CASTLE ROCK A WASTED EDUCATION - PART 1

I would struggle to find a better example of what was wrong with secondary school education than the first year I spent during Science class at Castle Rock. I had always had a keen interest in science as far back as I could remember even though we never did science at primary school. It was one subject that I was looking forward to doing beforehand, I had visions of spending lots of time doing interesting experiments. Since everyone's scientific knowledge (or lack of) was unknown to the teachers at the time the most logical thing they could have done would to give everyone a test, find out what everyone knows, then teach in groups according to ability.

This of course didn’t happen..................................................

What we did in that class could hardly be called “science”, one lesson we did was called “Mixing solutions”. This consisted of a series of test tubes with liquids in them marked A,B,C,D and E. We would have to mix different combinations of these liquids and then write down what happened such as A+B it turned blue, A+C nothing, B+C it went cloudy. That was it, no mention of what these chemicals were or what reactions were taking place inside them.

Science class was all like this, an endless series of trivial and remedial tasks that would have barely stretched my mind at the age of 6 or 7 let alone 11. The worst came about 3 months in when we did a module called “Classifying”. One lesson we had to take a pile of lego bricks then classify them, first buy size and shape and then by colour. After we then discussed which was the most difficult. By this point my interest in the subject was quickly fading away.

The second problem was our teacher Mrs Roe, a short middle age woman who talked to us as if we were 5 year olds. She was one of the most boring people I have ever had the misfortune to spend any length of time in the same room as. Typically she took half an hour to explain something that would take anyone else about 10 minutes.
In science we were required to bring an apron to protect our school uniforms against chemical spillages. Mrs Roe would go through everyone one by one at the start of each lesson to see who had or had not got theirs. 3 times a week even though it was at least 4 weeks before we actually needed them, all we did was written work during that time. Nobody ever got punished for forgetting as there were some spare ones hanging up in the corner of the classroom anyway.
Why not just tell everyone when they need them and if anyone forgets they will be punished be doing written work instead of practical experiments instead of going through this tedious and pointless routine.

Mrs Roe’s pathetic nature was an open invite for anyone who wanted to mess about and disrupt the lesson to do so. She had no control over disruptive pupils at all, she would make dozens of threats of keeping them behind in detention for every one time she actually carried it out. For the class to be held up for 20 minutes out of an hour's lesson was nothing unusual. In my opinion she should never have been allowed in a classroom in the first place (maybe just teaching 5-6 year olds instead). It’s hard to imagine anyone in any other profession being so bad at their job and still being allowed to remain in employment.

I quickly gave up trying to learn anything, I didn’t bother doing my homework a lot of the time because I honestly didn’t see the point. Why was I going to waste my time at home when I was wasting vast amounts of time in class anyway. My first school report and the parents evening that followed didn’t go down well at all. I had spent months telling my parents what was going on in these lessons beforehand but when Mrs Roe told my parents that I wasn’t doing my homework they instantly took her side which was typical of them.

Mrs Roe did confront me over the fact that I found her lessons boring, she told me that it was “important” that I learned these things and that science was not about knowledge but “skills”. I still don’t buy that argument over 2 decades later. Anyway my parents started keeping a closer eye on my homework. At the following parents evening mum questioned her on a piece of homework that I had been given. She said that it was hardly a challenge and had taken me less than 5 minutes to complete. Mrs Roe pointed out there was nothing she could do since it would take others in the class half an hour to complete. Basically admitting what I already knew right from the start.

Science did at least have a happy ending, towards the end of the first year we started doing what I called “real science”. One such example was microelectronics where we learned how logic gates work. I was the only person in the class who scored 100% when tested which proved what I had been saying all along.

In the next 2 years we had different teachers such as Mr Presland who was a great teacher and made the subject interesting.  I did have issues with some of the teachers (Mr Travers, as will be explained later!!!) but overall Science went on to become my best subject at Castle Rock, just a pity I wasted nearly a year to start off with!!!!

SCIENCE REPORTS (note the contrast between report 1 and reports 3+5)

1988 - DECEMBER (Mrs Roe) - Matthew is careless and needs to concentrate fully on instructions given. His written work is poor and his homework is generally late. I know that he is capable of improving and hope that he will try a lot harder.

1989 - APRIL (Mrs Roe) - Matthew has a good understanding and his work is in order but he is still not achieving the standard of which he is capable. He need to take much more care over presentation and put much more effort into his work to reach his full potential.

1990 FEBRUARY (Mr Presland) - Matthews scientific knowledge/ understanding and skills are good/very good. He shows a lot of enthusiasm and interest in the subject. He learning, communication and concentration skills are developing well. He does need to improve his research skills however.  The standard of coursework/homework are good/ very good and it is usually completed and submitted satisfactory.

1990 - NOVEMBER (Mr Travers) Matthew did not produce a very good level of coursework. He did however show a good understanding of the work in light of his end of module assessment. He must try to improve his coursework.

1990 NOVEMBER (Mrs Fletcher) Matthew has completed a course on digestion. He has carried out food tests carefully and recorded his observations accurately. He showed interest throughout and made a real effort.



The following is an extract from the blog of Frank Chalk which is a near perfect example of what I was up against.

The year 7 class are having their first Science Lesson. Edward in the front row is bursting with enthusiasm, his little hand reaching for the sky as Miss Jones asks a question about the Sun. He knows all the names of the planets and is fascinated by anything to do with dinosaurs, Astronomy and things that go fast. He has a Chemistry Set at home and is desperately keen to learn how to blow things up.

Two rows back, Brandon and Lee do not know the answer. Brandon has a reading age of six and an ability level that prevents him from doing anything more complicated than drawing and colouring in. His writing is totally illegible and he cannot do basic arithmetic. He has no support teacher today, as she is only with him for three lessons out of five.

Lee has a similar ability but never even has a support teacher because he has not been statemented; a lengthy process which must be completed before any help can be paid for. For some reason his previous school never managed to do it, which is not unusual.

At the front, Miss Jones has a choice: she can either spend a huge amount of her time helping Brandon and Lee, or she can concentrate on the middle ability level of the group and simply let these two do something trivial. Either way, she has no time to answer Edward's numerous questions on asteroids and comets. She is starting to get fed up with him, as he makes her feel guilty. He keeps saying that the work is far too easy and is becoming bored and disillusioned with Science.

Let's not pretend or mince our words here- Miss Jones is simply wasting Brandon, Lee and Edward's time.

It's not her fault- she is only human and cannot possibly deal with such a ridiculously large spectrum of abilities. Deep down, she feels that mixed ability classes seem to let down the best and the worst. All she has ever been told however, is how great it is that the school is so 'inclusive'.

In my opinion, Lee and Brandon should not be in this lesson at all. They should be learning to read and write, to add up and subtract. They should be with people who are trained to teach these things, not Secondary School teachers. They should never have left Primary school until they have mastered these skills, because without them, they will never be employed.

Instead their next lesson is French...

Edward is also being let down and shouldn't be in this lesson. The school will not worry one jot about him however, as the chances are that he will muddle through and get a 'c' grade, so he is just forgotten about. In another scenario he would have grown up to become a great scientist.

The above story is happening right now at a school near me.

Unfortunately it's also happening at one near you.