The ThunderDragon

Excessive testing hurts children. You don’t say.

A report on assessment by the all-party children, schools and families committee will condemn the way the results of national exams are used both as political capital and to compare how good schools are without taking account of their intake.

Because so much rides on them, tests are distorting education, with schools forced to narrow the curriculum and spend months cramming pupils. (The Telegraph)

Surely this is just common sense? Excessive testing, such as is currently carried out in our schools, massively limits the educational opportunities on offer. Way too much time is spent focusing on the tests - both their specific curriculum and “how to take a test” - which restricts the amount of time that can be spent actually on real education and expanding the minds of the students - ie. stopping teachers doing their jobs.

Of course, tests cannot be totally removed from education. But they can and must be restricted to their proper place, or we’ll have a generation of people who know nothing beyond how to take tests. Grade As and A*s across the board - but no knwoledge to back it up.

The harmful tyranny of tests must end. Or we’ll all suffer.

Which of these is more suitable for children?

This:

Or this:

Yet Venezuelan TV has decided that Baywatch is more suitable, saying that The Simpsons have flouted a regulation that prohibits “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents”.

So what exactly is Baywatch teaching young boys and girls? Apart from how to run in slow motion and play with themselves?

ASBOs have failed. Rather than deterrents, they have become badges of honour among young thugs. So what is the government’s response? To roll them out over young potentials as well:

So they just haven’t learnt from their mistakes, have they? Handing out “baby ASBOs” to even younger children - especially those who haven’t even done anything very bad at all.

The name of the scheme that is to to deal with this just sums up Labour’s entire style of government: Family Intervention Projects. Why do they feel that they have the right to intervene in out lives?

When this comes alongside the proposal to put young children who “exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life” on the DNA database. I mean, WTF? Since when has being a behaving badly ever been a good enough reason for your DNA to be added to their Big Brother database?

Have we finally abandoned the idea of innocent until proven guilty? Do you no longer actually have to commit a crime before you can be convicted for it?

Baby ASBOs and adding disruptive children’s details to the DNA database will not prevent them feom becoming criminals, but the opposite - pushing them in to a life of crime, since that seems to be what is expected of them!

A government-backed report had just declared that:

Maybe it would create a “fairer” system. But it would also create a system that was made to fail. And fail miserably.

The comprehensive - aka no selection - educational system is the reason that “[a]lmost half of leading companies failed to find suitable graduates to fill vacancies last year despite record numbers of students leaving university” and that “[l]eading universities complained this month they have to give new students crash courses in literacy and numeracy - and even extend degree courses by a year - because many leave school lacking basic skills.”

No selection - externally or internally - means that children don’t get the education they need, as different children have different intelligence levels and speed of learning, and as such need to be grouped together in order to raise the effectiveness of their teaching and learning. This sort of system wouldn’t do anything to help the children themselves, but in fact ruin their education. This is unfair on them.

Thus, ending selection in education may be “fairer”, but it certainly isn’t fair. On anyone.

Rather than the educational conscription proposed by the government that myself and the others [such as Fabian Tassano, Surreptitious Evil, and Devil's Kitchen] who write the Educational Conscription group blog are constantly arguing against, it has now been suggested that children should have the opportunity to leave school at 14 - by the head of the UK’s biggest education authority, no less.

His point is that, very simply, some children are not academically gifted and are not suited to classroom teaching and learning - and as such would benefit far more from apprenticeships.

The response of the NUT that the earnings of those who stay on and get qualifications is “much higher” than those who have “simply left school very early and gone on to do some very specific training.” Yes, it may well be. But those who leave school at 14 will not be the kind of people who benefit from classroom learning or those who are likely to be suited to do the jobs that require high qualifications. They are the people essential to our society - plumbers, electricians, builders etc. - without whom our modern society is screwed. That the NUT believe that qualifications are essential and required in order to live a useful and productive life betrays their love of the testing regime.

Not everyone can have high qualifications and great high paid jobs. And not everyone is suited to them. It’s a simple fact of life.

However, at the very least, children shouldn’t be allowed to leave school at 14 unless they have an apprenticeship to go to. I’m not entirely convinced by the idea that children should be able to leave school so early, but it is certainly far better than forcing them to stay there for longer. At least they then have the choice to make, the choice which this government seems determined to take away from 16-18 year olds.

Cross-posted at Educational Conscription. Please go there to comment on this post.

Soon there’s going to be no time left in schools for actual education, as ministers are to announce this week that every child is to have “five hours of cultural learning and activity every week” during the school day. Add this to be extra PE time schools are also supposed to give, and the amount of time for actual teaching and learning will suffer massively from the lack of time they actually get.

Even though school tables keep showing better results, and the annual increase in GCSE and A-level results, Britain is dropping in comparison with other countries:

This decline can at least partly be put down to just the “tyranny of the testing regime” which has sprouted massively during the last decade. Tests and targets don’t foster good teaching or a good education system. So even with billions of pounds being thrown at the problem, bugger all has really been achieved by it - and in fact the opposite in comparison with other countries.

What this latest education gimmick that Labour will introduce shows that they don’t really care about actual education and learning - which is the real point of school - but about making change for changes sake. Children don’t need five hours of “cultural learning and activity” every week, but they do need more actual education and teaching. And it is just this lack of teaching that gives them their arguments for educational conscription.

Source: The Guardian, The Times, BBC, The Telegraph

The government wants to indoctrinate children as young as five on the “dangers” of alcohol.

Why do children as young as five need to be taught about alcohol at all? They won’t have drank more than a sip, if any, at that age. What is the point of teaching them about it? There is none. The only intention possible is to indoctrinate these children into considering that alcohol is bad. Also, are these “safe drinking levels” that these kids are going to be indoctrinated on going to be real levels or just guesses?

We all consider indoctrination to be bad, right? So how could this be deemed acceptable at all! I have no problem with teaching children that alcohol can be bad, but it must be a balanced picture, including alcohol’s position in society, and health benefits in small amounts.

Instead of telling them that alcohol is bad, tell secondary school children what constant abuse of alcohol can do to your body. Getting drunk isn’t in itself a bad thing - but doing it every day is, and that is what they should be told - the truth, not a convenient lie.

Source: The Telegraph

Says - rather surprisingly - the head of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. And Tom Mullarky is absolutely right. Especially with this line:

Humans learn through pain. If it hurts, you soon learn not to do it again. Those who are wrapped in cotton wool as children have no idea about looking after themselves, and have less understanding of the real world and how dangerous it can be.

Children are reckless because they haven’t learn about pain and how they can hurt themselves. If they get the chance to hurt themselves, they learn through their experiences, by doing. They learn that it hurts if they fall of their bike, for example. They learn how to look after themselves.

If we wrap children in cotton wool and bubble wrap, they - and we - suffer in the long term. Like Tom Mullarky, I think that it is a “positive necessity” that children have the chance to play and hurt themselves.

For further reading on Health and Safety, try reading the posts from Wardman Wire’s Health and Safety Month.

Source: The Telegraph

In addition to my diatribe yesterday on educational conscription, something has just occured to me - this law will apply only in England. Only English children will have to stay in school until 18. Only English children will be deprived of their liberties and their freedom.

As such, when this law comes before Parliament, not one MP for a Scottish or Welsh constituency had better vote. This does not apply in their constsituencies, so I do not want to see them force two years of extra schooling onto English children but not those in Scotland and Wales.

That they even could do it illustrates the issues with our current devolution system.

Cross-posted at Educational Conscription.