What do we understand by School and Education?

School and Education mean different things

The Education system must keep up with technological advances and prepare children for their future needs as adults.

School is learning and remembering facts, obeying rules and passing tests. 

Education comes from the Greek word ‘educo’, which means “to draw out”, facilitating an individual's talents, abilities, ideas and gifts. To develop from within

Starting school and education

We all have our ideas and views of the world.   Filtered through out our senses, we evaluate our world, intellect, and social and cultural values.  As creative beings, we are happiest when doing what we enjoy and being true to ourselves.

I love how children start to see themselves drawing their arms and legs out of their heads, with big hands and feet. They realise they are a person in their own right, with a body, feelings, thoughts, and opinions. Some see their personal power to achieve whatever they want in life. 

We allow our children to indulge in the fantasies of what they want to be when they grow up and facilitate their dreams and wishes.  Every child has the right to an education.

Years ago....

Thousands of years ago, we 'played' and 'explored' our environment and learnt how to live as hunters and gatherers.  There was no distinction between playing and working groups, or families working as a team to teach survival skills.  Children taught themselves to learn through exploration and support within the community.

Industrial Revolution

Society changed when we lived in buildings and created villages, towns and cities. Agriculture, Industry and Religion have put boundaries and structures in place to force children to become products of what society wants them to be.    Agriculture saw children as a workforce, expecting long hours of toil to feed a family and extra to barter with.   Children's time was replaced by repetitive and low-skilled work.  The pressures of society forced families to work harder, as children were the ones who earned them more money.  A child who didn't conform would be punished or end up dead.

Child labour

Sent to work

At the turn of the century, families comprised many children in industrial times. They were seen as workers; the poorer you were, the more children you had.Legislation was enacted to protect children under nine from being part of the workforce. Hours were limited to a maximum of 48 hours a week for under-12-year-olds and a maximum of 69 hours for under-17-year-olds. The working conditions were harsher than we could imagine. 

Children's will, individuality and creativity were squashed. They needed to be obedient and at the will of their master.  In 1898, education in England became compulsory as there was a need to train children for the future workforce. 

Tedious repetition and testing were seen as character-building activities that would prepare the children for this sort of work in the future.

Religious schools

Religious schools filled a child with fear. They would get punished if they did not follow the scriptures or the schoolmaster's actions. 

Not every child adapted to factory work or labouring in the fields, but they had to follow the rules.  If they strayed, they were punished, beaten or killed if they didn't toe the line or sit still and work.   In these times, the adults assumed punishment was the way to learn. The older children have less time theR'sy can to play and let off steam. Compulsory physical education plays a more minor role in schools unless you are 'sporty'. 'Forest School' is allowing children to play outdoors again.

The Victorians

Victorians saw teaching the 3 R's and working in the local factory as all the child needed to do. The illiterate were left behind, fending for themselves.

A Victorian Classroom

Post-wars years

The 11- plus, which determined grammar school entrance overshadowed the early postwar years in primary education. It led to most primary schools adopting streaming from an early age. Robert Smith, who taught in a Sheffield primary school just after the war, recalls, "The scholarship class was streamed according to ability on arithmetic and English. "We worked them very hard, and about 10% were selected for grammar school."

But in 1967, the Plowden Report finally pushed primary schools into the modern age, injecting ideas from psychology, child development, social equality and welfare. Children are not empty vessels but as individuals who respond to different learning styles.

Robert Smith, by then a young primary headteacher in Oxfordshire, is the only surviving member of the Plowden committee. Today, he recalls its willingness "to ask very fundamental questions". Unlike today's government-commissioned inquiries, Plowden gathered evidence widely, including from abroad, and achieved political consensus.

Its essence is caught by this sentence: "At the heart of education lies the child". According to Smith, "That was fundamental, the idea that education should be related to … individual differences, especially the range of intellectual ability and children's capacity to learn at different rates".  This relates to children's varying ability to process information through their preferred senses.

The Plowden Report

Many saw the late 1960s and 1970s as the high point in "progressive" education. Educators were not bound by a National Curriculum or SAT (standardised assessment tests) in year 2 and year 6. 

By the 1980s, there was a political backlash, provoked partly by extreme examples such as the William Tyndale primary school in Islington, London, which became notorious for allowing children to do as they liked during lessons, including watching TV or playing table tennis.  Was it poor management or poor interpretation of Plowden's inspired policies?

About the curriculum, the Plowden Report was clear. ‘One of the main educational tasks of the primary school is to build on and strengthen children’s intrinsic interest in learning and lead them to learn for themselves rather than from fear of disapproval or desire for praise.’ The report’s recurring themes are individual learning, flexibility in the curriculum, the centrality of play in children’s learning, the use of the environment, learning by discovery and the importance of the evaluation of children’s progress – teachers should ‘not assume that only what is measurable is valuable.’

The National Curriculum

This backlash ended with the creation of the national curriculum under Margaret Thatcher's government and has led many ever since to see primary education as a battle between polar opposites: child-centred or subject-centred, progressive or traditional, informal or formal, a broad curriculum or the "three Rs".

Reinforcing differences

We teach children by reinforcing their differences, grading them and comparing them to each other.  This is why we are now constantly reassuring children that failure is not a bad thing. There has been a history of measuring children and squeezing them into a system.  Some lose their individuality, creativity and sense of who they are.  This is reflected in the number of children who are pressured to achieve. Is there any wonder that there is a massive increase in mental health issues?  

"My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should be treated with the same status".    “We are educating people out of their creative capabilities.”  (Sir Ken Robinson - TED Talk - Do schools kill creativity?)

How many adults are afraid to further their knowledge and skills because they feel they failed at school.  Were they made to feel no good at something or tested against other children with different talents?  

Standardised curriculums are being planned by Academies and given to all the Primary Schools within a 'Multi Academy Trust'.  The teacher knows their pupils and can plan the learning according to the children's ability to learn.

'One-size-fits-all' education turns children into winners and losers.  You pass or fail by a measurement designed by civil servants defining education. This child's talents are not considered only what they can contribute to society.  

The future

The Education system and the 'Medical Model' defines the boundaries of what they need.  Children struggle and feel the fault or defect is with them.

Going into an unknown future where technology changes exponentially, we need creative minds who can think outside the box.  Children must be allowed to develop problem-solving skills for a future we will never see.  Teachers are teaching children who will be going into a future that the teachers have no idea about. Children of today understand the emerging technology of the future.  Are we restricting the future's talent and creativity using outdated educational priorities?

Maybe we need to turn the education system on its head and put the child's needs first.

Plowden is a voice from the past but urgently needs to be heard again today.

"When politicians realise that what they measure is not all that is valuable and that teachers need to notice that children learn nothing by being tested. When parents are sick of their young children suffering from exam-induced stress, the public will start to realise that the results of national tests can always be manipulated to achieve politicians’ targets. When decent people decide to stand up against the name-and-shame culture of failure, then someone, somewhere, is going to remember that at the heart of the educational process lies the child."  

The Plowden Report still stands as an invaluable analysis of the needs and possibilities of the primary school.