To think the English attitude to learning can be very weird?

[DorothyL]

So often you read "no point in doing more than eight gcses/3 a levels, not needed for later/university"

How about doing subjects to LEARN something, not just to use them as a stepping stone? In other countries eg Germany youngsters continue with a broad range of subjects right through their school career.

Here I have met many teenagers who are woefully ignorant about all sorts of things - due to the fact they specialise far too early!?

[lljkk]

Is it especially English?
Anyway, a pragmatic approach makes sense to me.
My DC schools do 10-12 GCSEs, DD is struggling to choose so many, actually.

I've heard such weird things about German education, i don't know what to think about Germany. Including an immense lack of appreciation for inter-disciplinary research.

[Headofthehive55]

But that 17 year old might know skills that you don't. Such as making a website.
Lots of children are learning outside school - you may not even realise they are learning.
Education is broad, much broader than GCSEs. Our schools also do PHSE - not examined, which may teach things like what is NATO.

[ZbZb]

I've four DC who are all studying subjects that they 'love' at University. Three are studying the subject they will be working in but the 4th has no idea what career she will have. She studies mathematics not because she is particularly brilliant (she is good but no genius) but because she genuinely enjoys it. So in my DCs experience the UKs education hasn't ruined their love of education.

We used to live in a country with a more general style education but moved to the UK when they were teens. They were delighted to 'specialise' with A'Levels. Had we stayed they would have had to continue with a MFL and whilst they were good at it they were all ecstatic not to continue with it. Some kids struggle with certain subjects such as mathematics or English or art and being able to drop them might make them enjoy education MORE not less.

Sorry for crap English etc. I'm on a tiny phone ...and I'm crap at English

[sterlingcooper]

I think I was bright enough to get A grades at school without it seeming very hard. But not bright or self-motivated enough to have the natural curiosity necessary to take on extra learning on my own. So, for example, I'd always read, but not the classics or literary criticism. I just assumed those things were for university. In French I'd always think we seemed to be doing a ridiculously narrow range of grammar, but I didn't have the motivation to do any additional learning on my own. I can see that someone brighter and more naturally intellectual than me wouldnt have needed school to tell them to stretch themselves and go further than the curriculum. But I was in between those two camps.

[roundaboutthetown]

If you are not interested in learning outside of school, you are not interested in learning. Studying French or biology will not teach you what a bishop is, or what NATO is, anyway. Are you actually just thinking British students are politically naive and lacking intellectual curiosity and interest in current affairs, or that they don't know how to dissect a rat or who Flaubert was?

[Eolian]

I agree, OP. I'm a teacher. There are many, many things wrong with our education system and that is definitely one of them. My local secondary school offers the I.B. as well as A Levels and I hope my children choose to do that. So far they seem to be 'all rounders'. I very much wasn't, but looking back I think that if I hadn't been encouraged to specialise, I would have made more effort in the subjects I found harder, because I would have had to continue with them.

There is a lot of talk in U.K. secondary schools these days about 'growth mindset', which is encouraging kids to realise that they are not fixed at a particular ability level or in a particular set of subjects. This is good, but unless it goes along with a move away from the obsession with data and results and targets, it's not enough.

[AllMyBestFriendsAreMetalheads]

I left school 15 years ago and it was all about passing GCSEs. Parts of the textbooks were pretty much ignored because it wasn't going to be on the exam.

I remember being 7 or 8, and loving reading books and learning things for myself. I used to have a scrapbook full of my 'projects'. It took me over 10 years to get back to studying because I still didn't know what I wanted to do. It was only when I decided to just do something I found interesting that I figured out what I want to do. Now I'm really enjoying learning again and not just trying to pass the exam.

[sterlingcooper]

I don't think that's true. I became interested in real learning at university, as I finally saw what learning a really was. Not just from my course, but from being around other students interested in things like politics and social ideology. I just hadn't really had any motivation to get interested in those things before then.

[DinosaursRoar]

There has been a move in the last 30 or so years to seeing the only judgement of the quality of an education as the qualifications you end up with, and the only value of those qualifications the job prospects they give you.

(thread the other day illustrated it, a mother who thought it was a waste of time her DD doing A levels as the DD was thinking of doing an aprenticeship at 18 after it, which she could do at 16, the A levels experience and education was only seen as having value if it increased your income or you needed them for the next education step - the knowledge and experience aquired by doing them were viewed as essentially valueless - other Posters only support for doing them was that other jobs might require the A levels later on or the DD might want to go back to uni later on, not that the education and life experience of going to FE college might be interesting).

[sterlingcooper]

Sorry, that was in response to roundabout

[Middleoftheroad]

I think you need to look at what achools do in addition to study. Enrichment. I work with different schools - some in "deprived'" areas yet they all offer

DofE award
Debating contest
School visits to parliament etc
Outward Bound
School shows
STEM clubs
Charity fundraising

The children get so much out of these extra-curricular activities. It's not just about academia.

[AllMyBestFriendsAreMetalheads]

I don't blame schools though, league tables put schools under pressure to get the good results.

It's not GCSEs (or SATs) that are the problem, it's the way they are used to compare schools and as a lazy way of deciding which is the 'best' school.

My GCSE grades are really good. It wasn't through hard work though. I much prefer exams to coursework and I knew what I had to do to get the marks I needed and I did the bare minimum of revision.

[derxa]

It's my impression that general knowledge is not valued now. Only for freaks and geeks.

[LumelaMme]

I think we obsess too much about clocking up qualifications. I'm never impressed when I hear of a child doing five or more A levels, because all that means is that they've studied a very narrow syllabus on those five subjects. I think that if they're capable if that, it would be far better for them to do whatever the minimum number of A levels is that they need to get into university, and use the rest of the time either just learning something for the fun of it or doing a lot of wider work and reading around their chosen degree subject.
^This.

And a poster also commented that suddenly at uni the teaching to the test suddenly stops and students have to think for themselves. It used to be the case that A Level you had to think for yourself, whereas modern A Levels seem to be about learning the 'right' answer and regurgitating it. I keep telling my 6th Form DD to stick with it, uni will be fun, because as it is she is hacked off with school and the lack of scope to ask questions around the topic.

[mathanxiety]

I grew up in Ireland, which has a broad national curriculum and is very final-exam focused, and my DCs went to school in the US, where students heading for university do pretty much an academically focused broad curriculum with no final exams apart from school exams, but there are aptitude tests that are administered nationally and draw question material and skills like comprehension and writing from what students should be learning in school. There are also nationally administered Advanced Placement exams in all the academic subjects.

I really liked the broad Irish curriculum and liked what my DCs did in school too - they had more choices than I did but could choose among demanding courses, and could also do art courses, move up levels in summer school, change their minds about subject choices within a two week window at the start of each semester...

Best of all, they went to university and didn't have to declare a major until the end of their second year. I think the broad university 'core' requirements are the best feature of the American system. They make for versatile graduates and encourage inter-disciplinary research and insight. You still get the maths/science vs English Lit/humanities divide, but it's not as pronounced as it is in England.

[Salzundessig]

I just was talking about this to my dh. We are maybe moving to the UK next year and then our children will go to school there. I rate British primary education higher than Austrian or German (I am a British trained primary teacher though, haha) but secondary is completely inferior for all the reasons you mentioned, OP. My DH has much better general knowledge than me and he can't believe some things I didn't learn at school.

[BakeOffBiscuits]

I trained as a teacher 30 years ago and it was drummed into us that too many tests produced an education system which predominately teachers to that test.

This is what has happened in English schools and it's bloody sad.

[roundaboutthetown]

sterlingcooper - does that not prove my point? You were not genuinely interested in learning until you left school. You learnt what you learnt outside of school. It would have been nice to be given a love of learning at school, but studying more subjects at school would not necessarily have done that for you.

[Longtime]

I'm in Belgium and the system sounds very similar to Germany. It's horrible to be honest. It always makes me laugh when I hear people in the UK complaining about the constant assessment there. In Belgium that is ALL that counts. From primary onwards, tests all the time, exams twice a year, if you fail any you resit them, if you fail those you retake the year. The pressure is enormous and the system very academic. Its all very fine keeping up so many subjects but the school day starts at 8:00 and ends at 16:30 with hours of homework because you have so many subjects. Add to that the revision time for all of the tests and they have little time for anything else. Also, there is a lack of creative subjects and things like ICT or DT while Latin and Ancient Greek have space on the timetable! I have also found it a discouraging rather than encouraging system. It also isn't great if you want to study something like history or geography later on as they are only given and hour or two on the timetable. The level of maths is very high, even for four hour maths (I'm a maths tutor so I'm very aware of the levels for A levels, IB and EB to compare) so tough if you struggle with that. The other huge issue is their lack of ability to apply what they learn as they do a lot of learning by rote. My dd is now homeschooling for A levels (can't afford the horrendous British school fees) as she wants to study art. I said she would need IGCSE maths which she took last year after six months of study. I though it would be easy given that the maths she did in year 11 equivalent was a level level. She was used to learning definitions, proofs and then doing sheets of calculations. She found it hard at first to adapt to having to actually consider what she was doing, come up with her own equations and then solve them.

It is such a relief for me, after 24 years in the system (I have two older ds), not to have to deal with it anymore. Please be thankful you are in the UK.

[80sMum]

What an interesting and thought provoking thread.

Thinking back to my own teenage years, I'm sure that at 17 I knew what a bishop was. But where did I learn that information? Not from school, but from watching a TV comedy called All Gas and Gaiters!

My father used to say "you don't start learning until you leave school" and in terms of general knowledge, I would say that is correct.

[juneau]

I think by the time people reach their mid-to-late-teens, they should take some responsibility for informing and educating themselves, and not expect school to do it all. One can follow current affairs, improve one's general knowledge, read history etc., without studying it to A Level. So I don't think it's necessarily a case of specialising too early.

Well yes, I agree with this (and beyond, into adult life too), but I know a shocking number of adults who don't read the paper, watch the news or documentaries, read anything for pleasure except possibly the odd trashy novel. With so many people the level of conversation is unbelievably banal - and these people are parents themselves, informing (or not!), the next generation.

There simply isn't a culture of life-long learning in the UK. I'm doing a second degree right now and the number of people expressing disbelief and just not understanding why I'd want to do it, since I don't HAVE to, has underlined for me just how little we value learning and in this country. People see education as a means to an end - and that's it. No wonder other, more ambitious and hard-working nations, are over-taking us in productivity and innovation and that our populace has such significant skills shortages that we need to import it from elsewhere.

[Rainydayspending]

I did 5 a levels, all because I felt like they were interesting. It's very sad that the result is the be all (and of course in england i had to adapt to that weird culture of being a target if you put the effort in).

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

I totally agree with you re the functionalist attitude to learning. I guess I am glad, though, that people are seeing the point to an education at all. When I was growing up I was considered weird for wanting to finish school beyond the leaving age. Class traitor, I was.

[MargaretCavendish]

So often you read "no point in doing more than eight gcses/3 a levels, not needed for later/university"

To be fair, I've only heard this in the context of 'reasons not to force children to do so many GCSEs/A-levels that it leaves them completely stressed/with no time for extra-curricular activities'. I think you'd be unlikely to hear it about a child who was doing 12 GCSEs and who was happy and thriving.