Education matters

I watched a truly insightful documentary recently called Waiting for Superman. It wasn’t a documentary about DC’s superheroes; it was about different types of superheroes entirely, teachers.

The film took an in-depth look at the education system in America and how low expectations based on the region in which the school was situated had a profound effect on the outcomes of the students. The statistics regarding literacy and numeracy levels were terrifying but not altogether unheard of when one considers the situation in more detail. Basically it all came down to expectations and the constant battle between the education children receive at home against the one they receive at school, or in other words the value placed on school by parents and the impact this has on children.

This is something that I see every day at both ends of the spectrum. Some parents care not a jot about their children’s outcomes since they were let down by the system themselves. This attitude often permeates through everything the student does by the time they reach Grade 4. Sad but true. A child who is not encouraged at home is more likely to fail, right? Well, sometimes yes but it really depends on the attitude of the school whether or not this is allowed to happen.

Consider the following; the more you tell somebody that they can’t do something, the more likely they are to believe you are right. Why, because as any good cognitive therapist will tell you, repetition becomes reality. But this phenomenon works both ways. The documentary makers discovered that rather than just telling a child that they can do something loads of times and doing it has a positive effect, the teachers bucking the trend and making a difference in the desperately troubled areas of America such as Harlem or Compton raised the bar. They told students that not only could they achieve, they had to because by breaking the cycle of low parental expectations the children have choices because that is exactly what bad education steals from the young, their choices in life.

Now all this sounds very easy to say, but a quick reality check will tell you that it isn’t as easy as all that. First you have to inspire children or at least help them to understand and to do that, you need teachers who see their job as a privilege and not just a pay check. This is a priority and that comes from leadership. What the documentary makers discovered was that school leaders who had absolutely solid direction for their children took their time to recruit teachers who held the same beliefs as them and they paid them for it too, because in all honesty they deserved it! They weren’t entitled to it, they deserved it and the outcome was improvements in standards across the board not only in high school graduations but in college admissions by students from the toughest neighborhoods. So the evidence was there for all to read.

Now I think the problems faced by educationalists in America are very similar to those faced in Bahrain.  I believe that the schools who cheat their children through lazy teachers and who blame children’s attitudes on their background rather than their own attitude to education are the ones who don’t care about the future of this small island. So as we move toward a new year, I encourage all teachers in the kingdom who have an overrated sense of entitlement and who blame students for their failings as a teacher to move on and find a new occupation. Please make room for teachers who can see that we don’t need to wait for Superman to save the day because through good reflective teaching and high expectations, the day is already saved.