Cultural repair work badly needed

Seen at a local Pack n Save.So if school is so good, why this, and why Harry Potter's success, since it's about the cruelty experienced at school? We are surrounded by reminders of how horrible it is for most children at school-I saw recently a book launch of cartoons, most of which were 'funny' strips from the point of view of a child; a kind of 'funny' Harry Potter with the onerous requirements of school etc-and yet we chuckle as if to say, "Oh well, that's life!". I don't. To me its a sad indictment on a society which will not act in its own interests and put into place the things that brings it well being. The fact that we cant wait to get our kids back to school indicate a serious unstiching in our social fabric.As contributors I nominate the pressure of work; the poorly developed relationships we have with our kids thanks to the industrial work ethic; the inability to perceive anyone's (our children's and our own)difficulty and pain.

Go on, truant!

Break the back of this disease we call school. Its an aberration. Go on get out of there.Run and dont look back.Run into your life.
They have been running a campaign in our local town to rescue truants from certain peril (see my earlier blog) by not serving them in their shops.The jury is out on whether truants,returned to school,are ever the successes one local principle is quoted as calling 'research'. Depends on how you measure success. If you mean they complete their compulsory education,I wouldn't call that a success. Completion of schooling isnt success-. in the same way that lack of war is not peace.I would like to read that research.
Now a little guessing game: Who do you think truants from school? Children from a higher, middle, or low income demographic? Families or parents who are interested or who arent interested? You're right so far. Could we say that they rightly perceive (the truant child and the family) that school offers nothing for them? Is staying at school going to launch them on a career path to law or med school? Something about the whole problem smells of exclusion,privelege and a caste system.
I read an interesting Scottish Study of truancy recently. Its worth a look http://dspace.gla.ac.uk:8080/bitstream/1905/251/1/072.pdf  I noted that the overwhelming majority of kids in the study wagged because they were bored. I'd imagine the same results would be found here in NZ. So what do we say to that? The idealogues would contend that we have to entertain them with technology to get them 'engaged' in learning;to use eduspeak Their point of view is-it's obviously the kids fault.I would also bet that alot of these children would be the first to say its their fault,that they are lazy or badly behaved.We have The Perfect Society where the victims of shoddy systems are the biggest fans of the system that oppresses them..Natural learners would say let the children decide what they want to do.We did..And it worked.
When I was given the job to watch the gates at school during recess (keeping the inmates from escaping), I was frequently approached by young people begging to be allowed to go to the shop-a 200 metre walk in view of my station. I would engage them,and suggest that they were in a type of jail and that I was given the job of warden. These students were men and women;not children.In the rest of their lives,they were free to go to any retail store, drive a motor vehicle, make decisions about where and who to spend their time with. but for some reason it was considered dangerous for them to pick up a bag of potato chips from the local dairy. I mean,they might run away and never come back! That's ludicrous; the whole town would scoured for them and they would be in trouble from school authorities (and possibly from home).

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Examining exams

Righto,so i think exams are dumb.To explain why I came to this view I will look at(examine haha) some of the assumptions and premises which are taken for granted.Here's the commonly held rationale behind them: You need to test what people know. Now,don't teachers spend time with students?Ask any teacher around mid year,mid semester-do you know what your students know?I have asked; most know what they know.They have spent time with them.Once apon a time that's just what teachers did.They were entrusted and trained to do just that-see how students are going and work with them to assist them and mentor them .Now we have a 'low trust' model operating-its not enough for you to know your students and them you.
The second rationale is you need to have a pressure cooker system to make people learn better.Why do we create a stressful exam environment,with clocks ticking and success linked to them? If we want to test for how well we do under stress,why dont we say that?Why link it to the subject? It could be a subject in its own right-How to Solve Problems Under Strict Deadlines. Somehow we got to the insanity we have in the school system (and beyond) where we mistake learning for solving problems against time.There is no evidence that anxiety improves learning-on the contrary there is plenty of evidence to show that anxiety makes learning, thinking and doing harder.And for many if not for all,exams are anxiety producing.
The third rationale behind exams is that you should try and catch students out by 'surprises"- another cruel ploy by a system that fails to understand why and how people learn.Catching them out may reassure insecure teachers of the fact that they know something that students don't,but it doesn't have anything to do with learning.More erroneous beliefs are that learning is associated with discomfort,punishment,force or coercion.
I don't support assessment of any kind anymore.It drives down morale and self esteem,most people know their strengths and weaknesses very well.Teachers use it to what I call 'negatively teach'-the weird belief that pointing out failures and mistakes is the role of the teacher,and that they will do better if they are told.Mostly I've seen this when its used exclusively as a teaching strategy.The light goes out from the students' eyes and pretty soon they give up (inside). An analogy: Its like felling a tree in the forest to make it grow better.
An anecdote from a friend whose son recently delved into his favourite Classics subject.He loved it; its his passion. He produced an amazing document for a project but was told he only 'achieved' and did not gain 'excellence' (the New Zealand School system classifies work in terms of not achieved,achieved,merit or excellence) because his project was too long.That sort of petty meddling makes me really angry,especially because the odds are so high that this fellow will now feel deflated and lose interest in a subject he formerly loved.
One reason to support assessment is that an employer or a third party who wants to know something about a student can look at formal bits of paper and get an idea of their strengths etc.
My son has been mesmerised into thinking that he might not know anything about a subject-depending on how well he does in his exams-despite the fact that he his at the top of this particular class! Wak!! What the hell?Dont get your hopes up,it might be all dashed on the rocks! The end result is the mantra "don't trust what you know,you might be wrong"

The school system and natural learning

Ive just been relief teaching for 4 weeks at a local secondary school which confirmed everything for me about the problems and the solutions for 'education' today.Ive been lucky (actually no luck here;I wanted to)to have been a 'natural learning' father for 17years.Others know us as unschoolers, but in the same way that theism defines athiests,I thought that using schooling in the description of what I do is a bad start.We dont 'un' anything as my children,all three of them hadnt been to a school until 2009 except for a minor stint by my daughter at a local primary school for a term I think.Plus any reference to schools is abhorent to me-think sheep going through drafting or huge numbers of people being processed.You get the idea.So I have seen both schools and,in a flourishing network of locals called Hearthland Educators and in my own home,have seen children doing their own thing in many different settings.

And what did I teach the students during my stint? Not to trust their own views,feelings,intuitions.That someone else always knows the answer ahead of you and that pleasing them is very important.That freedom of expression is bad,that you dont have freedom to eat,socialise, go to the toilet when you want which by the way join a huge list of basic human needs such as privacy, autonomy,trust, companionship with who one chooses,ability to make choices about ones life- which are also denied at school.
So how do children learn? Or should we say,how do people learn? In my experience,and in my reading of education reformers and  such as John Holt,John Taylor Gatto and Derrick Jensen, people learn when they have good reason to do so.That is it excites them,it challenges them,something cool/amazing happens that makes you do it again; and they see in the 'teacher' profound effects of the particular thing.The 'student' says I want some of that-they see hear and feel the impact on the life of the 'teacher'.I'm talking here of the master/apprentice model.I'm also talking here of the value of the child setting their own life in motion-self learning.This is a massive gap between the current thinking in schools and the successful,happy motivated learner.

A little story before I go today. During my relief teaching I met a very determined but unhappy young girl who sat up the front and who asked if she could take the text book home and copy the text into her exercise book.Upon asking if she enjoyed the subject,the girl replied no,but she was working on her weaknesses which she seemed to interpret as any subject she hated.I said to her that I thought it sad that she did this-I think I said something like learning is about having fun,curiosity and the like.At that point another teacher,who happenned to be in the room,reinforced the girls viewpoint "Its no good doing what you like or are good at-its the things that you dont like or good at which deserve your attention."
I did think a little later that they possibly interpreted my arguement as there would be no challenge in doing what you love-thats if you just recycled the same stuff day in and day out.But that doesn't stack up with anyone who did what they loved-from Einstein to Olympic high jumpers.
Anyway,its a story that remains like an epitaph to a fallen city.This is the common view at school.Also that we know what you need-you just have to remember it and recycle it when we want.

I'm going to continue next time and lay down the wero(challenge) with some real challenges for the Ministry of Education.Bye for now
With patient love