{"id":303,"date":"2020-02-03T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grumpy.marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/?p=303"},"modified":"2022-12-21T17:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:08:57","slug":"learning-the-hard-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/learning-the-hard-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning the Hard Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve written in the past about my son and his participation in a local youth<\/a> football team, about how I think that Team Sports are an essential part of a young person\u2019s development<\/a>\u2014particularly young boys\u2014and of how last season, where the team did really well in winning their division by some distance, I felt particular pride after one game<\/a> when the coach singled my son out for praise after doing his individual job very, very well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My son is still paying. He\u2019s at \u2018Under-14\u2019 level this year and following last year\u2019s success, they\u2019ve been promoted to a higher division this year where life has proven to be a lot harder for them. Up until yesterday, they had only won two of their thirteen games, compared to having won eleven at the same point last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, they got their third win of the season and although it was against a team who\u2019d won even fewer games this year, it was still a\u00a0hard-fought\u00a0game and it was pleasing to see the boys knuckle down and get that win after so many losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And my son was again singled out\u2014not just by the coach this time but by the other parents present at the game\u2014for his outstanding display. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not what this post is about. It\u2019s about schools. Or education. Or both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This past Saturday, my wife, my children and I took a trip to London for the day. In the afternoon we went to Madame Tussauds<\/a>, which was very pleasant, but in the morning we attended the open day at Lyc\u00e9e International de\u00a0Londres\u00a0Winston Churchill<\/a> in Wembley Park, and while we simply cannot afford to send either of our children there thanks to fees in excess of \u00a312,000 per year\u2014and nor would it be practical to do so for that matter with us living an hour\u2019s train ride from the capital\u2014it was a worthwhile morning. Or, at least, I thought it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s because it gave me an insight into how things in our schools could be so different than they are right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I trained to teach after University in 1996\/97 and then taught Science and Maths at a number of schools over the next few years. I\u2019m the first to admit that, for a number of reasons, I wasn\u2019t a very good teacher and wasn\u2019t suited to the profession. Or maybe the profession wasn\u2019t suited to me. Is there a difference there? Either way, I\u2019ve not taught in schools for getting on for twenty years now. My wife, however, trained to teach at the same time as me (that\u2019s actually how we met) and has taught ever since. She\u2019s now been at the same school for longer than I\u2019ve not been teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in that time, so she tells me, the conditions in the school have worsened and the children become more difficult to teach. Which is probably something that most teachers will tell you, but wouldn\u2019t think was true if you looked at the exam statistics or read Government propaganda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made\u00a0Lyc\u00e9e International different was that it is very much a French school. It has a bi-lingual approach but teaches to the French curriculum leading to the French Baccalaureate exam. It also offers it Students the I.B.\u2014International\u00a0Baccalaureate\u2014which is a Swiss programme and is very, very different from our British\u00a0A\u00a0Levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main difference, or the one that stood out for me, was the\u00a0way<\/em>\u00a0in which the IB is taught. Whereas A-Levels (and GCSEs for that matter) teach the\u00a0knowledge\u00a0needed to pass the terminal exam, the IB is designed to teach (and test) critical thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s a big, big difference. After the IB presentation, I have to say I was blown away by it. By the ideas and the possibilities. It just seemed to me to be far, far superior to A Levels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I can\u2019t help but think if only all\u00a0British\u00a0school taught in the same way. If only we taught our young people\u2014all<\/em>\u00a0out young people, not just those who go to University\u2014to think critically and to question the stories and evidence they are presented with on a daily basis, would this country now be in the political mess that it\u2019s in?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having now been shown a different way of possibly doing things, I can\u2019t help but come to the conclusion that the focus on exam results over the last thirty years or more, that using them as a measure of which school is best and a stick with which to beat the \u2018worst\u2019 school, our education system has let down the young people that have gone through it, and let down the country as a whole. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday, my wife, my children and I took a trip to London for the day. In the afternoon we went to Madame Tussauds, which was very pleasant, but in the morning we attended the open day at Lyc\u00e9e International de Londres Winston Churchill in Wembley Park<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"template-page-builder.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,206,208],"tags":[229,233],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-143","category-grumpy","category-politics","tag-critical-thinkng","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}