Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education?

"School is prison" argues Peter Gray in his article 'Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education'

I read an article this morning that forced me to think about the shortcomings of the compulsory education system. You can check out Peter Gray's article here

Gray claims that compulsory education is literally a prison and amounts to incarceration of children who have done nothing to deserve such treatment.

A couple of general things to note before I continue:

• My personal experience does not match the author of this article. Peter Gray is focusing on his own personal experiences with the public education system in the US, and is also an alleged expert in the psychology of education (he has been awarded a PhD). Whereas I attended both public and private schools in Australia and have no formal qualification in teaching (yet!). Those are some major differences!
• The rhetoric of the article is that of logic/quantitative measures - the focus is placed on literal meanings of words as opposed to figurative meanings, among other things. I find it hard not to be critical of articles that are written in such a blatantly authoritative manner - "I know what I'm talking about because I have a PhD and have worked in this industry for decades" - and make no (or very little) attempt to leave room for opinions which differ from their own. I think most people have experienced the mental 'recoil' from reading an article that is written with a perspective so different from their own. During the act of reading, it can be difficult for readers to separate their own views with the influential position of the focalised 'voice' of the author, and as a result the potential number of interpretations of what has been written are effectively limited (but I digress!)
• There are a whole lot of specifics built into any system, regardless of its imperative of homogeneity. For example, I had to stop myself from using the term "the school system" in this blog post because it is actually not a fixed concept: what it means to me as an Australian, a Westerner, an educated woman can be quite different to what it means to someone else of a different gender, country, cultural or political context.

So what did I think of the article? I had mixed feelings, and I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that the author's worldview seems radically different to my own.

There are a couple of things that I can certainly agree with:

• the type of school system described by Gray is certainly not suitable for everyone (or indeed most people!) It is a one-size-fits-all system that one could argue reduces the process of learning to a system (or set of procedures) that allow society to efficiently 'administer' it. It is therefore inherently general, often treating individuals as if they are homogeneous.
• the notion that "fear prevents learning". I believe this to be true - in fact, I find it hard to believe that anyone can thrive in a negative environment, regardless of what it is that they're trying to achieve. On the other side of this, I have observed first-hand how playful learning environments can be very beneficial for promoting and facilitating learning.

On the other hand, there are a few things that I cannot agree with (or at least, not wholly):

• The suggestion made by Gray that the school system (as he sees it) forces children to privilege their own needs and success at the expense of others. This does not entirely match with my own experiences of school. Sure, in high school, quite a few of the kids in my grade were very competitive and went to great lengths to 'engineer' some kind of advantage for themselves. However, I witnessed (and also personally experienced) a few kids who were actually concerned about helping others who were struggling, or even those that were not, thereby creating a culture of cooperation. One specific example that I can think of is where one student became a 'proxy' maths teacher for others in the class (who were sadly at the mercy of a hopeless teacher in their final year of high school). This meant that particular student took the time to explain concepts to others in their class, worked through 'problems' together and encouraged others to contribute their own methods for learning the concepts more easily. Contrary to Gray's assumption, this scenario did not disadvantage those who were willing to help others: amazingly it assisted (and reinforced) their own learning. It is extremely difficult to teach others a concept without first having an adequate understanding of it. Also, the discourse of 'active learning' suggests that the more ways you can 'translate' a concept (written, speech, visual, collaboratively) the better your understanding of said concept. Take that, Gray! :)
• Gray's claim that 'compulsory education' and 'choice' are mutually exclusive. This is especially true when Gray claims that the word compulsory means that there is absolutely no choice in the matter. The fact that he later contradicts himself, admitting that there are alternatives to compulsory education (homeschooling etc), is not surprising. In contrast to his view, I believe that there is always an element of choice when it comes to educating individuals (whether that be the choice to 'homeschool' or enrol in a 'mainstream' school, the choice of school attended, the choice of extracurricular activities that facilitate similar or different types of learning). What I am getting at, is that when I think about education, I see a fair amount of choice involved (albeit limited in some ways).
• Gray emphasises the unfairness of grouping children based on their age. He also condemns preventing children from developing 'cooperation and nurturance' through sustained contact with younger children. The problem for me here is again one of excessive generalisation. Whilst I agree that some children benefit more from the influence of older and/or younger children, I also believe that kids can learn things that are just as valuable from their similarly-aged peers (who may be at similar stages of growth and development). I don't believe that children's development of 'nurturance and cooperation' are as inhibited by a school setting as Gray claims. What about children who choose to play with older or younger children at play times, or who experience school 'structures' that intentionally group together children of all different age groups? Failing that, what about the children who 'look out' for others of their own age group? Most people have witnessed bullying amongst their peers, and in some cases there is a child (or more than one) who is willing to step in to 'protect' that victimised child. Is that not nurturing?

I could go on and on and on, but I won't. The most important thing that this article provided me with was the chance to interrogate my own views associated with learning and to come to some conclusions about what I feel is most important when attempting to facilitate quality learning. No doubt I'll get a chance to try to put these ideas into action some day soon!

I learned to translate Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs!

Last semester I found myself studying Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs (to meet my quota of Ancient History units for the NSW IT subject content requirements). It was really interesting! The process of learning two languages at once (symbols and letters/sounds - see below for explanation) re-ignited my interest in languages and I learned some pretty cool things. 

Here are some of the things I learned:

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were written to be read both left-to-right and right-to-left. In some ancient tombs (see photo to the right) hieroglyphs were written left-to-right on one side of a doorway and right-to-left on another side of the doorway to emphasise the passage or 'opening' which must be passed through. Whichever way the symbols are facing is the way that they should be read, this is easiest to spot with hieroglyphs of birds or other animals: if a hieroglyph of a heron is facing to the left, then the hieroglyphs should be read left-to-right (and vice versa).

The so-called 'hieroglyphic alphabet' used to translate Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs into letters/sounds does have some letters which look and sound the same as (or similar to) letters in the English alphabet. However, there are quite a few differences, some of which relate to the fact that the English has less glottal (deep or 'throaty') sounds. 

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, and for that reason has been labelled by some an abjad alphabet, i.e., an alphabet without vowels (This fact is courtesy of Wikipedia)

The process for translating Hieroglyphs has two parts: first hieroglyphs must be transliterated to the corresponding letters of the alphabet to produce written words, then those 'transliterated' words must be translated into English words to form phrases/sentences.

Due to the fairly limited number of symbols available to Middle Egyptian scribes, they needed a way to distinguish different meanings from the same group of symbols. They therefore devised the 'Determinative' group of symbols: these were primarily used to indicate the 'category' or 'type' of the word. E.g. The word 'Ebony' would be followed by the symbol of a tree, which is a determinative to indicate that the word has something to do with trees (in this case, Ebony was a type of wood). A 'Determinative' symbol is found at the end of a word, so a 'Determinative' symbol not only hints at the nature of the thing represented by that word, it is also a handy 'marker' when trying to separate a line of symbols into distinct words.

The course I studied focused on Hieroglyphs from the Middle Kingdom period (2030 - 1640 B.C.), which are slightly different to those that came before (Old Kingdom: 2649 - 2150 B.C.) and those that came later (New Kingdom: 1550 - 1070 B.C. and later). Interestingly, Middle Kingdom hieroglyphs do not feature a symbol for the letter 'l', whereas New Kingdom hieroglyphs do (otherwise it probably would not have been possible to represent a name like 'Cleopatra'!)

After c.2000 BCE, the pharaoh had five names: four throne names and the name he had received when he was born.

1. the Horus-name (i.e., manifestation of the heavenly falcon)
2. He of the two ladies (i.e., the twofold country Egypt, represented by the cobra-goddess Wadjet and the vulture-goddess Nekhbet)
3. the golden Horus-name (expressing eternity)
4. He of the sedge and bee (e.g., Upper and Lower Egypt)
5. Son of (the sun god) Ra (i.e., personal name).

Generally, modern scholars use the 'personal names' to refer to each Pharaoh. You can find more info and examples about this here.

Most papyri and inscriptions that were written in hieroglyphs (at least those that have survived!) were written by male scribes about male subjects - usually the King, his sons, officials, priests etc. There are very few references made to women in these texts - usually these are in the context of their role as mother/as having given birth to important men.

Hieroglyphs weren't only used for official use, such as documenting the dynastic succession of Kings, the achievements of a Kings life (on their tomb) or religious beliefs (especially relating to the Egyptian gods and goddesses). They were also used to document stories, such as The 'Dispute Between a Man and his Ba' and the 'Tale of the Eloquent Peasant'. The latter is a story that says a lot about the daily life of peasants, the hierarchy of that society, the process of law/justice, and the value that was placed on 'beautiful language' (i.e. eloquence) by those occupying the highest levels of society. At its most basic form, it shows a 'lowly' peasant using his wit to achieve a higher position in society. You can read more about the eloquent peasant story here.

Below you will see the beginning section of the 'Tale of the Eloquent Peasant', rendered in electronic form (much easier to read than the original papyri fragments!) 

Typeset by Jenny Carrington - found at http://www.rostau.org.uk/ep/ep1.html

Ten Words You Need To Stop Misspelling

This poster is definitely going to be in my classroom. For sure! hehe :)

Check it out here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling