What about English and Maths?
If test results are all we measure, then the lives of young people will be inevitably narrow.
Whenever I talk about ways to improve young people’s lives or educate them differently, there’s one question which always comes up. ‘But does it improve their scores in English and Maths?’.
I’ve seen extracurricular activities, fewer exclusions, family interventions, giving young people a voice, more engaged fathers, even trips to the museum, all assessed by this metric. Whenever anyone tries to instigate change, the question is raised ‘but what happened to their exam results?’.
Everything about a child’s life in terms of whether it improves school results or not, and any intervention is judged by that benchmark.
This means inevitably that children’s lives will be limited, for it is an inalienable truth that an efficient way to raise test scores is to focus relentlessly on those tests and to do whatever you need to do in order to compel young people to comply. If exam results are only thing that you measure, then you won’t see the damage elsewhere.
Imagine if we did the same to adults. Imagine you wanted to join a choir, or run a marathon, or even get married and have children, but you had to justify it by your productivity at work. ‘Will it improve your promotion prospects?’, would be the question you’d be asked before you made any decision. And if your performance at work dropped for some reason, people would suggest that you should let the choir or the family go, as you need to refocus your efforts on what really matters.
What would that do to your mental health? Would it lead to a fulfilling life? And if not, why do we accept it for our young people?
I don't want just to repeat my moan about maths (or any other curriculum subject) not actually being the most important thing in the world, as I wrote in a previous comment, so I would like to comment on another factor that plays a role here. Not directly relevant to Naomi's post, with which I heartily agree, but still perhaps worth mentioning.
I mean the benchmarks themselves, the school results.
Let's assume, just for a second and for the sake of the argument, that chasing after good marks were, in fact, a sensible goal. (I wrote "just for a second", don't panic!)
Well, to be sensible, this goal would have to be backed up by robust, verifiable testing methodology, and the testing would have to be very carefully conducted. Are either of these the case? I think not. Over twenty years ago I wrote a system-critical book about current mainstream education (which is unfortunately still as relevant today as it was then (and incidentally still available)), and while considering the whole business of marking, testing, benchmarking etc. I started listing all the things that can go wrong in those processes and lead to falsified, perhaps dangerous results. I stopped after having found 23 completely different factors, any one of which can result in an invalid assessment. Remember, this has nothing to do with the question as to whether one *ought* to assess, but whether one *can* assess.
Well, one can't, in my opinion, at least not remotely so as to satisfy even the most rudimentary of scientific standards. And deep down we all know that. So why do we as a society keep trying to do it?
In individual persons such behaviour would appear so dysfunctional that someone would soon call the police or a doctor.
Yes - I love how you've switched it on it's head like that to make a great point 👍 I do wonder though if it has something to do with people believing that once you are an adult, you would have the ability to focus on more activities simultaneously, where as children may not be able to?