At some faraway point in the future, humanity will look back at what we call schools today and shudder in horror. To them, grouping children according to age will seem arbitrary, seating them in rooms for the entire day will seem constricting, instruction as a method of imparting knowledge will seem idiotic and ineffective and the assumption that schooling is good for all children and that it must be compulsory will seem like a violation of human rights.
I hated school till I was in the 11th standard - and I was in one of the ‘good’ schools (more on this later). A typical day consisted of paralysing fear punctuated by moments of dread and foreboding. Maths was the worst because I was bad at it: the few moments before the teacher entered were the worst, most dreadful of my life. I would pray with all my being that he couldn’t make it that day, that he had hurt his foot, even that his baby was ill. When he did enter always a minute early, I would turn all that energy that was going towards those failed prayers inwards, trying to make my body either disappear into nothingness or disapparate to some quiet forest where I could just sit around and watch things.
I hated maths because I was bad at it. This meant I would get things wrong constantly. Getting things wrong is embarrassing and humiliating especially when you’re a child and especially when your classmates can see and hear the teacher telling you how wrong you are and the disappointed look on his face (even though they never did this publicly).
Funnily enough, when I was sent for extra maths classes because of bad marks, I did well enough for that teacher to tell me I didn’t need the extra classes.
So it wasn’t the subject itself that I found hard: it was the psychological torture that came with the subject being ‘taught’ in the way that it was taught.
Students who were good at maths, or who were psychologically stronger than I was, weren’t troubled by maths class. The ones who were good sailed through with smiles and pats on the back. The ones who weren’t but were psychologically mature and tough (why were they like this and why was I the opposite?) shrugged and laughed it off.
But the ‘weak’ students, who were bad at math and psychologically tender, like me? It was torture for us. And no attempt was ever made by the teacher to help us: no analysis of why we were struggling, no questions of what we were struggling with, nothing beyond marking our sums wrong and telling us the right way to do it.
And I don’t blame him now (I hated him then): this is the system he was part of. How can he give attention to low-return students individually when he has a class of 52? Individual attention is an impossibility in the modern school system. And individual attention is the only way of helping struggling children.
The origins of modern education lie in the Middle Ages where it was exclusively used for religious instruction. And the age-wise segregation of children is from 18th century Germany. So why are we still following these archaic rules? Who said that children should be grouped according to age? Why not interests? Why not by personality? Why not by choice?
The answer both simple and horrifying is for the convenience of adults. It’s easy to make groups based on age. It’s difficult to make groups based on interests. Besides, why should we care about children’s interests? We know what’s good for them right?
I mentioned earlier that I was in one of the ‘good’ schools. Within the constraints of the education system, what makes one school good and one school bad? I think the answer is freedom. Schools that leave kids alone for longer periods of time, are better schools.
That is also what made me like school in the 11th and 12th standard: we were seen as ‘seniors’ and as seniors we were left alone, mostly, to do our own thing. And even though the 12th standard involved more academic work, since we got to choose our subjects and were relatively free, it was a far better experience than the 10th standard.
Unsupervised time is a very important, possibly the most important, part of a child’s growing up. In schools, this translates to unsupervised interaction between children and the more a school allows for it, the better it is.
The human mind is not a bucket, said Karl Popper. But our entire education system seems to think it is. You cannot shovel information into a human mind and expect any kind of knowledge to establish itself. Knowledge grows by problem-solving and until we recognize that children should have autonomy and be left alone to creatively solve problems, our schools will be the stuff of children’s nightmares.
Brilliant.
Beautifully written. As an educator, I know exactly what you mean.