SATs and grammatical pedantry: education, education, schmeducation
Recently, there’s been a row in the news over the level of grammar expected of pupils taking their SATs in schools across England, with private academy owners, the Schools Minister, and even David Cameron coming under fire for not being able to answer the questions these children are faced with. On the day, multiple parents took their children out of school on the basis of learning through ‘fun, play and adventure’ rather than the expected method of differentiating a preposition from a conjunction. Of course, we have to start considering how far parents are prepared to go when it comes to taking their children out of the classroom in response to an examination they consider beyond the call of duty. Complaints have been coming for years about how we treat testing, not just from concerned parents, but from GCSE students and beyond. How much testing do we really need, and who does it help, really?
Everyone knows that the methods by which we test children (and indeed young adults) in this country are not perfect. Some, notably dyslexics, dyspraxics and sufferers of anxiety disorder, to name but a few, struggle with exams. Placing an ostensibly very high value on what you do with a pen and paper and no additional help in the space of an hour isn’t exactly relaxing. It isn’t simply this that seems to be the complaint, though. Examinations, and even their less bothersome brother, coursework, are seen as the ultimate enemy of creativity and complex development, when it comes to what we teach our children and who they eventually become.
Some people would wish that our schools came much closer to serving our children’s search for their true passion, but the sad truth is that it's not as easy as it might seem to develop a truly benevolent education system. While it'd be nice to run one that almost solely catered to everyone's want for learning without teaching them the grey, pointless guff in between, that's neither an economical nor a sensible life choice. We need basic maths, and, while we might not need to know everything on that SATs English paper, we need to be able to convey the English language in a way that isn’t demeaning to our language, or, perhaps more importantly, ourselves. We have to think of the benefit that some of these English questions offer to bringing the average standard up. Looking past SATs, it's not hard to justify that even more advanced exams actually serve a certain vital purpose.
Specifically, the current system works because it enables us to shuffle students through a system that requires very little adaptation per student, and then we push them out with accreditation that tells the world of work 'Janet can read a spreadsheet', or 'Craig is good at selling a house', because realistically, that's the most a Bachelor of Arts can prove. It's possible to find an outlet for your passion, and yes, I agree that the education system doesn't do a great job of enabling this, but it is still possible. However, if we spent countless resources on trying to find each students' passion, perhaps before they even know what it is, without testing them to make sure some of the knowledge that actually is useful is going in, we'd be wasting our time. While it’s clearly important that the children of today go on to find satisfying jobs when they’re older, they need to be learning something important on the way, instead of some forced trial and error or a wasted 15 years when Susan suddenly decides she doesn’t want to be a portrait painter after all.
The greater issue is that the way we teach children follows a timely that comprises roughly six months of hard learning, two months of going over said learning, a few hours total writing it out, and the following four months forgetting the majority thereof, because it turns out that very little about the geographical details of a moraine comes in handy when you end up working in the DWP.
We know students forget what they learn in tests. We know exams can be a real bother. We know that they're not built for many students who really struggle with them.
The education system isn’t perfect, and that much is clear enough, but it works more than well enough if it enables us to be able to criticise it.
That alone is a success, no matter whom we have to thank for it.
Everyone knows that the methods by which we test children (and indeed young adults) in this country are not perfect. Some, notably dyslexics, dyspraxics and sufferers of anxiety disorder, to name but a few, struggle with exams. Placing an ostensibly very high value on what you do with a pen and paper and no additional help in the space of an hour isn’t exactly relaxing. It isn’t simply this that seems to be the complaint, though. Examinations, and even their less bothersome brother, coursework, are seen as the ultimate enemy of creativity and complex development, when it comes to what we teach our children and who they eventually become.
Some people would wish that our schools came much closer to serving our children’s search for their true passion, but the sad truth is that it's not as easy as it might seem to develop a truly benevolent education system. While it'd be nice to run one that almost solely catered to everyone's want for learning without teaching them the grey, pointless guff in between, that's neither an economical nor a sensible life choice. We need basic maths, and, while we might not need to know everything on that SATs English paper, we need to be able to convey the English language in a way that isn’t demeaning to our language, or, perhaps more importantly, ourselves. We have to think of the benefit that some of these English questions offer to bringing the average standard up. Looking past SATs, it's not hard to justify that even more advanced exams actually serve a certain vital purpose.
The greater issue is that the way we teach children follows a timely that comprises roughly six months of hard learning, two months of going over said learning, a few hours total writing it out, and the following four months forgetting the majority thereof, because it turns out that very little about the geographical details of a moraine comes in handy when you end up working in the DWP.
We know students forget what they learn in tests. We know exams can be a real bother. We know that they're not built for many students who really struggle with them.
The education system isn’t perfect, and that much is clear enough, but it works more than well enough if it enables us to be able to criticise it.
That alone is a success, no matter whom we have to thank for it.
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