The glass ceiling for very able children

[var123]

Has anyone else encountered the sense that the school is merely paying lip service to the ideals that they will challenge all children and work to bring all the children in the class to their potential?

I bumped along it a couple of days ago in a face to face conversation with one of the teacher's at my children's secondary.

He was full of buzzwords (like resilience and challenge) but there was a complete vacuum when it came to detail about how he planned to achieve that wrt to my children. In fact, he kept lapsing into telling me how my DC might help the others "by inspiring the less able".

Honestly, has there ever been a human being born into this world, who feels inspired to keep ploughing away at something due to being in the presence of someone who learned to do it without breaking stride?? People who struggle and then succeed are the inspiring ones because they make you feel like if you can do it, then maybe you can too. The ones who always find it easy and are just waiting for you to catch up so they can move on are just disheartening to contemplate.

Delete "personality". Insert "character"

That didn't alter much for me. Do you have a specific characteristic or two you have in mind?

"Bertrand I am 52 and LOVE life because I do expect everything to be interesting"

I am older than you and LOVE life too. Because I accept the fact that not everything can be interesting. For example, during the course of the day today I have made and decorated 200 cupcakes. Mumsnet and Radio 4 have been interesting. Cupcakes? Not so much. But I will like the money when I get paid. Both of my children are musicians. Scales bore them senseless. But they know they are a means to an end. Ditto the exercises Ds has to do before sport because of his dodgy knee. We do our children are HUGE disservice if we lead them to believe that everything is going to be fascinating and engaging. Sometimes it just isn't, but is still has to be done.

Of course always boring is different.

Interestingly, I was largely home educated. I found it incredibly difficult to crack on with anything I found boring until I was about 25! I skated on very thin ice at university because I had absolutely no "stickability"

I won't re-post the whole thing, so can I just say that I agree with every word that Lurkedforever1 Tue 19-Jan-16 20:09:09 wrote!

That's it in a nutshell.

Life is boring and repetitive sometimes. Our Dc need to learn how to process boredom and find ways to kill time in our heads.

My parents took me to church a lot as a child and I refer to this still as excellent training for managing boredom! Can I do an hour of sitting still, facing the front and trying to not hear what is being said? No problem at all!

However, do I want my DC developing this skill in class? Well no.

To be fair, that was only a tiny bit of my screed about my parental contribution............

Independent boredom is different. Taking berts cupcake example. Might not be exciting, but hardly causes long term issues or leaves you vowing never to cook. Different if someone stood over you making you listen to their boring directions. Now, in a minute we'll get out a spoon. A spoon is usually stainless steel, and comes in a range of sizes. I have a handout here with spoon pictures on, I'd like you to all study it in silence for 5 minutes and then we'll discuss it..'. Same mindless task but has a different impact.

That reminds me so much of entering classrooms at secondary, one look at the board and then thinking please, no, I can't cope with listening to you rabbit on about just that for 45 minutes.

.....and then when you've done all that the girl who always does this puts up her hand again and asks if the teacher can go through the bit about the spoon again as she didn't quite get it the first five times.

So, the teacher (not wanting the girl to feel bad), stops the class and asks everyone to listen to a the same explanation about spoons again.

That's the bit that makes DS1 treat himself to an eye-roll.

I'm sorry, I haven't read much of this thread. But the last couple of pages with their reference to 'boredom' have made me laugh.

I was pretty good at maths as a child. Better than a couple of my primary teachers, good enough to get a 100% scholarship to a highly academic private secondary and be top of the top set throughout, to do O-level at 14 and get an A, to do double Maths A-level and get two As, and good enough to meet and mix with people who showed me I was NOT good enough for university Maths at the very highest level, for which I will always be grateful.

I spent every maths lesson up to O-level working out exactly which point on my teacher's tweed skirt would be the PERFECT target for a very, very sharp pencil in order to inflict maximum damage, and to plot in precise mathematical detail the trajectory of that missile.

'Extended', in all the conventional ways - absolutely. Bored - yes, that too.

Bertrand the cupcake example is perfect and Lurked's additional comment sums it up. You made a task that might be other wise boring, interesting by listening to Radio 4 and Lurked pointed out that the problem in many classrooms is that children are not allowed to do that and it disengages them from education. My ds had a brilliant teacher for part of 4th grade (she got pregnant and left to have baby). She would let him read ahead in the textbook or do pretty much anything that didn't distract the class and every time she would start a new topic/subject she'd tap him on the shoulder and ask him to come back (mentally) to the classroom so that he could learn it and then while she was explaining it the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time to the rest of the class, she'd let ds float off into his world again. He learned more in that classroom (during his "floating" time) than any other class ever in elementary school.
By the way, I have a cousin who thinks that things like decorating 200 cupcakes is fun and would happily do it and not listen to the Radio at the same time because it would distract her and keep her from enjoying her cupcake decorating.
I think that learning how to entertain yourself while doing "boring" things is a skill that often has to be taught and is especially crucial for kids who get things the first time around.

teacher I love the imagery in your description....I can't deny having had a few of those moments myself...Ways to measure the zigzag part in the greasy hair of my pink pantsuit wearing obese high school geometry teacher used up quite a bit of my thoughts in that class.

Very familiar teacher. I filled pages trying to work out exactly what force my maths teacher would need to be kicked to make a clean exit through the top part of the open window, where exactly to place the kick, the flight path etc. and in order to test my theories on the possible wind force outside I often sent various handouts through it. Until I mentally gave up and spent my time being disruptive with the attitude to go with it.

Just popping back to ask why some here seem to think that the type of crappy teaching described in the previous view posts is absolutely fine for "the girl who always does this puts up her hand again and asks if the teacher can go through the bit about the spoon again as she didn't quite get it the first five times"?

Because you know what? She's not learning anything, either. She's bored, too - and increasingly convinced she's stupid, to boot. She can't even distract herself with amusing mathematical manipulations while this utterly tedious, pointless 'lesson' drones on.

But sure. A super selective in every county. That'll sort it. And any attempt to suggest that perhaps what's needed is a different approach to teaching and learning for all children is essentially a manifestation of communist jealousy, not to mention a national mistrust of success in any form.

'the previous few posts'

multivac I shouldn't worry.

I have sat in far to many think tanks, committees, conferences etc to have any expectation of new selective schools in the UK.

Perhaps a few back-door free schools, but not proper state sanctioned academic selection.

Despite pretty universal acceptance in relevent circles that there is a problem vis a vis the most able children, selection by test won't be rolled out as a solution.

The current 'solution' is the new year 11 public exam.

multi which is exactly why mixed ability teaching doesn't often work in practice. The same teacher droning on about the spoons might manage very well with a group of similar abilities. And you only need to look at results to see that in many comprehensives that do set, the top still ends up very mixed ability, and often with the least skilled teacher.

I have no problems with the state reintroducing academic selection. We already have patchy examples of it in state schools.

I do find it interesting that the one bit people picked up on in my "my role as a parent" para is the bit about learning how to deal with being bored- and have then picked it up an run with it as if I think that it's abolition fine for kids to spend their entire school days in a state of bored torpor.

I don't. But I also find it hard to believe that there are many children for whom nothing in school is interesting. Could that possibly be a mindset thing? Or do they really know absolutely everything already?

"And you only need to look at results to see that in many comprehensives that do set, the top still ends up very mixed ability, and often with the least skilled teacher."

Really? How so?

"Ways to measure the zigzag part in the greasy hair of my pink pantsuit wearing obese high school geometry teacher used up quite a bit of my thoughts in that class."

Hmm. Let's hope your children aren't quite so disparaging of people around them.........

The make up of a top set in a comprehensive will depend on the cohort generally.

In many schools it will include pupils who will need to work hard for an A at GCSE through to those pupils who are currently unchallenged by what it takes to get an A*.

That is mixed ability in practice.

I am not following you, lurked. You think it is ok to have crappy teaching, as long as it produces average results?

As a matter of interest, how many kids are there who are completely unchallenged by what it takes to get an A*? Apart from mathematicians, obviously.

@multivac, "perhaps what's needed is a different approach"

We know. Spotting a problem is the easy part, but fixing one can be tricky and expensive. You have chosen to leave your favourite 'different approach' indistinguishable from snake oil. How does it avoid the spoons problem?

"The current 'solution' is the new year 11 public exam."

Yes, but they did flirt with Kolmogrov and the idea clearly hasn't gone away if PE are playing with G&T.

"Really? How so?"

I'm not convinced re. weakest teachers, but bell curve tyranny is part of it. If you divide the children into four equal part e.g. 120 into four sets of 30, the average top set will contain at least twice the ability range of set 2. [Actual top sets will obviously vary.]