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?

I think there's a large scoop of truth in what wilf says.

I think anna is spot on re those skills of analysing, evaluating etc being the most important ones in many cases.

Re long and shiort sentences. I agree that the focus is all wrong. Including long and short sentences is not what it's all about and it doesn't make much sense to adults never mind children. But if you analyse it (), you get to the proper learning. To write long and short sentences you need to be able to use connectives (essential skill) and you need to undertsnd the dramatic effect that the occasional very short sentence can habve.

Dd1 is hassling me no end. I must go.

Does Cortina teach at my dc's school? Have only skimmed thread. They have gone fixed and growth mindset crazy, we are Dweck converts. I really like it, it's a hugely sensible approach to learning imo

I think that the theory you uphold, WilfSell, about élites is very outdated. Modern élites are global things that don't share tribal customs to exclude local savages: membership is dependent on brain power and education. And that education is, crucially, explicit because it must transcend all cultural constraints. All that implicit class knowledge is useless in a globalised world - the minute you travel to another country it is totally invalidated.

...oh yes, long & short sentences!

Obviously, I'm not yearning for a time machine so I can seize Dickens by the collar & say 'Now see here Charlie boy. More SHORT sentences, right?'

But if - as this afternoon - I am teaching a year 8 group of significantly below average prior attainment year 8s - then it is helpful to them if I take a piece of their writing & show how they can punctuate it for clarity & effect.

So I'll often get them to 'just write, don't worry about spelling, punctuation or paragraphs'.

This afternoon we were writing short descriptive pieces called 'Trapped'. I displayed one of the better examples (some effective similes & nicely judged use of onomatopoeia) on the whiteboard, & got one of the most able students to punctuate it. Then we read it round the class, changing reader at each punctuation mark, & discussed whether we could make the pace more effective with better punctuation.

By the end of the lesson, they had all absorbed that they could make their writing more powerful by using short, sharp sentences for punchy action, long complex sentences for building atmosphere, & long sentences without any punctuation at all even slightly whatsoever to create a breathless panicky feel.

Again, it's mechanical, but it's not something that natural writers don't do - they just do it far less consciously.

& again, if you come from a bookish home you absorb this sort of thing as a matter of course. For students who don't, actually lifting the bonnet of writing & having a good rootle round the engine is the only way to do it.

'Lifting the bonnet of writing' - love it. All the writing metaphors I use with my classes tend to be cake-related!

You know what? Threads like this remind me of why I love teaching English.

But going back a bit further, one of the studies discounted the bottom 2% and top 2% so surely a brain surgeon (or equivalent) would be in the top 2%.

So am getting that if you try and work hard enough you can achieve your goals or whatever. But there are some people who are genuinely actually more clever than others and for some, however hard they work are never going to become brain surgeons (myself for instance ). Much as I would like to imagine otherwise.....(ie if only I had worked harder at school etc etc, sorry is NEVER going to happen)

Even if you ignore those below the third and above the 97th centiles on a bell curve, the discrepancies in innate potential between those left are pretty massive. People just aren't all average.

RavenAK - Your lesson doesn't sound in the least bit mechanical. It sounds very well thought out, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Sorry, I'm just dying a little at 'two swallows does not make a summer'.

Oh, the irony.

How do you know that, Bonsoir? Can you demonstrate it? (PEE quite an apt technique for this kind of thing, I find )

Normal Distribution of Intelligence

There's a theory isn't there about 10,000 hours. If you give something 10,000 hours you will master it, sort of thing.

Being even a teensy bit (or even mistakenly) good at something is pretty much self-propelling. Child does a reasonable line drawing of a face (with nostrils n all) at age 8. Teacher puts it on the wall. Teacher mentions artwork on the school wall in the report as the child is otherwise unremarkable. Parents buy child Caran D'Ache pencils, oil pastels and paper and encourage her during the summer hols. They also take her to the Musee D'Orsay. Uncle P hears she likes drawing and stuff and buys her an easel for Christmas.

That's Gladwell too - being an Outlier. I think he thought it was ten years. For instance Bill Gates got access to one of those huge computer main frames as an early teen - ten years later, hey presto.

Being an Outlier does depend upon persistence though, and if you're going to do one thing obsessively for ten years, it's got to follow you also have some aptitude for it doesn't it?

I'm not Gladwell, I'm a gadfly. I haven't actually read the thread. Apols

Gates, Jobs and Berners-Lee were all born in the same year. Their success is largely brought about by the timing.

Swedington - I think your post of 20:37 merely demonstrates the fairly random nature of opportunity...

Also, Bonsoir, didnt you say earlier that you can't just get into top schools etc by money alone, have to have brains etc, and then your cousin who went to Eton was daft or something....so how did he get in? (not that you really need to explain that to me, as I do realise how these things work, e.g Prince Harry etc).

Bonsoir, yes I think you are right.

We were driving down Avenue Road near Regent's park on the way out to dinner the other night and I told DP that in my early 20s I used to cycle that route to work and think that if I ever had children I would probably live somewhere like that. I honestly thought it would be entirely possible.

Righto, Bonsoir. You gave me a Wikipedia graph. I wonder how that would go down as evidence in all the top universities...

I get the idea of normal distribution. But I stand by the masses of educational psychology, sociology and even biology that problematises 'innate potential' and 'intelligence'

selectivememory - But Eton used to be one of those places where you had to get your name down at birth, and be the right sort. Now it's a total meritocracy. They take the absolue brightest and don't even operate a sibling rule. It has changed, Prince Harry wouldn't get in now. He'd have to go to Gordonstoun like his father.

In the middle classes, Swedington. In DH's Salford council estate, being a teeny bit good at art would just as likely have landed you a thump.

We have aspirations for our children because we believe and know they have such talents. So we foster them, look for them, fund them.

Heh heh. We stayed in Swiss Cottage over the summer. And paced up and down Avenue Road with the kids. Fantasy Land. And intriguing. I'm sure they're all owned by the Russian international oligarchs Bonsoir was talking about earlier (the global intelligentsia? )

I don't have aspirations for my children. My children have their own aspirations. It's my job to introduce them to lots of things and guide them towards an education that keep as many options open for as long as possible until they decide what it is precisely that will be their thing.

Life is really all about finding your thing.

No it can't just be timing. Millions of other people were born then too! Timing, interest, application, some luck and access to what was then a rare computer main frame. No?

I've decided the nouveau poor irritate me as much as the nouveau rich. Possibly more.

but it's not just about putting the hours in .. all my three enjoy swimming - one of them, if he put in 10,000 hours he might, just, with a huge chunk of luck make it as an Olympic swimmer, but equally he might get injured just before a critical competition or fall in love when he's got to about 9,900 hours and lose interest etc etc and being realistic there are many more possible futures in which he doesn't become a professional swimmer ... ds2 on the other hand loves swimming, really enjoys being in the water, but is dyspraxic and will never in a million years be anything like as good as ds1 - it doesn't affect his enjoyment of it, but no matter how much work he puts in, he won't master it as easily as ds1

for all the sports people/musicians/artists/scientists who become famous for their achievement, there are dozens and dozens of people who worked just as hard in their chosen field and for whatever reason didn't succeed to anything like the same degree

it may well be 20% talent, 80% hard work, but you've got to have the 20% talent in the first place ...