Sats stress is crushing children's love of learning

A great opinion piece on how current education system in UK (but I can expand it to pretty much all education systems around the world, except maybe a few ones, which don't conform to what's being said here) are not igniting the flame of life-long learning & curiosity in children in school & instead, making them hate schools & learning in general by forcing them to do things in school, which is killing their curiosity & love of learning.

I see this everyday around me. People who were very smart & intelligent in school life (elementary, secondary, post-secondary etc.), & are still intelligent in their work lives, eschew even basic reading. Some still are curious & love to read but they are mostly reading fiction novels of romance & thrill. These are majority of our populace. Heck, these people don't even like to watch documentaries, to expand their learning & mental horizons.

So where's the disconnect that such intelligence in school life stays behind in their school lives?

Problem is the current modern education system. They are trying to make children rote learners or mere tools for teachers & the education boards to show that their students are successful in schooling system, & hence, those education boards & teachers are meeting their periodic targets.

Kids to adults in the education system come to learn that if you want a good job, assuming it is being awarded on merit & not on networks, then you need as high marks as there can be, & based on current education system, those marks can be achieved through rote memorization, regurgitation, & essentially, doing what the teacher / professor is telling me to do in class & in exam.

But that's not how learning & school used to be. Learning & education system built by such great teachers / philosophers as Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle were not based on strict tracking & meeting targets but essentially based on absorbing the knowledge for life. Their idea of learning was for learning is for life. They created curiosity in their students. They wanted their students to not study just enough to get a great mark in the next exam, but to think and learn about themselves, their society, & their world around them; however small it might be, whatever it might be.

That's why, in today's "modern" world, lots & lots of people are "educated" but they have not learnt anything. They are considered "educated" based on the number of degrees they have earned, which they got by regurgitating the materials on exam papers. They never actually gained the powerful idea of how to be curious & actually read & watch & travel to learn. Most people's lives don't revolve around learning about themselves, their society, & their world around them, but what can I learn now, which will help me make some money. Well, that course of "learning" has got us where the world is today; everyone is at someone's proverbial throat, because people have lost humanity & selfishness is enjoying its day out.
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http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/may/16/secret-teacher-sats-stress-childrens-love-of-learning

It’s funny really, we’ve all been there. We all remember sitting on the carpet with our legs crossed, listening wide-eyed to our teachers reading a book to us in class. That’s what many of us recall about primary school – how fun it was & how free we were to explore our ideas.

In many ways, that’s the point; to immerse our children in a world where learning is fun, to open up their imaginations & encourage them to be inquisitive in a safe space. As Socrates said, education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. As a primary teacher, that’s a good guiding mantra. Let children discover, their eyes light up & sparks ignite.

Unfortunately, in the wake of their Sats preparation, my year 6 class – & I’m sure every year 6 child across the land – would probably say this isn’t so. Flame lighting has been swapped for vessel filling. Yes, they’ve been learning & yes, they have made “progress” (lots of it for some). We know this because we’ve measured their strict diet of test, drill, repeat twice every half term for the entire year.

The issue here is whether it was worth it, because in so many respects the drive for floor targets & pupil premium percentage increases have robbed students of their primary school experience. The regime is focused on spelling & grammar, reading comprehensions & mental maths – combined with extra practice tests, interventions & booster clubs fitted in anywhere between dusk & dawn. Children can hardly remember what an art book looks like, or what a decent PE lesson feels like, or what a music lesson sounds like. They’re so confined to their desks that the process of developing the whole child has gone out of the window & their actual interests & other skills no longer have a place in school life.

Little Ricky, for example, loves geography. He’s fascinated by the world around him & can’t wait to get the atlases out on the search for capital cities, rivers, mountain chains & forests. This is where he comes alive & feels worthwhile. Excitement fills his wings & he’s ready to fly anywhere in the world – until he is pulled out for his maths booster. Yes, he needs extra support in adding fractions & rotating around a point, but seeing his shoulders drop & his smile fade is heartbreaking & frustrating. Nobody is denying he needs his maths – he has to be ready for secondary school & his future – but it’s just as important that he gets time & space to be him. He needs to connect with what he wants to learn because that’s where he switches on. That’s what he’s good at; that’s where we get him.

It’s at this point we need to wonder who we’re doing this for. Is it really for him? Because it feels like we’re missing who he really is, who they all are. What sparks their flame gets dampened. If your dyslexic child flourishes through art, tough. If the quiet, timid child at the back of your classroom comes out of their shell through drama, forget it. If the young carer, who comes in late because they’ve been changing their parent’s bed, feels they can express themselves through a map, no chance. Get down & give me the area of a quadrilateral.

Already so many children are being turned off school. It’s not just my Victorias & Emilys, who read every night & write stories for fun. It’s not just these children who are going home & telling mum it’s all getting too much. At least these children can complain – my Jaleels & my Delanes don’t know how to, their protest is not so eloquent. They share their thoughts through their poor punctuality & lack of focus. They are sick more, turn up less & don’t want to be there because it’s easier not to try than fail to get the results they “need”. A regime of test & repetition, rote & regurgitation is putting them off. They’re bored. They’ve had enough. They are saturated.

Apart from lesson objectives, all these children are really being taught is that school is a chore & a burden. Because of their Sats, these children are anxious & unhappy, rather than excited or inspired. They are only 11 years old & already asking for extra papers to take home so they can cram over the weekend. Some have trouble sleeping & can’t eat, while others stop attending school altogether. This is all before they have even started secondary education.

Of course, their levels will be great; we make sure of that – we have no choice. But what are they really learning? They are learning that education isn’t stimulating & nobody is listening to their needs. The kindling of their educational flames is fast being extinguished by tracking & targets.

We need to ask ourselves what we want for our children. Do we want them to learn that their passions, interests & dreams don’t count? Do we want them to learn that bottom lines & level 4s are more important than their self-confidence & talents? Or do we want them to know that we hear what they have to say? That the question is more important than the answer? That learning is a lifelong journey that should inspire?

As teachers, it’s our job to ensure that the flame of learning gets kindled & burns brightly for all, whatever their capacity, interests or age. But we need to think really carefully about what we put children through, because there’s no way we can engage them through more years of study if they’ve already run out of appetite.

In India, exam cheating is just a symptom

A good opinion piece. Although, the piece is focused on India only, the problem of rote learning / memorization is a problem all over South Asia. Heck, Muslims in South Asia feel proud to memorize the whole Quran, without understanding a word of it. Most don't even know the Arabic language. Those people become masters in rote memorization but don't understand what words are coming out of their mouths.

This problem of rote memorization & writing only prescribed answers in exams also lead to "in-the-box" thinking. Creativity is stifled. Silo thinking is encouraged. That's why, most South Asians don't go into subjective or abstract studies (philosophy, religious studies, political sciences etc.) in their lives. Their studies are focused in sciences & math, & even in them, students are encouraged to regurgitate what they memorized in class.

As per my knowledge, this problem of rote memorization is not only limited to elementary or secondary school levels, but, in some cases, go all the way up to professional studies. For instance, students of the Chartered Accountant professional designation in Pakistan are required to memorize the whole international financial regulation book & then pretty much regurgitate it in their exams. So whoever is great in rote memorization & dumping it all in the exams ends up becoming a Chartered Accountant. How can they solve a problem which will require integrative, subjective, & creative thinking?
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/in-india-exam-cheating-is-just-a-symptom/article23669759/

It was the picture that gave rise to worldwide derision – an image of relatives & friends scaling the facade of a four-storey building in Bihar, India, to help the pupils inside cheat on their school-leaving exams.
 
Clearly, cheating cannot be tolerated. But beyond the immediate offence, India needs to tackle the root causes of such large-scale cheating, which happens in various parts of the country. A prominent cause is the system of rote learning common in Indian schools.
 
Rote learning turns students into parrots, capable of memorizing anything but understanding nothing. The syllabus of the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education relies on memorization & so do the exams. In many subjects, students don’t write essays; they merely tick long lists of multiple-choice questions.
 
What few sentences they do write on their own have to be identical to what’s found in the textbooks to win high marks. Any variation, even if they represent an improvement or show originality, receives low marks. Students who aim for originality & answer questions correctly but in their own words are penalized.
 
If rote learning is abolished, then cheating will vanish on its own. Students will only be able to succeed if they have understood the concepts taught, because their exam answers will have to reflect their understanding, rather than their memory.
 
With the exception of new & improved cheating techniques, rote learning kills creativity, along with originality & critical thinking, which is why India is so rarely in the vanguard of anything new in science, technology or design.
 
It’s not that Indians are not capable of creativity. You only have to look at the magical skills of Indian craftsmen to appreciate the beauty they can produce. And you only have to look at Indians based abroad to know their abilities. But India’s domestic education system discourages innovation, exploration, risk-taking & the questioning of accepted wisdom.
 
Who are the educational reformers who can take on this job? Few names but one come to mind: Sugata Mitra, who won the 2013 TED Prize for his fascinating experiments in the use of the Internet in education. Prof. Mitra advocates the benefits of letting children loose in a room with computers, an Internet connection & minimal supervision by teachers. (If nothing else, this would solve the problem of absentee teachers, another bane of the Indian system.)
 
Prof. Mitra was once asked to name one single measure the Indian government could take to instantly raise the abysmal standards in government schools.

“Let students use the Internet in exams,” he replied. “In doing so, the whole system would have to change. The kind of questions set in exams would have to change. You can’t ask, for example, simple factual questions because they would be too easy to answer. The questions would have to be framed instead to probe students’ understanding of concepts & principles. Educators would also have to teach differently, just as officials would have to rethink the school curriculum.”

Unfortunately, Prof. Mitra has taken himself off to Newcastle University in Britain because the Indian government has shown no interest in his ideas, even though they could lead to enormously improved outcomes.
 
In other words, the radical reforms India needs are not likely to happen soon. In India, change only happens very slowly & gradually – the country’s culture & mentality are Menshevik, not Bolshevik.
 
Meanwhile, children continue to endure an education system that is a joke. Last year, an annual independent status report on rural schools found that after 5 years of primary education, more than 60% of children were unable to read simple text at a second-grade level.
 
Yet these same children will leave school & face ferocious competition for jobs where the only qualification that counts is their exam grades.
 
When the State Bank of India advertised 1,500 menial vacancies in 2013, it received more than 17 million applications. That’s not a typo: 17 million.
 
So while it’s easy to scoff at the people perched on those window sills, the reality is that Indian parents will go to any lengths – or heights – to help their children succeed in their last exams.