CM Conference Notes: Science of Relations vs. Examinable Content

John Thorley's first session was a talk about Charlotte Mason's early years as a teacher, with a few people reading letters from the time period from and to CM (Deani Van Pelt read the letters that CM wrote.) That was fascinating, but I listened to that session without taking notes. So, if that sounds interesting, you should watch the childlightusa.org website, as they will probably be making CD's or audio available.

These notes are from his second session. John Thorley lives in England and has was the Principal of the Charlotte Mason College at Ambleside. When I met him three years ago, he was working part-time at the Armitt Museum, which houses CM's library of letters and books.

Two movies, the Dead Poets Society, and History Boys, illustrate the debate in education, pitting a charismatic teacher against the educational establishment. The public is aware of this debate, and when it comes to movies, they sympathize with the teacher (but when it comes down to it, most parents are only concerned with test scores). In England, the public is rebelling against the testing system (England has mandated tests at age 7, 11 and 14). The debate is against policies that include testing, and the thinking behind that approach to education. CM is child-focused, but this kind of system is about government control. Can there be a symbiosis where both exist together?

Education is the Science of Relations. A child has natural relationships with a number of things, so we give him lots of things to help him make valid as many of his potential interests as possible by exposing them to him. Knowledge isn't data, knowledge is our relationship with the world. All that there is, all that there was, all that will ever be - that's what should be included in our curriculum. That's a concept that's dynamic, not static. Children aren't vessels to be filled, but beings who will develop relationships with the world. Every child is entitled to a full curriculum. Math shouldn't be the focus of a curriculum, science shouldn't be the focus; the child should be the focus of the curriculum. Children need to be actively involved in making knowledge 'their own.' (Children can't learn passively; that's why lectures and TV don't teach well. The child's mind needs to be engaged and participating. That's why narration is part of the CM method.)

1967 - the Plowden Report on primary schools said that education was good, especially in the early years. It said that the style of educational system was working very well, and was providing a full, comprehensive education. By the 1970's, reaction against child-centered education resulted in Black Paper studies, which reported that standards were slipping and recommended a focus on the 3R's. In our era of discoveries, they said, science and technology need more focus and kids need to be better at math. Thus, school was extended from age 14 to 16 to teach more science and math. This movement has progressed as society gets more technical. Trends in government policy that started innocently enough took on a life of their own and snowballed, becoming interlinked as one policy led to another. But all of them are based on questionable theories.

1987 - there were nine subjects in England's national curriculum, and specified methods saying how they were to be taught. In this new policy, curriculum would be reviewed and updated regularly. With the advent of a national curriculum, there was no more educational freedom. As a new policy, parents were given the option of choice to decide where their children attended school. (The truth is, parents had always been able to choose before.) This sounds good in theory, because nobody will choose to go to a bad school, so bad schools will close while good schools flourish. But in practice, people who live in small, rural towns have only one school to choose from unless they want to move or commute long distances to have city school options. And how can a parent know which school is better? So - new policy - it was decided that schools needed to have a Standard Attainment Test (SAT) so that parents could make choices based on objective test scores. League tables published scores and rated schools based on those scores. A new policy determined that math, science and English comprehension would be tested. These six-hour tests would need to be easy to grade, so they needed to be objective: fill-in-the-blank. SAT's required that certain skills (the testable ones) should be taught since skills, not knowledge, would be tested. Geography, history, culture are neglected.

This new system had undesirable results. Narrow tests mean that school teach narrow "skills" and leave no time for anything besides English, math and science. Now the government wants all schools to adopt a "synthetic phonics" program which improves individual word recognition without helping comprehension or writing. They don't understand that phonics isn't a magic pill to teach reading.

Does all of this help parents to make a school choice? Schools that have special needs children might be great schools, but they will test badly because the special needs students will bring the score average down. Small schools suffer when results are averaged out, because one child's low score carries more weight. Parents can't even make sense of the SAT results. So why is it still used? And what would happen if a small school tested well and then suddenly had a bunch of new students enrolling? What if small village schools decline and die? Where will village children go to get educated?

The fact is, even with new, scientific improvements, test results for reading are the same as they were in 1957. But today's children are stressed and labelled based on their test scores at age 7. The system of testing is expensive - 50,000 pounds per school per year. An entire industry (the test writers) lobby for more tests. But children don't benefit from these tests or from more government control.

Scotland doesn't do SAT's, and their students do better on tests than British children. Wales rebelled against the testing system and doesn't do them.

But schools do need to be accountable. If SAT's aren't the way to be sure that students are learning, then how do we show that schools are doing their job? Can Charlotte Mason's vision be combined with public accountability?

Maybe existing policies could be used, but according to methods that teachers approved of.

Governments have a right to know that a broad curriculum is being offered, and that the quality of teaching is good. Perhaps a national curriculum could have guidelines that are reviewed, with teachers involved in the reviewing process. Teaching inspectors need to be experienced teachers themselves who are specially trained to recognize good teaching even when it differs from their own style. They should be allowed to offer advice to help teachers teach better. Test results shouldn't be publicly published; schools should be the ones to publicize their scores along with explanations about any extenuating circumstances that might have affected their results. Tests should be brand new every year. Schools should have a broad curriculum, and then test themselves against national standards. Then schools would be able to experiment with different teaching methods and find something that works.

(complete list of conference posts here.)