It seems like a lifetime ago – the 1990’s. I was a secondary school teacher and getting very uneasy about what I saw happening in education. The National Curriculum (’82) and School League Tables (’92) seemed to be shutting down the very thing I loved about working with young people – their insatiable curiosity, creativity and need to challenge the ‘old’. It’s what made me leave teaching in 2000 and go to prison instead (to work with Geese Theatre Co.)
In the 2020’s, I’m witnessing the outcomes in my own children’s education. I’ll try to sum it up in one example. My 15-Year-old daughter is studying Macbeth for her English GCSE. I thought this would be great because she played Lady Macbeth in a primary school production of the play, and I thought she could really deepen her understanding of Shakespeare. But no, instead she was told that she ‘didn’t need to read the whole play’, given a sheet with the themes she needed to write about and a list of quotations to use. It has become about teaching the formula for getting a good grade in the exam, not about developing intellect, understanding and insight in our young people. This is exactly what my 1990’s self feared most. I’m sure that some schools are better than this, but the over-riding drive for ‘attainment’ (good grades) is now baked into our system.
Last week, my daughter was busy revising – i.e. sitting on her bed memorising reams of quotations for her English texts, and I was struck again not only by the absurdity of this, but also by the injustice. I have another, 12-year-old, daughter who works with pretty much a full hand of neurodivergent cards – dyslexia, ADHD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Tourette Syndrome. She is smart and insightful and resilient, with more emotional intelligence than I could ever aspire to. She has enormous energy to offer the world, but she will stumble right at the beginning of the road to success (as it’s currently mapped out). Her dyslexia will severely impact her ability to interact through written word, her poor working memory rules out those lists of quotations, her ADHD and autism turn the traditional classroom into an obstacle course. She’ll be lucky to even get entered for her GCSE English. But give her the content of Macbeth, the dark heart of the story and she’ll spin it into a thousand wild tales and terrifying images - and she’ll start connecting it to current world events.
So much for education. How much of this also applies to workplaces? I’ve worked with so many organisations that have their own, baked-in, curriculum and league tables, creating systems that immediately disable a large portion of staff potential.
If the EDI movement is to make any real gains for social and workplace equity it needs to tackle these injustices, deeply embedded in the structures of our society.
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