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?

teacher - teacher training (PGCE) is designed as a crash course so that prospective teachers aren't thrown to the wolves. It's not, very unfortunately, a properly researched exercise in best practice.

No of course they aren't limiting for the most able, Bertrand. On the contrary, they throw up really well researched questions that have been tried and tested.

"teacher - teacher training (PGCE) is designed as a crash course so that prospective teachers aren't thrown to the wolves. It's not, very unfortunately, a properly researched exercise in best practice."

Is it, perhaps, time we started putting our credentials on the table?

Irvine I fully agree with you.
A teacher that is ready to listen to me as a parent and is willing to work cooperatively will always get my respect too.
Because respect has come both ways, me to her job and the fact she is the professional. And her towards me respecting that I'm the mother and know my child (with the proviso that children don't always behave the same way at home and school).

Respect coming from being 'more educated' has one big issue imo. In some ways, it comes from fear and lack of knowledge/understanding. And that means that this respect can be eroded quite easily (Actually I think it's true for parents and for pupils, esp the bright ones that can have more knowledge than the teacher in some areas).

re text books.
Based only on my experience (so feel free too disagree), it can be very hard to be able to teach with just one textbook. I can't remember teachers using the ones we had very much. They usually went for the one they preferred (which usually wasn't the one chosen by the scghool 5 years ago) so we had lots of exercises copied from books/modified ny the teacher etc...
However, I do have an issue with no textbook/notebook/whatever support with referrences to the work done in class becuase it means children have very very little ressources available to work at home, something I would expect lower and middle ability children will need ever more than the higher ability children.
I also think that a textbook with lots of exercises means an easy source (even not perfect) of material that will help 'deepen the understanding' of higher ability students. So Little Johnny has finished more quickly than thought the exercises he was supposed to do, here is another one that will take it further. (Or little Johnny actually has struggled with the first basic exercise, let's give him another at the same level rather than doing the next two that are more difficult iyswim).
Another way we used them was as a source of information (in effect to do some research). Maybe this is not necessary now with the Internet (but again with the proviso the children are guided towards the most helpful websites).

Daily mail = free to access, very big on celeb stories, contains some actual articles but its got a lot of populist rubbish. Its also very contradictory. I bet if I looked right now, I could find a story on a new lose-weight superquick diet and a story on how fad diets are harming people's health or how anorexia is on the rise. There will be stories about how some celebs get their shape back within a month of having a baby and another about how young mother's should be focusing on their babies.

So, writing anti-teacher stories would be very much the DM's thing, but then they'd also write about how awful it was that a child attacked a teacher and how the parents are to blame.

Guardian = free to access, more insightful, and definitely better, journalism but a bit inclined to the "worthy" type stories.

BertrandRussell - my bus stop metaphor meant that the end was in sight for the wait. Finish these questions and then the next bus is already waiting at the stop.

teacher, I can see where you are coming from re being respected for your expertise.

I do think that there has been another major shift though. People have access to more and more information and that means they have developped ideas on what is right or worng to do in a lot of new ways.
Eg: someone might decide that vaccines aren't good for their dcs and will nor trust a doctor who tells them they are putting their dc in danger, despite their expertise.
Or a parent who has looked at homeschooling might have developped the idea that the 'right' way of teaching is by doing xxx, which isn't done/or is impossible to do in a classroom.
In effect you end up with people who have developped the idea that they know quite a bit about the teacher's subject of expertise without having 'learnt' about the subject in a traditional ways.

In some ways, this is what a lot of us on this thread are doing. Talking about ways of teaching even though we aren't teachers. And feeling that our pov is just as right as the one of someone who is trained in the area.

That's why I think that respect is more about respecting the other person (in that case, parents respecting the teachers but also teachers respecting the parents) as in my previous post.

Lots of xposts.
I'm too slow typing Lol

You don't need to tell me that the daily mail is shite but it is/was the biggest online news site in the world thus can't be ignored in terms of its influence on opinion.

Not many stories on there about great teachers. The teacher being attacked story will denigrate feckless parents, not big-up teachers.

BertrandRussell - that history example is one where the current system works. My children's school uses the same things for history and geography. If the questions aren't closed-ended,m then it would work in English too.
It doesn't work so well in maths or science though, and it doesn't apply at primary school.

noblegiraffe - I knwo the DM doesn't like teachers. And teachers don't like DM. It writes populist stuff though and that should be a worry for you because it doesn't take a line unless it thinks (its large) readership will enjoy reading it.

Its just a bad relationship (teachers and the DM / its readers). One side needs to try to make peace...?

WoodHeaven - I very much agree with what you say about textbooks and how crucial they are as a source of at home support and information for less able or less well supported pupils.

Access to libraries and even the Internet is (a) not a given (b) all very well but topics are not framed by libraries and the Internet. When my DD has a presentation to prepare we always check out the textbook and also the workbooks that follow the French NC in order to understand the parameters within which she is expected to be working. Sure, she pushes the boundaries but she doesn't go right off piste for the whole exercise.

^Lots of xposts.
I'm too slow typing Lol^

me too. Every time i press "post", the conversation has moved on.

Text books were one of the few positives in my education. Because in the absence of adequate teachers/ lessons I could do my own thing.

I'm not convinced it's an answer for the most able though, because once you've gone through it, you're back to finding yourself other amusements or boredom. And of course the same teachers/ schools that provide badly for the most able, are still going to insist on a child sticking to the page named. But in the absence of a teacher providing anything else, better than nothing.

BertrandRussell
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.......

Well would you prefer the current system of follow the pace of the 30th centile child instead?

Bertrand, of course my experience is pre-internet. But even now, my ds prefers to refer to maths dictionary or revision books we found in the charity shop, rather than google something. Because it's there when you need it. You don't have to remember which website next time, or make a copy of it.

Interesting. So it's OK for able kids to work around the subject and do their own thing in the liberal arts, but not in Maths and sciences. Why is that?

A GCSE maths textbook would only go up to GCSE level, so why would that help an able student for whom GCSE is apparently trivial?

Because more able kids aren't working around the subject, they are progressing, learning new stuff, thinking things through and working out better ways to do stuff, even if its just a more thoughtful, better structured written answer.

Closed-ended questions e.g. calculate x or describe y doesn't offer much opportunity to grow, or find new ways to challenge yourself.

I have encountered the full range of teachers for our DCs. A few have been absolutely exceptional. Those are the ones I rarely meet or think about: they do their job as they think fit and it is no business of mine other than to thank them profusely and to ensure I tell the SLT how brilliant they are.

But there are teachers who don't know their stuff and make sometimes horrible mistakes. It's quite hard to respect teachers who tell DC to do things that are wrong or impossible. Or who "correct" work and misdirect DC.

Noblegiraffe - you are right, once you know enough to sit the GCSE, you've hit a limit. Then you either sit it early (not recommended) or you find non-curriculum things to do. Would you agree that the curriculum is limited and doesn't represent the wide spectrum of the subject?

As to why do teachers not write their own textbooks? Because apart from it being a massive load of time and effort, it would be probably be out of date before it was finished. Like the new GCSE maths textbooks were already useless before the course officially started!

Yes the maths curriculum is limited, but then there's only a limited amount of time to study things so it has to be. It would be like saying that History GCSE is limited because it doesn't cover the whole of time!

BoboChic - I know what you mean. Ds2 Y6 teacher was one of the exceptional ones. If I spoke to her, I was eager to minimise my use of her time because I didn't want to hold her up. At the end of the year, I just wrote to the HT in praise of her (and thanked her personally).

DS2's Y5 teacher started out by giving him "knifes" as his first spelling homework. She progressed onto asking him to choose a US state (e.g. New York or San Francisco) to make a title page about. Every single thing she sent home was either riddled with mistakes or so opaque that you really had to guess what she had in mind - it was a bit like seeing a The Sun headline and having to guess what the article is about. She shouted at the children to the extent that some of them started bed-wetting again. I had no respect for her at all.

"Because more able kids aren't working around the subject, they are progressing, learning new stuff, thinking things through and working out better ways to do stuff, even if its just a more thoughtful, better structured written answer."

Yep. Just like in History or English. lewrning new things, thinking things through, making connections............The only difference with Maths is that it's more easily measured. And, arguably, more immediately impressive.