Is he getting dumber?
It’s that time of year again that school children dread: exam time. In the next few weeks, millions of pupils will be sitting down to Sats, GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels. And when results are announced in August, we can expect the usual debate about whether education standards are falling, and whether exams are being dumbed down to hit achievement targets. But, says Donald Hirsch in this month’s cover feature, we should instead be asking if we are making reasonable and appropriate demands of our children. Indeed, the row over exams distracts from a much more important question: what kind of education do we actually want for our children?
Hirsch also argues that, regardless of whether exams are getting easier, pupils are much better educated than most editorials suggest:
The educational experience of young people in the middle of the ability range has been transformed. Large numbers are being educated to age 18 or 21 who in the past would have left with few or no qualifications at 15 or 16. This must in part be positive news. For example, six in ten 16 year olds now get a GCSE at grade C or above in maths. Thirty years ago, most young people were turned off maths long before that age. Even if a grade C in maths GCSE is not that demanding, most 16 year olds are at least getting a qualification—helping to combat the “I can’t do maths” syndrome that hampers so many British adults.
Is Hirsch right: should the media and the public be asking different questions about education? Or is he fobbing the issue? As ever, weigh in with your thoughts below.
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Large numbers are being educated to age 18 or 21 who in the past would have left with few or no qualifications at 15 or 16.
There are a large number of university graduates who, a few years ago, would have left school at 16 without a single GCSE or O-level?
It’s tough to say how today’s education compares with that of previous generations. My feeling is that the present curriculum covers things at a quicker pace.
The larger concern for me is whether academically inclined kids are managing to keep their sense of humour. Homework demands and a condensed curriculum makes for a fair amount of stress.
I don’t know about children, but editors certainly are. The question should be ‘are children today less intelligent?’ Dumb means mute.
It is absurd to say that institutional racism is dead. It is still alive in the form of Islamophobia. . One of the deepest expressions of institutional racism affecting immigrant communities, and one that has been long documented is the unequal treatment of their children by the education system. They are motivated, but knocked back by their experiences of the school system. They are often treated more harshly and viewed with lower teacher expectation on the basis of teachers’ assumptions about their motivation and ability.
LAs are failing in their duty to combat racism in schools, according to OFSTED, Education system exhibits “aspects of racism”. A quarter of authorities are not doing enough to promote equal educational opportunities. A Brighton University study found that the Britain education system is institutionally racist, with pupils and teachers vulnerable to abuse by peers, teachers and management. I discovered the element of racism in early 70s. National Curriculum does not reflect cultural diversity and minority pupils are being held back by native teachers. London Borough of Newham was judged by OFSTED as unsatisfactory in tackling racism. There are big issues about racism in schools needed to be tackled but could not understand that Bilingual Muslim pupils need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. It is a crime against humanity to deprive a child of his mother tongue but in the name of integration every thing is fair. Independent schools are also racist in nature. The parents of a Pakistani boy who was racially abused by his classmates and teachers are suing St. Christopher School.
Education report by Birmingham Advisory Service recommends that school lessons should take into account cultural differences in order to improve pupils’ performance. It calls for teaching “the need for mutual respect and understanding”. Minority pupils are underachieving at school because the curriculum is racist. The study found lessons often failed to motivate or interest pupils because curriculum did not provide enough positive role models. The curriculum needs to be more balanced and less Eurocentric. Pupils grow up thinking there is no other playwright than Shakespeare. An ethnicity “Tsar” should be appointed to reform British schooling. Muslim schools performed best overall, although they constitute only a fraction of the country’s 7000 schools. Muslim schools do well because of their Islamic ethos and a focus on traditional discipline and teaching methods. They teach children what is right and what is wrong, because young children need structural guidance. Muslim school is responsible for the development of the whole child. Muslim schools give Muslim children “pride, identity and a sense of culture and languages.
Iftikhar Ahmad
The invention of the thoughtcrime of “Islamophobia” itself echoes the tactics of racists. It lumps together multitudes of human individuals of different ethnic backgrounds and origins and attempts to assign to them a single label and, with it, a set of presumed characteristics and/or grievances. It also seeks to protect a group of believers from legitimate criticism of their beliefs by condemning anyone who disagrees with them as bigoted.
I immigrated from West Africa to the UK as a child. I’ve learned this country’s official language, respected its laws, and asked for no special treatment. I would expect any Briton moving to an African country to try to do the same—indeed, I count such individuals among my friends.
Imagine if they instead expected that African host countries laid on special bilingual “Christian schools” for UK immigrants and you can see how outrageous your demands are for privileged treatment for adherents to your particular collection of superstitions.
Religion is not race. Faith is not fact. Ideology is not identity. It’s not the job of schools to indoctrinate children into Islam; it’s to educate them about the World as a whole. It’s typical that someone who believes otherwise should attempt to hijack a discussion about standards in education and to hope to exploit western guilt about actual racism to advance a political cause.
A smart piece of writing, wrestling thoughtfully with difficult questions — unlike most of the government’s thoughts, comments and actions on education which tend to avoid the very questions raised in the piece.
I quite fail, though, to understand why the two comments above have not been trashed on account of having little bordering on nothing to do with the topic.
Online comments only work properly if they are subject to the same rigorous thoughts about standards that Brian Semple put to work in his article.
I’d be happy for both to be deleted too—as should be obvious from the last sentence of mine—but if the former remains then it shouldn’t go unchallenged. Fashionable nonsense becomes received opinion when enough people fail to reject it.
Re : “In another review in 2008, commissioned by the Office of the Examinations Regulator, none of the experts consulted could suggest a way of keeping standards consistent over a long period” – well sack them as they are not only not experts they are not even average – Have French verbs changed in the past 20 years, has the area of a circle changed, have Newton’s equations changed ? – it can’t be difficult to do the same sort of questions at the same standard for 20 years on these things. Computer science has changed but most of the rest are pretty much the same
Re Iftikhar’s rant : First Islamophobia – fear of Islam is a made up pseudo-medical word copied from the other made word Homophobia – fear of homosexuals. You suggest that we should sack English teachers and hire bi-lingual foreign teachers instead – otherwise that’s fear of Islam !
You say that Muslim schools do well because of their Islamic ethos (how can this be ? Muslim girls are taken out of school and sent to Pakistan to be married off at 14 and 15 – how can they pass their exams and do well ? or are the ‘results’ taken from only those kids left in the school by 16 ?) In Saudi one of the biggest academic courses is Islamic theology – usually blokes. So if you had it your way the boys would get A levels in the Koran while the girls would be pushing a pram – I’m not sure that’s such an improvement in ‘education’
… and a focus on traditional discipline (– Yieks what is the Koranic punishment for a kid stealing sweets ? – Oh you don’t chop their hands off – why not ? – the Islamicphobia institutionally racist British law doesn’t allow you to ? or are you against it yourself and hence against the Koran ? if so, you are not a Muslim and so should not get a government grant as these are meant to be given to Muslims ) and “traditional teaching methods” – what is a traditional Muslim teaching method ? – the only one I’ve seen is kids sitting down all day reciting the Koran by memory.
Interesting article, but the question of what our children should be learning was fudged. I’ve been in the classroom for 37 years now and I am sure children’s reading skills have improved. The multi-communicational world we live in has forced this. However, intellectually demanding subjects like maths and languages have deteriorating standards because modern life – for all its stress for younsters – is easier intellectually. The internet et al has persuaded the younger generation that life ought to consist of short cuts, and therefore the hand-holding references in the article were spot on!
I’m a scientist and a computer programmer. I went to a fairly mediocre school and can see that most of my sisters kids work far harder at school than I or my friends ever did. Some of the students I would like to have a little bit better mathematical aptitude but the best kids are still very good.
Recently I started to play an online game that my nephew introduced to me: ‘World of Warcraft’. After being very bad at this for a while he explained to me that I should get some ‘Add-Ons’- programs that supplement the gameplay and make complex operations easy. Being a programmer I found this concept fascinating. Asking other players in game I found a wealth of complex technical knowledge relating to server mechanics, bandwidth, computer hardware. On the programming side there was knowledge of web-programming, scripting, fairly simple algorithms and even object oriented programming. Also their was a wealth of knowledge on the inner statistical mechanics of the game and different strategies based on albeit simple linear algebraic formula. Many people I discussed this with had tested differing strategies and crunched the numbers to guess at the programs formulae empirically (one mailed me their spreadsheet).
After a while I found to my surprise that the people I was discussing this with online were mostly teenagers and some students. To my mind many of them were creating or at the least understanding fairly technically complex procedures (they were certainly programming well beyond 1st year comp sci) . I do not know how good kids are at trigonometry but bright kids always find channels for their creativity.