To wish parents appreciated their kids’ education more?

[MayasJamas]

Another meet up with middle class parents last night, another inevitable diatribe about how the education system teaches kids nothing but how to pass exams.

As a teacher, I bite my tongue. I truly wish parents could see what young people are actually learning. How the world works (scientifically, sociological, ethically). How to question what they read and hear. How to draw, write, speak, listen. How in English, even in GCSE lessons, we regularly discuss the deepest of human issues: war, love, injustice, misogyny, kindness, religion, prejudice.

I completely agree that the GCSE system is flawed and too much pressure. I have a Y11 child myself and it is too much. But it seems to be a middle class hobby to slag off everything that schools and teachers are trying to do. It’s ironic because, generally speaking, these privileged children are the ones who will benefit most from the education system their parents deride. They’ll go on to study subjects they enjoy at A Level and uni, to have rewarding careers in whatever field they choose. They literally couldn’t do that without education. Generally speaking, teachers and schools are also trying to make those opportinities available to all. I teach underprivileged kids who want to become brain surgeons and journalists and politicians. Education will help them to do that.

But no. ‘It’s just a memory test’. ‘They’re not learning anything relevant to real life’. I don’t want a medal btw, but AIBU to think parents are quick to shit on the system that is actually (on the whole) enriching the lives of their kids?

I appreciate the teachers. However it doesn't seem like the education system is serving kids or wider society well.

It is too pressured, actively discourages an intrinsic love of learning, and schools are fixated on trivial things like skirt length. Assessments are too heavily skewed towards factual recall and there's insufficient emphasis on skills.

I think most teachers agree with the view of parents, the unions certainly seem to say similar things.

I agree OP.

I've observed quite a lot of middle class parents doing this in my circle. I think it's underpinned by a legitimate concern about anxiety and stress which is not without foundation and I do understand wanting to protect kids, especially neurodiverse kids, from pressure to a degree. And there are legitimate concerns about schools at the moment.

But I do think its become a kind of fashionable cri de coeur among certain sections of the MC to fetishize "rest" and "downtime" and I think it's got slightly out of hand. Parents who live very comfortable lives objecting to the amount of homework their kids get set and encouraging them to do nothing during school holidays to "recharge" etc. I have said this before on here but I remember the outcry at my DD's primary school when in year 5 they set a very limited amount of homework (30 or so minutes twice a week). Endless letter to the head about how "play" was so much more important than structured learning, people digging out scientific papers about it. It was all a bit hand-wringing and in my view a bit entitled. Of course children shouldn't be pushed too far and they do need to rest, but I think sometimes the pendulum has swung too far.

If you compare these families to immigrant families who know that their children's success depends on hard work and academic success the contrast is very striking. It's meant well, but the unspoken implication is that their children are somehow entitled to success without the graft. The hard facts are that success for children today is less guaranteed than its ever been. Telling them that they can do very little and maintain their parents' standard of living is dishonest.

I think having pride in beautiful handwriting is worthwhile, but regardless

• I read an article once that said you remember handwritten notes better than printed notes. I've definitely found this to be true.
• handwriting stuff makes you think differently when forming an argument. You can't insert stuff later or delete stuff in the same way.
• it's good for manual dexterity - I read something else which was arguing that teens weren't doing tasks requiring manual dexterity like in the past and it was impacting on things like trainee surgeons.

Joined up writing is in the national curriculum

Eh? My OP had nothing to do with complaining about working hard. I love my job. The holidays are fabulous too 😉 (just getting that in there before someone else uses it to have another pop). It was about parents valuing (or not) the education our children receive.

My issue is with comments like ‘all they have learned is how to pass an exam’, which I feel some parents trot out without really thinking about all the things their kids are being taught. It’s just not true. Even if they don’t become geologists, historians, artists or whatever, it is a real privilege (as well as a right) to have access to this wealth of knowledge about the world. How a flower grows. What’s beneath the earth’s surface. How poets have tried to articulate the horror of war. Why people move to different countries. The human behaviours that are destroying planet and what we can do about it. How to bring emotion to a drama performance. The practices and beliefs of different faiths. Not to mention how to read and write. What an amazing, empowering thing it is to have all this knowledge at their fingertips.

There are millions worldwide who do not receive an education. 150 years ago only the wealthiest in this country did. That was wrong! I think what I’m trying to get to the heart of, is that while the system is flawed, education itself is actually wonderful.

I went to a good grammar school in the 1980s. My goodness has education improved since then!Mg children were far better taught in their compressive (late 2010s/2020s)

I truly wish parents could see what young people are actually learning.
What do you do to tell parents? When DC were at school I always felt that we were kept at arm's length and in the dark.

Is that really the teachers’ job though? They can’t be expected to tell the parents everything they’re doing day to day, there just isn’t the time or resource. My children tell me what they’re learning at school.

Of the person marking their GCSE and A level papers can't read their writing they can't mark them properly and marks will be lost. They are all handwritten.

I massively appreciate my teachers - things pop in my head all the time that were not really about exams. One teacher giving us snacks during revision. The praise I got from one. The trip we went on to a local uni - all outside a curriculum but had a huge impact on me. I feel the same about my kids teachers too - a couple of them were life changing

None of that requires joined handwriting.

That’s true, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear, since at that point you’re basically just arguing that having an education system is better than not having one. It’s not much of a defense of the British education system over those of comparable countries.

And yet despite it being so much easier to blame the teachers, not a single person here (or any of OP’s friends) has done so.

Students still have to handwrite their GCSE and A level exam scripts.
If they have illegible handwriting that will be a problem.

They also have to write a lot at speed so learning a neat, cursive script (which is faster to write than printing) is a vital skill.

If exam scripts were typed then your DD would be learning speedy touch typing in Y3 instead.

I’m a high school teacher, so there is little day to day contact with parents. I would hope that parents (if they care about education) would talk to their kids about what they are learning, be across what they are doing for homework, have a look at their books etc.

So agree with this. We are an ‘alphabet soup’ family (ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, ED etc), all v high functioning, yet whilst my workplace has always been happy to allow for my requirements, school just won’t for DD. It’s baffling and enraging.

I do sit with my Y7 child every day whilst they do their homework, and they are learning some fascinating things! Not all of which are things I learned at school. My problem is really with the way schools are not being resourced to help high functioning ND children (eg actual quiet spaces, including a quiet space at lunchtime). There seem to be a number of children at school who frankly shouldn’t be in mainstream school, and they take SO MUCH of the teachers’ time and attention that there’s little left for the other children. It’s a real problem, but there are no suitable schools available for these children, and they have to have an education, so everyone loses (as they also aren’t getting what they need from school).

Just to add, I am not blaming the high needs children for taking the teachers’ time from the other children, I’m blaming successive Govts for not investing in education for high needs children, thus forcing them into mainstream settings that can’t meet their needs, at their expense, and with knock ons on everyone else at school.

what annoys me with the hand writing is that it has to be joined up. My 10 year old can not get to grips with it but can write really well non joined with all the correct letter formation. Her current teacher has told her not to worry about joining up but I know come September she will be forced to do unreadable writing again for her to get to secondary school and for them not to care if you join up or not as long as it’s readable

Just as an example: a Y7 child having an absolute breakdown in class last week, throwing chairs, screaming, hiding under the desk and biting and hitting everyone who came near. It was awful, for all of the children (who had to be taken out of the classroom), for the child suffering the meltdown (who had clearly reached their emotional limits and then some), for the teacher trying to handle it all, and for the deputy head who spent two hours trying to coax the child out from under the desk until a parent arrived to help, at which point it still took another half hour to get them out. It was then discussed at length on the Y7 parents WhatsApp, which must have been awful for the parents of the child in question. They made it clear they know the school isn’t right for their child, but until a place comes up somewhere suitable, and is somehow paid for, and the child somehow got there (as the lack of state provision means such schools are mostly now private, and not many of them so long journeys to get there and back each day), there isn’t any other option. Unless one of the parents gives up work to home school, and not many of us are in a position to afford that.

This is sad to read. I teach in a private mainstream school and we have a lot of students who've chosen it because it gives just that. Its small, very pastorally focused, loads of clubs at lunchtimes for the sort of activities that quieter, academic types like plus lots of places kids can just go and be, reading or playing cards or having a hot drink but these arentbsoecial, set aside places like the propsed 'hubs'. Its what, to my mind, inclusion actually is. A school where ND kids can just be alongside everyone else because the environment is sufficiently calm.

as a shortcut i used to write normally but then add the extra parts so it looked like i had joined it up

overall the issues are we as a society run society for generally profit, and unless theirs £ to be made etc, we need a society similar to where its not about profit but whats better and good for humanity overall

But yeah, the current education system is awful. That doesn’t mean kids don’t learn anything and it definitely doesn’t mean teachers aren’t valued. Teachers are as much victims of the current system as the pupils.

Your school sounds lovely, @CharleneElizabethBaltimore, and very much like the school I went to (and loved!) I agree, the profit motif is rife, and it’s so short sighted, as children failed by the education system are less likely to achieve their potential, and more likely to end up on benefits / in prison, all of which cost far far more than decent schooling would.

Also, I get so cross that for want of really quite simple humanity in schools and the school system, the potential of some really quite brilliant young people is being wasted. Let’s face it, looking back over history, many people who advanced human knowledge / science / engineering etc. in fundamental ways were almost certainly ND. I mean, where would we be without the obsessively focused research scientists in the field of medicine?! Plus Einstein, Turing, Isambard Kingdom Brunel etc.