I was reading an article about one Headmistress’s view that education has become so focused on getting children through exams that the very passion or enjoyment for the subject has been lost.
In education surely we should be focused on engaging children’s minds and encouraging them to question whilst also learning the skills to apply the knowledge? Not to simply learn strategies to pass exams. We should be allowing our educators the freedom to inspire their pupils, not to be constrained to the teaching of skills and content to meet targets.
Education is a gift for a lifetime. The skills learnt need to be ones that can be applied throughout their life, not just to pass another hurdle in the education system. The ability to assimilate information, to question, to extract relevant material and apply it in a variety of settings are skills that are needed throughout life. The passing of exams is a natural by product of that. To simply teach content and strategies that hit targets is denying our children the value of a real education.
