Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 5; September 2000

Education? Education? Education?
What are our children learning ?

by John Beresford, UK

Tony Blair has promised us significant improvements in the provision of state education. Inevitably these will be quantitative - 90% 'A' grades; 32% going to University; all class sizes under 30 ; an extra £x billions on the budget; y million degrees awarded. But is this really the best way to prepare our children for their future ? How will they spend their lives ? How will the world be served ? No-one knows.

The only certainty is rapid, cumulative, fundamental change, and it is for this we should prepare. Darwin tells us that survival goes not to the strongest or to the most intelligent, but to the most adaptable. Most children will have to sell or exploit their abilities in a more volatile, more competitive society, re-training as they go and changing jobs frequently, hence the importance of life-long learning. They will need to acquire initiative, competence and a good track record rather than qualifications. They will be portfolio-working or self-employed for much of their lives.

Most of the new jobs they do will be outside the scope of today's education system and many of today's qualifications will be irrelevant or inadequate. How many leaders of any radically new development such as computers actually studied that development as part of their education? Most formal education deals with the past and the present., with research for the future being jealously segregated from the educational process. Our future society will probably consist of three strata: technically qualified professionals, academics and the rest of us. The rest of us will only survive by energy, vision, initiative, flexibility and competence.

How often have we heard youngsters say that in their 12 years at school they learnt nothing except the 3 R's that was of use to them in later life ? They were turned off, not so much by large classes or boring teachers, but by subjects that they found irrelevent and backward-looking. Today's youngsters are increasingly interested in the future. Their entertainment is largely science fiction and computer games, and their boredom threshold is measure in seconds rather than minutes. They have become accustomed to hearing about the world in sound-bites because that is the way the media present life nowadays, but when a subject really engages their interest they can give it prolonged concentration. Their interest seems to be determined largely by their peer group's perception of what is currently 'cool', plus an element of self-interest in subjects which they believe are going to be of real use to them.

If the future is uncertain and the world is changing, how is education changing ? How are we to narrow the growing incongruence between the system and the real needs ? Like the generation gap, the abyss between children's needs and adults' offerings is growing exponentially. We must adapt both the methods by which children learn, and the range of subjects. A nurse from Victorian times, suddenly re-incarnated into on of today's hospitals would be at a total loss to understabd what was happening. She would be dysfunctional. By comparison, a Victorian teacher, similarly re-incarnated into a present-day classroom would notice very little change.

Life-long learning has to be a reality, and modern technology will make it much easier to achieve. But it means that instead of trying to cram a huge educational package into a couple of decades, we have the opportunity to re-assign priorities and to match the sequence of topics to the maturity of the pupil. Technology means that much more learning will be in small groups or one-to-one, with the pupil controlling the speed and to some extent the choice and sequence of lessons and subjects. We should try to re-schedule the order in which things are presented. So we have to consider which things are best learnt by institutional teaching, which by self-study and which by experience; which by accident and which by design; which when young and which when mature; which are fundamental and which cultural; which are the roots and which the blossoms.

It should not be necessary in a rich society to exclude anything from the scope of life-long education but it is important to review the sequence in which we present the various elements to ensure that we lay the foundations before the concrete sets. Of course education is not an exact science, but essentially it should consist of placing the important dots in the right places. The rest of life consists largely in joining up the dots.

It helps to consider the four main areas - values, skills, creativity and knowledge. The first three, values, skills and creativity need to be taught relatively early. By and large they are finite in scope and in permanent demand. Knowledge, on the other hand, is vast in scope, subjective in relevance, increasing daily and becoming obsolete almost as quickly. Knowledge can and should be acquired gradually, enjoyably and largely informally in the course of an active life. Formal education should aim to stimulate and guide the appetite rather than to satisfy it.

Values are the sine qua non, universal and permanent, regardless of religion. They come under three main headings, conscience, will and discrimination.

Conscience involves among other things honesty; self-control; self- sufficiency; responsibility (the glue of society); courtesy (its lubricant); and generosity.

Will involves persistence and courage, and is the result of inspiration rather than teaching or exhortation. Conscience and will are ideals common to most of humanity and need little justification.

Discrimination adds to these an appreciation of beauty, a sense of humour, and curiosity, the driving force of education.

How children internalise these things is arguable. How can we improve their behaviour ? Who are their idols ? What sort of example are adults setting them ? How can we possibly be surprised at their standards ? Perhaps we need to experiment a little more adventurously.

Skills will facilitate the action which has been determined by circumstances and by values . Firstly, the essential mental skills. I would rate, not necessarily in order:-
Ability to think and express oneself clearly.
A good memory.
Study skills, including much more self-access and individual learning.
The 3 R's, including quick mental arithmetic, and enough simple statistics not to be misled by commercial and political advertising. Statistics can prove anything to people who don't understand statistics.
Critical perception and the ability to present a persuasive argument.
Estimation of weight, length, distance, time and number.
Judgement of probability, i.e. common sense.

Secondly, physical skills and strengths. We live in an increasingly sedentary, obese and cerebral of giving top job opportunities to rugger blues was not as crass as usually portrayed. The Greeks said that up to the age of 16, the only things a young person needed to be taught were to ride hard and tell the truth. That of course was another country, but the physical and emotional components of human beings haven't changed greatly. Health, and the confidence which it engenders are the mainsprings of both mental and physical activity. There are many ways of promoting these, most of them involving exertion and an element of calculated risk-taking . The traditional ones which tend to be neglected in today's urbanised societies include :

Healthy living. Knowledge of the body and first aid. Swimming. Camping, map-reading, travelling independently, cycling. A ball game or horse riding.

Then the everyday skills such as :
Basic DIY, housekeeping, budgetting, shopping.
Keyboard competence and basic computer literacy.
Driving a car.
Preparation for the responsibilities of parenthood.

Most of these skills are already taught in elitist schools.

Professional and vocational skills would be built on the basic ones, and would frequently need refreshing. These would form the backbone of tertiary education and of in-service training.

Creativity. This embraces imagination, which is more important than knowledge; awareness; aesthetic appreciation, without which creativity will be abortive; sensitivity; self-expression in writing poetry, art, music, drama, dance. It must be very difficult to teach all these to a formula, but unless we find an effective approach, a great deal of talent will run to waste. Perhaps there is too much emphasis currently on passive appreciation. Endless studying, analysing, comparing, criticising. Arts are being studied and enjoyed as never before. The volume of new work is gratifying but the quality is embarrassing. Creativity is being crippled by an institutionalised intellectual approach, polishing pebbles and dulling diamonds. The mountain goes into labour and brings forth a pathetic mouse. The incestuous Art Establishment acknowledges its parental responsibility and still encourages more of the same.

Knowledge is the most contentious element. Much of it is essential to keep the wheels turning, but this area is so huge that people have to specialise in one discipline or another. Beyond the level of necessity it merges into erudition which illuminates the world and the individual. Without it, life would be unthinkably boring. But what do people actually do with it? Savour it? Impart it? Discuss it? Flaunt it? Forget it? Perhaps even use it?

Such knowledge as is acquired should help the pupils to understand the world and human society, to participate well, to delight in the richness of life and Nature, and to fill leisure intelligently. A large and increasing proportion of knowledge taught at school is best suited to enriching leisure.

Essentials would be :-

Brief world history. A few anecdotes - just enough to stop the pupils nodding off. But are Henry VIII 's wives really important ?
Elementary geology, geography, meteorology.
Basic Law and Simple agriculture, awareness of animals and their habits.
Practical economics.
Principles of mechanics, dynamics, hydraulics, heat, electricity.

Our system tends to divorce knowledge from thought. Information only becomes useful when it has been savoured, understood, evaluated, digested and slotted into the jigsaw of the brain. Much of the information institutionally taught is parochial bric-a-brac, concerned mainly with the past, not really worth remembering. It is heavily culture-based, and much of it potentially divisive. It recycles clones and echoes, and echoes of echoes. Consider the fatuously irrelevant theses on which most non-scientific Ph.D.s are granted. We are in danger of substituting reading for experience, and literature for life. Useful knowledge is gleaned incidentally, from experience, and from good conversation and reading in later years.

We should distinguish culture from civilisation. Culture is about words and arts. Civilisation is about behaviour, and must take precedence. Of course culture is interesting, and gives life-long pleasure. It is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. Without it the Times crossword would be impossible. But what is interesting is not necessarily important, and vice versa.

At present we turn out thousands of our brightest young brains in the mould of the Modern Major-General who can write a washing list in Babylonic cuneiform and tell you all the details of Caractacus's uniform. They know the name of every bird, but not the song it sings.

We need more free-range minds. Part of the solution could be to encourage more rigarous sandwich courses lasting several years. At present, youngsters spend most of their youth as full-time students and suddenly emerge overnight into the world to face adult responsibilities. If they were phased un gradually, the work experience would add insight to their studies, relieve some of the frustrations of adolescence and facilitate cross-pollenation between theory and practice on a daily basis. It would also help them to choose a career, or at least an area of lucrative activity. And treating them as responsible adults at an earlier age might usefully harness some of their wonderful energy and idealism.