Training for Discontent
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Politicians here are fond of talking about 'raising standards', and ordinary people you talk to have started to echo this language. I've developed a strategy for dealing with this. I just ask 'what is a standard? what do you mean, what is it we are raising?'. The result is a stuttering fall-back on things that can be measured (pass rates on our national tests and external exams and so on). I suspect the bathwater is thick with babies - we are focussing on the scaffold/feedback at the cost of the underlying process we wanted feedback on. Exam results seem to replace the things the results were symptoms of.
Before I started teaching, I studied physics at a reasonably good UK university then tried a PhD at another good one. I didn't write up the PhD but had a good four years and learned lots.
What got me into physics?
Its 1963. It is raining. I'm dawdling which Mum doesn't like but I'm coming home by my self now. I have my yellow raincoat, wellies and souwester on. I like those because they look like the seamen on the tugs.
I'm watching the rain running down the gutter on the side of the road - the road cambers gently to the curb so the cross section of flow is wedge shaped with a slight curve - water running fast but there is a stable pattern of waves at an angle to the kerb that stays the same. The water is running through the structure of waves. How does the structure of waves stay there if the water is moving? I drop leaves in the water and watch them race down the hill under the waves that stay still. I stay for what seems a long time (probably about 2 minutes!) and listen to the rain on my hat - little rattling sound. Then carry on home.
Most of my work in physics was (in one way or another) to do with that question. I don't think you can schedule that kind of experience. In praise of dawdling.
>I'm watching the rain running down the gutter on the side of the road - the road cambers gently to the curb so the cross section of flow is wedge shaped with a slight curve - water running fast but there is a stable pattern of waves at an angle to the kerb that stays the same. The water is running through the structure of waves. How does the structure of waves stay there if the water is moving? I drop leaves in the water and watch them race down the hill under the waves that stay still. I stay for what seems a long time (probably about 2 minutes!) and listen to the rain on my hat - little rattling sound. Then carry on home.
>Most of my work in physics was (in one way or another) to do with that question. I don't think you can schedule that kind of experience. In praise of dawdling.
This was beautiful.
My point was: are we scheduling/measuring children a little too much? I have no answers. Just a gut feeling that the algorithm of 'measure - intervene - remeasure' is getting a bit out of hand in education. See the BBC News article below...
Your experience in Education is not dissimilar, too, to my experience in Big Corps. 'Innovation' is a word banded around as if it were an elixir from heaven as a way to solve all problems and create the perfect workplace.
Late evening at work, around 11pm long after the workforce had long since left, the managers tended to be able to tie-up their day. A vision of a 500 seat open plan office kept illuminated by 4-5 heads at various locations around the floor. Passing a much liked colleague, she asked me "What does innovation mean?" while pointing at a generic poster on the wall of a lit light bulb on a blue background with 'Innovation' in large text and some scrawl about a corporate competition. "Well, doing things better, modifying processes, creating new ways to do things" I replied. English language was not her first language, but I knew she knew what this word meant and I felt a bit taken aback.
"No" she replied. "It is brainwashing us and my team to think change is good. Innovation is just change. And you know what, some things are OK. We don't need to change them. We need to leave them as they are. I don't want everyone thinking about how to change this or how to change that when they're perfectly fine. I want people to do their jobs and document it well, not think about how it isn't right, and change it to something else that is broken. People could be doing their job, be happy, and when a real problem happens deal with it. Brainwashing us to accept the next change in direction from our dear leaders."
This made sense, and has stuck with me, even several years later. For those in Big Corp or other institutions where the word 'Innovation' is thrown around with glee, it does indeed not mean better. Infact, its meaning is probably closer to "Throw (new) mud at the wall and see if it sticks, and in the process of creating 'innovation' gain the opportunity cost of creating better documentation, going home earlier, or multitudes of other things, but say 'yes' to change because it is masked as being 'good'."
Think about what words really mean, and if they don't make sense, there are much deeper problems with the people saying them.
Should she further the "achievement" of her child through cultural conformance and obsession with "achievement" and corresponding status, or is it her who needs to find her own voice, not defined by external validation. She laments how comfortable she is with her status accredited largely to Stanford, and is ambivalent to whether she wants her child to drink from the same source.
This is a "humblebrag" mix of a genuine and slightly insincere search for yet more validation. Children are a symptom and reflection of their parents' values. To acknowledge the limitations or shallowness of a life defined by a pursuit of "achievement" and validation for her child, she must become self-aware and acknowledge the same throughout her own life.
'Voice' and 'validation' are inextricably intertwined in a social being. She is finding her own voice within this piece. Indeed, I rather admired her self-awareness and questioning of her own assumption and influence (culpability?) in the problem she was addressing.
The problem unique to the West is 'do your best' doublespeak. There is a real, objective standard that, if kids do not meet it, means they will live a materially worse life. Their prospects at virtually every level, personal and professional, will be reduced. Effort is not actually what our kids need to be elite: admission to an ivy league school is, and that means objective achievement.
Preparation for admission requires ever increasing levels of achievement, where achievement means "fewer and fewer mistakes" approaching an asymptote of no mistakes, ever. This pressure apparently starts to kick in around 6th grade.
Maintaining that kind of consistency is itself a very real burden, no matter what age, activity or the difficulty of the task. Imagine being told that, as long as you press a button every hour for 8 hours a day, for 4 years, you'll get 20 million dollars. If you miss once, you get 10M, twice 1M and three times, 0. Would this create a healthy psychology, or would it be stressful?
Sounds kind of like the Lost scenario, where failing to push a button will destroy the world. It certainly did not result in a healthy psychology in the show. I always wondered why they didn't just rig up a machine to push the button (and type in the numbers) for them.
> “What’s a bad day?” I ask the class, when I’m done reading. “A school day,” Lea... says. Lea has always seemed perky and upbeat. I start to laugh as if Lea’s comment is a joke, but no one else does. Her eyes look watery. The boy beside her nods. I ask Lea why, and she tells me she is stressed out and unhappy, “every single day” during the week.
The principal of the school would like to eliminate homework, but the parents demand that their children are "challenged". There is no evidence that this pressure and forced study actually benefits children.
What about letting kids find out what they want to do for themselves? Try things out, feel free to fail without an adult standing over and judging them.
There is a totally different style of education called "democratic free schools" or "Sudbury schools" where children are free to do as they like (within democratically made rules), no curriculm, no mandatory exams or meetings, no book reports, no required English or math. In follow-up surveys, graduates are happy, well-adjusted, and successful.
Here is a 9 min intro video about the original Sudbury Valley School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI
And here is a book "Free to Learn": http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Re...
Every day I am happy I'm not a child anymore. I don't have to "study". I can have what I want. I can choose. I work on meaningful things.
And I know it could be a lot worse.
Of course, part of the reason is that I've worked almost exclusively abroad and there nobody knows that my university is well ranked but I strongly believe that what really matters in the end is the actual skills you have and not where the diploma comes from.
I find it sad when kids waste their childhood because their parents push them to got to the one perfect ivy league school. I don't think it's beneficial for a kid to choose extracurricular activities based on how the admission committee will look at them. I also do not believe in hours of homework that prevent the kid from having time to assuage his natural curiosity and to have fun.
It wasn't even close.
But a nice way to handle the to1 many homework is to use homework as "family time", doing homework together with the kids... Not like doing homework for the kids, but more like have them have fun while they do their homework, ask them question, and let your kid explain fraction to you...
Frankly it's way too much work for kids and not enough idleness. But when I try to put a stop to it's the kid who objects. He's fearful that if he messes up his whole life is screwed.
When I point out that his parents didn't follow the straight-and-narrow he just says "well it's different these days".
Oh, and another cost of this: I can only work on low-concentration tasks, so have to catch up on the rest of my work (professional or domestic) between midnight and 7AM, by either going to bed late or getting up early.