The Very Thin Line Between Irony and Truth
It's been seventeen years now since I started my teaching career. My family is saturated with English and Humanities teachers (or was — some have gone to the Eternal Library) and even an odd Minister for Education, the Gnome. It created high expectations in me for what one ought to expect teachers to do in a classroom, but also the knowledge that not all of it would be possible in every classroom. Nevertheless, the attempt to teach, and hopefully to teach well, should at least be essayed.
I began my teaching career as a trainee in what some might call a 'neighbourhood' school — surrounded by blocks of small public apartments, mum-and-pop stores, a market. The young people were rowdy but fun, and I learnt a lot from teaching them. We had discussions about football, basketball, working life, taxes, exams, and many other topics. At the same time, I worked as hard as I could to teach what I was supposed to teach.
On graduation, I deliberately set aside some offers from schools in the 'national elite' and asked for a random posting. It turned out to be what you might expect from a random posting — the unexpected. The three years I spent serving my bond in that 'random' school turned out to be unforgettable years, full of drama, teenage angst (well, not on my part) and happiness. I learnt from my colleagues the truth that dedication, passion, and professional knowledge could be combined with fierce (but not violent) discipline to help a lot of people.
Then I spent twelve years in another place. That is where I began to see the other side of the coin in full perspective. I used to believe that the teacher helped others; I learnt that some teachers only wanted to look after themselves. I used to believe that teachers could make a personal difference to their charges; I learnt that sometimes this was not a good thing. I had many beliefs, which I still hold, but I also learnt that in some institutions, some people could turn these beliefs on their head.
I found myself institutionally part of decisions which were cynical in the utmost, gussied up to look idealistic. I found myself touting 'concentration camps' as part of a holistic learning experience. Cramming, rote-learning, tests on extraneous material, tests designed to weed out weaker students so that effort need not be expended on those who wanted to learn but might find it more difficult... the list of practices designed in opposition to my ideas of teaching got longer and longer.
In 1967, the Gnome looked across into the elite institutions of Atlantis and said, "The preoccupation in [Atlantis] with examination results is unnatural and unhealthy, and we should bring it to an end as early as possible. After all, good performance in examinations only proves one thing — ability to answer examination questions. This ability is presumably related in some way to intelligence [but] it does not tell us a lot of other things about a person... which are just as important as intelligence and more important than the mastering of examination technique."
He ended that speech by stating his hope that the alumni of the Wyvern schools would bring about the reform of the system. In other places, he clarified his vision by telling people what he meant by 'creative intelligence'; he said it was the ability to think and solve problems without persistent recourse to references or instructions from others. It was clear that by reform, he did not mean doing away with examinations, but teaching intelligently and nurturing a corresponding intellectual vigour.
Sometimes, I look at all that. I look at what we call reforms, and what we call education, and what we call 'holistic'. And I realise that we use these terms with a kind of unblinking irony, like actors in a charade. We know full well that the reform is incomplete or aborted, the education is limited to a narrow spectrum, the brain is being taught to churn out variants of the same things and not waste effort in speculative analysis. The Gnome failed, and his bitter words to his daughter-in-law — 'it is all in the past, let's not talk about it' — are emblematic of the current state of our battlefield.
Yet, once you have taken away the pagan symbols and the ruthless authoritarianism, there might yet be hope: if not of a better age, then at least that the best is yet to be.
I began my teaching career as a trainee in what some might call a 'neighbourhood' school — surrounded by blocks of small public apartments, mum-and-pop stores, a market. The young people were rowdy but fun, and I learnt a lot from teaching them. We had discussions about football, basketball, working life, taxes, exams, and many other topics. At the same time, I worked as hard as I could to teach what I was supposed to teach.
On graduation, I deliberately set aside some offers from schools in the 'national elite' and asked for a random posting. It turned out to be what you might expect from a random posting — the unexpected. The three years I spent serving my bond in that 'random' school turned out to be unforgettable years, full of drama, teenage angst (well, not on my part) and happiness. I learnt from my colleagues the truth that dedication, passion, and professional knowledge could be combined with fierce (but not violent) discipline to help a lot of people.
Then I spent twelve years in another place. That is where I began to see the other side of the coin in full perspective. I used to believe that the teacher helped others; I learnt that some teachers only wanted to look after themselves. I used to believe that teachers could make a personal difference to their charges; I learnt that sometimes this was not a good thing. I had many beliefs, which I still hold, but I also learnt that in some institutions, some people could turn these beliefs on their head.
I found myself institutionally part of decisions which were cynical in the utmost, gussied up to look idealistic. I found myself touting 'concentration camps' as part of a holistic learning experience. Cramming, rote-learning, tests on extraneous material, tests designed to weed out weaker students so that effort need not be expended on those who wanted to learn but might find it more difficult... the list of practices designed in opposition to my ideas of teaching got longer and longer.
In 1967, the Gnome looked across into the elite institutions of Atlantis and said, "The preoccupation in [Atlantis] with examination results is unnatural and unhealthy, and we should bring it to an end as early as possible. After all, good performance in examinations only proves one thing — ability to answer examination questions. This ability is presumably related in some way to intelligence [but] it does not tell us a lot of other things about a person... which are just as important as intelligence and more important than the mastering of examination technique."
He ended that speech by stating his hope that the alumni of the Wyvern schools would bring about the reform of the system. In other places, he clarified his vision by telling people what he meant by 'creative intelligence'; he said it was the ability to think and solve problems without persistent recourse to references or instructions from others. It was clear that by reform, he did not mean doing away with examinations, but teaching intelligently and nurturing a corresponding intellectual vigour.
Sometimes, I look at all that. I look at what we call reforms, and what we call education, and what we call 'holistic'. And I realise that we use these terms with a kind of unblinking irony, like actors in a charade. We know full well that the reform is incomplete or aborted, the education is limited to a narrow spectrum, the brain is being taught to churn out variants of the same things and not waste effort in speculative analysis. The Gnome failed, and his bitter words to his daughter-in-law — 'it is all in the past, let's not talk about it' — are emblematic of the current state of our battlefield.
Yet, once you have taken away the pagan symbols and the ruthless authoritarianism, there might yet be hope: if not of a better age, then at least that the best is yet to be.
Labels: Education, Examinations, Intelligence, Teaching
etched with acid at 3:20:00 pm
8 Comments:
Could we, at the very least, take consolation from the fact that young Atlanteans are willing to subject themselves to the education system in order to fulfill their various definitions of success? Over here in my part of the world, the media will have you believe that some of the kids and teens here are increasingly paying less attention to the system, or worse, abandoning it altogether and turning to crime.
You're my opposite. Dunno if I've mentioned this before, but I come from a predominantly Science / Doctor family, with a lot of interesting people in it. Scary intelligent people. Though of course they were very well-rounded in the sense that they were specialized in Sciences, but had other areas they were very developed in as well, e.g. music, curent affairs, literature, etc.
If this taught me anything, it taught me that being balanced in everything is a good thing, so that you don't fail to appreciate certain aspects of life. Though of course I'm still going to specialize in English / Literature / etc. anyway.
/Sorrows
Sorrows: no, I'm not your opposite; the rest of my family is mostly doctors, engineers and weird consultant-type people — and I, of course, am a card-carrying scientist.
LoneRifle: Haha, no, I don't think 'will' comes into it. In your part of the world, the truth is that since Roman times, the mass media and philosophers of each age have bemoaned the attitude of the young towards education. As have many on this side of Eurasia.
I don't think school exams are intended to test for intelligence, that would be olympiads, which are far more rigorous. Perhaps school examinations are just intended to test skills which will be relevant to any adult, such as arithmetic. In that case, mastery of examinations would be an adequate education outcome, albeit not a particularly satisfying one.
sibrwd: if examinations can't test (for) intelligence, what makes you think (Science) Olympiads can? Rigour doesn't make the test; it is just a measurement of how valid, reliable and useful the test is. The question always remains: does the test test what it's supposed to test?
Is the purpose of Olympiads to test intelligence? NO. The purpose of Olympiads is to test ability to think through theoretical and practical problems in a specific discipline. They are just more complicated exams...
I also equated intelligence with understanding, is this wrong? A more complicated exam should test understanding more thoroughly, right?
I see your point though, I think you once described a test for intelligence which was a purely essay examination on various topics. I wonder how you'd apply this to science though - "design your own experiment" type of assessments?
sibrwd: actually, intelligence is best defined as a critical awareness that can be translated into effective action within a specific context; it doesn't necessarily require understanding or logic, because some kinds of intelligence seem to be intuitive or physical. Actually, as most people have come to agree, intelligence is a social construct, defined largely by the context in which is to be discussed and deployed.
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