We Don't Need No Education

Professor Dylan Wiliam, an expert on exams and testing from the Institute of Education, has suggested that GCSE students (14-16 years old) are being taught in a mechanical, parrot fashion way just that material that will help them pass the test and maintain the position of the school in the league tables. He suggests that pupils should be taught to think and critically analyse just as much as they are loaded up with acquired knowledge. I agree with this is the sense that league tables should be scrapped. If a school is failing miserably then the government, which has access to the figures in private, could step in.

Professor Guy Claxton from the University of Bristol goes one step further. He suggests that 'everyone knows that the kind of performance required is about accurate retention and regurgitation. But the demand for those skills is now pretty low in the marketplace.' He suggests children should be taught how to use their initiative and ask 'good questions', skills which will be more useful to employers.

There are two issues here. The first is whether school should act to prepare children for work. If we are to mentally fatten children up for the marketplace like this then why not do it properly; teach them how to use powerpoint, how to fill in expenses claim forms, how to handle factory floor banter and how to stay awake on the production line. It is the birthright of every person to spend their formative years learning about themselves and the wider world around them. They need space to breathe and grow. They should not be prepared to be an employee.

Now the second issue. Critical analysis skills are important and so is initiative but knowledge and experience come first. In science we spend many years learning to speak the language before we attempt to debate with the native speakers. Many years spent learning all the key principles of Physics have not been to waste. Later in my undergraduate and doctoral years I have learned to critically evaluate the scientific literature and to judge whether an experiment presents a fair and accurate test or not. Only the latter was taught to me at GCSE level (in a very dilute form) and the former would have been beyond my reach.

I feel that the same must be true of other subjects. How can a history student write an essay on the role of women in the second world war without first learning all the important facts about that conflict? The best history lessons at school were the ones where I was told a fascinating story and we later went on to look at all the sources of evidence to support or refute that story. The worst lessons were where studied the theories of primary, secondary and tertiary evidence and then applied these to some small corner of history without a feeling for the events and the time.