Hardly
a week goes by in the
UK
without some reference to schools in the media, sometimes
praise-worthy, often critical, always demanding more.
Let me declare an interest. I have been involved
with education since 1964, the last 24 years before retirement as the head of
three different schools, two of them local authority state schools.
It has been a time of immense change, much of it
good, some of it questionable and a portion downright destructive. So let’s
start with a couple of questions. What makes a good school and what is the task
of the teacher?
In the entrance hall of my last school, I had framed
the following words of the educationalist, Lawrence Downey.
“A
good school is known by what it teaches, how it teaches and what kind of place
it is”.
It
was that final comment that I felt deserved the greatest credibility - what kind
of place it is.
Over the years since the re-establishment of the
English hierarchy in the middle of the 19th century, the founding of
a parish community inevitably led to the building of a school. The Catholic
Community saw the existence of a school as a way of preserving and developing
the faith for young ones when their own education and simple faith was not up to
the task. Yet time and again, it was the family example of values that supported
the emergence of a faith that would last a lifetime. It was a time when the
teaching orders had the numbers necessary to staff the schools.
In our time there has emerged a challenge to faith
schools, a question of their value in a secular society, a question of division
within communities. True in this country and especially true in
Northern Ireland
where the name of a school on a job application form carried
a whole structure of meaning and affiliation.
How do we meet this challenge all these years on?
There is no doubt that the considerable effort to support our schools has been
of great value, but that was then, in a period of time that is gone. How do we
meet the challenge now, what kind of place is the school in a multicultural,
multi-faith society?
That leads the discussion on to the consideration of my second question,
what makes a good teacher. Buildings are fine, intentions great, but how should
we attempt to define a good teacher? A few years ago, the late Chris Woodhead,
one time director of OFSTED, was being interviewed in a radio programme by
Jeremy Paxman who asked a simple yet disarming question “Mr
Woodhead, what is a good teacher?” I
found the reply stunning; it was “someone
who tells you something”.
Not in my book. A good teacher stands alongside
pupils in their learning, guides them where necessary, asks questions, offers
re-assurance when the going is tough and helps them to have the courage to fail
but encourages their willingness to try again. I had written into my school
documentation the words of the Irish writer, Samuel Beckett “Ever
tried, ever failed, never mind, try again, fail better”
A paradoxical statement but essentially one that offers patient support
to bring about success from failure. It is called the joy of learning.
In
every classroom there was a poster with the legend “What
did you learn in school today?” That
was considered a broad term. I would often ask the question on the playground
when they were being collected by parents. They learnt quickly for soon the
children started asking me the same question…
A professor of education at
Columbia
University
in
New York City
, Neil Postman, wrote a book a few years back, entitled the Disappearance
of Childhood. It opened with these words.
“Children
are messages we send to a time we may not visit”.
They
have always struck me as powerful words, emphasising the great responsibility on
teachers to care well for those in their charge. The value systems we encourage
in our schools not only shape the ‘now time’ of education, but have a direct
influence on the future society that will be populated by these children in
their adult lives.
We need to step warily, for children, other
people’s children, are influenced by the experience of meeting their teacher.
We cannot avoid taking into account the homes they
come from, the very real difficulties that some of them face for it will affect
their learning. The struggles of a young single mother doing her best for her
children does not go unnoticed, the scarcity of clothing a fact of life, the
lack of breakfast on a cold morning real, all have a consequence in the
classroom.
So in our evaluation of a good school, the
examination of its ethos, be it a faith school or otherwise, we should be broad
in our assessment. Yes, effective teaching in the classroom that enables a child
to explore a world where learning is a marvellous adventure, not a series of
facts to be told about, is so important.
But then also ask the question what kind of place is
it where a child will spend many hours of their formative years coming to terms
with the reality of who they are and how others value them. We should be a
generation intent on caring for the messages we send to the future.
END
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