There is such a rift in this country between the Public School and the State School. I have mentioned it before, especially the specialised investment in equipment and facilities and the specialised teaching that accompanied it. Even before they sit their A levels the dice is set and the game rigged.
My belief as to why pupils pick up the rudiments of learning largely concerns the quality of the teaching and the effort made to make the subject interesting.To make a subject interesting for a young person you have to make it relevant to the pupil it has to be alive in the way it means something and can be correlated to the world around us.
The skill and the effort to do this is sometimes beyond the teacher or the school and one must also bring to the equation the wide and varied background of each child particularly in the State School.Public Schools our populated by children from a much more harmonious background and seem, by and large,to have inculcated their parents wish to succeed. To afford the Public School fees the parents themselves have succeeded. No small wonder that their children want to learn and also succeed.
As if from another world comes the State educated child. Parents in dead end occupations, broken family's, unwanted and unloved what does success mean to that child?
But back to my main premise,it's the quality of the teaching and the imagination brought to the lecture that makes the difference.The internet has provided a marvellous conduit for ideas and comment. My pearls of wisdom being only one of a kind !!
The schools are already set up for the internet and use it to some degree or other.Why not, using the Open University as a model to provide a much greater degree of structured, vitalised, energised information directly into the classroom. The teachers roll is to "re-enforce" the lesson.
The Open University recruited the very best teachers and teaching methods. Outstanding communicators, illustrators, graphical compilers and all the latest electronic gadgetry to get their message across. It was no contest. The single teacher, chalk and blackboard and a room full of disinterested kids.
Along came the Open University and a new way of putting across the interconnectivity of the mathematical equation. How these equations were inter-related as functions, representing the physical world. A family of functions, creating mathematical symmetry which could be represented by graphical curves, plotted, moment by moment. The sum of these points represent the physical event from beginning to end. Calculus.
The beauty of the broadcast lay in the ability to change the function or the values and see instantly how the curve altered to represent the altered state of the physical moment it described. This was not hocus pocus, not magic and if it was magic it was magic of a different kind it removed the "scales from my eyes" I was no longer blind !! The fear of asking questions was removed. My ignorance no longer a thing of shame, " I got it" !!!
Why not use this technology in the class room. All class rooms, in all the schools - why ?
Well as in most initiatives the devil lies in convincing those who the change most effects - the teacher. It seems that the sisterhood would rather keep the children mystified, than loose status ?
The politicians shrank from taking on the might of the teaching unions and we are where we are, sinking in the league tables from 4th to 28th in three decades.
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