To Miss with Love and Disagreement

Thanks to Victoria's recommendation, I discovered To Miss with Love -- a compelling blog written by an anonymous inner-city school teacher in London. It is so fabulously well-written that I've found myself glued to it. So far, I've read over a year's worth of entries in a single evening. And yet... I can't help but disagree with a lot of what she has to say.

She goes through phases with the points she's trying to make. Just when I think I've established a trend, she'll switch to an entirely different one. First (in reverse chronological order), it was all about private schools. Private schools are automatically better than state schools. They breed children who take their studies seriously (which I know to be false because I attended private school--two of them--and they filled me with contempt) and who feel a sense of entitlement (which is apparently a good thing, because it gives them the confidence it takes to succeed). State schools inevitably fail to produce the same calibre of learners. Even the brightest students are doomed and will never live up to their potential. Most of the rest are on their way to the streets or prison or both.

Apparently this also has something to do with private schools not wasting time on frivolous subjects and creative education. Right. Well, I can sort of see where she's coming from. I'll admit I haven't been here long and my sample is small, especially in terms of mainstream education, but... for all the talk there is around here about creative education, I haven't actually seen it. My hunch is that it's a fad that most teachers don't actually understand and haven't properly implemented. In which case, yes, it probably is a giant waste of time.

Next, we take an interesting glimpse at the difference between students in Britain and India. We learn that "bad behaviour" in India involves wearing trousers with pockets on the outside, whereas Britain struggles with kids who constantly throw things and break into fights in class. Clearly, the fact that Indian children are grateful to go to school while British children feel entitled (wait, where did I see that word before?) to an education can be blamed for this discrepancy. Clearly, the solution is to eliminate state schooling. Nevermind that, say, Canada's education system is primarily public and doesn't see anywhere near the same level of chaos as what you'd find in a typical British school. Nor would you expect to find that same level of behaviour nearly anywhere else in the world, publicly-funded or not. I do think she has a point: We, in the Western world, do take a lot of things for granted. But I think it's far too simplistic to say that public education is at the root of all evil. And what was that again about a sense of entitlement being a good thing??

Finally, I'm on to the part about how children in the UK are not held accountable. Now here's some thinking I can get behind. She's right. You cannot hold a student back in the UK. I'm not even sure whether they get graded on their work (can someone clarify?). I think they just get tested on their abilities at the end of the year; the results of which are meant to reflect more on the school and the teachers than on the students. Why should they care about trying hard in school? It doesn't matter to them until it's too late... after they've already decided that they're not good enough and don't care about going to university, anyway.

Anyhow, for all the arguments I make, I still think To Miss with Love is an excellent blog that all educators should read. I submit that its author is obviously very experienced and a talented teacher, and I no doubt have a lot to learn from her. Debate on these topics is long overdue.