Yet More Frankly Unbelievable Education Crassness

Just when you thought that the morons who have the lamentable bits of our education system by the short and curlies (I had wanted to put "state-run" in this sentence but it would have been tautologous) couldn't appear to be more clueless, they cheerfully serve up another truckload of evidence to show that there remains plenty more where that came from.

In the last few months we have had:

• the toys thrown out of the pram when phonics (that's "actually-teaching-children-to-read-rather-than-just-look-at-pictures" to you and me) was suggested as, errr..., a method for actually-teaching-children-to-read-rather-than-just-look-at-pictures;
• some light shed on the absurd process whereby the appointment of a teacher has to go up to the Minister to be approved;
• a generous ladling of old-style class war breaking out on the topic of selection. (A little quiz for you: if, as is very widely accepted - not to mention entirely self-evident to all but the meanest of intellect, honesty or adherent of marxist dogma, pupils respond better when streamed into classes of similar ability within one school, why would this not be doubly so between schools? If a school has a more narrowly focussed range of abilities, why will its streaming not be even more closely tailored?);
• and the confirmation that

  the state could pay for a private education for every child in Scotland for no more than it spends on its own Stalinist system.

  (via Freedom and Whisky)
  

This time, it is a ban on putting your hand up. "Questioning" is itself under question.
Let's review what is being suggested here:

Pupils have been stopped from putting their hands up to answer questions because their school believes it leads to feelings of victimisation. The head, Andrew Buck, says it is always the same children who wave their arms in the air, while the rest of the class sits back.

And? This isn't staringly obvious? This hasn't been spotted before? And isn't seen, generally, as a pretty huge issue?

I have, in front of me, a dog-eared copy of the "Students Administration Precis" from RMAS. Annex B to Precis TRG1 (Methods of Instruction - General) deals with this very topic. It is titled "Question Technique". Para 4 merits a full quotation:

4. Direct questions to the class as a whole, give time for the whole class to think out the answer and then nominate the student who is to give the answer.

POSE THE QUESTION - PAUSE - NOMINATE THE STUDENT

When I was in the habit of giving instruction on "methods of instruction", I rendered this as

Pose... Pause... Pounce

and golly it is effective. The use of this question technique on its own is enough to transform the performance of an instructor who subsequently adopts it. It reinforces the idea [pause to listen for the satisfying POP that pressages the explosion of the heads of Senior Lecturers in Education] that the teacher controls the class. Once students know that this technique will be applied, they also know that they cannot doze off at the back because that is the surest way to be picked to answer a question. They have to pay attention. That soldiers also know that persistent recidivism in this regard will usually result in a short chat with the Provost Sergeant helps a little, but I shall resist the temptation to digress onto discipline in the classroom in general.

There is, of course, more:

When teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, that leads to feelings of victimisation.

Victimisation? Asking a pupil a question to check if he or she has understood the lesson correctly is victimisation? Get a grip man.

Perhaps our Training Precis has something to say:

Questions Technique: When used well, questions generate interest, thought and learning. If used badly, they can embarrass and isolate one or two individuals while the remainder quietly relax and think of other things.

Ah, maybe someone has spotted this before. If you pick on one or two individuals, they are going to feel, err..., picked on. Trying to involve "less adventurous pupils" is not victimisation: it is called "Doing your job". Smells to me as though our illustrious Headmaster is pussyfooting around the problem.

Mr Buck believes that it can also cause panic in children who are picked but do not know the answer while others around them are straining to give it.

And? Is this preferable to have them sit monging at the back and leave the teacher quietly ignoring the fact that half the class has not actually absorbed any of the carefully-produced, culturally-sensitive, government-approved material?

Moreover, like all really obvious and sensible ideas, one can rely on the Public Sector to screw it up completely when trying to adopt it.

To spare the embarrassment of those who do not know the answer, the school uses a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.

Spare me. Please. The teacher and the child needs to know whether or not the child knows the answer. The child might have been right, but just too molly-coddled to have the confidence to try. Do you even know what questions are for? Perhaps our Sandhurst Precis can instruct us:

PURPOSE OF QUESTIONS IN INSTRUCTION

There are three purposes in asking questions:

1. To TEACH by making the class reason out answers for themselves.
2. To TEST by checking the knowledge of the class.
3. To create ACTIVITY by keeping the students mentally alert.
   

Giving the class a "phone-a-friend" option means that each pupil has a get out clause and destroys purpose 1. Further, the teacher cannot be certain that the pupil does NOT know the answer - the pupil may be passing the buck. There goes purpose 2. Get out clause allows a pupil to switch off: nothing for purpose 3 then.

Gaahh! A perfectly sound and well articulated idea is trashed by a vain attempt to avoid hurting people's feelings. When will these morons learn that allowing children to pass through our education system (such as it is) without touching the sides is infinitely more damaging to their usefulness or sense of pride or self-esteem.

Mr Buck says the ban on putting hands up has improved attention levels because pupils never know when they will be called on.

Oh for Heaven's sake. What did he think would happen?

But of all the changes to teaching methods decided when the school opened four years ago, that policy had proved the most difficult to implement. "It is every child's instinct and every teacher's instinct as well because it is ingrained in us," Mr Buck said.

There are a lot of things that are "ingrained in us". If one is a pupil, ingrained behaviours such as "doing anything to avoid work", "not eating our vegetables", "preferring to gossip at the back about Eastenders rather than pay attention to a lesson on the solutions to quadratic equations" spring to mind. From my hideously white, middle-class perspective, I fondly imagined that it was part of the role of teachers to confront and change these "ingrained behaviours", rather than meekly to accept or encourage them.

I suppose, to be fair, teachers - like all adults - have some ingrained behaviours of their own. "Taking the Easy Option" and "Not Confronting the Uncomfortable Truth that you are Failing to Control your Class" might be illustrative examples of this.

You are supposed to deal with this stuff you monstrous waste of taxpayers' money.

There are others who never put up their hands because they have decided that they do not do that bit of the lesson, so they stop listening. If you don't use hands up, the pupils don't know who you are going to choose and they all have to think about the question.

Sorry, but do you expect any of us to think that this is radical new thinking? Someone does:

Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was the first time he had heard of such a policy.

Just hold that thought for a moment. This is 2006.

Those of you who are more astute (keep up at the back there: I shall be asking questions later.) will notice the use of a monospaced, or fixed width, font for all of the references to the Sandhurst Training Precis. I have used this because it is an accurate reflection of the font used in the document itself. Because the document itself was typed on an old fashioned typewriter. Which means that it is a damn sight older than the revision date of

May 1988

given at the bottom of the page. So the technique of a teacher controlling a class and ignoring hands raised has been standard practice in the Army for at least the last 18 years. I would venture to suggest that this method is used by all three services - and possibly the Police, Fire Service, Coastguard and probably in fact any organisation that actually needs to have students learn a specific skill or technique, as opposed to ignoring the problem and wasting everyone's time - and has probably been in force for a very great length of time. The "Pose, Pause, Pounce" method is drummed into the lowliest form of life ever to be tasked with instructing private soldiers. This is basic stuff. Really, really, really simple.

Yet Mr Brookes has NEVER HEARD OF IT. One wonders what on earth they teach in Teacher Training Colleges.

The habit will be hard to break

No it won't. It just takes a teacher with a grip of his subject and his pupils.

but when you listen to what the head says there may be method in what at first appears to be madness.

There may be method in what first appears to be madness. Give me strength.