Education

So I have my final day in post 16 education tomorrow. There is a 'Leaver's Assembly' at 9.30am, but I don't remember the last time I attended an assembly at the BRIT school, so my plan is to rock in for around half ten. Plus I reckon that it will just be ultimately cheesy and if I see anyone crying I would leave straight away.

So from next Monday I will technically be a free man, I won't have jack shit to wake up for (until I find myself a job, that's something else to worry about). Looking back on my time in education, since the age of 5 (or younger?), I am trying to remember if I have learnt anything particularly groundbreaking.

To be perfectly honest, primary education didn't really teach me a whole lot than more than I already knew. I'm going to sound like an absolute prick here, but throughout my whole time through primary school I honestly thought I was being held back. I despised the fact that I had to have a tutor to help me get into all those secondary schools, but on the other hand it made life a whole lot easier and me a whole lot smarter! If you think back to your primary school class, there were quite clearly some kids who were a bit more gifted than others, and some who were just plain slow (all those kids who were still chewing their jumpers all the way up to year 4). Obviously, there are some primary schools that are better than others in terms of standard of teaching, but I believe the way that the government runs primary education needs a serious look over (maybe it already has).

One of the reasons we get kids stabbing eachother to death over a spilt milkshake these days is because they are so uninterested in making something of themselves; they get brainwashed by the people around them into thinking that this sort of behaviour is ok. If just one person could reach out to some of these kids and have a lasting effect (ie, change the way they think) whilst they were in primary education, I believe we would have a very different youth of today. And why can't these people be their teachers? Admittedly, it takes someone with a certain character to be able to teach, and in my honest opinion around half of the teachers out there today chose the wrong profession. To be able to teach, you have to be able to:

a) Speak about something you understand, not recycle information
b) Deliver your information in a way that will make people want to listen
c) Believe in what you're teaching
d) Make the kids you're teaching think that you are someone they can respect and depend upon

If you can't fulfill at least 2 of these criteria, you shouldn't be allowed to teach. The sad thing is, all you need to be able to teach is GCSEs in every subject, a couple A levels, a degree in your subject, and an extra qualification (which I can't remember the name of right now, some postgrad kind of thing but it's pretty achievable within a short space of time). Whilst a degree may sound daunting, chances are you yourself are probably going to do a degree in your chosen subject. If you aren't, you've probably sorted out how your life is going to work out by now, and what career path you're going to take so that you don't end up on minimum wage until you're 35, working behind bread counter in Somerfield. It's unfortunate, but these days the more letters you have behind your name when you write it down the more successful you are (something I've always found slightly ridiculous).

I think I sidetracked myself (had a Lamb Curry in the middle of writing that last paragraph), so I'll try return to the point I originally had in mind. Oh yeah, teaching. Teaching is something that a lot of people think they can do, but in actuality can't. We've all had shit teachers, the ones that turn up to the lesson and just try and teach straight out of their notes. And (hopefully) we've all had good teachers, the type of teacher that can turn up to a lesson without anything save his brain but still manages to keep you interested for an hour. Admittedly, the more boring the subject is, the harder the teacher is going to have to work to keep you interested, but it can still be done. And at the end of the day, after your GCSEs, you choose what you want to learn about, which is why I just don't understand when people moan about how boring a certain subject is at A level; if it was boring before your GCSEs not alot's going to change it after (people who study Geography spring to mind). I won't lie, there are some kids who turn up to school with the completely wrong attitude, and to be honest they don't deserve to be in school, even if it is mandatory.

I think that there's something wrong with the circle of education in this country, and I don't really see it getting better anytime soon (although believe me, I'm glad I didn't grow up in America - the amount of crap that they are taught in that country from a young age is unbelievable). To put it simply, most of the teachers don't really want to be in the classroom, and neither do the pupils. Learning should be something you should be passionate about, teacher or student. When neither teacher nor student gives a shit about what is happening in the classroom, we have reached some kind of breakdown. It saddens me when you hear of teachers taking their own lives in the newspapers; why should someone deserve to die if they are trying to help other people? But at the same time, the teachers that are committing suicide are probably the teachers that don't care about teaching anymore (probably). The adverts on tv from the government advertising teaching are only really making the situation worse; although the adverts do make the job look lovely and appealing, all people are really interested is the salary part of it. Teaching should be something you do because you love the job, not because of the money involved. If everybody in the world was taught free of charge, the world would be a lot more exciting.

I also have doubts about how useful public examinations actually are. To be honest, I don't remember jack shit from my Maths GCSE, and I got an A in that fucker! GCSEs don't really test your intelligence, they test your ability to remember things. One could argue that to remember things you have to be intelligent, and that's a valid argument, but when it comes down to it, getting a qualification in something should mean that you're good at it, no matter how menial the qualification is. I also think that exams bring about unprecidented stress in young people, especially people who are taking overly complicated subjects such as Psychology. I mean, I thought I was pretty clever, only got 1 C in GCSEs, but a month before my first exam, alarm bells were ringing and I was asking myself if I was actually smart enough to pass at the start of January. Maybe I was just shit at it, but the amount of stuff you have to know for those exams is immense. In the end I scraped through with a D, and managed to bump it up to a C the following year. What I'm trying to get at is that yeah, if you paid 100% attention in class and revised your notes every day then you'd pass that exam no problem, but let's be honest which kind of kid (apart from the nerd kids) actually looks at their notes in their spare time? I am a strong believer of being constantly assessed throughout your course; if you can keep up a high level of work throughout all the time you are doing your subject, it will make sense that you get a good grade at the end of it. Instead what happens is some people do OKish throughout the school year, get sidetracked at times (drugs/girls/boys/table tennis), and then by the end of the year they panic hardcore because they have an exam in a month and they don't know fuck all.

I don't really know where much of this had led to, or what I've been trying to achieve here, all I know is that it felt good to air out some of these thoughts. What I am sure about is that if you want to learn about something, and you are motivated enough to put in the effort, you will succeed. There may be places where you fall off the track a couple times, but it shouldn't matter, as long as you want to learn and succeed to be more intelligent, you will. Look at humankind - we have gone from lives in caves and shitting outdoors to creating online blogs. Anything is possible.

More learning and more gurning.

James