Educational experiment

Posted on 09.19.08

With a heavy sigh of relief, I’m pleased to declare that my experiment paid off.

I spent every Wednesday of the last academic year attending a fast track English A level course. Why? Well… to see what later-life learning is like, spy on the state of 6th form colleges in 2008, expand my mind… and — I confess — to see if my 29-year-old self is any more capable of getting a decent A level grade in the bag than my 16-18 self.

I got an A.

Whilst it’s very reassuring to know that, like the pound in my pocket, my A grade is worth less this year than it was last, and will be increasingly worth less (though hopefully not worthless) as the years roll by, there were a number of motivating factors besides adding an A grade to my CV. So a year on, I shall just indulge myself a few paragraphs of reflection on goals achieved and opportunities missed.

Adult Learning

Many adults think it’s going to be hard to learn in later life; in fact it’s much easier. With all your accumulated life knowledge you catch on to a range of concepts far quick than the average 18-year-old. As far as assignments go, you understand far better the person responsible for marking them: they are like you. Therefore the mystique is removed from the examiner.

Sure, if you’ve allowed your mind to stagnate then it’s probably a struggle – but I suspect the ‘it’s hard when you’re older’ line is just an excuse — it was hard when you were young as well wasn’t it?

“Must pass exams” mentality

Apparent from virtually day one (but insidious until about term 3) was the relentless, tunnel visioned focus on passing exams, rather than on learning. Problem is, it’s contagious and addictive. By the end I was not only obsessed with getting as high a grade as possible, but I had lost sight of wanting to learn (thankfully I was rescued by the last text which has probably become one of my favourite novels of all time).

And so I come full circle to why education and me didn’t mix, why I only saw the appeal in learning long after leaving academia. Had I done English Literature aged 18 I’d almost certainly have resented it.

I have a wild and naive hope that one day, the balance between learning and assessment will be such that those in education can put the latter out of their heads, for the duration and enjoyment of the former.

Technology woefully absent

At Futurelab it’s kind of anticipated that we will reduce the emphasis on the technology focus of our work and focus more broadly on innovative practice — because technology will become increasingly ‘invisible’ in schools there will be less need to champion it.

Um. No. Teachers, for the most part, are still pretty afraid of using computers for anything beyond the most basic task so I think we’ll be waiting some time before technology is invisible in the classroom. When it is, we won’t call it technology anyway :-)

The thing to remember about technology is this: it’s not the answer, but it is part of the fabric of students’ extra-curriclar activities and day-to-day lives. When it is missing from the classroom, it makes the learning all the more irrelevant.

UDPATE: Stephen Heppell has some interesting words to say on much of the same stuff, but particularly on the resistance to bring wordprocessors into the exam settting — something which bugged me no end.

Books and stuff are good

…but if you speed-read you probably aren’t taking the time to savour the words and the meaning, or consider the writer’s aims. The syllabus recommends reading each text 4 times — this is probably overkill; I managed to read each text twice only and yet found many, many times the meaning the second time through.

Sigh. How much must we all miss from our paltry single reading of most novels? The benefit of a course like this I suppose is that it has taught me to look for those things *first time* round, clues from the author and so on.

Writing

I remember being told, “if you want to improve at writing, just do more of it”. I’ve done more of it and I think I’ve improved.

And with that I’m putting down my pen.

Categories: English, education

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