Now it’s the angry teacher’s turn

Dubai: Attending the cinema in the UAE can be an enjoyable evening of popcorn, world-class seating and of course considerable stress. Invariably, someone, somewhere in the theatre has a conversation. Loudly. This happened to me recently when two gentlemen entered the cinema and sat several seats away from each other. It didn’t take long before the conversation flowed between them. Loudly. I politely pointed out to them that the film had started and I’d prefer to listen to it rather than their conversation. They stopped, but clearly only to take a deep breath. The conversation continued. Once again, I politely pointed out their indiscretion. They moved closer together on the row. The conversation, as you would expect when people huddle together in a cinema, got louder. I’d had enough at this point and admonished them using the best teacher voice I could muster. “I am trying to watch the film. I did not pay to listen to you talking!”

The response was deafening from one of the gentlemen: “Now YOU are talking!!!” he chided. The logic was immediately effective, though utterly misguided and wrong.

My cinema experience reminds me of many parents whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years. They are the ones who arrive to parent meetings with a different view of the evening compared to the teacher’s. It’s akin to the gentlemen above wanting to chat through a film when you have a different idea of how the evening should go. You see, the problem is this: many parents come to talk at the teacher, not with the teacher. They’ve come to talk through the film, not watch it. They’ve read the review and decided they don’t like this aspect or that aspect and they are going to tell the film what they think, how the director has gotten it all wrong for the main action scene, how the composer should’ve used strings not wind instruments. How the teacher should be teaching the three R’s!

And why shouldn’t they talk at the teacher? After all, most parents have been through a school themselves, therefore they know exactly how it should be done. This is the heart of the matter. They know how teaching should be done. Like being told in the cinema, “Now YOU are talking!” it is a difficult logic to rebuke because it is possibly valid. Nevertheless it is utterly misguided and wrong.

Those of us lucky to have gone through an educational system have met our fair share of good and not-so-good teachers. We know what we learned and we believe we know what was a good lesson and why. We know what worked for us and how excellent teachers inspired us. We know what a bad teacher could do to a child’s self-esteem and we know of friends who possibly never recovered from being bullied by a teacher. We know that study, homework, spelling tests, sport, good discipline and respect for your elders were part of a good rounded education. We’ve been through the system, we know what we are talking about. This is what we think, those of us lucky enough to have had an education. Unfortunately, we are so misguided, mainly because the landscape of education today is nothing like the one we experienced.

Parents, and teachers it should be noted, who believe they know all there is to know about education just because they’ve been educated are using a misguided logic. For example, when we leave the barber or hairdresser, most of us do not walk out believing we can now cut other people’s hair. Certainly not our children’s!

This analogy is exactly the same with regard to education: they’ve been to school, they know what works and what doesn’t, they could easily teach that class. If we reapply the analogy of the hairdresser, many of these parents would admonish me here by pointing out that, at least, we all enter the salon knowing what style we want. This is true of education and it is a correct view. We all know what style of education we want for our children: that’s healthy. The problem with the style many parents want is that it is usually the educational equivalent of the mullet: outdated, old fashioned and wrong.

The process of teaching is a complicated and constantly evolving set of knowledge, skills and, crucially, interaction with students and parents. It is certainly impossible for me here to get into every aspect of how complicated teaching has become, but allow me to show you some differences between old style teaching and learning (let’s call it ‘mullet schooling’) and modern teaching methods.

‘Mullet schooling’

Those of us of a certain age, will remember sitting in rows, heads down, writing, writing and writing some more. It never did us any harm and look at our writing skills now. We are brilliant at writing, aren’t we? All because of those rows of seats, all that copying text, all that writing the question as well as the answer. Full sentence answers too, please. We are great communicators as a result, aren’t we?

This is classic, ‘mullet schooling’. Old fashioned, wrong and distasteful. It produced students who, according to employers in many studies, cannot think for themselves, cannot communicate orally and who cannot work in teams. All because they were sitting head down, writing and copying and scribing, while ignoring the child beside them. Well, at least they could spell, unlike like today’s students. Perhaps they could spell better, but at what cost to other, higher level skills?

It is not implausible to suggest this type of learning has contributed to producing the current economic woes of the planet; the increasing obesity epidemic; the rise in learning disorders; the inability of many people to communicate with others face to face; violent crime; the atomisation of individuals; the collapse of family values and many other modern day ills.

Modern, progressive and outstanding teachers are committed to teaching the skills of creative thinking, successful collaboration, community and personal awareness, increased speaking skills and working as effective teams. There is a lot more to the modern-day English lesson than good grammar and excellent spelling. (If not, there should be). I am not suggesting grammar and spelling are not important. However, the modern teacher has much more on her plate than just the three R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic).

But the modern parent doesn’t know this. The modern parent went to a mullet school, was taught by a teacher who had a mullet, and that teacher exalted the mullet as the apex of educational achievement. (I’m afraid the analogy is taking a life of its own, but I hope you get my point.)

Alternatively, modern teachers have to produce learners who can speak for themselves, work well with others and think creatively, as study after study has shown, those are the learners who succeed in life. These things don’t come easily and require lessons that are: engaging, interesting, involve carefully regulated measures of individual and group work, require students to think outside the box, learn new information, present that information in writing or orally or both, apply the information to different settings, interrogate the information for themselves, require students to teach each other, require healthy doses of movement, play, music, video, audio, ICT and on and on and on. I hope you can appreciate how complicated modern teaching and learning can be. What you can be sure of is this: if your child has a teacher who works at this level, during the next meeting with them, talk with them, not at them. They know far more about what’s right educationally for your child than you do.

But no, cry the mullet parents. My child can’t spell. He hardly writes anything in his books. He doesn’t get much homework. Why isn’t she learning about this history topic or that geography topic? They don’t do enough tests! Why can’t my child multiply? Why is my seven-year-old learning simultaneous equations? Bring back Latin! (Michael Gove, the current UK Education Minister is possibly the most famous mullet-schooled person today. He’d love everyone learning Latin again).

A personal favourite of mine was the parent who met me, ashen-faced and worried. He was very concerned about his son’s education. There was a problem at home. The parent couldn’t understand it. The problem was simultaneously a compliment and a conundrum. You see, his son was enjoying school for the first time. What he never said, I inferred, was that school wasn’t like that in his time, so I had to be doing something wrong.

(The Angry Teacher teaches primary classes at a Dubai school)