THE PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1979. Expectations of education

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 16

THE PRESS TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1979. Expectations of education

While many people must wonder at the demands of the teachers’ organisations for such allowances as specially allotted time to assess their pupils for School Certificate passes, there is one score on which teachers must earn a good deal of public sympathy. This is the extent to which so many parents seem to expect the schools to take responsibility for the behaviour of children. The Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, touched on the point when he spoke last week to the conference of ParentTeacher Associations.

Mr Wellington observed a danger in the community asking schools to give more than they could possibly give. He also discussed the burden put on teachers by restive and disruptive children in their classes. For their own part, parents can easily complain that they inherit problems from the schools; and there is nothing new in this. The teaching profession has, however, seen itself in a changing role in recent years and has put new emphasis on “development of the whole child ” The idea is not novel: some teachers and schools have long seen their job to be more than merely cultivating essential abilities and imparting academic knowledge. When the idea works and is competently applied parents are delighted. When the idea fails the schools are open to criticism, and no school system can expect to

equip itself with teachers of such experience and competence that it will not have its failures.

The problem raised by Mr Wellington, and many before him, surely begins in his own department, or with those who speak on behalf of the education system and its ideals. They have raised expectations too high. Education theorists, advertising unattainable ideals, are as much to blame as anyone for inviting parents to expect that new methods in the schools will succeed when it stands to reason that, in many instances, they have no chance of success.

Even now, the system is trying to absorb reactions to the proposals on how the schools should deal with “human relationships.” Of course, it would be fine if the schools could handle the development 1 and understanding of human relationships to everyone’s satisfaction, including that of the pupils. Mr Wellington should be cautious in asking parents not to expect too much from the schools when teachers are about to be invited to do more than they have ever managed to do before.

If teachers were not required to spend so much time on matters peripheral to formal education, they would surely be better placed to carry out, as part of their normal duties, such essential, scholastic tasks as the assessment of children for School Certificate.