What is education? As far as I’m concerned, ticking boxes required by the National Curriculum and stacking up GCSE grades have nothing to do with it. If we take the word “education” back to its most basic Latin origins it means to lead out. Not quite the same as filling thousands of young heads with the same facts and the idea that there is one right answer and one right way to go about things.
Please don’t misunderstand me; I don’t criticise schools or teachers. And I think that schools are the best place for most children to learn, not just because of the acquisition of knowledge and the availability of expert teachers, but because it’s good for kids to know how to fit in to a timetable, face pressure and work to targets. Because that’s what the world is like, for many of us.
Some of us are very different, though: square pegs. And if you try and file a square peg to fit it into a round hole you can’t avoid doing some harm. I, for one, needed to finish my ‘A’ levels working at home. I’m very academic and since then have spent a total of six years at university and gained a respected professional qualification. As a parent, however, I had to make the decision to home educate earlier, when my son was 13. And the decision to take a different path, one that doesn’t include GCSEs and formal lessons.
What I have learned from this, with the help and support of several experts, is that academic achievement is only one aspect of schooling. And if the drive towards academic achievement causes so much stress that a child stops thinking, there is no choice. I would place the ability to think, and to think independently and creatively, above exam results and convention every time.
So it’s really only been in the last few years that I have understood the point of studying English. Towards the end of my own English degree at Cambridge University, I had begun to question seriously whether what I was doing was trivial and self-indulgent. What was the purpose of all this writing and this intimacy with Shakespeare, Milton and TS Eliot, much as I loved it all? Maybe I never voiced my concerns, because certainly no-one told me what I now know: there is a very, very serious point in all this.
Studying English teaches us to think. We learn to exercise our analytical muscles, our critical faculties and our subjective judgment. We learn about ourselves, what we like and what we don’t. As long as we are studying in a culture and environment that encourages freedom, and reassures us that there are no right or wrong answers, we develop independent thought. I’d gained all these wonderful qualities by the time I was 22 but it was some 26 years later that I found out what I had!
So back to education in general and these poor teenagers whose fate is currently the subject of political debate yet again. Good grades are marvellous and especially important if they need them to get to university or for their career (or both). But more important is learning to think. I don’t know enough about the current system to make judgments; I just know that I never hear it talked about. I am sure there are lots of excellent teachers who ensure that, as far as they are able within the confines of the curriculum, their pupils’ minds are stimulated and supported beyond that curriculum, but surely we should all be wanting our teenagers to benefit in this way? Because I can’t join in the competitive parenting discussions about exam results and university entrance, I have to look at my son in a different way. Is he thinking for himself, being creative, making independent judgments? If he is, that’s my job done, and I’m pretty sure we’re well on the way.
