The Boy Who Was Failing.
Tests vs Creativity
While recently looking through some research notes, for a documentary about our education system I made a few years ago, I came across this piece of an old school report card which I thought I'd share with you.
It was written by a teacher at Eton about a 15 year old pupil who was bottom of his science class, and in case the print is too small for you to read it says:
"It has been a disastrous half. His work has been far from satisfactory. His prepared stuff has been badly learnt, and several of his test pieces have been torn over; one of such pieces of prepared work scored 2 out of a possible 50. His other work has been equally bad, and several times he has been in trouble because he will not listen, but will insist in doing his work in his own way.
I believe he has ideas about becoming a Scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous. If he can't learn simple Biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a Specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and those who have to teach him."
The boy?
Sir John Gurdon who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology of Medicine
The lesson?
While it's never a good idea to draw huge conclusions from individual cases, Gurdon's teenage report card is a salutary reminder that right or wrong tests don't measure creative thinkers and visionaries very well at all.
I'd also say this report reveals a teacher who was " measurement centred" ( as our government clearly wishes our education system to become ) and reflects a view that it is the pupil's responsibility to attain the artificial benchmarks set for students. The underlying theme is that Gurdon's doing badly, he's making me as a teacher look bad, he's making Eton look bad and it's all this lazy, ungrateful boy's fault.
Ultimately everyone has to be responsible for their own education - but isn't the great trick all good teachers are trying to pull off is to light the fire, the passion, for learning so it burns by itself? Not to snuff it out by stiffling creativity with a one size fits all approach to maths or any other subject.
We do of course have to have diagnostic tests that help teachers understand how an individual child is progressing in comparison to other children of the same age - but as a tool to help tailor an education programme to meet that student's needs.
Not as a weapon to bully them, or burden their teachers with pointless administration that reduces the time they can spend with each child.
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There is definitely a narrative that our education system has become broken but when you look back at historical experience school broke a lot of peoples curiosity focussed on the wrong skills for a different time and had a lot of bias built into it.
With the explosion of technology and knowledge we now have.
The accumulated trauma from our old systems we ask a lot of schools much more than we ever did.
Yet we grasp at the academic myth of the past vs looking properly at how we build new systems to support a curious and future ready population.
It is much bigger than academic standards, a big part that is missing is the treatment of education is something you get done to you as a kid vs the village raises the child.
Suburbs are deserts compared to earlier times, kids have to be escorted and booked into extracurricular activities.
Kids without the benefit of wealthy families with connections struggle to escape and are punished by almost punitive measures from a government dominated with children from wealthy backgrounds who don’t understand their good fortune, never had to struggle and often lack understanding of the real world….
We need to be measuring employability and innovation.
Science and maths is undervalued by society but desperately needed.
By cutting funding for public science why would kids want to excel at science/maths, where will our teachers come from, if you are into science what does Aotearoa offer you???
Out of strong scientific institutions will come not only great connections to schools but also more startups and innovation in all sectors.
Boys in particular often don’t know what they should do or excel at until 25 and they are not very well catered for by our society which currently expects them to have a clue and be organised by 17….. Many men who excel at life find their path in their mid to late 30s
Kids are not all the same, curiosity should be rewarded but we also need to move to more wholistic models of education that are life long.
Much of the failing in our political system is a lack of curiosity and participation by an uneducated electorate who have decided to leave learning to others as our education system has told them they don’t have what it takes when they were at school.
We need to support our kids growth mindset everyone starts with one!
Well expressed - your viewpoint on bringing the best out of each student! But Black & White thinkers like Luxon have no comprehension of this - he’s a measurement guy. That’s his entire approach to everything - metrics and outcomes! We want more of the Gurdon’s to come through. That’s why education must be a creative environment!