I was back in the classroom for one day a week last month, giving workshops to students on storytelling and oral language. I did two other sessions before Christmas. For someone who retired 15 years ago, it was interesting to note the differences in today’s classrooms from “way back then.” And the lack of differences.
Because what we hear is that school has changed so much. There are so many different pressures on the teachers. There are so many students with different problems.
If you listen to that, you’d think the education system was going to hell in a handbasket closely followed (or led) by our whole modern society.
I’m here to tell you it just ain’t so. British Columbia’s education system has always functioned at a world-class level, and it continues to do so. Kids come with a wide range of abilities and handicaps, and that doesn’t change, although the ways we deal with them vary. There are a few important factors to consider.
Technology
Computers are ubiquitous. Blackboards are now white. But teaching remains. You can’t replace adults helping children learn. At least, we can’t yet. In fact, all the problems we’re having with kids spending too much screen time means that other learning styles continue to prevail in schoolrooms.
Number of Problem Students
Statistically, we have a larger number of students with recognized learning difficulties. This sounds terrible. Does it mean the human race is deteriorating? No, it doesn’t. The school system has changed its way of dealing with students who need extra help. In the old days, the teachers would identify a problem student through observation. They would report this through anecdotal evidence, and some kind of help would be provided. Nowadays we have progressed far beyond this ad hoc approach. Now students with problems are immediately tested, analyzed by professionals, and labelled. Now, this may sound like a backward step in the area of human rights, but the fact is that once a student is labelled with a specific problem the bureaucracy can assign specific resources to deal with that problem.
Autism
Because of this approach, we have a spike in the number of autistic children in our schools. Is the human race falling apart? Again, probably not. In the first place, we know a whole lot more about autism these days, and children who in previous times were previously diagnosed with other problems, all the way from dyslexia down through poor discipline to possession by evil spirits, are now recognized for what ails them.
However, the causes of autism are uncertain, and environmental risk factors cannot be ruled out. Only time and more research will tell.
Also, the bureaucratic need to label a student before that student can get help means that autism, because it does cover a wide range of symptoms, has become a sort of catchall. If you can’t really pin down what’s wrong with a kid, you say he’s autistic and the school system takes care of him.
And what that means is the school system puts him in the hands of a caring professional who does whatever possible to meet that child’s needs, which is what we have been doing all along. Plus ca change.
Deterioration All Over the Place
In my teaching career, I managed to teach a wide variety of clients, from inner-city to suburban yuppie to rural hick. I’ve had a pretty good sample in the past three months, and I have to say it all looked very familiar. The school in the disadvantaged area had large numbers of Indigenous, immigrant and refugee children suffering from a wide variety of learning disabilities and traumas. The French immersion school had a lot of kids being dropped off and picked up in Audis and Cadillacs. But all schools had students with a wide range of behaviours and abilities being cared for by competent and caring professionals. A stranger such as myself could walk into any of these classrooms and help students achieve difficult objectives demonstrating consideration and respect for teachers, visitors, and each other.
That pretty well sums it up.
Stress Levels
Did I see signs of stress? Of course I did. Teaching is a stressful job. I felt it myself, working one day a week. But despite the lack of funding, the shortage of staff and the negative attitudes of some employers, the teachers were out there giving their all.
You can’t help but note that in stressful jobs like teaching, nursing, and policing workers cannot be forced past a certain level of achievement. Governments wanting to stretch tax dollars push those employees as far as possible. If they push too hard, they can create a counterproductive, antagonistic relationship that lasts for decades past the term of the government that created the original problem.
The Bottom Line
All we need in B. C. right now is another right-wing union-busting government to destroy any baby steps we have made in the right direction lately, and education will go into another nosedive. I often wonder how the teachers can put up with it and still do such a marvelous job. We’re that kind of people, I guess.