Standardization kills creativity. The Leaving Certificate is the leveller for secondary school students here in Ireland. Using it we rigorously examine our students each year in an effort to compare their academic ability. It rarely seeks opinion preferring to extract regurgitated ‘Cliff-Notes’ over original ideas. It affects the morale of not only the students but the teachers too. Ken Robinson says “The problem comes when these tests become more than simply a tool of education and turn into the focus of it”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Personally speaking this element of our current education system hugely affects my morale. I find myself telling students to learn Irish essays off by heart because this is what it takes to succeed in the exam. I spend more time preparing for the exam, than I do on actual language skills and this is hugely frustrating. It’s also promoting the demise of the Irish language. What can we do?
“The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Time and again teachers complain about the inadequacies of the system, about how “The Leaving Cert is a test of memory and not of intellect”. But teachers are not the problem. Schools up and down the country are full of fabulous teachers working within an ailing and archaic system. Robinson suggests that we focus on personalization rather than standardization.
We need to discover the individual talents of each child, to create an environment where they want to learn and can discover their true passions. Lessons need to be student-centred and lessons should be what student interest dictates. Students should be able to interact, communicate and collaborate.
Robinson also asserts the notion that “school systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines”. He feels that this would make a more “fluid” and “dynamic” system.
Finally education should be personal taking into account the individual learning styles and talents of each student.
“The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers”. (Robinson, K).
ReplyDeleteThe author’s aforementioned quotation from Ken Robinson and her comments on educational investment are of topical importance in light of yesterday’s Budget 2010 and in particular, to the education cut-backs therein. Today’s ‘special supplement’ in the Irish Independent notes that as a result of the budgetary announcements, current expenditure in education will be down “six hundred and three million on this year”. Now, more than ever, teachers should be “taking into account the individual learning styles and talents of each student” to produce a more career focused education sector and enable students to benefit from limited educational resources.