‘Children must be set a challenge': the flaw in radical education ideas

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 20

‘Children must be set a challenge': the flaw in radical education ideas

MR JAMES BAKER, principal of the tiny Double Hill School near Methven, argues against proposed radical changes in education and in favour of setting high standards for children.

Success Level Education, the subject of an article in “The Press” last Monday, is the latest in a series of impractical propositions produced by educational theorists who have little or no recent classroom experience. The article is based on a newsletter sent to principals and staff of Canterbury schools by the retiring district senior inspector of primary schools, Mr Les Cramond.

Mr Cramond quotes the draft report on the curriculum review, which sets out fourteen principles that should be basic to the curriculum of every school in New Zealand. The fourth of these prinicples is expanded by Mr Cramond into his' statement on Success Level' Education.

The principle reads: “The curriculum shall be designed so that all children enjoy significant success. Students will be extended, and challenged to strive for their personal best performance; however, no students will be set learning tasks they cannot be expected to accomplish.” On the fact of it, this is a reasonable proposition with which few educators would disagree, but the interpretation put on it by Mr Cramond must cause grave misgivings about the guidance being given to classroom • teachers by senior officers of the Department of Education. Success Level Education is said to “rely on a number of basic strategies:

1. The careful assessment of the pupils (sic) present level of attainment.

2. A planned sequence of appropriate learning activities provide a 90 per cent success level for all pupils.

3. The regular monitoring and

recording of individual progress.” What is ignored in this statement is the fact that there are certain standards which all children must strive to attain. In an era when educational standards are declining at an alarming rate, this omission is frightening. It is all very well for a child to aim towards a “personal best performance,” but Mr Cramond makes no reference in his paper to extending children. If teachers are to set only such tasks as will enable the pupil to attain 90 per cent accuracy, how is that child ever going to be really challenged? Extending children implies that they are challenged to attempt something which they regard as impossible, or at least very difficult, and then guiding them', probably by way of a failure or two, towards its successful attainment. How much more rewarding it is for children to achieve what they previously thought they could never do. And on such success may be built other successes.

Mr Cramond singles out what he calls “little more than meaningless ‘busy’ work.” In this category, he includes “written comprehension exercises that are unrelated to any study in hand and language exercises that are unrelated to the pupils (sic) own written language or present needs.”

Written comprehension exercises are, however, valuable

for their own sake on two counts:

@ Any exercise in comprehension must improve a child’s ability to transpose the written word into mental images from which deductions may be made; ® The requirement to answer questions with complete sentences encourages both logical interpretation, and logical thinking in the construction of a sentence that answers the question clearly and concisely. Practical experience proves that neither of these tasks is beyond the scope of a child in Standard One if the written matter is appropriate to that age group — no matter what the theorists may say. Language exercises also have value, contrived through some of these may appear to be, simply because they provide practice in the use of idiom, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. (Mr Cramond, or his typist, would have benefited from some instruction in the use of the apostrophe to show possession, for example, as demonstrated by the two extracts I have quoted from his paper.) Mr Cramond compares learning English with learning to swim, but perhaps a more realistic analogy would be learning to play the piano. Anyone who learns that instrument spends hours practising.scales and other fingering exercises that give confidence in the physical manipulation of the keyboard. It is only when this skill has been mastered that any artistic inter-

pretation may be expected to develop. The same is true of so-called “process writing”: to expect a child to use imagery and write creatively without having first mastered the elements of sentence structure and the like is comparable to asking the same child to sit down at a piano and make music without having been shown where to find middle C. Mr Cramond states that "the learner is more important than the content” and goes on to say that “a good teacher is constantly watching the pupils — evaluating, modifying, encouraging and ensuring that the 90 per cent success level is maintained.” Certainly, a good teacher will do the first four of these and all learning, especially at the primary school level, should be child-oriented, but is the learner really more important than the content?

To answer that, we need to examine the reasons why children go to school at all. They go to school to learn certain skills that will enable them to lead useful and contented adult lives. To do this they need a sound grounding in the elements of language and mathematics and they need to develop an enquiry ing mind, sound moral values, a social conscience, a sense of cultural heritage and, one would hope, an adventurous spirit. During their years at school children should be brought into contact with as wide a range of pursuits, intellectual and other, as is possible in order that they may experience the options available to them. And in an age when the only constant is change, they must develop a capacity to adapt to conditions dictated by changing circumstances and technology.

In short, there are certain things which children must master if they are to make a success of their adult lives. Standards must be clearly defined. Life beyond school involves earning a living and, to take one’s place in the work force, one must have attained educational standards appropriate to one’s point of entry into it. The fact that employers find so many school leavers virtually unemployable is a sad indictment on the way in which the education system is preparing children for adult life at present and to pander to theories such as those proposed by Mr Cramond will merely serve to aggravate the situation. If, however, one accepts that there are certain skills which must be taught at school, one must also accept that some children will not attain 100 per cent or even 90 per cent success in them. That is not to denigrate a child’s endeavours. Not all children are destined to be brainsurgeons and most will be content with the realisation that they have their own individual niche to fill.

There is still a need, however, for a sorting process. The examination system as we know it may not be perfect, may well be too “academic,” and it may well be that some form of aptitude testing would be more appropriate, but employers are entitled to expect the education system to provide them with a realistic guide to a prospective employee’s abilities. Merely to say that a school leaver has achieved his or her “personal best” is totally meaningless and a waste of the money that taxpayers lavish on an education system which is itself a failure.