Comprehensive school teaching - is it really this bad?

[jackstarbright]

I have just found this very disturbing article published in the Reader a few months ago. It's Gabriella Gruder-Poni's essay, 'Scenes from a PGCE'. here.

It provides one woman's view of teaching methods in a comprehensive school. Any comments?

But whatever Wil says the bottom line is the private schools do much much better than the state schools, most parents want to do their best for their children in all ways and if a mother has a good career she can afford to buy that advantage.

The issue of what keeps people within particular groups is fascinating and you can get AAA and go to Oxford from a very poor home but still not have the right accent or even more important know how to get the contacts to get a job

Not that my children have used contacts but the broad package of their education and life helps them in what they have chosen to do.... So far only one has a job but by buying her experiences such as she worked in the Caribbean, learned to teach sailing, learned elsewhere to teach skiing, show jumped... all those things have given her connections with the place she works.. she was talking about the Christmas dinner - next to two senior people who have sailed where she has.. she's also quite bright and outgoing and was aged 2 and from whatever home in her case would probably have been able to find connections with anyone but it has helped and fascinates me.

I was at a public library in a regional area 2 weeks ago and it felt like another world and I bet I don't have the skills, accent, clothes to fit in that group either.

I am particularly interested in how some people can be a chameleon (my mother moved classes) and others aren't. I suppose that's simply an internal characteristic. Anyone can learn not to say "haitch" and you was but plenty even those who make a lot of money choose not to. Some wear with pride their working class origins. Others entirely mask them. All good fun.

However much you earn, you cannot guarantee your child a place at a top-performing private school, though. They select (and weed) on ability.

It's interesting how many seem to see ability as a fixed trait.

Anyone can learn and improve.

I failed my 11 plus, have only an average IQ and was never grammar stream material.

I was clever enough to get 'B's at A level and go to a reasonable university where I got a 2:1.

I was passionate about my subject and driven to learn. I could have got a first if I'd really applied myself. Those I know with firsts were of similar average IQ. My friend got turned down from the M&S training scheme ('A' level grades not good enough) but went on to get a first.

Hard work and passion counts for a lot. Very good teachers have this sort of growth mindset and build learning power in their pupils.

I believe that a child with an average IQ could gain a place in a academically selective private school. As long as you believe the sky is the limit, I really believe that.

And yes I believe you can be happy in that atmosphere if you don't feel judged and realise you can only grow and develop.

I don't understand the point you are making, Cortina.

Of course ability is not fixed - we all go to school and pursue our education in order to increase our knowledge and improve our skills. But, for better or worse, we are not born equal in our potential.

In my school you were smart or you were dumb, the teachers had a fixed mindset about it. The upper band did the O'levels and the lower band did the CSEs. Moving between bands was rare. The best teachers were allocated to the sets in the upper band.

I see this attitude here in that people say 'he's no good at Maths' or 'his English is weak' in reality it is possible for a 'weak' or average student to go on to get a first later in life if the environment is nurturing enough.

It's possible, with some excellent teaching to 'turn' an E student into an A* student. I believe that potential is far more equal than we realise but we need to be encouraged at a very young age and believe.

That's why the distinction between O-levels and CSEs was abandoned, Cortina. You seem to be very angry about something that happened in the past and that steps were taken (a long time ago now) to remedy.

Bonsoir:

"Of course ability is not fixed - we all go to school and pursue our education in order to increase our knowledge and improve our skills. But, for better or worse, we are not born equal in our potential"

Is it potential or is opportunity? I know which one I believe to be true.

It's not a case of either/or. We are born with potential, and opportunities allow us to realise it (or lack of opportunity prevents us from realising it).

You can give some children all the opportunity in the world and they won't get anything out of it.

I agree with Cortina. Although genetics matters environment has a huge part to play too which is why if you have an average child who will work if pushed like a good few of mine, and you place them (and get them into - by no means a given most people applying for private selective schools fail to get in) in a school where everyone does well and goes to university they will be pulled up with the herd, rather than pulled down if they were in a different place.

The problem some areas have is that there can be low expectations in some comprehensive schools - the 34% getting A - C in 5 decent GCSEs in my local school etc.

Also I'm not that clever and know loads of people more clever but I've always thought you can mostly achieve what you want and I work hard. Most people dont' have that mind set. They think I'm a housewife. I'd never earn more than the minimum wage of £5.71 an hour or whatever it is so I will give up, sit at home, eat donuts and let a man earn to keep us at the £20k a year average wage level.

All individual parents can do for their children is give them the best education they can and seek to ensure they're emotionally sound and robust to cope with life.

Hey, I am not angry at all I can see that for some things haven't changed as much as they might. Fixed versus growth mindsets.

Agree, AngryFromManchester!

Bonsoir I'd say this was evidence of having a fixed mindset:

You can give some children all the opportunity in the world and they won't get anything out of it.

Can't agree with this. Will come back later on this when I've more time. To me it's very interesting and important to debate this!

Very stereotypical post there Xenia.

"You can give some children all the opportunity in the world and they won't get anything out of it."

Let's take some examples. Some parents invest hugely in, say, music lessons, riding lessons, tennis lessons, foreign language lessons, ballet lessons. I know adults who as children spent hours, week in, week out, practising something, for years on end, and achieved nothing at the end of it (except hatred and regret for the wasted opportunity, when they could have been doing something they enjoyed instead). Not all children can achieve anything by any stretch.

Did they not acheive fun? Or is fun not importanmt? Leisure activities are not solely about acheivement

Although you are on about people who particually hated something and actually I hated athletics, ran for county pushed by my Father and then when I was old enough to give it up I did and he never forgave me. He said I could have been in the Olympics We no longer talk though so it is not a problem

Fun???! When I hear the resentment and anger directed at parents who tried to make children achieve things for which nature had never intended them, fun is the very last thing that springs to mind.

Let's take some examples. Some parents invest hugely in, say, music lessons, riding lessons, tennis lessons, foreign language lessons, ballet lessons. I know adults who as children spent hours, week in, week out, practising something, for years on end, and achieved nothing at the end of it (except hatred and regret for the wasted opportunity, when they could have been doing something they enjoyed instead). Not all children can achieve anything by any stretch.

First off I believe all children can achieve.

Secondly, did the children want to do these activities? Did the parents find out what it was that drove their children, what was their passion? Were the parents trying to fulfill their own aspirations through the children?

Did they sit down with their children, even when they were very young, and explain how learning was fun, learning was a journey, sometimes tough, sometimes they'd have to graft. Did they explain, in a friendly non-threatening way, what the purpose of it all was?

Did they support the children in the 'right' way? All children can achieve, how can you say otherwise?

One of my cousins went to Eton (as did his brother). Eton is an excellent school with amazing facilities and opportunities. These days it is very hard to get in if you aren't both very clever and have been prepared in the right sort of feeder school. In the past, the latter (plus ability to pay, of course) sufficed.

My cousin has a piece of gruyère cheese where his brother has a brain. He has never really achieved anything at all, despite educational opportunities and a home environment that 99.99999% of the planet can only dream of. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear .

Is your cousin Boris Johnson?

My cousin has a piece of gruyère cheese where his brother has a brain. He has never really achieved anything at all, despite educational opportunities and a home environment that 99.99999% of the planet can only dream of. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear .

Unless he has learning or emotional difficulties (and even then he can progress) it won't be true he couldn't progress. Back to try to explain why later.

I hope teachers don't have this view, it simply isn't true in my opinion. If you don't believe and others don't believe in you then no you won't progress.

It suits underachievers to believe fervently that lack of opportunity, rather than lack of potential, has held them back. Do you think that's your case, Cortina?

It's gotta be George Osborne.

I've never heard of PEE before but it seems emminently sensible.
Not about regurgitating facts but giving pupils a structure on which to hang their ideas. One still, of course, needs decent ideas.

And as for creative writing - as a writer I would say that structure and planning are essential to tell a good story...though the best and most sturdy structures are invisible to the reader, or should be.

I 'know' that I have an average IQ. I don't believe that limits or should limit me in any way.

I am an example of how hard work and passion can win through.

When I was younger I thought as you did. My opportunities were a little limited and I wasn't 'grammar stream' but worse than that I had a fixed mindset. I believed my brain was the 'cheese' you speak of, how could it not be? After all I was in Maths set 6 out of 8!

Maybe the boy with the 'cheese' brain would have benefitted like me from acceptance from my parents and freedom to grow.

At my school it was very much 'there are some people born smart in maths and everything is easy for them. Then there are the rest of you' (Fixed mindset).

When someone told me that mathematicians were people who were passionate about maths and ended up making great discoveries I began to see things differently. I learnt that one man didn't discover the lightbulb but heaps, a whole team contributing different things in a lab.

The message I then received was skills and achievement come through commitment and effort. There have been studies done on gifted children. What they often find is the 'gift' they have is not the ability itself but what feeds it, a constant, endless curiosity and challenge seeking.

I don't divide the world into the successes and failures but the learners and the non-learners.

I can assure you, Cortina, that my cousin had every possible advantage in life and a massive amount of encouragement and freedom. His downfall was not lack of opportunity but rather opportunities beyond his potential.

I think it is possible to learn the basics of most things, and certainly with practise one can improve.

But there are some things for which you do need innate ability to be good at them...though not to say, you shouldn't give them a go.