(N.B. I'm from Britain so this may need adaptation for an American audience, please advise me what could be changed and where.)
Good Morning John/Hank,
So results came out recently, and there was a general rise in grades! Always good to hear. But it's very easy to take results at face value, and if you do that, it's easy for the success or failure of a school to be manipulated, or even sometimes, just wrong!
Let's begin with a story: When the a level results came out this past month, my school said, quote "[We are] delighted to report that this year’s results have maintained our consistently excellent track record for top levels of performance. We have the largest Sixth Form in Wales with over 500 entries, and over half of the grades achieved were B or above. 16 of our students achieved at least three A grades. I would like to congratulate all of our students and their teachers, both here and in previous schools, who have contributed to this outstanding level of success.”
And from this we can read: What a remarkable school! And concurrently, the easy thing to do is stop at that and be content. But if you're a caring parent like so many are, you begin to look deeper and things get... suspicious. My brother has done the family proud by achieving 2 A* and 2 A which is by any strech of the imagination, looking at all other results, best in the year considering that he took maths, physics, further maths and chemistry. They're not exactly easy. But the school didn't mention him in any further public comments. Instead, an anonymous girl was draped with the acclaim for A* Maths, A* Physics and A in music.
At first i was confused as to why the school celebrated the said girl and not my dear brother. Then the answer hit me like a literal slap in the face.... with a newspaper.... from my brother.... Said girl had aspirations of studying natural sciences at Cambridge which she achieved, my big brother had no such lofty aims and always wanted to study at Manchester, software engineering to be precise.
The school is advertising the fact that it got a student into Cambridge, not the students. It is cherry picking the results which make it look better, in order to get more students to attend and gain more approval... Is it just me who finds this a little.... business like? I thought schools were doing the job of education, giving the best teaching possible, and should reward those students who do best (a.k.a. my brother)!
I am appreciative and aware that because this directly concerns an immediate family member, it will be hard for me to be unbiased. Yet, I'm going to do as best i can.... after a bit more ranting...
The Cambridge girl should obviously be commended, she did very well, just not as well than my brother. However the school really got me angry when they started celebrating fake A*. If you take Performing Arts and you do very well, you can get a 1/3 of an A* in 3 separate areas, accumulating to an A*. Yet the school have been reporting this as 3 separate A*s, which is wrong. So people who got 1 A* in performing arts and an A in psychology.... THAT IS WORSE THAN MY BROTHER, have recieved more praise!! But the school insult the parents by thinking they won't see through this manipulation of results to see that he they are simply trying to make themselves look good.
It frustrates me that this fake success is a schools priority now. Schools have got their priorities wrong and it's leading to an average generation. In the world of numbers the education system have started playing the numbers game. Kids who are borderline passes get so much attention, edging them over so schools can saying we got this many passes, we rule! But whilst the world celebrates, I think the world suffers. Because young minds aren't nurtured in the best way to allow free thinkers, complex thinkers, thinkers that could think the thoughts to help the economy or understand why poverty is still a problem in this day an age. Instead we are left with minds that can remember 20 different organic compounds but don't know how to help global warming.
It isn't hard at this point to think me ludicrous for suggesting that a school's attitude can be so influential but although my experience is little, my ears are fine tuned and they pick up a frequent message. They hear the renown complaint that the people with the power and in government are fancy, well spoken, Eton boys who have been brought up with a silver spoon and don't know what it means to live a 'normal' life. This is often thought of unfairly, because it is impossible to understand completely the life of the unemployed if you have been brought up with 3 meals a day, as it is equally impossible to understand any difficulties of an upper class life if you got a job at 16 in the local shop. Yet the social ignorance doesn't have to be so severe if schools taught us to be free thinkers. We need to learn to imagine everyone, everything and every situation thoughtfully and complexly, not as a series of 1s and 0s.
I've been thinking about this issue more recently due to the tragic demise of Robin Williams. The dead poets society [film poster] is one of my favourite all-time films and the message I take from it is the importance of literature and free thinkers who think about the right things. Schools don't value those concepts just as Welton academy doesn't.
But I'm not saying the world is full of mindless robots who can't process a single thought of there own and Skynet is going to take over and the terminator kills everyone and omg....
I was a mindless robot before I started English literature with my teacher Miss. Roberts. Imagine John Keating and make him real, add a sex change and you've got Miss. Roberts. She has infected me with the 'I'm going to analyze everything and think deeply disease'. And i say disease because that's how my friends see it, that thinking about literature is contagious and I've caught it. When I read' the fault in our stars' I almost felt embarrassed to talk to others about it because I would enter into a soliloquy discussing the meaning of water in the book and names and how despite the crushing sadness it proves that a illness doesn't make a person and they can still have a good life. And they'll do something like this: [stares for a moment, "what you taking about nerd, Augustus sounds hot"].
We all know there are anti-nerdfighters who don't see complex thinking as a vital element of society, but when schools start taking the same approach, its never.... ever, going to end well!!
BUT, despite all that about thinking, you can't avoid the upside. If a school is doing well and it can afford to attract more students in order to give them an education, you can see the obvious benefits. If the difference between a school giving 50 people Cs, giving them opportunities to get a job, earn a salary, buy things and help the economy or giving them Ds, not passing and struggling to put food on the table, is some more attention for them instead of those who are flitting between A and A*. You'd say sure, that's the right thing to do.
We have to except survival and maintenance are everyone's number 1 priorities, if you're lucky enough for them to be easily accessible, due to the gift of high intellect or affluent family or whatever, doesn't mean that everyone is in the same boat and getting others those two essentials should come first. We see such motives in John's recent trip to Ethiopia, giving them health and survival is a consideration on our conscience, so we should also act equally for those less fortunate in our communities.
Yet it does strike me that to be aware of these issues and their solutions we need complex thinkers, and they exist, my mum is a wonderful one, and Nerdfighters, and Miss Roberts and so many more.
Schools need a balance. I don't want to wake up in 60 years and to be in world where everyone can add one and one, but no one could tell me the meaning of to 'kill a mockingbird'.
John/Hank, I'll see you on Tues/Friday
