LOOKING BACK at THE PRINCIPLES OF MY EDUCATIONAL BELIEFS

One of my early aspirations as a teacher when I was founding my own independent school, was for all my pupils to achieve university entrance if they chose; without state examinations.

I recognised that university was not necessarily the right direction for all my students, but securing a university place at the end of a private education was important to those graduating from my school.

Thirty-one years on since founding the school in 1991, all graduates (from the school) who applied for undergraduate study, achieved university entrance using my internal assessment system. (The principle of avoiding such government testing until our students took their place in university, was applauded, both by universities and Ofsted).

It was not only academic standards that The Acorn School school excelled in, but artistic, practical, musical, physical and moral education were encouraged offered to each pupil at the school. My main task in educating the children at the school, was to create free-thinking, upright and morally centred young people ready to take their place in the world. That remains the principle of the school.

My old friend and mentor, Samuel Dubrovic, who would be one hundred and fifty years old today, once gave me a great pearl of wisdom, which I followed. ‘What education must strive for in the future my boy, is morality’.

In my school you would see children who smiled, who loved learning, and who made free-choices, to value themselves, value one another and value all people. In the school you would find the very best of the family values of our society, and the vision of Sam Dubrovic lives strongly inside the walls of The Acorn School today.

I was listening to Barry Humphries on ‘Desert Island Discs’ in 2005, and was greatly inspired by his life story. When he mentioned his education, I cast my mind back to the late ‘fifties when I was at school. Only now do I remember and recognise the high all-round standards in all areas that I was fortunate enough to receive when I was at school, and how moral my education in a state Technical High School and Grammar school had been, considering the struggles of the world at that time.

Those days of school bliss have long since gone, and I am greatly disappointed in the achievements of the government educational system today.

Our once great nation can no longer be proud of its attainments in the educational sphere, and the entire process of education has been watered down and is failing our young people. I blame the examination system which I feel is unable to assess the children it is supposed to be assessing sensibly for their post-school life. It is archaic, simplified to the extreme to meet large numbers, and is actually quite meaningless. It is centred on behaviourism instead of humanism, when looked at closely, and features children competing against children for grades and apparent ultimate success, but is creating a nation of anxious children who may not be able to fit into that ‘state-promoted’ assessment system.

Knowledge is absolutely no use at all unless it becomes part of the human being, of their inner being, not learned for an examination, to be lost afterwards!

Learning to pass an examination is a waste of time as a priority after the traditional educational process has been followed, but it is still what the end of children’s education is centred on! Testing and assessment by a raft of very different examiners who are skilled at box-ticking and residing in a system which is not at all fair, but through the system cannot possibley honour each and every child!

Just before I sat down to write this article my doorbell rang. (My home at that time was an old generic Victorian stone school-building that had been the place of education for children of the local area for two hundred years. My drawing room had been the school’s main classroom for all that time, where a teacher, and a part-time pianist for the daily hymns, which was the usual regular starting activity then, with perhaps the occasional moral story told by the headteacher, and a single class numbering over forty children from five to fifteen, were taught).

The door was ajar so I shouted to the bell-ringer to enter, not knowing who might walk into my ‘castle’ and deserve my writing.

A northern accent responded in a rather nervous and startled manner. I rose from my study, took a few steps towards the door and saw a young man with a shaved head and a blank-face, with his eyes set deep down in the dark sockets of his very round, small head.

He was holding an identification card, which he declared was because he was on prison release. It became immediately clear that here was a poor fellow, ready for my ‘never before received’ welcome! He had clearly become the victim of our modern society; drugs, alcohol, fags, sex and violence.

Henry said he had two beautiful young daughters who meant the world to him, and I could see that look in his eyes that confirmed his love for them.

He said he could neither read nor write, so I asked him what he wanted. He said he was on a ‘Government Release Scheme’ and had to prove himself as part of the programme, and had been given a task to carry out which merited some form of formal payment, to make sure he had the ability to earn. After listening to his story, I was gently fuming, and deeply upset.

Many young people are let down by our society, and in particular the education system, designed by ministers who often haven’t got the faintest idea about the ‘real’ ‘kingdom of childhood’, many of who are creating the system, some who had received a private, public school education!

After parting, I heard a few chosen expletives from the mouth of this rather majestic and unexpected visitor. I shook his hand, wished him well and he left, ironically with great respect, , who I got to know and honour, shedding a few tears. He reluctantly dragged himself out of my house and onto the main road from whence he had come. He paused, and as a passing car hooted at him, quite aggressively, he turned towards me and said, with full conviction ‘you should be a politician, mate!’

So many young people with great potential, once babes in its mother’s arms, lose their way in an unguided and un-centred, quite inhuman behaviouristic education system. There seems to be little hope for so many, and I see reform as the main task of our society, not vilification and judgment of children!

NB. My opinion of the EYFS (Early Years foundation Stage) government requirements, which I see as taking away from parents the right to choose the education they wish for their children, is that it seriously flawed.

Although I have been working well with my local county education body and listening to some of their advice for many years, I have reservations about what the government is trying to do to control every parents’ right to have their children educated how they choose.

I urge every child-loving adult in the land to fight the ever-changing legislation vigorously, which many do, and give them the human right to enable their children to receive a child-centred, loving education, as a human gift for their lives.