Training | 2009.07.05
Cadenzas in a curriculum | Rebecca Front
My school days were lit up by two wonderful teachers. Would there be room for them today?
Goodbye, Mr Spitz. An obituary in the Guardian, with a photo of a round-faced, sharp-eyed elderly man, reminded me that I hadn\'t seen him since my school days. Heinz Spitz never actually taught me, but he always took time in the corridors of my school to chat to me about theatre, and his unpatronising enthusiasm helped to foster a sense that acting was an achievable ambition. It was a pretty ordinary school, really; a suburban grammar for girls that became what might be called a "bog-standard comprehensive". Academically it was nothing special. But there were enough flashes of brilliance and wisdom and real affection from the staff to offer an education in the truest sense – a drawing out of what was there in us all anyway.
Last year, I went to the funeral of the man who best encapsulated this: my old English teacher, Joe Meltzer. Joe had a certain disdain for working the exam system which probably didn\'t endear him to some in authority. I don\'t think Ofsted would have approved. But if, like me, you showed him a little keenness to learn, then he could make a lesson fly. He taught me that texts were to be wrestled with, torn apart, owned. He rarely stuck to a lesson plan, would bribe us with Mars bars to exceed his expectations, and was a law unto himself. But with every lesson he taught me that learning was … well, bloody great.
We are frequently told that the strictures of the national curriculum throttle the individualism of great teachers, and that constant testing leaves little room for independent thought. Education has to be about more than hitting targets. I know it may sound hollow to those coming through the nightmare of GCSEs, but passing exams is the easy part. Making a child want to know more is where the real art lies; bringing out what is latent and opening the doors to possibility.
I don\'t know how you do that if you\'re having to follow a rigid template. I suppose the trick is to use the curriculum like a classical score, or the sheet-music version of a jazz song. If you\'re imaginative enough, you may be able to sneak in a cadenza, or a showy bit of improvisation. I was hugely encouraged to hear, the other day, that a teacher at my son\'s primary had turned a key stage two numeracy lesson into a philosophical discourse on the possible existence of unicorns; but how many teachers would be confident enough to do the same.
The flip side, and the argument so often trotted out in defence of centralised standards, is that for every great classroom communicator there are a dozen plodders, regurgitating the same facts and figures year after year with no ability to foster anything other than boredom. It is to maintain an efficient middle ground between these two extremes, current wisdom suggests, that the curriculum needs to be standardised and regulated. If we can\'t guarantee excellence in all teachers, then we must aim for efficiency and uniformity.
There are, I suspect, a great many babies being chucked out with the bathwater as a result of this theory, and it is the passing of the years, and the passing of teachers like Mr Spitz and Mr Meltzer that has made me re-evaluate my education. True, there were a few teachers who were lamentably bad, and taught me nothing at all, but most were probably well up to Ofsted standards: they could pass on information, lead us through exams, keep order in class.
And how much of what they taught has remained in my head? Chances are your experiences are much the same as mine. What stays with me as I get older are the off-piste moments from teachers with a little freedom to be iconoclasts or enthusiasts. It\'s the Mars bar and unicorn moments that stay with you for ever. I\'d hate to think those moments were, like those teachers, dying away.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/teaching-mathematics
