School finished today for children at state schools here in Greece. A whole three months off for them. We are fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood that provides all day activities and programmes up until the end of July. That will be an enormous help to stave off the boredom children feel when they are stuck in the city for the summer. Especially when many of their friends go off to stay with grandparents in their villages or on the islands. It is impossible to find enough child-centred activities in Athens so these programmes are a great opportunity for our kids to get out of the house and be with their friends (and make new ones) and have some fun during the holidays.
They also received their grades today. It is always a time of anxiety for both parents and children. I do not believe that my child should be graded every term, at such a young age but this is the system we are in, so we go with the flow. My son did not do well this year in terms of his marks. One reason for this is that he didn’t study! Well, he did a bit, but he gets so bored having to learn things by heart so he makes excuses to try and avoid doing the work. I don’t blame him. It is boring. I don’t tell him that of course but I hate to see him struggling, not through lack of brains but because of the methods of teaching.
Give him a project to do and he’ll spend hours on it. He came home from school a couple of weeks ago, after his music teacher had brought various instruments from around the world into the classroom, and decided he wanted to make a rainmaker. It was not homework, he just felt inspired. He took his project into school the next day and his friends were so impressed that they all made their own.I felt that he learned more in that two or three hours of working out how to make it than he learned in the whole of the last term.
I have had years of experience working with children and teenagers that are “failing” at school. They would participate in various programmes/projects in the arts. I worked with children who were on the verge of being excluded from school, many them with learning difficulties. What I found was that in the vast majority of cases, when they were given the freedom to be creative, to improvise, to express themselves; they were exceptional. Not just average. Exceptional. Smart, funny, interesting, talented, unique and exceptional.
Children don’t fail school. Schools fail them. I know it’s a question of economics. It’s cheaper to have one teacher for 30-35 children than it is to have small classrooms with individual programmes for children that need extra help. It is cheaper to stick the kid who can’ read at the back of the class out of the way, than it is to bring in a specialist to help. It is cheaper to expel the “problem” children than to involve social services, child psychologists and other specialists
It is cheaper in the short term but what is the real cost?
One boy from my sons class will be repeating the year. He “failed”. His situation is difficult. He is the youngest of seven children with both parents working all the hours they can to make enough money to make ends meet. He has no parent at home to make sure he has done his work and the school cannot provide the extra help he needs. So he will suffer the humiliation of seeing his friends move up a year while he stays back. He will learn at the age of ten, that he is a failure. He will learn that he is not as smart as his friends. He will learn that he does not fit in with what is “normal” How will this help him in his education and in his life.
It won’t. He will be forever playing catch-up. If he is lucky to make it to the end of high school. I doubt he will without real assistance. Wouldn’t it be better to intervene now ? Before we are picking up the pieces of another child “failure”
[Aside: This is not only a problem in Greece. This is happening in schools everywhere. The problem is much worse in Britain as I am sure it is in America. I just think Greece has a chance to make reforms before it is too late. Before it ends up in the mess we have experienced in Britain]
dont know if 10 pupil classrooms would help
or if teachers handling only ten pupils a year
would be better prepared with seminars
and knowledge ,,,…….
BUT for sure i hear many people ,,older people
when there cursing their luck
having gone to poor school systems
or victims of such,
not having reached their full potential
and remebering exactly who is at fault,,,
so basically youre article , catches the truth , before and after.
Yep, it’s happening in America. No Child Left Behind has caused a mess, according to a number of people I know who have worked in america’s public schools. It’s a shame. People do not realize that the educational system often only measures and encourages a certain kind of learning and development, and not others. And people really don’t realize that testing is not always an accurate measure of abilities. In the real world, you do not have to memorize nearly as much as you do in school; you can always look it up. In the real world, nobody gives you a limited amount of time to write down what you know.