RE: Focusing on the learning rather than on the teaching

[paulingram <paulingram@freeuk.com>]

Charles:

>At best, 20 percent of the nations read well and regularly and want to
>read more.  
>  We have failed to support 79.4 percent of our children because we are not
>trying to identify what it is that slows the child or prevents the child
>from being successful in reading.

The more widespread identification of this as the emergency it is, rather 
than as just the education problem, would be a start. Even in a 
'literate' society like England - where, incidentally, levels of 
illiteracy have not improved one jot  through all the postwar initiatives 
- learning expectations are still 'need-to-know.'

I feel it's down to a global lack of interest in children, bordering on 
distaste; even a misinderstanding of what they are - and what we all 
were. Child abuse/neglect is our depressing adult historical constant; 
the end of history for war is more probable than the cessation of 
hostilities with our own progeny.

The western education system has no answers because the people working  
in it find education and educational management difficult: coping with 
the systems takes up all their energy and there's no time left for the 
kids. This coping with the system  - and complaining about it - now *is* 
the system.  Education is seen as a problem. So are children. Conversely, 
children don't generally have any problem with learning about the world - 
as John Holt observed -  until they go to school. 

Hence the economical solution is to invest wisely and exclusively in 
out-of-school resourcing and education; cheap, parallel systems; we're 
all teachers. England isn't ready for this, don't know about others; and 
no-one wants to bite-the-bullet aimed at producing/attracting/paying  
better-educated and  more intelligent teachers;  but the notion of 
Primary Schools as educators is redundant, within the current system, 
which functions at its theoretical optimum when there are no kids around, 
or if the kids shut-up and perform within low expectation parameters, 
letting the schools get on with their 'job.'.

Beyond that, polemical campaigns simply to raise the actual status of the 
world's children in the eyes of adults - and not just bleeding hearts 
when the kids are on the point of starvation - might have more effect 
than any costly educational initiative. We seem to be missing the point 
that we're squandering our prime, obvious source of renewal. Nature keeps 
 giving us another chance with another generation, despite our dumbassed 
attitudes. Time to take the individual children themselves more 
seriously, at a much earlier age, as part of the team, to be involved and 
consulted; time to see our own kids as more miraculous, and the rest the 
same. One runs the risk of sounding a '60s throwback, against one's 
better nature, more Ronnie Laing than Charles Handy, but it's good to see 
the cards on the table courtesy of Charlie,  in a Quality forum. 

cheers

Paul Ingram
Shropshire, England