Comprehensive Education Under Re-evaluation - Essay Example

The comprehensive education system in the UK has come under significant questioning in recent years. Many of the educational theories which have been applied over the past few decades have not delivered as promised, and the comprehensive educational system in the UK is graduating students which are behind in ability when compared to students of other countries. In addition, this school system of comprehensive education practices has not been able to dissolve the link between poverty and educational progress. Those students who are in most need, those who are from the lowest income levels, are progressing through grade level after grade level and still not progressing in their educational and academic progress. As a result, as is occurring across the western civilizations, the UK is experiencing significant decline when measuring the academic progress of its students. Specifics of the problem were discussed by Terry Hadyn in his essay on the death of comprehensive schools in England and Wales. He cites that although the comprehensive education system was established in 1965 with lofty ideals, the policy has failed to grow the desired fruit. Previous to the 1965 initiative, the country’s secondary school system was divided. Students who were more suited for an academic career path were sent to Grammar schools, and those for whom an academic career did not seem suitable were sent to what was called a secondary modern school, or the equivalent of a trade school for apprenticeship, and transition into the lower class working social strata. (Haydn, 2004) However, since the passage of this educational policy, educators have come to realize much more about the educational needs of the children with which they have been entrusted. The modern educational system recognizes that children learn at different rates, just as they mature physically and emotionally at differing rates. Therefore putting children of different levels of educational abilities together, and expecting them to mutually benefit, as if by osmosis, is a policy that is coming to be understood as a bit short sighted. The children are not building social networks across the educational and social differences. Rather the opposite is occurring, and has been occurring increasingly over the past 15 years. The divide between the educational ‘haves’ and ‘have – nots’ is growing. The social order that is present outside the classroom is only becoming reinforced in the classroom. As a result, the more academically able children are being slowed down in their progress, and the less academically inclined are no more encouraged to make better progress. If anything, they are becoming resentful, along with their parents, at being bussed 25 miles or more in order to facilitate a quota system for the schools. At the same time comprehensive school policy was being put into place, influences blew across the educational ponds which included linking the educational institution to social trends. The school organization, as seemingly the single most influential element in the child’s life, shifted its focus too. The social fabric of the family and close community was breaking down in the post war era. As a result schools picked up the responsibility to address cultural and social learning issues, in addition to their primary goal of creating educated and intelligent students. The result, as mentioned, was a steady decline in the educational quality as measured in academic progress of the student. The student was learning how to feel better, but not taught how to read better. In the UK, by mixing the more academically inclined with those who may prosper better in a trade school environment, educational policy makers expected to bridge socio-economic patterns. If the wealthier, more academically inclined students were allowed to co-exist in a school setting with lower income, more academically challenged students, the belief was that the barriers would be breached, and lower performing students would make better progress. A second factor influencing this shift of educational paradigms was the belief that when school adhered to academic entrance standards, the result was a two tiered education system. The intellectual children would be together in their elitist schools while the less intelligent, and often poorer social class children, would be filtered out of the mainstream, and settle into lesser performing inner city schools. England has always experienced social turbulence between its social classes. Thus Comprehensive Educational theory touted itself as the social, class and educational savior which the country needed. The Current Debate among Professional Educators Estelle Morris, the education secretary in the UK, wants to reform the comprehensive education system and return to a system in which students are learning. Speaking as a former teacher Ms. Morris was recently very critical of the comprehensive educational system. She said that while some schools were delivering and holding standards high, there were some comprehensives she would not touch "with a barge pole". Speaking recently at the Social Market Foundation in London, Ms Morris said “Traditional comprehensives had failed to break the link between poverty and academic under-achievement. Nor had they brought the numbers of teenagers staying on in education beyond the age of 16 up to the levels of other industrialized nations. There was no question of going back to the days of selection, which had seen children from more deprived backgrounds denied opportunity, she said. But it was time to break the "taboo" which saw any differences between schools as proof of elitism. . . . ‘As a teacher, I go into some schools and think I would like to work here, but there are some I wouldnt touch with a barge pole.’” (BBC News, 2002) In response, many teachers and administrators were in horror. Ms. Morris had assaulted the central goal of a socialized educational system, which is to treat all students similarly, create similar school settings, expect similar progress from all students and hope that similar results would be seen from all students. This was the four cornered foundation upon which comprehensive education was founded. However, even as the goals have not been reached, there are many in the educational establishment who continue to defend and support the approach. When this type of controversy erupts, administrator can quickly turn to protecting their own reputation and position rather than admitting the problems as a part of the process of change. For example, Doug Mc Avoy, who is the general secretary of the largest teaching union, was quoted as responding to Ms Morris this way. "Our teachers devote their energies to doing the utmost for their pupils . . . Her statement will leave many of them asking if she would not teach here, why should they. She has opened the door to speculation on the reasons why she would refuse to teach in certain schools. She should identify those factors” (BBC news, 2002) Attempts to bring change solely by identifying problems in a current situation are a sure way to gin up opposition, and Ms. Morris seems to have accomplished this with her statements. However, identifying the problem is an important part in turning the current direction of the educational ship and charting a new course. If the purpose of the educational system is to produce educated students, prepared for the work world that awaits them, then evaluating both the successes and the failures of the current structure is the path which will blow away the clouds, and reveal important stars by which to chart a new course. A Changing social environment The discussion between the values of a comprehensive education vs. what is coming to be known as a specialist school system is one which needs to occur. However, to identify that the change has to be made simply on the basis of a failing school system is an incomplete evaluation of the current educational environment. Some schools are flourishing under the comprehensive system. This discussion must take place in light of the changing nature of the adult work force, and the competencies which will be required by graduating students. At the time the comprehensive educational model was evolving, the adult work force was largely dominated by manufacturing, and other economies of scale businesses. The work force needed to be educated to the extent that they could function in an advancing marketplace. But the idea that the work place would evolve into a significantly segmented population was not the model which educators were working. The social workplace no longer is dominated by positions which were typical to the manufacturing era. Today’s marketplace demands a graduate that can thing independently as well as function as a team member. The person must know and be able to demonstrate his or her individual strengths in order to add value to an organization rather than submit to the requirements of the job, and demonstrate value by becoming a ‘cog in the industrial wheel.’ In light of these trends, the discussion regarding comprehensive education vs. specialized school must take place. In a recently published report covering the CASE (Campaign for State Education) Seminar which was held in 1999, the track record of comprehensive education was brought into the light, and honestly evaluated by those who did not have personal stakes to defend or protect. The Seminar was held in Westminster Central Hall, and featured seven doctors and professors in education as they considered the positive successes of the comprehensive educational theory. For example, Professor Peter Mortimer presented his ideas supporting comprehensive education as a function of the goals and positive outcomes which the comprehensive theory was expected to produce. For example, because a childs intellectual performance is influenced by family circumstances and genetics as well as his or her schools, some children are born with intellectual endowment. This shouldn’t be construed as to over power the learning experiences and family environment. He believed that there is a strong relationship between educational deprivation in the early years and later educational successful outcomes. When a system is dominated by competition, as is the specialist school initiative, he believed that children were subject to disadvantages as a result of not competing well as they enter the scholastic system. Dr. Mortimer sees the comprehensive system as the best response, a buffer designed to cushion young children against the harshness of competitive educational surroundings. Dr Mortimer also made the following points which are generally agreed to by the current educational establishment. He stated that: Educational development and academic progress is neither linear nor even across the years of a child’s development. Formal IQ testing is recognized to be unreliable, as it is a measure of past experience rather than to future potential. So as a measure of where a child should be placed for future educational progress, Dr. Mortimer believes that academic testing is inaccurate, and thus invalid. More modern theories regarding intelligence (Gardner, 1993) have identified that there are many different forms of intelligence. Gardner described 5 or 6 intelligences, and accurately defined how each of these intelligences learns differently. Motivation is also one of the factors which influence academic progress. Some have labeled motivation as more important than inherent academic ability. However, this belief is significantly different than those of the Chinese and Japanese cultures, which continue to stress more in the direction of hard work and application of learned ideas in order to gain mastery of the subject matter. This philosophy believes that everyone can do it if they work hard, practice and get help (Stevenson and Shin Ying, 1990). At this point, those who support comprehensive education should take a look at the eastern cultures’ philosophy. This approach is similar to that which the western countries applied prior to the educational system’s theory revolution of the late 20th century. This approach required less of the teachers applying their time and effort to social trends and more to application of learning. At this point, it may be time to re-consider the approaches left behind, since the eastern nations and cultures are those which are consistently outscoring the west in terms of academic progress and proficiency. In Finland, the same approach to education has evolved, and believed for similar reasons to be the solution to many of the social and emotional dysfunctions among children. According to the official Finnish policy on education “The traditional long-term objectives of Finnish education policy have been to raise the general standard of education and to promote educational equality. Efforts have been made to provide all population groups and regions of the country with equal educational opportunities.” (Finland Ministry of Education, 1999) As one reads the literature regarding comprehensive education in Western Europe, the UK, and the outcome based educational paradigm in the west, key words are beginning to appear across the educational horizon. The idea of “promoting educational equality” rings across the spectrum. For the comprehensive system, equality of outcome is another way of saying that all students will reach similar levels of academic achievement. The question which remains unanswered is whether the comprehensive educational system brings all students up to the level of higher achieving students, or the system slows down academic progress to reflect the level which the lower performing student can master. The UK wants to eliminate social inequalities by eliminating psycho-social entrance barriers to education. The stated goal is that by accepting all students into the educational system, higher and lower performing students would be treated similarly. The goal is to prevent the labeling which often happens in schools. Student populations easily become caste systems of ‘intelligent,’ ‘struggling,’ and ‘stupid’ student. The hope of comprehensive education is to eliminate this caste system by accepting all students equally. The question needs to be asked whether of not entrance requirements of educational progress have a larger impact on establishing caste roles. It seems that what happens in the classroom day to day, and the progress that is made would have a higher impact on little Johnny’s self esteem, rather than who he gets to sit next to. The Finnish want to create equalized outcomes, and have also adopted a comprehensive system to address these goals. However, they seem to be adjusting their views when a student reaches a level of advanced secondary education. For the Fins, once a student reaches a level of acceptable educational progress, they have identified more specialized paths for the student to follow. This approach is leaning in the direction of the Specialist school initiative, which we will consider at this time. Specialist School Development. Excellence in education seems to be a universal goal. After all, who would not accede that students within our schools should, in fact, excel? The interpretation of the term “excellence” is, however, less obvious, as is the path which a school system should follow to reach this goal. Many in the field of education cannot come to an agreement on how schools can best achieve excellence for and from students. In the case of the majority of students, 80% to 85% of the general student body possess below average to just over average intellectual ability. By permitting a void in the definition of educational excellence, this resulting snafu creates an unacceptable obstacle to quality education. In the case of the more academically adept student, those who can excel in their field of choice, an ambiguous educational plan is not a snafu, it is a tragedy. In a way similar to Michael Jordan’s presence on a basketball court in the 1980s, the gifted student brings to the classroom the ability to raise the level of achievement of everyone around them. The gifted student can be an example, and an encouragement to other students of what is possible, as well as reward the teachers with the fulfillment of truly helping a student with advance abilities to reach his or her potential. These accelerated abilities also come with a subset of special emotional, social and psychological needs. If an educational system is mired in a lack of definition as to what defines a quality education for the majority student body, how can it identify the path toward helping the gifted student develop his or her own talents? In many cases the gifted child is left to fend for himself, and wrestle alone with the social and psychological dimensions of educational maturity. This student not only fails to develop intellectually, but develops other educational and behavioral disorders. These dependant behaviors can make the task of educating the gifted child even more difficult. A longstanding tradition in the field of education assumes it is possible and desirable to identify children as gifted or more academically advanced based on high IQ scores and/or high achievement test scores. Gagnes research (1985, 1993) and model for talent development explicitly set the stage for a focus on talents. He proposed an underlying set of aptitudes or gifts that are intellectual, creative, socio-affective, perceptual-motor, and other unspecified abilities. With these basic abilities the child interacts with catalysts such as teachers or parents and participates in learning, training, and practice experiences. With encouragement and support, a childs talents emerge from these experiences. Therefore, the process of recognizing and developing talents should also not be seen as a one-shot, one-time determination with tests and rating scales, or entrance standards, labeling students as "talented" or "untalented." It is a long-range process in which parents, school personnel, and the students themselves recognize, understand, and work together to facilitate the development of the students unique talents. As a way of involving students, parents, teachers, and counselors in the recognition and development of student talent, Feldhusen and Wood (1997) presented a system for "growth planning" in which students, grades 3-12, plan in late spring their school programs for the coming year. The students inventory and review their own achievements, assess their own interests and learning styles, and write personal goals (academic, career, and social). They then select courses, extracurricular activities, and out-of-school experiences that are commensurate with their prior achievements, reflect the goals they have set for themselves, and are suitably challenging. Feldhusen and Wood used the system with several hundred students and found it to be an effective method for involving children and youth in the talent development process. With a set of self directed goals, talented students often could engage in learning activities with little or minimum teacher involvement. These students grew rapidly in their capacity to carry out self-directed and individualized learning. The results of which were increased levels of educational progress because the students were encouraged to learn, and do the work of learning in a direction which was aligned with their abilities, desires, and learning intelligences. This approach is more significantly in the direction of the specialist schools. When the issues revolving around social and psycho-social behaviors can be set aside for a short period of time, and open dialogue occurs, what can be seen is that the goal of the comprehensive education system and the specialist school is the same – to teach students. When the emotional and social engineering paradigms are left out of the equation, the two systems can address the facts that comprehensive education schools art struggling to bring about the desires goals and outcomes. Students have to be challenged to learn, and if a large amount of time is spent on those students who are not able to keep pace with higher functioning students, then the need for specialist schools should be considered. It may be that there are comprehensive schools which are functioning strongly and well. However, it is also true that many comprehensive schools are failing, and the demand to remediate students is slowing down the progress of an entire classroom. An approach to change this is found in the specialist school plan. There are those who believe that specialist schools create a two tiered educational system. One set of schools is for the ‘smart’ kids and the others are for ‘dumb’ kids. However, in order to validate the educational theory which has been identified in the last 30 years, and discussed herein, developing different types of schools in order to address different learning styles and different learning abilities is a needed step. If sets of student exist which have significantly different skill sets, and learning styles, developing schools which are built to accommodate and engage these differences seems to be a reasonable path. For example, many schools are reducing the class sizes in order to facilitate more face time between student and teacher. This approach cannot be the strategy for the comprehensive school which accepts larger numbers of students. For example, in the US, entire Florida school districts are pushing reading by reducing class sizes in kindergarten through second grade in order to raise reading levels. Pre-kindergarten teachers are using state benchmarks to track learning and teach reading at levels through a program called "Breakthrough to Literacy" ( Miller, 2001) Students start with letter sounds and work up to writing sentences in their journals. Schools are focusing more on pre-kindergarten reading skills with a new checklist that shows what students should know at 4 years old. The checklist, which is based on state standards, includes categories such as identifying letters and showing an interest in reading. In the classroom, Breakthrough to Literacy’s conceptual framework integrates the perceptual/behavioral predictors of reading success with the equally important home/environmental predictors. Breakthrough helps teachers build these integrated elements into daily activities through four essential instructional practices. Book-of-the Week Comprehension Strategies: Each week is similarly structured. Mondays is Predict and Read; Tuesdays, Remember, Retell, and Read; Wednesdays, Read, Integrate (personalize), and Read Again; Thursdays, Read and Create; Fridays, Read, Summarize/Analyze, and Celebrate. By the end of the week, students are reading the books fluently. Writing: Even very young children write by making marks or drawing pictures. As they learn to make the connection between spoken language and print, they produce increasingly sophisticated written and pictorial records of their thoughts and ideas. Daily writing also provides the teacher with insights into each childs stage of development in the reading/writing process. Take-Me-Home Books: One predictor of reading success is having books and participating in reading activities in the home. Every child receives a personal Take-Me-Home copy of the Book-of-the-Week to keep, and for parental use which engages the student in the process of learning in home and school environments Individualized Computer Instruction: Breakthroughs software replicates the all-important rehearsals with symbols and sounds as children listen to and read stories as many times as they wish. (Earlyliteracy.org, online) By using this approach, more individualized attention is given to each student, while at the same time creating an encouraging and supportive educational environment. The additional attention and support created the needed psycho-social motivation and security for the student to apply them, and take the risk of working harder. The result is more confidence, more effort, and more academic progress. This is the kind of results comprehensive schools state as their goal. However, the paradigm and the practical outworking of this school structure seem to get in the way of the intended progress. Specialist Schools – A necessary adaptation for the post modern social order At the heart of the controversy is a shifted social order which has not been adequately addressed. Before the educational theory shifts of the 1960’s, society itself was a fairly homogeneous structure. Similar goals and beliefs, which had been universally formed as a result of the Second World War, shaped the national social consciousness. Universally held were desires to better one, to attain more than the previous generation had experienced, and to apply hard work and faithful follow through to all the endeavors which one found in his life. In the presence of this social order, the comprehensive school paradigm seems to fit. If . . . and this is a large, somewhat outdated if . . . the population equally feels the drive to apply oneself, and work to the level of one’s abilities in all the tasks presented, then the outcome would be a universal level of success. In the years immediately antecedent to the war, this was the social and educational experience. However, today’s social order is not the same as 40 years ago. The post modern social structure is understood as a fragmentation of the unifying social paradigms which, like a coating of Jell-O, held the world together in simple unified sweetness. The Postmodern man is interested in self and self fulfilling goals rather than applying himself to extrinsic social values. The Post modern student also does not feel the internal motivation which defined the first post war generation. They also seek a level of self identification and self gratification as their approach to the world. Therefore, and approach to education which is in line with the modern theories of education as well as directed more parallel to the direction of modern social order seems to be that of the specialist schools. Conclusion It may be time to address the failures of the past in new terms. Rather than call comprehensive school failures, a place which the education secretary Ms. Morris “wouldn’t touch with a barge pole” the time has been forced upon the academic community that it must address the societal changes. Students will no longer learn together when their abilities and interests are divergent, and the multi cultural, post modern social order supports this diversity mentality. Schools can no longer be afraid of hurting Johnny’s feelings by suggesting he may be better at pursing advanced education in skilled trades rather than insisting that he learn along side of someone who is more suited for a professional career path. Each of these students would be better served if he or she were surrounded by like minded students rather than forced together with students of dissimilar talents and desires. In addition, in the post modern era, segmentation of skills and population within the work environment is understood as strength rather than an obstacle. The differences within the abilities and desires of individuals are strengths upon which businesses are learning to build. Therefore the comprehensive model, which seeks to move all individuals toward a cohesive social organization, may be less desirable in the current age. For this reason, the policy of segmentation, and launching specialist schools is one receiving more attention, and being given more consideration. In the CASE seminar discussed previously, one of the visiting professors, in an attempt to support comprehensive education, cited that "The German approach of providing different streams for vocational and academic education is part of the reason for that countrys economic success. Since Labour has adopted most of the rest of the German model, it should take this also." (Willman, 1992) He went on to attempt to dismiss the apparent disagreement between Germany’s success with a specialist educational model and the point he was trying to make in supporting continued comprehensive education. However, the time has come when educators supporting the comprehensive model honestly address the widening gap between the goals and the results produced by comprehensive educational models. If they are willing to yield their protected territories to new ideas and input, the resulting evolution in educational theory could indeed bring the revolution to educational progress and results that are needed. 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