The Pendulum Swings

Education swings like a pendulum do….

There was a time when segregation and separation were seen as a bad thing, comprehensive schools were intended to right that wrong, now a plethora of special interest schools are positively encouraged, in the name of ‘choice’. The educational pendulum whooshes past…

When the Primary Literacy Strategy was introduced at the end of the 90’s the mantra was handed down about the way literacy HAD to be taught with group carousels, strict timings, rigid adherence to the word/sentence/text level work regime (all with dodgy new interpretations and redefinitions of English syntax) a return to the lesson based approach ditched in the 60’s … Whoosh….

The whole or real book movement had swept away much of the grammar focussed learning which had held reading back for so long (ancient whoosh....). KS2 texts for the most part were now to be studied in extracts, giving rise to a surge, a frenzy of publishing in the educational book market, with whole school sets of courses designed to meet the needs of the literacy hour. Upon inspection of a few of these I was amazed to see a rigid, repeated structure, under various grammatical and text type labels: a passage of text from some worthy literary or other source, comprehension questions, exercises on spelling and grammar loosely based on a feature of the text passage, some ideas for writing or other activities – jaw-dropping, take away the colour illustrations and photos and these were the very same books my junior school was using in the 1950’s! Whoosh….

The Janet and John type reading scheme books so sneered at for 20 years are now reappearing as part of an expensive RML revolution. Whoosh….

Extended writing disappeared with the Literacy strategy but it was quickly noticed that the Strategy made no mention of writing anything longer than a few sentences. Big Writing suddenly appears, like a new idea, Whoosh….

Trying to follow the handwriting pendulum is liable to cause you a seizure: necessary? useful? redundant? gives sense of pride? stifles creativity? pen? pencil? which colour? do we correct it in all work? Whoosh….

Does marking, including grammar and spelling undermine the confidence of the writer or provide instant feedback? Whoosh…. or should that one be the rapid boing-boing of a pin ball machine?

Milk….no milk…..milk… Whoosh….

Should children explore the world through a series of exploratory exercises in a structured but open environment, using their natural curiosity and instinctive wisdom or be led by the nose to a variety of knowledge troughs, forced to slurp up whatever has been deemed of value by a higher power? Whoosh….

Rote learning of times tables, pages of sums, endless focus on abstract mathematical skills were widely replaced by topic based maths in the 80’s, maths had to be integrated with other learning to make it meaningful to the learner…Whoosh…., then re-whoosh…. the Numeracy strategy puts all of that back on the menu, reinforced with medium and short term (unit) plans, actually backed up by resources, that looks pretty settled ……… Oh, no, everybody duck!! re-re-whoosh…. the strategy is being over-prescriptive, teachers are slavishly following the plans, afraid to adapt them for their own classes (where on earth could silly teachers have got the idea that they would be in trouble if they didn’t do what the government told them to do, in the order they were told, at exactly the time they were told?).

Discrete lessons, integrated curricula, topic based learning ….. back and forth the pendulum swings, each parabola spawning a new generation of experts, people who have developed an in-vogue teaching style, system or philosophy in their school and are employed to spread it around.

Perhaps the image of the pendulum is not as potent as that of a deranged snake coiled around itself, poked by many masters wishing to prod it in different directions, for different reasons. The snake writhes and wriggles, driven by the increasing demands made of it. It hisses and occasionally strikes but to little effect. None of the tormentors and especially not the snake have a clue what the outcome will be.