Trevor Baylis
Was listening on the radio tonight about kids - many the same age as my daughter - talking about the stress of sitting the 11 plus in order to get onto a grammar school, and how their parents (well the better off ones) pay tutors to help them make it through.
It’s the type of program you switch on when nipping out in the car, yet stays with you long after the journeys over.
First off it felt a bit odd listening and making judgments about schools, kids, parents and tutors as my two kids get an hour a week extra as both struggle to read (like I did, only it was Hull county council who paid for me). Luckily their booster education gets paid for by two people buying a book on this site every week, meaning perhaps, because some one once took the time to help me with extra lessons, and so in turn help me write said book, my kids should end up with a reading age that matches theirs, something I never quite managed!
But it got me thinking about schools and education, and what it really means.
I have a lot of dealings with education, both private and state, as well as teachers, universities, even military education and exam boards, so it see it from many sides.
What I know is the state schools I visit - just like the hospitals - are far from the run down and shambolic institutions that the tabloids very effectively run down (if there was any institution in this country which was genuinely shambolic, shabby and lead to genuine misery of the soul and moral of this nation it’s the tabloids).
What I find is that these schools are staffed - in the most part - by bright, motivated and enthusiastic teachers, teaching assistants and helpers, all who take helping these kids seriously. BUT they can only go so far. And to be frank the majority of kids WILL have very mundane, sad and shitty lives, with poorly paid, and unrewarding jobs. The schools can’t stop this, because this is the social order. Some will win X-Factor or the Lottery, but 99.9999% won’t. All teachers and parents can do is try their hardest to help them hit the ground running.
And this is my point: making children feel like failures makes them failures - well at least for one of the most important formative phases of their lives. I’m 37 and I’m only just getting to grips with the possibilities open to me, at 11 I hadn’t a clue, but know without doubt there was no way on this earth I’d have passed my 11+ and got into a fancy grammar school. I’m lucky, but perhaps that luck is in my genes; being far too single minded and stubborn for my own good (somehow I always had confidence that I had more to give then I was able at the time).
What we should tell kids is that life will offer up a series of tests, and the passing each one will help you immensely, yet at the same time guarantee them nothing. Passing your 11+, getting into the ‘better’ school, getting great exam results, these are golden tickets, but they only guarantee entrance. It’s what you do when you’re in the chocolate factory that makes the difference.
For any parents out there here is the advice from someone who knows no better than you, but who has seen a lot of kids, and teachers, and schools, and millionairs and down and outs:-
Make your kids love themselves as much as you love them, and see in themselves the same boundlessness of their possibility that you do.
Tell them that failure makes genuine success, and without it that success is hollow.
And if they feel that life has let them down, take them up a mountain and sleep on its summit to remind them that the it’s what you’ve seen and done, your thoughts, and your actions, and who you ARE that unfolds your life; not a spreadsheet on a government database of exam results.
And if that dosn’t work then sit them down and listen to the amazing Trevor Baylis - who proves that it’s YOU who knows best.
— December 12, 2008 11:06 AM
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