The introduction of education for all in the UK in the late nineteenth century, although a brilliant step forwards in the furthering of equality among all ethnicities, social classes and genders, does have many downsides. For example, the introduction of the national curriculum means that all subjects have a limited percentage of time that each school is allowed to spend on them, with specialist schools having slight variations on these percentages, however, they are all very similar. This is not really to ensure that we all have a similar education though, but instead it is so that schools can be compared for their results more easily, as they must attract future students. Parents can easily compare the English or Maths grades of any school and know that all students are getting a fair chance. One school may average a B for all of their English exams and another may average an A. Previously the school achieving the average of an A could spend up to half of each day in English lessons and the school achieving an average of a B may only spend a quarter of each day in English lessons. However now all schools have set percentages of time which they must spend on each lesson. This does not apply to private schools.
The national curriculum exists to ensure that we all learn the same things and therefore have equal chances of passing exams. But, a downside of the national curriculum is that some students can't even imagine the thought of of studying a subject that truly interests them until they move up to sixth form or higher education, meaning that the talents they may have been able to nurture from childhood will go unused and may fade, or the person may not even know they are talented in a specific area.
The national curriculum also limits the further knowledge we may posses. Someone may enjoy learning about the human body in Biology, but the national curriculum, and their exam board, only states that they must learn the names of organs, while they may be keen to learn about things such as blood types and how diseases impact our bodies, this further knowledge is considered useless in the grading field because if it's not on a mark scheme, a mark cannot be given, no matter how much they know about something.
Another thing about education (excluding vocational education or training) is that exams are a huge part of most subjects. But these exams do not test understanding or creativity, they test our memory and ability to structure answers, even though the structures have been taught to us over and over again. For instance, I knew that in my GCSE English exam, every time I wanted to say something, I'd have to say it in a PEC format- Point, Evidence, Comment. I couldn't focus an entire essay on something that interested me, I had to write everything in a PEC format multiple times, but make sure I have an acceptable introduction and conclusion. But this wasn't unique to me, across the UK, most students followed the same format, or a format very similar to it, and this needed to be done to achieve a high grade, otherwise our writing styles would be faulted and marks would be deducted.
I see exams more as memory games than true tests of understanding. All you really have to do is write what your teacher has told you. You have to remember facts and figures, but only of things you have been taught. We all possess the same knowledge and must generate the same answers in order for us to be recognised as academically intelligent, but I regard academic intelligence and real life intelligence as two completely different things which have entirely different uses. Academic intelligence is useful for the first 16-25 years of our lives, but after that, real life intelligence is far more important and useful. So it almost seems as if what we learn during our time in education is useless to living our lives, and while this is true, in almost every job, a certain degree of academic knowledge or intelligence is required, so it's not all useless.
I could speak about the issues I have with education for hours, and it would seem that I hate learning, but I in fact love learning, but this brings me to my final point. Because education must cater to a variety of people, which means different learning speeds and styles, I personally find education to be incredibly slow. A whole lesson can be spent on something that I would happily be able to learn in ten or fifteen minutes, however the entire class must understand the content and this means that the teacher may have to repeat themselves multiple times and give more than one example to the class. It has been suggested by my friends and family that I start to teach myself ahead of classes, and this is what I have been starting to do. I am currently a few lessons ahead in all my classes, and baring in mind I only started yesterday to teach myself the content that my teachers will be going through in the future, I think this is a great start. It does however mean that during lessons the work is just being repeated, but I find this useful in memorising it, so it's not too bad. I just know I'm going to be frustrated when the material I currently have runs out and I will have to wait for my teacher to hand out the next bit of the course. But I will just deal with that as it comes.
While I understand that this blog post shines a negative light on educational establishments, I do still enjoy learning, but if it was possible, I'd love it for education to be tailored more towards each individual. But I am incredibly grateful that I am in a country where I have a right to an education, and I will make the most of all the educational opportunities that come my way, as it would be a shame to waste such an amazing privilege.
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