To think primary school children are smarter than we were in the 1980's?

[Littleideasbigbook]

After observing zoom lessons for two weeks and supporting my DD with her school work, I am pretty impressed with the cognitive abilities of 9 year olds in this country tbh.

There is definitely a spectrum of children in DD's class, of both demographics and ability, (Yorkshire village but next to a big industrial town that has a high index of social deprivation) so not all of them are super performers but the baseline level of applied knowledge, problem solving, analysis, socialisation, literacy, speech, presentation and grasp of technology is not that far off what I see at work if I am honest.

The way they are introduced to a new concept and then build their knowledge in stages, contextualise it then relate it to other subjects is amazing. They did a geography lesson on climate and biomes (they all knew what a bloody Tundra was!) and had a class discussion on different biomes in relation to the equator. One boy said 'Oh Miss C, is that an arid climate because of the angle of the sun?' and the teacher (cleverly) linked in with previous learning in science and maths. Don't get me started on their literacy either...they are amazing! When I was 9 I remember being bamboozled by Jesus feeding 5k people with 2 loaves and a few fish (catholic school) but it didn't occur to me to question it and say hang on, the maths doesn't add up here. I hear loads of people slag off the curriculum (and I don't doubt it is a pain to work with btw) but whatever schools are doing to translate it into practice, they are doing bloody well. The collaboration between the children is much better than I remember from my peers too - lots of feedback and peer marking, respectful. I wonder if better nutrition has helped? The internet? Parental involvement? Better quality teaching? Children's rights? I remember being leathered with a wooden spoon by the nuns and disliking school for that because I was a timid, tiny little girl. Maybe learning is helped by a lack of fear?

YABU - the primary aged kids I am in contact with are rubbish in comparison to my generation

YANBU - I have noticed that primary children seem much more able than in my day.

I think the education is better nowadays

YABU because you didn't give the sensible middle option that children are, as ever, full of interesting information and are sponges. That you hear all the answering children putting in what they know and not the ones who are confused. The great advantage of learning in a group is sharing information, they all can chuck in helpful information.

I do think teaching and resources are less about dumbing down facts than they used to be.

The teacher does pick out the confused/struggling children though and seems to offer extension activities and support BUT even those DC who are struggling still have a baseline knowledge and cognition that seems higher than I remember from primary school.

"Maybe learning is helped by a lack of fear?"

Massively. I think children are encouraged to take more of an active roll in their learning and allowed more free thinking. They are often exposed to more knowledge via television, gaming and travel. There is more respect for children and at primary level teaching is about knowledge building and not just training. Communication is encouraged.

They aren't smarter as such.

I'm constantly amazed at my DC learning stuff in infant school that we didn't have any concept of until secondary school , across all subjects.(I didnt do any grammar at all at school in the 1980s/90s and really struggle with stuff like compound sentences and subordinate clauses etc) they're doing circuit boards in science which we didnt do until secondary either.
However I disagree with homework in primary. We didnt have homework until secondary school and organised it ourselves. A lot of homework in primary is basically an additional task for parents.

Not sure about Primary. On a similar note, I know several secondary teachers, some recently retired, some still teaching, who've all said that the gap between the most and least able children has grown considerably in the decades that they've been teaching.

These comments are against a general pre covid modern setting.

There is less learning by rote, and more participation- those are positives.

Less positive is the constant over-involvement by parents, and contact and complaints to the school from parents being the norm rather than the exception it used to be.

I don't think children are any more intelligent, and exams for the older pupils seem easier today than the same exams 40 ago.

At present, after normal schooling returns (soon we all hope) there will be large gaps in learning and understanding- and some of these may never be repaired, leaving a whole range of pupils much less knowledgeable than any previous pupils.

That is what I was interested in. Is it socially constructed or biologically? I was thinking socially. I don't think biological cognition could have improved to that level over 2/3 decades.

What @Fizbosshoes said.
I totally agree.
I went to school in the 80’s, and didn’t do any grammar or Shakespeare, even at secondary. Foreign language teaching was basic, even at secondary.
My 9 year old has been learning all of this since age 6.

Academic teaching had improved but children are less independent and less able to occupy themselves than in the 80s.

No. They simply learn different skills.

My girls are much better technically than I was and learn things I didn't learn until later but they don't have the project working skills I had.

I feel 21st century education sucks the joy out of learning.

DS seems to be doing work in Primary a good few years earlier than I did, and the teaching seems broader, so doing projects on named artists, for example. The schoolwork seems less focused on everyone sitting at their table and not moving around.

From a home point of view, we are much more able to answer any question DS asks because if we don't know, we google it. There has rarely been a question where we've not been able to discuss the answer with DS.

YANBU

My 5 year old is better at maths than me. Just been doing subtraction this week and he gets the answers right whilst I’m still working it out. He’s better at his times tables too!

Teaching and range of resourcing has improved. It's easier to explain concepts on a smartboard than with chalk and wheeling in the school TV.

I'm not a fan of the curriculum. At the time I finished secondary teaching 5 years ago, it was very focused on a narrow range of topics and focused on assessment performance at a cost of breadth of knowledge.

Dexterity skills have suffered. At school we'd take much of a lesson to produce an intricate graph on graph paper and there isn't the time to do that any more. Creative subjects have suffered with a lack of resourcing and time.

I'm finding with my DCs and the primary curriculum that it's very repetitive. There's too much focus on technical grammar and not enough exploring and developing love of literature and it's reduced to a tickbox exercise.

I feel thick as champ trying to help my DC with home learning

Will they will have a far better grasp of technology won't they , we got one BBC computer for the entire school when I was in junior 4 ( year six ) we had black board,s ,schools these days have they have interactive white boards ,we certainly didn't have a home computer as most of my friends didn't ,my fourteen year old has a laptop ,phone ,smart TV ,myself and Dh have s phone each and a couple of other tablets .

And yes Google is an amazing resource ,I did my nurse training in the mid 90,s the internet wasent really a thing ,when I did essays and assignments I had to read through lots of text books .

Interesting thread. I think the gap between low and high abilities has widened hugely. Not sure why. There seems to be much more group working, which is probably a good thing. I do think there is a place for some rote learning, and I think sometimes teachers have to tie themselves in knots trying to make something fun that just needs to be practiced the old fashioned way eg spellings and times tables. Love of reading seems to have decreased, general knowledge has increased because of the internet, as for critical thinking... hmm I'm not sure.

I don't think exams are easier today at all as I know my two learnt a lot more than I did in primary and gcse maths is a lot harder than when I was at school.
I think is too hard to compare then and now though as different range of subjects and amounts studied ,bigger classes etc

What I will say is that although I hate lockdown and home schooling I think the remote learning is forcing kids to draw on more resources than they did when I was at primary (late 70s/early 80s).

Although my 17 year old said he felt all about just having a good memory when it came to gcse and not much thought of maybe enjoying and exploring subjects and thats a shame.
Plus expected all kids should achieve x,y, z academically when not all are academic , but will have other skills and maybe a great artist, sportsmen , carpenter etc etc

I was born 1960, my only child in 1989 so I cannot answer for 1980s primary school children. We both did well at 11+ if that is any indication of how bright we were and I'm not saying it necessarily is. No, I would say primary school children now are no brighter, probably just the same but how they perform and what they know is down to parents and the school they attend.

I stopped being able to help with his homework in year 6 I had no idea what they were talking about! I did a degree 😱

More confident or less nervous I would say.