Sarah Callanan

Last year I was sitting in a local library whilst my son sat a GCSE maths exam. The librarian, who was in her late 30s or early 40s, asked why I was there. When I told her, she said ‘I am so glad I wasn’t born nowadays. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.’ She told me that she had failed her maths GCSE, and that she had retaken it and had failed again. ‘I just can’t do maths’ she said. However, at the time this wasn’t an insurmountable barrier. She got other qualifications and developed an interest in English literature. She got a place at university to study librarianship, successfully obtained her degree and now works as a librarian. All without GCSE maths. Had she been a teenager now, that opportunity would most likely not have been open to her. Requiring everyone to pass GCSE Maths in order to progress limits some young people and causes intense distress. There is no way that everyone will ever pass. The exams are not designed that way. The only real way to raise standards for all is to create systems which empower young people to succeed in many different ways. Some of which will not involve a pass in GCSE maths. It can never be the case that everyone passes and those who fail need a future to look forward to as well.

All rules are not equal. It’s sometimes said that children must just learn to ‘follow the rules’ It sounds reasonable, after all. We all have to follow rules to get by in life. But ‘learning to follow the rules’ doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t say anything about what those rules are. For a rule about sock colour is not the same as a rule about violence or drug dealing. A rule about tracking the teacher with your eyes is not the same as a rule about running in the corridors. Some rules enable a community to function. Others are about micro-control of individuals. Some are created with the community. Others are simply stated by authority, with ‘if you don’t like it, go elsewhere’ as the putative opt-in. When we put them together under the umbrella of ‘rules’ those differences are invisible. We talk as if they are all the same, and the child must simply learn to accept them all. But rules have different purposes, and a different impact on individuals and the community. Some are about community wellbeing, others are about petty control. All rules are not equal. If someone pretends that they are, ask why.

It’s an inconvenient truth than when you make someone do an activity, they enjoy it less and want to do it less in the future. Even if it was something that they were originally motivated to do. It’s a consistent finding in the research. Adults make children do things in many ways, and one way is through rewards. It’s assumed that children will try harder with more incentives, so adults add a reward ‘to encourage them’. Small children come into school, and they are curious and interested. They are driven to learn about the world around them and participate. Quickly, they are surrounded in an atmosphere of consequences, both positive and negative. Do your reading and get a star. Learn your times tables and dress your avatar better. Be nice to someone and you might get a sticker ‘Caught being kind’. Paint a picture and get a Star of the Week certificate. Young children are often easy to manipulate with stickers. Learning becomes about the rewards, not the learning. It should no surprise that by the time they are teenagers, many of them have completely lost their interest in learning. They are not curious anymore, They’ve had it rewarded or sanctioned out of them. Now, they are mainly focused on getting the awards (and avoiding the sanctions). Stickers and stars don’t cut it anymore, so secondary schools have to up the ante. Schools give rewards which can be traded in at the shop, or reward those with the most with theme park trips or free AirPods. Sanctions get worse too, with isolation an ever constant threat for some young people. Not to mention fear of failing your GCSEs, something which young people tell me is always present in their lives. None of it makes teenagers want to learn, but it often makes them go through the motions. How do I know it’s not ‘just how teenagers are’? Because young people educated outside school don’t go through the same thing. They don’t lose their love of learning, even for difficult things. I know teenagers learning languages for fun, doing extra maths because they love it, learning history and physics and challenging themselves in multiple ways. Adults set themselves difficult tasks all the time, why would we think that teenagers are any different? The young people I know aren’t paragons, they’re ordinary teenagers with all the difficulties of adolescence. They just don’t need to be forced to learn. Their internal drive to learn is still there, just as it was when they were four. All children start off with that drive to learn. They want to participate in the world. What if the point of education was to keep that spark alive? How differently would we organise education then?

We’ve just launched our first recorded mini-course for teens on recovering from burnout and it’s half price until Sunday. Suitable for those with and without a diagnosis and featuring Chloe from Me Just Me. Please share if you know a teenager who might benefit. naomi-fisher.mykajabi.com/of…