How education is backwards
Education is literally the opposite of what it needs to be
As I explained in my previous post, I have started to think more seriously about education. As part of my exploration, I’ve started reading a book called Exam Nation by Sammy Wright. I’m half way through it so far, but I’ve already found it really helpful. He keeps on returning to the question ‘what is school for?’
Reading the book has made me realise that education in this country is not simply flawed, but backwards in a couple of key ways: it’s the opposite of what it should be. Firstly, I think that education doesn’t treat children and young people as individuals; secondly, it puts knowledge in front of values.
Let me unpack what I mean.
Impersonal education
At the end of the first chapter in the book I mentioned, Wright recounts meeting a boy who used to go to his school. He was one of the naughty kids - a bit of a ne’er-do-well, and he didn’t leave school with many qualifications. However, when they met a few years later, the young man had totally turned his life around: he had become a scaffolder, and that was the thing which had helped him to succeed at life, rather than school.
I found this a very helpful and illuminating illustration of one of the fundamental problems with schooling: it has a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, when that is absolutely inappropriate. Not every child is an academic. Not every child loves reading. Some children excel at other things such as sports or doing things with their hands (e.g. building or scaffolding). However, school is set up so that every child is aiming towards the same goal (i.e. passing exams and getting qualifications) when not every child is good at those things.
I do appreciate that there are certain skills and facts which are important for everyone to learn - e.g. I would say it’s important to aim for every child learning to read. But that’s not the issue here.
Wright makes the point that we are effectively setting a certain percentage of children up to fail every year in the school system. Not every child is capable of achieving good grades at GCSE and A-Level - in fact, there are a certain number who won’t get good grades by design. (You can’t have every child getting an A or A*, can you?) We are making those who do not have academic gifts feel like second-class citizens - and that is a terrible thing.
From a Christian perspective, God made everyone different - each one with unique gifts they can contribute to society. Paul speaks about this in 1 Corinthians 12, where he talks about the church:
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
1 Corinthians 12:12-14
All of us have a part to play in God’s world. God made doctors and lawyers, just as he made binmen and scaffolders. Neither is more valuable than the other. Each one is equally made in the image of God and worthy of dignity and respect. One of the passages I’ve come back to many times over the last few years is this from C.S. Lewis’ magnificent sermon, the Weight of Glory:
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
How we treat people really matters, because - as he says - there is no such thing as a “mere mortal”. It should be a sobering thought, especially when it comes to education. If the education system is making those who have different gifts feel like second-class citizens, it is doing a serious injustice to them as human beings made in the image of God.
The fundamental problem here is in those words I used - ‘education system’. Education has become a system, an approach which simply puts young people on the conveyor belt from the ages of 4 through until 16. It pays little attention to their actual personalities or gifts, but simply processes them all as if they were cattle.
This is an issue I’ve come back to several times over the last few years - the ‘powers that be’ in the Western world have been increasingly seeing human beings not as precious individuals, but as cattle who need to be coerced and controlled. It shouldn’t be surprising that the education system is doing exactly the same thing.
Let me move on to the second - but related - aspect of how education is backwards.
Values over knowledge
The British education system as we know it today is focussed on pragmatic things like skills, facts - getting young people what they need to be able to pass exams. As we saw earlier, young people who don’t fit the specific academic mould of school don’t do very well in that system.
When it comes to values, most schools don’t go much beyond the government’s “British values”. The less said about them, the better!
Here, again, I believe schools have got things backwards. Every child is going to have a different set of skills and gifts. Some children might flourish at music and drama; some at sports; some at science; and some at building. The diversity of the modern world is astonishing!
However, there is one thing which binds them all together: all should be following the same values.
Let me give an example. Compare the educational pathways of four different jobs: a GP, a computer programmer, a car mechanic, and a bricklayer. All four of them have very different educational requirements. The first two tend to be more heavily academic, and the last two more practical. A bricklayer doesn’t need to know about all the bones in the human body, in the same way that a programmer doesn’t need to know how to replace a crankshaft.
As an aside: I trained in computer science, and there was — and probably still is — a lot of debate in the community about whether degrees were necessary to do the job of a programmer. Looking back, I think they’re not necessary, and it’s a shame that many companies today require prospective employees to be education to degree level. But maybe we’ll come back to that another day!
There is one thing which binds them together, though, and that is values. You can be a dishonest GP, programmer, mechanic, or bricklayer - or you can be an honest one. You can be kind to your employees or colleagues, or you can be unkind. The list goes on. The point is, values cut across every single career path and every single educational pathway there is. They affect all of us.
From a Christian perspective, this is how all Christians should see the world: our character is much more important than what we do. The prophet Micah has a famous summary of what God requires of us:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
God calls everyone to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him. This is the same whether you’re a doctor or a plumber or anything. Who you are as a person matters much more to God than what you do.
However, if you looked at the education system, you could be forgiven for thinking that the most important thing was not who you are but what you could do. The message of our value being found in academic achievement is reinforced by the very way it’s setup. School doesn’t reward values and character, but exam results. What’s more, schools don’t teach personal values any more — they don’t even expect children to have them any more. Those personal values are almost totally irrelevant to education.
Once again, it seems to me, the education system has become inverted. What God cares most about is who we are as people - what kind of person we are, whether we love God and love our neighbour.
Unfortunately, I think we are seeing the fruits of an education system which is oriented towards academic success rather than personal character development. It struck me the other day that we have never had such a government in our history - people who have such a high opinion of themselves and their own abilities, while at the same time being so utterly mediocre (at best).
We may moan about it, but the truth is this is the result of an education system where someone can feel clever because they got a qualification, but not demonstrate they are someone of integrity and good character. When we train children basically to be Machiavellian, we shouldn’t be surprised when we end up with governments and leaders who are Machiavellian.
Rethinking education?
A while back I read Os Guinness’ book The Magna Carta of Humanity (which I went through on the podcast, as it was so helpful). One of the things he said which struck me was how a revolution can be a good or a bad thing. If the world is the wrong way up, then a revolution is about turning the world the right way up again. I feel that we need something like this in education today.
We need education which:
Looks to the needs of the individual, rather than the needs of the system. I think at the moment the needs of the system are crushing the needs of the individual. Some young people who are academically gifted are able to succeed, but there are many who are cast to one side and treated like second class citizens.
Priorities values over facts and skills. When I need anyone to help me - whether that be a doctor, a plumber, a roofer or whatever - I not only want someone who’s good at the job, but I want someone who has personal integrity. Someone who won’t defraud me or lie to me for their own personal gain. In fact, that is the most important thing. (And, indeed, I think those who have personal integrity are more likely to be good at their jobs.) At the moment, there’s an enormous black hole where values should be in schools - they are almost passed over completely.
I don’t know what such an education would look like - but I do know that it would look very different from the way we are doing things now! Over the coming weeks and months I’m hoping to explore these issues more.
But please do get in touch and let me know your thoughts - are there any other areas where education is backwards? Let me know in the comments below…