People tend to forget their childhood, or at least the parts of it they’d rather not remember. The give-away line is when they enter a discussion with the words “In my young day” and go on to draw unfavourable comparisons between how things were when s/he was young and the way they are now.
This thought jumped out of the radio and bopped me over the head this morning as I was listening to a number of people discussing the low levels of literacy and numeracy in our little north-eastern Nirvana. There was much mention made of the way children don’t go out and play any more, the way they did “when we were young”, the tendency today’s children have to sit in front of a television “which is a passive medium” (which it’s not), and the lack of language skills in youngsters coming from deprived homes.
Were things better then, when we played outside and developed our language skills? My memory is of wrestling, fighting, spitting, sometimes even urinating – all pretty much non-verbal communication forms. When words were used, it was often to shout names at anyone who was different : different in the way they walked, different teeth, different eyes. I suppose calling somebody “Specky four-eyes!” or “Big banana-feet!” involved some verbal skills. But not a lot, not a lot.
The mistake a lot of educators make is in thinking that they can gauge a pupil’s level of language development by testing him or her. If you’re asked questions and you know that all you say is being recorded and will be used in evidence against you, you tend not show yourself at your best. Compare this with how you perform in a relaxed conversation with friends. Right, quite some difference.
Besides the need to feel at ease when being tested, there’s the equally important matter of interest. If you ask me to read a novel by, say, Ronan Bennett, I’ll probably fly through it. If you ask me to read an account of newt-collections down the decades, I’ll probably groan, take forever and still not understand half of it. For many youngsters, what they’re asked to read is boring and pointless; as a result, they get low reading scores. What you score in a language skills test depends on how you are feeling and what’s being used to test you.
As for numeracy, the importance of learning the Times Tables was emphasized in the radio discussion. What’s that – you say you agree? Right. Then tell me this – what’s fourteen times thirteen? You’d need a pen and paper first? OK, let’s try the seventeen times tables?…You didn’t do those in school. Right. The teacher only went up to Times Twelve? So why is it crucial that youngsters learn to recite the Times Tables up to a certain point but not beyond that point?
Ah, but you won’t be able to do mental arithmetic if you don’t know your Times Tables. That’s probably true. But – and I’m not sure how I can break this to you – these days we have machines for doing that. Why spend ages learning by heart something you could establish at the touch of a button? Parroting the Times Tables today makes about as much sense as using an old push lawn-mower when you have an electric one in the garage. Or walking from here to Dublin when you have a train or a bus to take you there. And much much faster.
One of the reasons children’s numeracy skills are adjudged poor is because the children don’t see the point to it all. If you’re one of my older readers , you’ll remember a time when a young lad used to stand at traffic lights, shouting out the name of the evening newspaper he was selling. If someone paused and passed him a pound note, he’d have their change and their paper ready in a flash. Lightning calculation skills. Why? Because such skills served a purpose.
Maybe the head honchos in education should sit down and ask themselves (i) Are we teaching reading through books that are truly of interest to the children we’re teaching? Because if they are, that’s half the battle; (ii) Are we teaching numeracy in ways that feed directly into the child’s need now, serve a purpose in his/her life? ; and (iii) Are we teaching skills that can be and are performed much more successfully using machines? If we are, maybe it’s time we stopped.
As that great educational philosopher Paul Simon once sang: “When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school/ It’s a wonder I can think at all.”
And as Adrian Mole (13 1/2) discovered, measuring it doesn’t make it bigger.
But the smart student knows the difference in wondering whether he can think, or thinking that he can wonder.
I don’t know why anybody thinks the times tables doesn’t need to be learned. You mightnt notice but every day you probably use mental arithmetic in one way or another. My own daughter who has excelled at her all school exams so far struggles to do mental arithmetic. It frustrates her that she can’t work out things quickly like her elders do. Unlike her we would spend school days rhyming off the times tables in primary school. I was astonished to learn that at her primary school they spent very little time on them but rather they were just told learn it as part of their homework. Yes we have machines and devices to do all that boring stuff for us but surely teaching kids to rely on themselves rather than electronic devices, will work wonders for their self esteem? We should be encouraging our kids to be independent and not reliant on others or other things to perform everyday tasks.
In saying that there’s a lot of other stuff being taught at schools that is a total waste of time and does nothing but dumb our kids down. Btw, unlike the times tables, they spend lots of days rhyming off that stuff.
Jude
I don’t necessarily accept the idea that teaching facts, such as times tables (or spelling), and teaching within and for a purposeful context, are necessarily opposed to one another.
First of all (and I’m only beginning to look into this and you may be on the point of correcting me) the research on what is called ‘working’, and ‘long term’ memory points to the idea that ‘facts’ assigned to long term memory free up working memory, which, because of how it works, is short term.
So, to take the question of times tables as an example, if I know certain (not necessarily all) of these, then 24 times 36 becomes easier because I already know: 4×6, 4×3, 2×6 and 2×3 – obviously place value is important too, but you’ll see the point. Knowing, already, that 4×6=24 means there is one less process in the sequence of 24×36 calculations. And there are lots of ways to work towards memorising such facts without repetitive parroting.
The same is true of spelling. Building blocks and whole words consigned to memory make it much, much easier for me to type in this comment box. It is only the spelling I don’t already know that I have to check out.
Likewise, in response to the idea that ‘we have machines for doing that’, the reality is that we need a certain number of facts assigned to memory in order to be able to use these machines.
Using a calculator, for example, requires that I already know, and can remember, what the various signs (including the digits) mean, the sequence in which to press the keys and how to interpret the answer flashing on the screen. Get any of these wrong, and the ‘answer’ is wrong. This way we remember that the machines are there to serve us, rather than master us.
As often in life, and in teaching, I tend to the view that it is ‘both and’, rather than ‘either or’.
Having said that, I’m entirely with you when it comes to the context of learning, which must be as engaging as possible.
But when the ‘head honchos’ are fixated on statistics as a measure of all things, that requires teachers with grit and courage.
“As that great educational philosopher Paul Simon once sang: “When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school/ It’s a wonder I can think at all.””
I left Secondary School 10 years ago this year. I did 7 years there and all I can recall learning is some simple facts about History which I could easily have learnt in a few hours by doing a google search. Why facts about History? Well that was the only subject that genuinely interested me, I did well in other subjects but I’m sure I’ve now forgotten most of what I learnt.
So, in truth, those 7 years were ultimately a massive waste of time for me. I’ve forgotten around 95% of everything I’ve learnt in those 7 years at school, most of which would never have been useful to me anyway.
Primary School maybe wasn’t a total waste of time. Like most people, I learnt simple maths there, learnt how to read and write properly, etc. Some of the stuff I learnt in Primary school I use every day, I’m even using that knowledge I attained right now as I type. But, like Secondary School, I’ve largely forgot most of what I was taught in Primary School, so that was largely a waste of time too on reflection.
It seems schooling is more useful as a babysitting service for kids and teenagers whilst both mummy and daddy go to work, instead of educating and training young minds. But I also think this forced “education” (and it is obviously forced) demeans education itself, most kids find it boring. It also causes kids to despise learning and education itself. Not to mention the environments schools create truly are toxic for many kids. Bullying is still a major issue in our schools, leaving many children mentally scarred, harassed, emotionally troubled, low self esteem and in extreme cases (which happened to my nieces friend who was getting bullied) feeling suicidal.
Since I went to College and studied subjects I actually wanted to learn I’ve learnt the value of education and actually enjoy learning. I’m primarily self taught now days, like most people who regard themselves as “Life Long Learners”. I love reading books and try to finish one a week. My compulsory schooling years did more to put me off education than make me want to embrace it.
I think school hours should be shortened massively, I think no more than 3 hours a day (including Lunch/Break). I think kids should be given the option at the age of 13 to continue schooling or go straight on to do something like an Apprenticeship in whatever subject they choose, whether it be ICT, Joinery, etc. I think that system would be a lot better for kids instead of boring them into a depression.
Ryan
The other solution to your cynicism is to read children’s literature.
You’re too young to be cynical.
Anyone who quotes the rhyming and reasonable Paul Simon, Esteemed Blogmeister, has this reader’s immediate attention.
Mental arithmetic is right. Never were an adjective and a noun so perfectly matched: truly one made in mathematical hell. The number of times arithemetic drove one mental during one’s somewhat less than stellar schooldays is all too readily recalled in the this screech of beseechment.
Directed as it was at a wool-gathering pupil by one’s demented yeller of a teacher (whose initials were not JC, one hastens to add – those came later):
-Warbeck Minor ! Stop ACTING. THE. MAGGOT.
How prophetic was this term of endearment to prove, particularly for one who only ever managed to master the sinister art of subtraction during Sums Classes. Indeed, so often was said demented teacher dirven to use it that in order to save that equivalent of money, time, he felt compelled, eventually , to abbreviate it:
-Warbeck Minor ! Stop A.T.M. !
Nowadays, when ever one finds oneself nervously eyeballing one’s unpredictable local A.T.M. one thanks one’s blessings that one at least is numerate in the s. art of subtraction. Though one’s inner rote learner does tend to find the following admonition a tad on the superfluous end of things:
-Don’t forget to take your money !
No fear of that, sister. For it always a friendly female voice in the A.T.M. which does the admonishing.
Mind you, one does not mind this a. as it is nice for one to be reminded that friendly and female are not mutually exclusive f-words. Not least one who has been subjected to the talking Female Heads on the Presidential Panels of CNN, RTE and BBC over the past semester.
Why is it that ALL, with one or two all too obvious exceptions, these talking Female Heads are chosen exclusively from the reasonably rancid ranks of the Harpie? The answer to that rhetorical q. Is probably a toss up.
It was a truth universally acknowledged back in the Fabulous Fifties that the gold medalists of mental arithmetic in any given Irish National school were those wizards of quick calculation: the cohort of young travellers.
Once however, the first cuckoo was heard, the Ballinasloe Horse Fair beckoned, itchy palms needed to be wetted and slapped, and they took to the roads again, OECD statistics of the time indicated that the standard of mental arithmetic plummeted in the , erm, Irish Educational System. Right across the blackboard, going backward.
Mention of the Fabulous Fifties reminds one that the M-word on Liffeyside was more often honoured in the observance than in the breach by those whose noggins were specifically designed by Mother N to don the conical cap marked D.
That would be M for Mitching. Or, as they say in the land of Mitch Miller: to play hooky.
One chooses the mantlepiece name of Mitch Miller advisedly (a daarlin’ word, Joxer) : for his was one of the very sounds which contributed more than most to making the Fifties so Fabulous.
And for which contribution his memory deserves the mantelpiece treatment for all those lucky enough to fall under the spell of this musical genius of a geography teacher . Truly did he give Home Learning a status hitherto undreamt of.
Not only did the stay-away-from-school mitcher learn about geography as in:
-What did Della wear, boy, what did Della-wear ?
She wore a brand New Jersey, she word a brand New Jersey
That’s what she did wear.
But the horticultural dimensions of the Lone Star State too were introduced to him, in ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’.
One can even go further back that the Fabulous Fifties of the 20th C, to say, the Fabulous Fifties of the 19th C to appreciate the true merits of M for Mitching.
Take, say, GBS, for instance. He was probably the Boy Wonder of Mitching back in the day and see where it got him. Instead of creeping like snail to the Private School of the Misses Squelch on Lower Baggot Street he instead veered sharply left and directed his shining morning face to the uplifting and eye-opening surrounds of the National Gallery in Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
And look where he eventually ended up.
As the first dual winner of the Nobel and Oscar awards. So appreciative indeed was George Bernard Shaw (for it was he !) of his ‘alma mater’ that he bequeathed the royalities (Dubland pronunciation with an extra i, as in Sean Lemass-speak) of ‘My Fair Lady’ (nee Pygmalion) to the National Gallery.
(It might be noted that in the Fabulous Fifties the life-affirming Alma Cogan acknowledged her debt to Mitch Miller with her bubblegum hit: ‘Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo’).
Indeed, GBS remained the only dual winner of the Nobel and Oscar till he was recently joined by a Minsesota Boy on that hitherto unique rostrum:
-What did Missy sip, boy, what did Missy sip?
What did Missy sip, boy, with her pretty lips?
She sipped a Minne sota
She sipped a Minne sota
That’s what she did sip.
Better stop, EB: as one of one’s teachers of English (see above) used to advise:
-Don’t waffle, paper is a finite source. Think, Norwegian Wood..
To what point should we rely on computers. Should we be learning how to write with a pen anymore? Draw on paper? Talk we our mouths? I think we need to be very careful that in this new age of IT that we do not become machines ourselves. Do the computers serve us or do we serve the computers?
talk with our mouths*