20% of UK school leavers illiterate and innumerate. Help my partner change this
15 comments
How about yourself gaining an understanding of facts and statistics and not presenting the findings of a study as you did when it suggests that 17% of UK school leavers are functionally innumerate (limited to “very basic competence in maths, mainly limited to arithmetical computations and some ability to comprehend and use other forms of mathematical information”) and 22% are functionally illiterate (i.e. have "less than the functional literacy needed to partake fully in employment, family life and citizenship and to enjoy reading for its own sake"). NOR for that matter does it suggest that 20% are both illiterate AND innumerate. There may be some overlap but instinctively I'd guess that the % of people that are both is significantly below 20%.
For me this is a prime example of the real failings of our educational system - school leavers have completely deficient bullshit-radars, zero healthy skepticism, and a complete inability to spot false inferences. Coupled with a total reticence to go to the source of so-called 'facts'.
The worst thing is that our media (which, in this day and age, you are now part of, in broadcasting these findings) is amongst the worst culprit (and thus in my eyes, most educationally deficient), as are our politicians (save for a few brave souls like Dr Evan Harris, sadly voted OUT of his seat as an Oxford MP last week), who even if they aren't, are slaves to the media in any case.
For me this is a prime example of the real failings of our educational system - school leavers have completely deficient bullshit-radars, zero healthy skepticism, and a complete inability to spot false inferences. Coupled with a total reticence to go to the source of so-called 'facts'.
The worst thing is that our media (which, in this day and age, you are now part of, in broadcasting these findings) is amongst the worst culprit (and thus in my eyes, most educationally deficient), as are our politicians (save for a few brave souls like Dr Evan Harris, sadly voted OUT of his seat as an Oxford MP last week), who even if they aren't, are slaves to the media in any case.
Couldn't fit the word functionally in. 80 letter character limit. If you go through life assuming that someone isn't being dense or facetious, but that there's a mitigating circumstance, you'll find people are more responsive, and that you're more right more of the time.
you'll have to excuse me for the tone. I realise it was just a straight up repetition of the original article's outrageously negligent strapline. But it's still absolutely your duty to set it right rather than help propagate a very misleading meme. And the same will be true of the generation your partner is now teaching, bless her. Teach them to set messages right, based on fact and truth not sensationalism and angst or ignorance. If our generation truly revolutionised the media, let that be the revolution, not the creation of an online echo chamber for misleading memes...
I'd go with... try teaching something different that has a real impact on their lives and work from there.
In reality... a lot of people will forget what they were taught in school. They really do not care about education as presented by school. And it might shock some, but yes - they will never need any of their school knowledge per se and you can live a happy life without being able to read. If you'd like to make a difference: it doesn't matter if those 20% can pass any maths exam; it matters if they can read their electricity bill and bank statement.
An old joke comes to mind: "- 5*5? ; - I don't know ; - If you steal 5 pounds of lunch money from 5 other students, how much do you have? ; - 25 pounds!"
In reality... a lot of people will forget what they were taught in school. They really do not care about education as presented by school. And it might shock some, but yes - they will never need any of their school knowledge per se and you can live a happy life without being able to read. If you'd like to make a difference: it doesn't matter if those 20% can pass any maths exam; it matters if they can read their electricity bill and bank statement.
An old joke comes to mind: "- 5*5? ; - I don't know ; - If you steal 5 pounds of lunch money from 5 other students, how much do you have? ; - 25 pounds!"
Give them the internet and a problem to get to the bottom of - then back off unless they have a question. And if they're not interested in your task, give them some other problem to investigate. Just because one child doesn't care about writing a Freedom of Information request to a public authority (even if it's to ask how much their teacher gets paid, their MP spends on expenses, time coppers spend filling in forms, times the local power station has been reported for environmental infractions, or whatever) then find something else they would - maybe it's looking up new techniques for computer graphics - introduce them to modelling and show them how maths plays a role in that. Or show kids the stock market. Get them to read up about how rich people avoid paying taxes. Whatever.
Just make them feel confident, once they find a direction. Don't forget to round them out, and teach them to be balanced, skeptical and sustainable. Teach them to make parallels between systems - e.g. a balanced ecosystem is resilient to change and challenge, so too is a balanced education, a balanced portfolio, a balanced diet, a balanced peer group, and a balanced political sphere.
The idea that we can ram 'knowledge' down young throats through rote learning, and get anything useful out of the end product, is NONSENSE.
Just make them feel confident, once they find a direction. Don't forget to round them out, and teach them to be balanced, skeptical and sustainable. Teach them to make parallels between systems - e.g. a balanced ecosystem is resilient to change and challenge, so too is a balanced education, a balanced portfolio, a balanced diet, a balanced peer group, and a balanced political sphere.
The idea that we can ram 'knowledge' down young throats through rote learning, and get anything useful out of the end product, is NONSENSE.
Given that ~26% of the British population will definitionally have IQs of 85 or less I think that's a pretty creditable result. They can mostly read, write and do arithmetic; given what the teachers have to work with they're doing pretty well.
Academics said that literacy skills had also failed to improve since the late 1980s.
And what happened then? They got rid of streaming. They'd probably hit the point of diminishing returns by then anyway but seriously there's only so much blood you can squeeze out of turnip.
“People at this level can handle only simple tests and straightforward questions on them where no distracting information is adjacent or nearby,” the study said. “Making inferences and understanding forms of indirect meaning, eg. allusion and irony, are likely to be difficult or impossible.
I don't think that's a problem with their ability to read, but to reason, and to discriminate.
Anyway the only thing I can see as having some chance of reaching those with these difficulties would be Direct Instruction or something similar, like Kumon. This has the small problem that teachers will not stand for it. It makes a stressful, demanding job a boring, stressful demanding job.
Academics said that literacy skills had also failed to improve since the late 1980s.
And what happened then? They got rid of streaming. They'd probably hit the point of diminishing returns by then anyway but seriously there's only so much blood you can squeeze out of turnip.
“People at this level can handle only simple tests and straightforward questions on them where no distracting information is adjacent or nearby,” the study said. “Making inferences and understanding forms of indirect meaning, eg. allusion and irony, are likely to be difficult or impossible.
I don't think that's a problem with their ability to read, but to reason, and to discriminate.
Anyway the only thing I can see as having some chance of reaching those with these difficulties would be Direct Instruction or something similar, like Kumon. This has the small problem that teachers will not stand for it. It makes a stressful, demanding job a boring, stressful demanding job.
Given that ~26% of the British population will definitionally have IQs of 85 or less
Your percentage is incorrect. I think you were confusing what percentage would be in either extreme range (low or high) with what percentage would be more than one standard deviation below the mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_distribution_and_sc...
Your percentage is incorrect. I think you were confusing what percentage would be in either extreme range (low or high) with what percentage would be more than one standard deviation below the mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_distribution_and_sc...
True. 16% not 26%.
I think that your insight, while simple, is profound. Yes, I think it's the mind state, to a large degree.
With that insight, what does a teacher have to do? She has to find a way to change their minds. She has to make it feel interesting also to them, and most of all inspire them. She has to be a leader for that class, in an exploration of the world.
Anytime a student asks why (anytime! In any context) that's an opportunity to take that student, and her question, seriously. Have a discussion on why, the reasons, perhaps the history of the subject matter.
Create a special environment. Let the student's know that even if the rest of the school is boring, with teachers that just don't understand or seem grey and dull, this is not that, it's different. Spark curiosity.
Don't argue with those who say they're not interested, cater to those who are, and make it easy to join in.
But most of all, take the children seriously, create a culture of trust in the class, and read the six lesson school teacher by John Gatto: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
With that insight, what does a teacher have to do? She has to find a way to change their minds. She has to make it feel interesting also to them, and most of all inspire them. She has to be a leader for that class, in an exploration of the world.
Anytime a student asks why (anytime! In any context) that's an opportunity to take that student, and her question, seriously. Have a discussion on why, the reasons, perhaps the history of the subject matter.
Create a special environment. Let the student's know that even if the rest of the school is boring, with teachers that just don't understand or seem grey and dull, this is not that, it's different. Spark curiosity.
Don't argue with those who say they're not interested, cater to those who are, and make it easy to join in.
But most of all, take the children seriously, create a culture of trust in the class, and read the six lesson school teacher by John Gatto: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
Thanks so much for that. I printed and highlighted the pee out of that.
I've been hearing about Gatto for a while but have yet to pick up one of his books.
I can quibble about some points, but most of it fits with my experience: the abilities that I retain are the result of my resisting the educational system. So I expand the traditional maxim of, "1) Those who can... do; those who can't... teach." to include:
2) Those who can't teach... administrate.
3) Those who can't administrate... design educational systems.
4) Those who are concerned only with controlling deviance (aka creativity)... run for school board.
Disclosure: My UC-Berkeley diploma is validated by the signature of a movie actor. [No, not Arnold; think early pleistocene era.]
I've been hearing about Gatto for a while but have yet to pick up one of his books.
I can quibble about some points, but most of it fits with my experience: the abilities that I retain are the result of my resisting the educational system. So I expand the traditional maxim of, "1) Those who can... do; those who can't... teach." to include:
2) Those who can't teach... administrate.
3) Those who can't administrate... design educational systems.
4) Those who are concerned only with controlling deviance (aka creativity)... run for school board.
Disclosure: My UC-Berkeley diploma is validated by the signature of a movie actor. [No, not Arnold; think early pleistocene era.]
I'd suggest not lowering exam standards year on year as well as allowing respected qualifications like GCSEs to be replaced with vocational GNVQs or similar.
Also what's very important is a work environment conducive towards learning at school and at home.
Also what's very important is a work environment conducive towards learning at school and at home.
Whilst we'd both love to see the former done, as someone who's not yet in a position to influence government education policy yet, that's not a particularly useful answer.
Every reply so far has missed out on one crucial fact: it is not possible to deviate from the officially approved method of teaching and keep your job. I urge everyone to closely scrutinise the National Curriculum and the National Strategies, bearing in mind that you will fail an OFSTED inspection for deviating from either.
http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/ http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/
Teaching at KS1 and KS2 is completely micro-managed, with statutory requirements set through the National Strategies on a day-by-day basis. Under the guise of "disseminating best practice", the system forces teachers into lock-step. If a child needs a little more time to grasp a concept, forget it. You've got to move on to the next unit, and the next one, or you won't be able to complete your Teacher Assessments. If they are lucky, the child will busk it and nobody will notice that they never learned appropriate use of the apostrophe; If they are unlucky, they will receive the mark of Cain - the Statement of Special Educational Needs. It is a near-certainty that they will never recover from this, and will be treated as a dunce for the rest of their school career.
At Secondary level, matters are worse still. Almost all secondary schools are surfing wave after wave of exam-driven panic. The abolition of the KS3 SAT has helped matters, but continuous assessment has kept the pressure on to a great extent. KS4 more closely resembles a death march than anything else; The whole school becomes a machine for getting those all-important marginal students those essential 5 A*-C grades. Any student too far ahead or behind the pace is completely ignored. All other school functions become a tool for pushing up that magical number. Student engagement matters only as much as it affects those marginal students.
The primary function of school is not to teach, and anyone naive enough to believe otherwise will quickly be corrected. A school is a bureaucratic machine and the role of a teacher is to follow the Approved Procedure. Your success or failure as a teacher will be measured entirely in terms of how closely you imitate the State Approved way of doing things.
If your partner has an ounce of intelligence and decency, I'd advise her to quit right now and do something else with her life. There's a lot wrong with FE, but at least you've got some freedom to teach. In the private sector, you won't be teaching anyone who actually needs your help, but at least you won't come home crying. There are some real opportunities to actually engage with young people in the voluntary sector. The pay is awful and funding erratic, but at least you get a chance to actually do some good.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm
http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/ http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/
Teaching at KS1 and KS2 is completely micro-managed, with statutory requirements set through the National Strategies on a day-by-day basis. Under the guise of "disseminating best practice", the system forces teachers into lock-step. If a child needs a little more time to grasp a concept, forget it. You've got to move on to the next unit, and the next one, or you won't be able to complete your Teacher Assessments. If they are lucky, the child will busk it and nobody will notice that they never learned appropriate use of the apostrophe; If they are unlucky, they will receive the mark of Cain - the Statement of Special Educational Needs. It is a near-certainty that they will never recover from this, and will be treated as a dunce for the rest of their school career.
At Secondary level, matters are worse still. Almost all secondary schools are surfing wave after wave of exam-driven panic. The abolition of the KS3 SAT has helped matters, but continuous assessment has kept the pressure on to a great extent. KS4 more closely resembles a death march than anything else; The whole school becomes a machine for getting those all-important marginal students those essential 5 A*-C grades. Any student too far ahead or behind the pace is completely ignored. All other school functions become a tool for pushing up that magical number. Student engagement matters only as much as it affects those marginal students.
The primary function of school is not to teach, and anyone naive enough to believe otherwise will quickly be corrected. A school is a bureaucratic machine and the role of a teacher is to follow the Approved Procedure. Your success or failure as a teacher will be measured entirely in terms of how closely you imitate the State Approved way of doing things.
If your partner has an ounce of intelligence and decency, I'd advise her to quit right now and do something else with her life. There's a lot wrong with FE, but at least you've got some freedom to teach. In the private sector, you won't be teaching anyone who actually needs your help, but at least you won't come home crying. There are some real opportunities to actually engage with young people in the voluntary sector. The pay is awful and funding erratic, but at least you get a chance to actually do some good.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm
'Deschooling Society' by Ivan Illich is by far the best book on this topic I've ever read. Old, and somewhat dated since it presages the Internet but never experienced it - but still as fundamentally brilliant
I am leading a team working on an AI-based learning game that should help with literacy issues. The software implements several cognitive science principles including those in lionhearted's comment:
> (1) at the edge of their current capabilities, which is to say doable but slightly challenging, (2) interesting, stimulating, and relevant to them.
We are pretty close to launching. If you're interested, please just get in touch. (My email is in my HN profile).
> (1) at the edge of their current capabilities, which is to say doable but slightly challenging, (2) interesting, stimulating, and relevant to them.
We are pretty close to launching. If you're interested, please just get in touch. (My email is in my HN profile).
I would look onto game design. game designers has plenty of techniques to create a lot of motivation with people. just look at farmville , leading millions of people to spend a lot of time in an inherently boring game.
A good book about game design:
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004195.php
The failure begins in most cases with appallingly bad reading instruction in school. See
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-Science-Evolution-Invent...
and the earlier sources it cites for research on what to do about that.
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-Science-Evolution-Invent...
and the earlier sources it cites for research on what to do about that.
Just wondering, is she stuck to the British classroom, and how flexible are the rules for what happens in the British classroom? What if the traditional system simply doesn't work at all? How do alternative school systems like Montessori compare?
Incentivise and Inspire the students to care about what she's teaching. I've been through the British system, it absolutely diabolical, if you want more information follow me on twitter @ajrajanathan - send me a DM we can talk over that
[deleted]
People need to be studying things that are (1) at the edge of their current capabilities, which is to say doable but slightly challenging, (2) interesting, stimulating, and relevant to them.
Classrooms fail at this. Some kids are good at math, but do not like writing. And vice versa. A little boy might be doing algebra very early, but does not like nonfiction. Give him time! Let him work out his math and progress with it, perhaps he'd get interested in reading a biography of a mathematician or scientist at some point.
Likewise, maybe another boy is reading and writing at an advanced pace, is devouring classic works, but is behind in math "for his age" - that's okay! Give him time. If he needs more time in arithmetic or doing long division by hand, let him spend time there while reading at a high level. He'll get there.
Subdividing based on age is asinine and crazy. It means a majority of people will be studying at a skill level incorrect for them in an important discipline. That's before even considering how boring school is for most kids.
Me? I loved physics, liked chemistry, and hated biology. Because the way it was taught, physics was cool with acceleration, chemistry was interesting in terms of mixing things, but biology was a bunch of boring memorization of genome and species and things like that which didn't seem very important to me. So, I really enjoyed my Freshman "introductory earth sciences" (physics, chemistry, and a little geology if I remember correctly) and had a fun and enjoyable time, but then I was forced to move into rote memorization biology my sophomore year... I tried to skip ahead to physics, but they said no. Long story short, I wound up dropping out of two high schools, and got into a university despite that before dropping out of there too. Was a great decision for me! The school system is broken - it doesn't meet kids where they're at or where they want to be. Instead, it forces a strict curriculum that requires memorization and obedience to pass.
Look at home schooling if you want inspiration. There's a big community devoted to it, and home schooled destroy mainstream teaching methods on almost every metric except for social interaction/emotional maturity. (A big problem for homeschooling, parents need to be diligent in getting their kids representative social experiences if they're home skilled, at least enough for them to relate to other people their age)
But that's really it - on just about every other metric, home schooling wrecks on mainstream teaching methods. I think the biggest problem is that mainstream schooling instruction is bureaucratic centrally planned with age being the overwhelmingly important decision on what the kids learn.
How asinine! Everyone goes through cycles of being interested in different things. If a kid has a knack for language and is doing hardcore immersion, learning the Chinese characters that will let them read/write Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, and they're learning Mandarin and Japanese at a high level and starting to read literature in the native languages... do you really want to break that up because now it's time for geometry?
You introduce the kids to a little bit here and there, when they're ready for it they learn it. Learning is one of the most exciting and coolest things in the world. The fact that schools somewhat make learning dreadful and boring is one of the most laughable things in the world. But again, you've got to meet the student where he is at. Statistics can be taught via sports, or via census data, or via business, or via hard science experiments, or... y'know? You've got to find one that stimulates the pupil. One training going 100 kilometers per hour towards another one going 180 kilometers per hour isn't going to get it done for the vast majority of kids.
Classrooms fail at this. Some kids are good at math, but do not like writing. And vice versa. A little boy might be doing algebra very early, but does not like nonfiction. Give him time! Let him work out his math and progress with it, perhaps he'd get interested in reading a biography of a mathematician or scientist at some point.
Likewise, maybe another boy is reading and writing at an advanced pace, is devouring classic works, but is behind in math "for his age" - that's okay! Give him time. If he needs more time in arithmetic or doing long division by hand, let him spend time there while reading at a high level. He'll get there.
Subdividing based on age is asinine and crazy. It means a majority of people will be studying at a skill level incorrect for them in an important discipline. That's before even considering how boring school is for most kids.
Me? I loved physics, liked chemistry, and hated biology. Because the way it was taught, physics was cool with acceleration, chemistry was interesting in terms of mixing things, but biology was a bunch of boring memorization of genome and species and things like that which didn't seem very important to me. So, I really enjoyed my Freshman "introductory earth sciences" (physics, chemistry, and a little geology if I remember correctly) and had a fun and enjoyable time, but then I was forced to move into rote memorization biology my sophomore year... I tried to skip ahead to physics, but they said no. Long story short, I wound up dropping out of two high schools, and got into a university despite that before dropping out of there too. Was a great decision for me! The school system is broken - it doesn't meet kids where they're at or where they want to be. Instead, it forces a strict curriculum that requires memorization and obedience to pass.
Look at home schooling if you want inspiration. There's a big community devoted to it, and home schooled destroy mainstream teaching methods on almost every metric except for social interaction/emotional maturity. (A big problem for homeschooling, parents need to be diligent in getting their kids representative social experiences if they're home skilled, at least enough for them to relate to other people their age)
But that's really it - on just about every other metric, home schooling wrecks on mainstream teaching methods. I think the biggest problem is that mainstream schooling instruction is bureaucratic centrally planned with age being the overwhelmingly important decision on what the kids learn.
How asinine! Everyone goes through cycles of being interested in different things. If a kid has a knack for language and is doing hardcore immersion, learning the Chinese characters that will let them read/write Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, and they're learning Mandarin and Japanese at a high level and starting to read literature in the native languages... do you really want to break that up because now it's time for geometry?
You introduce the kids to a little bit here and there, when they're ready for it they learn it. Learning is one of the most exciting and coolest things in the world. The fact that schools somewhat make learning dreadful and boring is one of the most laughable things in the world. But again, you've got to meet the student where he is at. Statistics can be taught via sports, or via census data, or via business, or via hard science experiments, or... y'know? You've got to find one that stimulates the pupil. One training going 100 kilometers per hour towards another one going 180 kilometers per hour isn't going to get it done for the vast majority of kids.
I'd consider myself a fairly bright person. I have exceedingly diverse interests, and a can talk in depth and with authority on politics, classical and contemporary music, literature from 1600 to the modern day, current theories on psychological development in humans from birth to adulthood and so on...
In addition, my partner is currently studying to become a teacher. She has equally diverse interests, and is also extremely bright.
Now, with her insight into the British classroom, I've come up with a theory: very few children are incapable of learning to be highly proficient in maths, English and the logical deductive reasoning and research in the quest of knowledge.
Where failure comes in is where the child, due to the influence of their peers, parents, or some other social pressure feels that they don't actually care to learn these things. It is not that it is beyond them, it is simply that they either passively don't see the need, or actively resist being taught.
This would fit well with the available data, as I can easily imagine (just from thinking back to my own school days) around one in five children believing that what they were being taught would have no relevance in the real world.
So the question that I'd like to ask is, how, as a teacher, could my partner try and beat the odds and ensure that the students entrusted to her care are prepared for the world they'll enter as adults as best as possible?
Suggestions on the back of a postcard, or in the comments below. Whichever...