wasn’t using the language of ‘industry’, but common scientific terms. It is not only possible to measure educational outcomes, but relatively easy when compared to other subjects that psychologists study. Measurement of factors like pupil satisfaction or the effects of a method on literacy, numeracy or school completion is relatively simple (e.g. Project Follow Through).
As for inspections, what they measure is, from my experience, is adherence to Des policy and protocol. A poor teacher who speaks the lingo and fills out the right forms on time gets by. The fact remains that only a tiny, tiny number of teachers have ever been fired. I know of one principal who described it as being easier to convict a person of murder than to fire a permanent teacher for incompetence when their co-workers complained. Perhaps you’re right about the usefulness of internal complaints mechanisms, but if that’s true then that principal certainly didn’t think so.
Ivor, there’s something in what you say – though perhaps we can ratchet it down a fraction. But what I know of whole school inspections in the recent past is that they’re now no warning and a lot more comprehensive than they used to be.
In relation to firing, I went to two schools, did my leaving first in a Community School and then repeated it on a sort of weird exchange with a Jesuit fee-charging school [it was an experiment, both schools were nominally Jesuit]. In the former there were some not so great teachers, but none I had which I would say was bad, in the latter there were three or four who were abysmal. I often wondered if that was a function of type of school or what. In fairness to contemporary teachers, that was just under 30 odd years ago so I’m loath to draw too many conclusions subsequently. I did a year and a half’s teacher training myself for secondary – which is one of the resasons I’m so interested in the area and I found it pretty comprehensive and good, but that too is no assurance of quality of teaching subsequently or abitlity, though that course did weed those who weren’t suited to it.
[...] is a response to a blogpost from the excellent [...]
Lev, as you say the main thing is that ASTI is back in the fold where, IMO it is best positioned. Should add I have close relatives in the TUI and ASTI {now ret’d a few years} who might have a slightly different view of matters but then again all these things are subject to the subjective.
More broadly on league tables in this discussion I think we agree that they’re not micro, in the sense of about ‘teachers with problems teaching’ or ‘teaching itself’ int he sense of the curriculum but about the macro tangling issues of class and class perception, a certain view of outcomes [exams] etc and so on. To me, objectively, that makes them hugely problematic.
First @ Ivor Thorne
Possible to measure educational outcomes? Measure the kid from a disadvantaged area who completes the Leaving Cert, measure the kid with autism who makes a modest success of secondary school, measure the kid who ‘gets it’ one day a year; nothing relatively easy about your industrial/scientific approach to education.
You’re ill-informed about inspections too. There are no such ‘DES protocols’ (more jargon), there is no ‘lingo’ or ‘right forms to fill out’, just a judgement, published on the DES website, I might add, as to whether a school and it’s teachers are providing a creditable education for the students.
And why the obsession with ‘firing teachers’? Would the inspectorate, the DES or what you might call the system or the machine chucking out a regular number irregardless of ‘measurement’ be more to your liking? Firing people for spurious reasons from any profession is just plain wrong.
Could it be that your attitude is based on your own experience decades ago?
Finally your principal friend sounds like he has an agenda, I presume he had some evidence for what sounds like a gross overstatement.
Lev, it is disturbing that you equate science with industry. If you don’t think that education should be informed by a scientific approach and empirical literature, what do you imagine it should be informed by? Should teachers simply “look into their hearts” and decide what a student needs?
And yes, it is possible to measure changes in school completion rates of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and it is possible to measure the success of integration and academic success of children with autism. Confidence, literacy and numeracy can all be measured as well. In fact, these are popular areas of study and you will find plenty of articles in industrial/scientific journals on these topics. In regards many of these topics, try reading the literature around the report I previously referred you to if you would like more information.
As for the DES judgements, I’ve worked in schools where I’ve read the reports published on the DES websites (both favourable and less than favourable) and the descriptions published do not resemble those schools. Forgive me if I don’t put the same about of faith in them that you do.
As for firing teachers, what makes you think it’s an obsession? Or was that just another attempt at semantic slander, like the “scientific/industrial” jibe? And my principal friend who has an agenda? Even if you don’t agree with him, you discount the possibility he could simply be mistaken, why? Or do you usually engage in ad hominem attacks rather than rational debate.
For the record, I don’t have an obsession with “firing” teachers. I happen to believe that access to a quality education is a pre-requisite for a just and equal society. The single most importance factor that the state has control over in the process of education is the teacher. A well-informed, motivated teacher is priceless to society while an underperforming teacher results in lost opportunities. I happen to think that we need to intervene where a teacher is underperforming and see what we can do about it. We also need to identify what practices the teachers that succeed employ so that we can teach other teachers to use them to the benefit of their students. We all know of poorly performing teachers who are of little use to their students. If the aren’t performing and they can’t/won’t reform their practices then, for the sake of their students, they should be fired. That doesn’t happen.
As for my experience, my work has brought me into contact with different schools. I have relatives and friends that work in education. I finished school around a decade ago and many of those who taught me are still teaching.
@ Worldbystorm
You are right in regard to inspections being what they now call ‘incidental’, and far more frequent. Personally I welcome them, though some teachers still have a wariness born out of far from best practice on the part of some inspectors.
You are also right to give some qualification to comments about schools experienced in the 1980s and earlier. I went to school then too, schools now are unrecognisable in comparison, not entirely because of investment either.
On the reaffiliation of the ASTI to Congress, in my view the place to be is changing it from the inside out, but that requires a huge effort from officials, elected and headquartered, and of course from paying members; there’s no stomach for that at the moment. Congress relies too heavily on certain sectors and the relative lightness of the weight of sectors like education runs contrary to what Congress is meant to be for, united action on behalf of those under pressure.
I completely agree about the intermingling of class attitudes and the desire for league tables.There seems to be more shrugging of the shoulders about them in small towns around the country than there is South Dublin or indeed Tara St!
Lev-”education is not a machine,schools are not factories” that’s just a slogan and those who spend time reflecting on schools in this state know that schools are indeed factories and education is indeed a machine.Even those teachers who claim to be progressives run their classes as the all-knowing adult who has huge power over the students and if pushed even the gentlest will dish out detentions,lines or whatever sanctions are currently in vogue.
Some reasons why schools are factories
1 Compulsory,you can’t hack it but it’s a legal obligation until you’re 16,being bullied,bored,beaten up just ain’t good enough
2 Schools all start at times linked to the old factory systems,every single thing is timed and controlled.Kids are usually made to have their breaks in schoolyards,imagine teachers or other adults having to take their breaks outdoors!
3 Uniforms,enough said
4 Single sex schools or as is the case for most schools,learning is linked to age so all the 10 year olds must learn together and all the 15 year olds
5 Schools provide fodder for businesses as schools value obedience,submission,time keeping,repetitve and dull work.Government,businesses and unions all connive in this.This is like the old 19th century “truck” system with all of us having to pay so that the Intels and IBMs can get the cream of the crop.
6 Of the two or three million things worth learning schools decide on 7 or 8 key subjects which is simply put a factory aproach to learning.
7 Like the factories of old most schools are cut off from the students and their community.This sense of not belonging in a meaningful way is reinforced by walls,long avenues and even CCTVs.
8 The imposition of religion in many schools,enough said
9 The intolerable middle class nature and ethos of schools often excludes working on manual subjects.It also excludes working class values such as loyalty,self help,mutual aid, cooperation,looking out for your friends,not snitching or chipping in.Competition and individualism reign supreme,students only do exams on an individual basis.
10 Like the factories of old there is a huge transfer of resources from the bottom up.As it is usually upper middle class people who stay the very longest in the education system studying to be doctors,dentists or university dons they cost the most,the cost being borne by everbody else.
This is not to blame the teachers for a system that is embedded and based on the points race….There is very little if any critical thinking going on in our education system and Lev can claim that schools are not factories or machines with a straight face.I would also imagine that it helps to explain to some extent why people here have not resisted austerity.
Easy to criticise..possibel solutions(with thanks to AS Neill,John Holt,Paolo Freire,Leon Tolstoy and Ivan Illich)
-Genuine community schools with workshops,creches,chess clubs,cinema clubs,music classes,old folks groups,community gardens open all the time where old and young can meet as equals and learn form each other.
- radical schools on the lines of Neill’s Summerhill
- personal learning,home-schooling and child led learning
@Fergal
My reply might be quick as I’m due back in school to fulfill my commitment under the Croke Park Agreement, open night at 7pm
Let’s begin with the tone of your reply. As you suggest you spend time ‘reflecting on schools in this state’ I’d love to know from what perspective. Again, as with a previous commenter, the schools you describe are no longer in existence. Your knowledge of the 21st teenager is, in kindness, laughable. If you think they come into class to simply listen to someone on an ego trip, presenting themselves as ‘an the all-knowing adult’, you probably haven’t met a teenager lately.
But, to the bulk of your argument, presented as a list, not unlike a Leaving Cert composition, of the old style of course.
Compulsion: yes schools are compulsory, but avoidable, unlike the world of work whci as I pointed out above catches up with us all eventually. Being bullied is not something condoned in either as far as I know.
Yes, schools start at nine o’clock, how 19th century of them, however taking breaks in the yard isn’t compulsory or indeed the norm in many schools, some even have central heating; the modernity!
Oh and the old uniforms chestnut: ‘Yes we are all individuals’. How many factory workers wear a uniform I wonder? How many teachers for that matter?
I don’t know what your problem with single sex education is, but neither do I know of many single sex workplaces, or indeed stafrooms, to labour an earlier point.
I’m surprised you’re even a follower to this blog if you subscribe to the reductive notion, often pedalled by ICTU than schools should provide ‘fodder for business’. Do you, like captains of industry want the condraditory ideas of less rote learning and more complicity? Guess what schools are for? Education! Not for businesses, not for time-keeping (though what’s the issue there?), not for gathering statistics on social change either via League Tables either.
I don’t know what your problem with subject based learning is, the Greeks invented it, so any issue you have with schools here isn’t something factories are responsible for.
And now we come to the part where you assert schools are cut off from their students and communities: what an utterly ridiculous thing to say! Schools rather are rooted in their communities, designed for their students and linked in a myriad of ways to those that keep them going. Off the top of my pretty angry head I can think of GAA, soccer, rugby, school shows, school banks, work experience, social justice and interaction, an almost endless list. And as regards walls and avenues: schools are buildings, they’d fall down without walls my friend.
Can’t think of many factories now or back in your day when religion was imposed; can’t think of many secondary schools where your religion is an issue actually; I teach Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Orthodox Russians and atheists. it’s a Catholic school but our links to the community mean we take all comers.
You have a legitimate thing about the middle class nature of education, I would like to see a broadening of the cohort who take education in 3rd level but that surely isn’t the fault of the schools themselves?
I can’t see the truth of your statement about critical thinking, not every student crams his way to 600 points, many find their voices and succeed without worrying about the points race. I can tell you this though, I much prefer to teach a student who can think for herself than someone who wants to rehash what someone else said. Are you genuinely going to blame teachers for the failure to revolt over austerity? Seriously?
All of which brings us back to where we started: schools are vibrant places, where those who are motivated by internal or external factors can flourish. They are a vital part of communities across the country, but should have no truck with league tables or points races. They are far from the Gradgrind institutions of your memory, they are places where industrialisation has no place.
Then again Fergal knowing someone who works in a school in a deprived area they will tell you that what the children there seek almost above all else is a degree of order and predictability in their lives, so while there’s an huge amount that I agree in what you propose there’s also short term and intermediary issues that need to be addressed [and in fairness I think are generally speaking] before we get to the step change required to implement the sort of approaches you rightly suggest. And Lev’s got a point, compared to when I went to school in the late 1960s through to the early 1980s there’s already been a massive shift towards more open forms of education – though I wonder if the middle class emphaiss you point to undercuts that.
I’m with Fergal on balance, he points to some structural flaws that permeate “education” in 99.99% of situations.
Just for Lev’s benefit here, I’m a 47 yr old father of three kids aged between 9 and 15, one in the local village national (RC) school, one in the local VEC community school, one in the convent secondary school in the nearest town, they’re all doing well in their schools and are happy campers. I don’t have baggage from my own school days, I liked school and went on to college and came out with 1st class hons. And I’m married to a maths teacher.
But despite all of that I think Fergal’s right in a lot of what he says.
It’s a factory system, that’s the truth of it. It suits the natural high achievers and it fails a lot of kids as well. Despite the huge effort put in by teachers I would add.
This echoes many of Fergal’s thoughts:
Yes, that animation is excellent. I’m pretty sure I posted it here last time we discussed education, or one of the previous times at least. Education crops up here on CLR a lot, and tends to generate more debate than most other social issues (in the broadest sense), which I always find a bit strange. Why do we have such strong opinions about education? Are there simply a lot of teachers or teachers spouses here? Is it because we’ve all experianced education firsthand? Is it because many of us are parents and experience it again in that different context? It’s a pity we don’t often have such varied discussions over other aspects of our lived social experience really. I get the feeling that collectively the contributors / commentators on CLR could outline a decent framework for a transformative educational approach, something which addresses immediate shortcomings and opportunities as well as medium-term and blue-sky apsects, but we don’t seem to have as much to contribute to other areas of everyday political importance such as healthcare, housing, work, community. Not a criticism by any means, just an observation.
Hi LATC good observation why not a post a week on ideas on housing,work etc and then we couls issue it as a manifesto or programme and try to implement it ourselves!
Hi Fergal,
The thought has occurred alright, but to be honest I think there’s a fundamental problem with that sort of activity in the shape you propose it, in that the results of such work would appear and disappear fleetingly and would be lost in (and add to) the noise that constitutes web-based commentary. Here today, gone tomorrow. Not even 15 minutes of influence (fame).
There is merit indeed in people brainstorming a political programme without getting bogged down in ideological differences between political parties. The question is the mechanism for doing the work. I don’t honestly think that an open forum such as a blog is necessarily an effective way for doing that. Call me what you like but not all voices should be heard equally, and the web is a classic example of often empty vessels making the most noise and hindering progress, whether maliciously or through genuinely knowing no better.
The other issue is that for a programme or manifesto to gain traction it would really need buy-in from the start from already existing organisations who would lend the weight of intellectual endeavour and credibility to the project. It would need to be a genuine engagement which is targetted at a particular result, e.g. an election, without being reduced to a mere short-term electoral ploy.
Anyway, it’s a subject for another time I think.
Hi Lev,
Many thanks for your reply,suppose I reflect on the education system in this state as a product of it,a user of it,a payer of it and as a citizen genuinely interested in (transformative)education.Okay so my knowledge of teenagers is laughable and the teacher is not the all knowing adult so how does a class go?Does the teacher not provide the curriculum and follow it?Do teenagers engage in a Greek like dialogue with their teachers? Do teenagers and teachers engage in curriculum building using Freire’s methods by seeking out what’s relevant,real and meaningful to the learner?I don’t know,tell me.If a teenager has absolutely no interest in Medieval Histrory do they still have to learn it as it’s on the course and it might come up on the exam?From my limited experience only Transition Year provides freedom from the straitjacket of the curriculum,but I could be wrong here and 21st century students engage in a different way to any other century students.
Compulsion,genuinely believe that real learning can’t take place unless it’s free.I’ve never met anybody that condones bullying,have you,schools obviously are no different the point is that it happens and that the child is told that schools are “good” places.The only reason schools start at 9 is to prepare the five year old to a regimented life in an office or factory there’s no educational basis for doing this,is there?Sorry about the schoolyard error,breaks are held inside,who decides this the student council or the principal?Uniforms deny individuality,they ultimately alienate just like factories.Single sex schools are daft and the only justification I;ve heard is some silly thing about better grades that I can’t remember,it’s to do with control just like a real factory,I suppose.
No truck with the captains of industry but the ASTI has no problem teaching their sons and daughters in fee paying schools and I never hear them complain when Intel and IBM want to change the education system,but I could be wrong here.
“Schools are rooted in their communities designed for their students”again the all knowing adults who design things FOR their students who really don’t know their own needs and wants and need to be told what they need.What happens when schools close for the Summer does the local community collapse?A school bank sounds like a novel idea,captive audience do the banks’ dirty work for them,any school credit unions?The point about religion Lev is that it’s on the curriculum at all not the particular brand of religion,mind numbing classes just like mind numbing factory/office work.
I didn’t blame teachers for the lack of resistance to austerity I said that it helps explain to some extent the lack of resistance here.I still don’t see any evidence of critical thinking in schools in your reply,and this could be replicated in society on a larger scale.How many schools have been occupied by teachers,students and parents?Does the community not feel under attack as it school loses resources?There is no real culture of fighting back in schools here..why?
Sorry Lev, but I’d like to say as I did in my initial post that I am not anti teacher but the actual education system that doesn’t put the learner central stage…it can’t as it’s run on factory lines.Getting bac tot my Medieval history lesson if in 2012 I put my hand or rise my little finger and say that I see no relevance to this in daily life what will the teachet reply?What can he reply?The curriculum.I saw my nephew’s Junior Cert history book and flicked through it and saw no reference to the great Peasant Rebellions in England in 1381 but plenty of black death etc,i digress.