Tuesday, 10 January 2012

What's the point...?


The question from dejected half broken voices at the back of the GCSE class - ‘what’s the point?’
The answer from the front – ‘quite honestly, I don’t know.’

The usual response should be something along the lines of, ‘it’s in the exam’ ‘It has relevance as background’ ‘it’ll help you practice your exam technique’. The reality though is that often the work we set as teachers has little or no bearing on how the students are learning, or even what they are learning.

I’m reminded of a trip to Australia. Picking up a History book in the airport on the aboriginal tribes I was struck by the incredulity of the settlers as they singularly failed to get the indigenous populations to work for them in a western way. The point was that for 25,000 years, they had been doing things their own way. There was no nine till five, no ploughing, sowing, shearing or cropping and they certainly didn’t have to turn up on time. The indigenous people looked at the settlers and their distinctly inappropriate clothes and laughed. ‘Why bother, what’s the point?’

If a man can eat what he needs, get where he needs to go and have a good life; why would he need to work on a farm and buy for money what he can take from nature?

I sometimes wonder if the culture clash between student and educator isn’t just as wide as the first meetings in New South Wales between settlers and locals. Students need to know why they should be pursuing course, doing an essay, composing a sonnet. Without reasons and rationales can they ever really buy in to the realities of education? They are the customers and the customer should get a say, surely? Do we need to look again at the utility of what we do with our students? We can’t give them what they want all the time, but surely, to paraphrase a great philosopher:  if we try sometimes, we just might get them what they need?
‘The need’ however, is the big debate. Perhaps it is as simple as showing them why these things matter.

To start with though I’ll be trying just to make sure when a student asks me what the point is, I don’t reply with the same old answer we got at school.

If you can’t be honest, what can you be?

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