Subject: The 11 plus exam.
There are few more emotional sights than to see the happiness or the disappointment on the faces of primary school children when receiving the results of their 11 plus examination. A program tracing the path of these young kids as they prepare for the 11 plus showed the inadequacy of pinpointing a child's academic progress on one exam with all the weighted emphasis on their 'life opportunity', concertinaed into a two hour burst of academic reasoning.
The children from all backgrounds, were filmed in the lead up to the exam and afterwards, as winners and losers. The tragedy of failure writ large on some faces was made more moving as the Mom, an African lady couldn't read the text message, her illiteracy, concealed up to that moment, gave even greater pathos to her story as she working all hours godsend for the minimum wage and yet still made the sacrifice to pay for extra tutoring to give her daughter the chance to aspire to reach both their dreams. Other Moms in 4x4s wheeled their kids around the tutor circuit confident that their efforts would pay off, instilling in the child this aura of 'can do'.
Some children fizzed with innate self esteem and it was these kids who shared their doubts after the exam as to how well they had done. The young African girl seemed confident and even went so far as to say it had been easy but as her Mom asked a member of the television crew to read what was opaque to her, the tears which initially fell for the embarrassment of not being able to read turned to real anguish when she learnt her child had failed to win a place at the grammar school. Even more telling was the look on the child's face as she tried to take in the enormity of the words she was hearing, trying to digest what failure meant. Her confidence flattened and her life in tatters she stared into an abyss of lost hope and difficult mediocre education.
Now we all know that life is full of opportunities, many of them not tied to academic scholarship but are part of the fundamental character which provides the chances we make for ourselves. But having said this she also knows that most of the professions are out of reach as is the featherbedding of respect one obtains by having a profession rather than a job.
At 11 this is a far too early a moment to contemplate becoming "second class" in a society which is so bound up in ratings. It's cruel and so deterministic to choose a moment in time and in so doing in effect closing a path or a pen, cattle this way, pedigree that.
I have long advocated spending the most of the educational budget on the losers on the basis that the cleaver children will prosper anyway, especially when surrounded by like minded achievers. They could virtually self teach with prompting by a centralised Open University electronic style class tuition.
The losers, the Comprehensive School children, need the hands on tuition, the smaller class size the latest in educational stimulation to develop after the pinch point of the 11 plus exam and as a society we want them to succeed before they gravitate into the benefit culture.
There are few more emotional sights than to see the happiness or the disappointment on the faces of primary school children when receiving the results of their 11 plus examination. A program tracing the path of these young kids as they prepare for the 11 plus showed the inadequacy of pinpointing a child's academic progress on one exam with all the weighted emphasis on their 'life opportunity', concertinaed into a two hour burst of academic reasoning.
The children from all backgrounds, were filmed in the lead up to the exam and afterwards, as winners and losers. The tragedy of failure writ large on some faces was made more moving as the Mom, an African lady couldn't read the text message, her illiteracy, concealed up to that moment, gave even greater pathos to her story as she working all hours godsend for the minimum wage and yet still made the sacrifice to pay for extra tutoring to give her daughter the chance to aspire to reach both their dreams. Other Moms in 4x4s wheeled their kids around the tutor circuit confident that their efforts would pay off, instilling in the child this aura of 'can do'.
Some children fizzed with innate self esteem and it was these kids who shared their doubts after the exam as to how well they had done. The young African girl seemed confident and even went so far as to say it had been easy but as her Mom asked a member of the television crew to read what was opaque to her, the tears which initially fell for the embarrassment of not being able to read turned to real anguish when she learnt her child had failed to win a place at the grammar school. Even more telling was the look on the child's face as she tried to take in the enormity of the words she was hearing, trying to digest what failure meant. Her confidence flattened and her life in tatters she stared into an abyss of lost hope and difficult mediocre education.
Now we all know that life is full of opportunities, many of them not tied to academic scholarship but are part of the fundamental character which provides the chances we make for ourselves. But having said this she also knows that most of the professions are out of reach as is the featherbedding of respect one obtains by having a profession rather than a job.
At 11 this is a far too early a moment to contemplate becoming "second class" in a society which is so bound up in ratings. It's cruel and so deterministic to choose a moment in time and in so doing in effect closing a path or a pen, cattle this way, pedigree that.
I have long advocated spending the most of the educational budget on the losers on the basis that the cleaver children will prosper anyway, especially when surrounded by like minded achievers. They could virtually self teach with prompting by a centralised Open University electronic style class tuition.
The losers, the Comprehensive School children, need the hands on tuition, the smaller class size the latest in educational stimulation to develop after the pinch point of the 11 plus exam and as a society we want them to succeed before they gravitate into the benefit culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment