Take out a sheet of paper. Design the perfect school.
I imagine that your list would be similar to mine, which has the following five key elements:
- School should be a place children love to be: they should feel deeply loyal to their school, their fellow pupils and its teachers. They should treasure their experience of schooling as a rare gift.
- School should develop all aspects of children's personalities and aptitudes, not just their intellect. They should learn who they are, and what they want to do with their life, both at work and at play. They should be taught how to think, and how to solve problems.
- They should know how to look after themselves, taking responsibility for their bodies, their emotions and their minds, and emerge as young adults at the ages of 16 or 18, ready to live a contented, prosperous and fulfilling life.
- Parents should be fully involved in the whole experience of learning, as should the wider community. Schools should be beacons of opportunity and excitement for all, not just the children.
- The teachers at the school should be valued and respected, with the pupils treating them with civility and gratitude, recognising that this is a profession that they should take seriously, that they are as valuable as, say, a doctor or a solicitor.
The harsh reality
No doubt your list will be more imaginative and better considered than my own. It is important not only to imagine what schools could be like, but also to ask why the reality is different from one's ideal.
Schools in Britain today are vastly different from my own notions, but I do not believe that this has to be the case. Most children in Britain do not love their school and they are not proud of it. It is a widely reported fact that school leavers who work in the developing world during a gap year are often struck by the pride pupils there feel for their schools and their eagerness to learn. It is all the more surprising when there are often 50 or more children in classrooms in such schools, few books, and no interactive whiteboards or other facets of modern technology. Why is it that British children, who have so much in terms of teacher quality and goodwill, and classroom resources that most children in the world are crying out for, feel so little gratitude or celebration in their schools?
