There is something fundamentally wrong with the education system (NOT teachers, lecturers or TAs, we all do the very best we can with what we have). The majority of AP kids that I teach have ADHD, dyslexia and other barriers to learning. They have been completely let down by the system, and by the time we get them at 14 or 15 they see themselves as failures and unable to learn. Many of them then go down a route of self destruction (drugs, thieving, drinking) and they can’t see the way back.
However, it’s not just the AP kids. Having dyslexia and ADHD in a mainstream school was recently described to me, very eloquently, as being like this:
‘I sit in a classroom, and I know what I have to do, but I just can’t. It’s like being on a pitch, seeing the goal, knowing how to take the goal but I’m in a glass box, so I can’t. I know what I have to do. I know what I need to do, but there’s a massive glass box around me that stops me from doing anything.’
Why are so many children with barriers to learning not overcoming those barriers? The new GCSEs and grading will, in my opinion, just create an uneducated sub-class within society. The answer is not to re-gig the education qualifications, but to re-gig the way we manage classrooms. Take away some of the paperwork and box-ticking and let us have time talk, teach and nurture the children. To find ways to break down those glass boxes in the classroom – or to take away the classroom completely, and let the children with ‘problems’ find a place where they can learn.
Please comment with your ideas and opinions – good and bad – on this!!
SkwarePegRowndHole 