That glass ceiling! Part 2

[var123]

Continuing the discussion about artificial limits placed on G&T children, and the resulting impact on their health and happiness (not to mention futures).

Do they really matter less because they have a perceived "advantage"?!

original thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gifted_and_talented/2507232-The-glass-ceiling-for-very-able-children?

WoodHeaven - personally, my own extended English family very much values knowledge. There is an awful lot of overachieving among aunts/uncles/cousins etc, with PhDs ago go. However, there is indeed a strong anti-intellectual current in the UK and perhaps a greater focus on pragmatic concerns like having a big house. I have to hold myself in serious check as I am far too caught up in intellectual pursuits at the expense of practical ones and France does nothing to stop this. I just like solving very difficult problems far too much for my own good.

So there are good things about the English approach!

I also suspect that the change in relative educational attainment of teachers and parents goes some way to explaining the entirely irrational attachment to PGCE/QTS.

Eh? Wanting teachers to go through a period of training and achieving an agreed standard of work is irrational?

Actually, I don't feel inferior to parents in any way, however I did feel looked down upon and patronised occasionally as an NQT, when I was a Miss. The next year I was a Mrs and parents (well, mothers) treated me far better.

It's not the wanting teachers to train that is irrational - I greatly adhere to that. It's the mediocre quality of current training provision that makes the perceived status derived from its completion irrational.

Oh, right. We're not in Kansas any more!

While I agree it's not top-notch, it's better than nothing. And also, given that it's an extreme endurance test, some kudos should come from completing it.

I strongly disagree with the attitude that confers kudos for hard but irrelevant experiences noble. As a parent I don't want my child's teacher to have had a horrible year in lieu of great training and I confer no respect for that. I just take it as a folly of the system - no fault of the teacher's but a waste of everyone's time and money.

It's not irrelevant, Bobo have you done one?

Being horrible is also good training for the hard years that follow. In that way it's totally relevant to teaching.

Can somebody send up a flare or something when this thread returns to something approximating reality? Thank you.

"We're not in Kansas any more!"

In this context (education) it's California.

WoodHeaven "Is knowledge something that is valued in the UK?"

It's not quite this simple, but it's essentially about an ideological spectrum running from 'traditional' to 'progressive' education.

This century education has mostly been biased towards the progressive end, with a lot of talk about acquiring 'skills', rather then rote learning facts that you can look google or look up with your smart-phone (Christine Blower of the NUT recently suggested doing that the other day instead of learning times-tables 'facts'). Until recently Ofsted enforced progressive teaching styles, group-work and so on. Not that all teachers taught like that unless they were being observed/inspected.

Mr Gove, Gibb, Morgan et al are more traditionalists (quite taken with E D Hirsch's 'Core Knowledge'), so a significant part of the changes set in train since 2010 are an attempt to shift the balance back towards valuing knowledge. On that point I agree with them and it also unites some on the left and right of national politics.

WoodHeaven I do think you have a point about knowledge being less valued in the UK versus skills that can be monetised. This is partly, I think, because specialisation occurs too early and many adults are very uneducated outside of their narrow specialisation. In France where knowledge is still valued for its own sake, most "elite" post-18 courses remain quite general for at least the first two years. For eg one of the options for my DD is a "prépa biologie" (a course that prepares students for the competitive entrance exams to the most prestigious HE institutions and which is equivalent to the first two years of a degree) - this would involve studying not only life sciences and geology/ physical geography, but also maths, physics and chemistry, plus humanities and two MFL.

Whether this is better for gifted students depends on the individual of course - I'm sure my DS can't wait to drop literature and MFL, but for all-rounders like DD it's a good system and keeps options open.

The argument about skills vs facts is a monumentally stupid one. Knowing how to search for information is a hugely valuable skill, but it is impossible to judge the value of the information you have found unless you have a solid "databank" of background knowledge.

Bobo, I am (very) highly qualified in an academic sense - 1st class degree and PhD from Oxbridge, in a 'hard' science subject.

I could have taught science - in a 'transmission of information sense' - in my local private secondary without any further training, in fact one of them positively wanted me to do so.

I did a PGCE instead (partly because i wanted to teach 'children' in primary, not 'science' in secondary), and it taught me to teach, which I would not otherwise have known how to do so effectively. It taught me both through lectures / seminars but also through structured and mentored practice in 3 different settings.

I could 'transmit information' without it, and I could have picked up some 'teaching skills' on the job. But I was a better teacher from day 1 of my teaching life because I did a good teacher training course first.

Yes, some training courses may not be any good, and the balance between 'learning through doing' and directly being taught / reflecting on both good teachers and bad is a difficult one to strike. But definitely not useless - partly because IME it is a good 'sieve' for removing from the profession those who are never going to make it in the classroom.

You can be keen on learning and earn a lot and buy a big house. They aren't mutually exclusive.

Knowledge has huge value for its own sake. I hope all schools seek to make children keen to soak up new information and expand their knowledge every day of their lives.

Bobo, btw, what is your evidence for the fact that current training is mediocre?

It's like saying 'degrees are mediocre'. Yes, some are, many are not, some are excellent.

Compared with no training at all, very few indeed - if any - confer no benefit to the future teacher once in the classroom.

And I find the 'better educated = respect' thing very odd, and very far from my day to day reality (the parent who declared that he was better than me because he had a degree, whereas I was only a primary teacher, was the only time I have ever had to wheel out my educational history - and that remains an isolated example, over my years in teaching).

IME, I am respected and trusted by parents in the school environment because I know about teaching, and I know about their children and their progress. In the same way, I respect and trust my plumber when he is examining my heating system, because he knows about plumbing, and I respected and trusted the medical professionals who advised me about DD's birth, because they knew about obstetrics. Of course, I, like my plumber and consultant, can lose respect if I fail, make a bad mistake, or pretend to know something that I don't. But I expect, and get, respect for my expertise, rather than my title or qualifications.

Why are knowledge and intellectual challenge incompatible with having a good job? I have a job that required a number of years of study to gain in depth knowledge, and frequently presents me with intellectually challenging "problems" to solve. It is also well paid. I very much doubt it is the only job which fits this description!

That's a very good point, teacher.
It does appear to me though that the public's respect for teachers as a profession has diminished. (Maybe there's a study to back up that statement?)
If true, however, then the question is why?

Some of it can be explained by a more global change in the population. We are just less deferential and respectful to others than our grandparents were, and probably our parents too. However, that doesn't fully explain the much diminished status?

I argued up thread that it was partly down to the caricature that has been drawn of teachers by the media (including drama as well as hard news) and then reinforced by politicians whenever there is a dispute. You haven't been demonised but you certainly don't get anything like the Angels tag that nurses do.

If I am wrong though about the cause, and it's not comparative educational attainment either, then what is the reason?

Could it be something as simple as teachers are known to be poorly paid?

I know it's not good forum etiquette but I am just catching up with the conversation. I'd like to ask a question resulting from the discussion on textbooks yesterday.

If a good reason not to use modern textbooks is because they are so bad, then why not pool together a years worth of lesson plans and use them to write your own textbook? If you wouldn't personally want to do that, then why doesn't anyone want to do it, including the teachers who have recently left the profession and are looking for something to do?

Teacher I understand your point about textbooks being prescriptive (not sure if this was your exact word) and potentially shatterproofing the glass ceiling for G&T.
In answer, isn't it always possible to add extra exercises for those who need more in order master the topic and advise the more able to either skip the easier questions in an exercise? Actually, I don't think G&T children mind doing the easy questions as it doesn't take long and builds confidence for the harder ones. The issue is that once you've done the harder ones, the teacher won't let you move onto the next chapter but instead finds yet more things for you to do on the topic that you've already proved that you've mastered.

With a textbook you might have to trawl through a few questions but at least they get steadily harder and you can see that when you've done them, there's something new ready and waiting for you.

The current system is like waiting for a bus, you are there at the stop ready to get on it, you know it's coming eventually but you have no idea when it might arrive, so you stare at the horizon in the hope that it will appear any second, but it doesn't come for ages and you later realise that it was still parked at the terminus when you started looking for it. If someone would only tell you that then at least you could manage the frustration better.

Textbooks aren't ideal, but it does seem better than the current system.

I think the teacher strikes in the 80s (to get totally unreasonable stuff like a lunch break) pissed people off.

The Daily Mail hates teachers and regularly posts articles about how crap and lazy we are. See this for example: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062491/Teacher-strikes-Its-1980s-nativity-plays-threatened.html such a bunch of lies.

I respected my ds's reception teacher deeply. She was very experienced, always calm, and what she said she would do, always happened straight away. And she was ready to listen to what us parents said, never became defensive or dismissive. I think respect is a mutual thing. If I feel like I am respected as a parent, I would respect teacher too.

I do think the textbook thing is a bit of a red herring. People look back to a golden age when the kids all had textbooks. And wore shorts in the snow and took apples in for the teacher. And it were all fields.

var- I don't quite get your metaphor about waiting at the bus stop. Why would having a textbook help? Because you could then go on at your own pace? Surely you can do that anyway? There are libraries full of books and the infinite Internet- why would a specific textbook be useful?

I used earlier the example of history, and project work. At my ds's school, the class are all given the same topic, but different targets, and a guide to show them what is required for the different targets. There is, in fact a textbook they use as a jumping off point- but if they want the higher grades they need to go further and deeper than that.

Bertrand - the textbook issue is not a red herring and it's not yesteryear. There are some very good textbooks on the market. Of course, when schools rather than parents cover the cost of textbooks it is much harder for teachers to choose the textbooks they would like each year.

I always thought text books are good reference. I didn't have to bring all the text books home, we kept it in the school locker. I only took it home what I needed, usually maths and grammar. If I wasn't sure about something, I can just have a look. And there always seemed to be a extension you can do, and extra problem to solve, on the text books.
I had text books for all subjects, including music and art, and it was just fun to read and explore.

Yes, of course there are good textbooks. But even the best would be incredibly limiting for the very able. And the prescriptive "following the book" style of learning would be the last thing I would want if I had a super able child.......

Irvine- I presume that was pre Internet?