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?

No fees in Scotland.

‘I think a fair few teachers take things too personally and get on the defensive unnecessarily. I haven’t seen another profession where someone makes a comment about their personal experience and the people in that sector who were nowhere near that specific situation get so upset.‘

I do agree. I have worked in the nhs for 30y and am at a senior level now. I believe most negative stories I hear about the nhs and I encourage people to complain about genuinely poor care. In an effort to make things improve, and highlight bad care. I don’t feel remotely
defensive. I know how hard I work and the great service I provide. And I know there is plenty good too about the nhs as a whole. Criticism of the nhs isn’t a criticism of me.

My daughter was discussing this yesterday. She’s doing her finals and needs to make some notes. She was saying it is much quicker to type the notes, but if she hand-writes them, she remembers that much better.

I can’t believe anyone is saying that being able to write by hand doesn’t matter. How depressing.

For what subjects?

Send them all to a place in the world where you have to pay for education and it’s scarce. Leave them there for a year, or more.

And maybe they will come back with an attitude that we have in our culture - education is key.

Im also a believer in if you keep hearing that education is useless at home, as a child, of course you will think negatively of education.

I know these days it’s all about exams etc, but as a mum and hearing second hand from my partner who is a teacher - schools are introducing life skills, they are embedding some element of real life into the curriculum.

and then you have a heap of parents complaining about that! They did at my Dads primary and secondary “why are they teaching our children about society” “why are they not pushing my kid academically”

You cannot please everyone.

But behaviour and attitude towards education has gone downhill along with the massive cuts - so no wonder it feels like this.

Assume it stands for New Zealand.

I guess joined up hand writing makes things quicker and even in secondary school a lot of work is still handwritten.
That said, DS (year 11) handwriting is awful and every time he asks me to check or read through anything I pity the teacher (or examiner) who has to make sense of it! Its never been flagged as a problem so maybe that is one of teachers super powers!

Write neatly. It's a good skill to have

Do they do GCSEs there?

We have continuous assessment in comprehensive school in Finland, the vast majority of it being based on tests and exams throughout the school year (the rest on class contribution and in some subjects presentations and portfolio work/course work). Works well as the exams are AI proof but don't involve memorising two years of learning

OP, I very much appreciate my children's education. Not in the UK so the system is much less stressful (nowhere near as many strict rules) but the most important part of any system is the teachers and I really appreciate the ones my children have/had, same as I appreciate the ones I had back in the UK (even if my high school was pretty shit on the whole, the teachers still did their best

In A Level RS we actually memorised essays for the exam. Our teacher said the same themes usually came up every year so we picked one and wrote an essay on it, rewrote a few times then memorised it. Bit of a gamble I suppose as they might have changed the themes but they didn't so worked out alright, just had to edit to fit the actual question.

I don’t know if this is the same. My youngest didn’t sit his highers due to illness, but agreed to sit his English one then, on the day, wasn’t well enough. But because the school had put him forward they put it an appeal. He got an A without sitting it!

So I’m assuming that there was a body of work already assessed by the school.

Yes but you wrote the essays.

Comments about NzHS staff /medical staff not taking offence at complaints - when someone has your life in their hands you aren’t going to start bleating about your bed not being changed -I also think maternity care has got so bad because you feel you must keep staff on your side to keep your baby safe - reading the many critical threads on here about hospital care - you’d think most people need a gun to their head to suffer more of the awful care that there is in places.

AND no one posting mentions the dreadful hospital or awful staff by name -presumably nervous if repercussions.
But the opportunity to whinge at teachers is there for anyone - AND parents have enough faith in teachers to assume their behaviour won’t be taken out on their child.

So the comparison with NHS staff is quite wrong.

Yeah they must have looked at what he was capable of in his usual work. Glad he got a good grade for it!

Much easier than thinking them up from scratch in the exam though!

Nothing wrong with that. You had to study and understand the subject in order to understand what you are memorising. It isn’t just me, having never studied RS just memorising some essays and sitting the exam.

far better that than coursework which teachers/ parents/AI can write.

Thank you 😊

Yep.

I remember our English teacher getting us to write a "killer" story based loosely on one of our choosing from past exam papers - she marked it and then we had to re-write it following her suggestions and she marked it again, and so on, several times until she was "happy" with the final version. Then she spent loads of time looking at all the past paper questions and giving us hints/tips as to how to change our story to fit in with the exam paper! She basically taught us all the "cheats" to make the bones of our stories fit the question in the exam!

My story was about waking up in a hospital bed, with the "sights and sounds and smells and noises" of a hospital ward then going on to find I'd been in a coma, had a serious operation, lost part of my leg, etc., so I did a lot of mental anguish as well as the physical pain, etc. Quite a classic descriptive story in the end! Basically everything beyond the link paragraph (explaining how I came to be there) was fixed in my mind (and had been marked/improved by the teacher many times). Only the link paragraph needed to "fit" whatever the exam question was. She gave us loads of hints and tips as to how to "pivot" from what the exam asked for in one paragraph, to lead on to the "pre-set" story. In the exam itself, the question was a story about a very common/popular one, which was "if I knew then what I know now, I'd never have done it" - so basically all I had to do was write a paragraph explaining what it was that I did that led me to being in a hospital bed with half a leg missing rather than spending time thinking about and planning an entire story.

I "coached" my son to do the same for his English GCSE as, like me, he as no aptitude for creative writing nor imagination, so I basically gave him the same core story (hospital, smells, amputation, mental anguish etc) for him to practice and improve and the same "pep talk" about making it fit the exam question. In his exam, the question was a story about "a city at night" so his story turned into how he ended up in the hospital because of an attack in the dark early hours of the morning, "tweaked" with the hospital period being overnight, with noise of patients snoring, deserted ward no staff about, looking out of the window over city streetlights etc.

We both got our A grades!! Sometimes you have to play the game when it comes to exams!

I'm a middle class parent and don't really recognise this. I bloody love that my kids go to school and have the opportunity to engage with teachers with different perspectives from me. When schools closed for COVID, I was gutted, as we're most of my friends.

What I do note from Mumsnet though is that some teachers do deride what parents teach their children. There's a lot of "we are teachers, we know best, trust us" and an unwillingness to engage in what could be a more constructive partnership. The system supports this - is very suspicious of flexi schooling, time off for educational experiences etc. Home schooling is out of reach of many but a lot of parents are engaged with their children"s education but also have views about what that should and could entail.

It was very frustrating trying to help with support of education at home. They'd you they are struggling in an area -something we'd often said first - next step it how do we help. There was often nothing in school they could access so only way to improve was going to be us parents helping - but asking how never seem to get any answers.

Teacher and other parents on MN were helpful.

Those attributes are very useful in our profession actually. As DS says, AI could replace the work the juniors do; but it can’t replace the managers and partners - where do we get them from, without them doing the training as juniors?

I have always found it very useful to be able to hand write as rapidly and legibly as possible.

I imagine there will be big push back on continuous assessments in this way - too much testing, too much pressure, anxiety and stress inducing, not enough learning and understanding etc etc

I can see why teachers get pissed off though as I do think the biggest barrier to ongoing assessment and project work is that it would rely on teacher based professional assessment. And fundamentally our leaders don't trust teachers. Even if we implemented the equivalent of peer marking to get schools to cross check a sample of each others work, with a government body for spot checking, that trust isn't there anymore. I would love to see qualifications based on ability to understand and apply across a year. Final exams just don't work for a large number of children.