Whatever happened to inspiration?

Whatever happened to inspiration? Where does all of the excitement of early years education go when children progress to big school?

Schools often demonise failure - students failing exams, children failing tests and failing to attend classes. They wish to cover up failure and emphasis success - especially when the school inspectors pay a visit. And yet failure is often a prelude to good learning. We shouldn't stigmatise it, but rather see it as a step in the right direction to future success. My two best teachers at school gave me permission to fail and then showed me how to do better next time.

But what happens when schools fail children? The graphic on this page was shared on Twitter by Aaron Hogan, and originated on the #innovatorsmindset hashtag organised by George Couros. It presents a truth that some schools might choose to ignore, as they set about perpetuating an old, out of date education regime that does more damage than good.

One of the many undesirable consequences of standardised testing in schools, is that it treats children as metrics rather than people. Award a number or a letter to a student's work, and that's all they will see. Whatever feedback/forward they are given will be ignored. All they want to know is 'have I passed?' and then ... 'What level is my pass?' It's how they have been conditioned to think - and the grade takes precedence over the learning.

Schools that treat children as numbers instead of as individuals are in danger of switching students off from the potential of education. How can we foster curiosity in our students instead of stamping it out? How can we engage them, and create within them an unquenchable thirst for knowledge? The sad irony is that children arrive on their first day in school with this thirst, but it is gradually sapped from them as they progress through the punishing cycle of teaching and testing.

Good teacher assessment, coupled with inspirational teaching, where children are involved, engaged and immersed in the experience of education, and timely personal feedback - all have been identified as essential if children are to progress. Teachers' commitment to children's progress is the greatest influence on their future attainment (Hattie, 2012). If we know all this, we should be doing it more often.

Reference
Hattie, J. (2012) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning: Abingdon: Routledge.


Whatever happened to inspiration? by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.