for good or ill, the rest of young people’s lives. To ignore these layers of the curriculum is not hard-nosed but bone-headed.
Is this an ill-conceived experiment with the next generation? Are we suggesting they be used as guinea pigs for some new-fangled, untried, radical revolution in education? Manifestly not. The status quo, or the image of the ‘good grammar school’ of the past, is neither safe nor neutral. To focus our attention exclusively on such schools is wilfully to ignore all the bright, interesting youngsters who are dying to learn, for whom the grammar school model is neither available nor appropriate.
All the methods we are going to illustrate in the next two chapters are already in use in good schools, where children are well-behaved and getting good results. They are just not as widely spread and as widely known as they should be. There is good empirical evidence to trust and support these methods, and encourage their use. But we have to stand up to a few noisy people who are mired in the past, unconcerned (despite their protestations) about the education of all those who must, of necessity, fail to do well in traditional exams, and too lazy to get to grips with the detail of these new methods or to read the research that supports them.
1 Progress 8 is the latest term for EBacc (a short form of English Baccalaureate), a deliberate attempt by government to control the subjects by which a school’s success is measured.
2 Warwick Mansell, ‘Spoonfed’ students lack confidence at Oxbridge, TES (10 December 2010). Available at: https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6065624 .
3 For more information, see Michael Brooks and Bob Holmes, Equinox Blueprint: Learning 2030 . A Report on the Outcomes of the Equinox Summit: Learning 2030 convened by the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, September 29 to October 3, 2013. Available at: http://www.wgsi.org/sites/wgsi-
live.pi.local/files/Learning%
202030%20Equinox%20Blueprint.pdf .
4 Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character (London: Random House, 2013); Scott Barry Kaufman, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
5 For a critique of charter schools, you could try Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2008).
6 See Terrie Moffitt, Louise Arseneault, Daniel Belsky, et al., A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 108(7) (2011): 2693–2698.
7 See Paul Tough, Can the right kinds of play teach self-control?, New York Times (27 September 2009). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/
27tools-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 .
8 Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton, Wider Skills for Learning: What Are They, How Can They Be Cultivated, How Could They Be Measured and Why Are They Important for Innovation? (London: NESTA, 2009). Available at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/
files/wider_skills_for_learning_report.pdf .
Chapter 5
Reasons to be cheerful
The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson
So far we’ve painted a picture of schools which may be rather different from the one with which you are familiar. If you are a teacher or parent you may have laughed (or cried) out loud at the gap between what we are imagining and the experience you are having of your children’s school. Similarly, if you are reading this wearing your employer’s hat you may be wondering if we are inhabiting the same world as you do, where job applicants regularly show an alarming lack of basic literacy and numeracy, or even basic aspects of self-organisation.
Or perhaps neither of these imaginary reactions is accurate. Maybe you know schools that are doing much of what we are talking about. Or perhaps you are an employer who has developed a great relationship with local schools and are in active
Is this an ill-conceived experiment with the next generation? Are we suggesting they be used as guinea pigs for some new-fangled, untried, radical revolution in education? Manifestly not. The status quo, or the image of the ‘good grammar school’ of the past, is neither safe nor neutral. To focus our attention exclusively on such schools is wilfully to ignore all the bright, interesting youngsters who are dying to learn, for whom the grammar school model is neither available nor appropriate.
All the methods we are going to illustrate in the next two chapters are already in use in good schools, where children are well-behaved and getting good results. They are just not as widely spread and as widely known as they should be. There is good empirical evidence to trust and support these methods, and encourage their use. But we have to stand up to a few noisy people who are mired in the past, unconcerned (despite their protestations) about the education of all those who must, of necessity, fail to do well in traditional exams, and too lazy to get to grips with the detail of these new methods or to read the research that supports them.
1 Progress 8 is the latest term for EBacc (a short form of English Baccalaureate), a deliberate attempt by government to control the subjects by which a school’s success is measured.
2 Warwick Mansell, ‘Spoonfed’ students lack confidence at Oxbridge, TES (10 December 2010). Available at: https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6065624 .
3 For more information, see Michael Brooks and Bob Holmes, Equinox Blueprint: Learning 2030 . A Report on the Outcomes of the Equinox Summit: Learning 2030 convened by the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, September 29 to October 3, 2013. Available at: http://www.wgsi.org/sites/wgsi-
live.pi.local/files/Learning%
202030%20Equinox%20Blueprint.pdf .
4 Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character (London: Random House, 2013); Scott Barry Kaufman, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
5 For a critique of charter schools, you could try Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2008).
6 See Terrie Moffitt, Louise Arseneault, Daniel Belsky, et al., A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 108(7) (2011): 2693–2698.
7 See Paul Tough, Can the right kinds of play teach self-control?, New York Times (27 September 2009). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/
27tools-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 .
8 Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton, Wider Skills for Learning: What Are They, How Can They Be Cultivated, How Could They Be Measured and Why Are They Important for Innovation? (London: NESTA, 2009). Available at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/
files/wider_skills_for_learning_report.pdf .
Chapter 5
Reasons to be cheerful
The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson
So far we’ve painted a picture of schools which may be rather different from the one with which you are familiar. If you are a teacher or parent you may have laughed (or cried) out loud at the gap between what we are imagining and the experience you are having of your children’s school. Similarly, if you are reading this wearing your employer’s hat you may be wondering if we are inhabiting the same world as you do, where job applicants regularly show an alarming lack of basic literacy and numeracy, or even basic aspects of self-organisation.
Or perhaps neither of these imaginary reactions is accurate. Maybe you know schools that are doing much of what we are talking about. Or perhaps you are an employer who has developed a great relationship with local schools and are in active
Similar Books
