An
Open Reply to the Secretary of State for Education
Dear Secretary of State,
The Value of Real Literacy
Thank
you for your letter on my retirement in appreciation of my contributions
to education. Although this was clearly an official note, it is just as
clearly kindly inspired, and I am grateful for it. But soldiers, as you
will know, are invariably de-briefed after a mission, and since I was once
a soldier, I hope you will wish to know what I have learnt in my twenty-five
years representing - as I supposed I was selected to do - the best of British
teaching practice in the official European Schools of the European Union.
Most obvious is the anxiety everywhere in Europe
that education is not returning the academic results expected, whilst at
the same time a whole spectrum of anti-social tendencies is undiminished
or is increasing: dishonesty; aggression; lack of compassion; pressure for
conformity; distrust of authority; hatred of schools; vandalism - even arson
and murder. The most heretical question that can be asked is whether education
is not just a victim of these trends. Could it actually create them?
Since I have become respected elsewhere in Europe
as an authority in this field, recently the University of Oerebro in Sweden
asked me to write a paper explaining why I think this is so. The paper will
be published in Europe early next year. Here is its gist.
The fundamental problem is that whatever approach
teachers have been taught and are encouraged to follow, in many classrooms
other factors: numbers, preparing for tests, management or parental criticism,
and other pressures, cause literacy to be reduced from a complex transaction
to a one-way process. Teaching becomes instruction. Teachers instruct; pupils
learn by copying their instructions - and the responsibility of the teachers
- and their schools - then ends. The instruction has been given. It is now
the responsibility of the pupils whether they understand it or not.
It took me much of my career to understand the reason
why most schools depend mainly on this process. It has evolved, entirely
unobtrusively and even without any conscious complicity, as the simplest
method of avoiding blame. But to learn from instruction pupils must comprehend
their teacher's use of language. Those who succeed in this, naturally find
it completely satisfying. When they are older, even as professors of education,
they tend only to ask how the instruction may be improved. They rarely ask
whether instruction, which has suited them, suits everyone equally well.
Clearly, it does not. Instruction benefits pupils
who already know how language is used, both carefully and thoughtfully,
to communicate ideas and emotions. With this advantage, in any class they
quickly form the first division. They also soon learn to be selfish. Sharing
their understanding reduces their advantage.
A far greater number are less fortunate; some are
from homes where there is rarely any real conversation at all. Intellectually
their handicap is crippling. But they soon find that so long as they never
confess not to understand; and if they also exclude from their circle of
companions all who are more openly perplexed, their appearance of understanding
is still rewarded. By thus combining uncritical obedience, dishonesty and
selfishness, they form a strong second division.
The third division - not always the smallest - neither
understands, nor can obey, nor can even reproduce results well enough to
continue. They will soon be told they have failed. They do not know why.
They resent, almost equally, all those who have succeeded and all those
who rejected them; they despise their schools and they hate the teachers
who have stripped them of dignity. It would be a serious mistake, however,
to believe that this group is helpless. Their chief weapon is disruption.
By disrupting the lesson they can slow down, even prevent, the progress
of others who are leaving them behind; by challenging and distracting their
teacher they can expect some mischievous support from allies in the either
of the other two divisions. Just two or three individuals of this nature
in a class, not necessarily the same two or three at any one time, can prevent
any instruction from being effective. This is how teaching can be made to
fail completely.
Children do not want this kind of treatment. Like
victims of a war they never wanted, and have never understood, this corrosive
corruption of their values: of honesty, compassion, innocence and dignity,
all of which they may once have believed in, all combine to produce the
spiritual sickness we find almost everywhere today and for which careless
sex, alcohol, and drugs are the most common palliatives.
It should be know, must be known, that there is
an astonishingly simple alternative to all of these personal, social and
moral disasters. Learning through discussion requires an understanding that
literacy is not a one-way trade. It is highly complex. It consists of networks
of associations, built up in individual minds over long periods of time
through critical discussion of ideas and emotions. The source in the classroom
is not the teacher. It is the text-book The teacher is no longer to be feared
or resented. Instead there is a textbook, which the teacher helps them to
learn to consult at any time. First they must learn what real literacy means.
Everything they need to know is read aloud by them,
one after the other, out of the textbook. "And what do you think that
means?" the teacher asks any pupil of every sentence; and every answer,
when it comes and however hesitant, must be in a pupil's own words. Real
mental effort is required of everyone, in listening, thinking and speaking.
In this way the meaning of the text is extracted, discussed - it is literally
re-constructed - by the class thinking and working together. When the result
finally satisfies them, and their teacher, they choose exercises to test
their understanding; attempt and mark them. If necessary, they also correct
them. The teacher, whilst still the necessary judge of their efforts, is
no longer an executioner to be feared.
Working together, slowly and carefully connecting
ideas, children learn to enjoy the difficulty of co-operation; the fruits
of being patient with each other, of being respectful of others' effort
to understand. This is also how democracy should work. But there is here
also, I think, a cure for the spiritual malaise mentioned earlier. Spiritual
reality has long been a matter of indifference to science - but to describe
it most simply, it is always about sharing understanding. Spiritual growth
takes place when we learn how to share what really matters with others.
And this is also science.
Colin
Hannaford,
10 Marlborough Court, Oxford, England OX2 0QT
