Curb your enthusiasm, kids

Jamie

Rather than teaching a student terrible lessons about success and life I think this is teaching them quite a sensible lesson: work isn't *everything*. It would be different if this kid was being discouraged from working flat out to get a C, but as it is he's clearly talented and there's a risk he'll burn himself out.

Pot Head

I wonder if Ministers ever gets sick of backbenchers who want a "quick word" ?

Peter From Maidstone

Is it driven to want to get an A if that is what a person is capable of? Surely if a child can get an A without working themselves into an early grave then they should attempt to do so. If the mistakes this student were 'silly mistakes' then it seems entirely sensible that he would want some pointers about to avoid making them.

If a student who can get an A it told to settle for a C then what does that tell him or her about how to handle lots of other similar situations in life.

Surely the correct response of the teacher should be to run a session considering what sort of silly mistakes all students might make and how they should approach a question to avoid doing so?

www.coffeehousewall.co.uk

Yow Min Lye

"But what is better: to go to Cambridge with three As and hate it or to go to Bangor with three Cs and love it?"

Or achieve no As, Cs of even Es and head straight for the dole queue to savour a life loafing about on benefits?

David L

Kids today, eh! You try to instil in them good, socialist notions of under-achievement and welfare dependency; and do they listen? Happily, no.

johnfaganwilliams

So depressing and it all starts with the phrase "can I have a word with Jonnny please." In better days teachers were "Mr Griffiths." They weren't your mates but people in authority. The giving and receiving of a title emphasised this. Bloody Shirley Williams.

Ian Walker

Maybe if we paid teachers million pound bonuses, instead of bankers, they might be a little more enthusiastic?

teledu

To be fair to the teacher, he has posted a rather good reply on Ian Martin's blog. Although I don't agree with all he says in his response, he doesn't come across as quite the numpty portarayed in Mr Payne's piece.

Frank Furter

I think back to my own time at a state grammar school. I approach the staff room door at at 4.05, knock nervously, after a few minutes the door opens: 'may I speak with Mr Dean please?'; 'Dean, some oik wants to speak to you'; ;'Who is it?'; 'Furter'; 'What does he want -assistance with his maths - he is useless. Tell him he'll be lucky to get into Hull and tell him to buzz off' I duly buzzed. But later, got into Manchester - thanks to Mr Dean.

William of London

If 'Jonny Griffiths' is a real teacher, one hopes he will be instantly dismissed.

julesm

In the mid 1990s the head teacher of my daughter's state secondary school told her and the other assembled Year 10 GCSE group that they needn't worry too much about getting good grades at GCSE as they didn't matter that much, and that anyway the students who did tend to strive to do well were not usually very nice people. He had already decided to stop having separate sciences on the curriculum as 'some students found them difficult'. He was at the vanguard of the last government's dumbing down of education, in the name of 'equality' I suppose. A complete chippy mediocrity.

Fergus Pickering

You might get a load of Cs and be happy in Bangor upending beer glasses and shagging, but alas these years will end and you will have to stagger out into the world with a huge debt and no skills. And why should the boy necessarily be miserable in Cambridge. I was not miserable in Oxford and I am as common as dirt. Oxford was a good place for boozing in those days and very reasonable for the other thing due to the proximity of secretarial colleges and the like.

REPay

Hmmm...the Cambridge/Bangor comment is depressing because the very teachers who put off good pupils from Oxbridge will be the ones complaining about elitism.

2trueblue

Ah. Must not try too hard, you might be disappointed. Bless.

DJT

Ahhhh...it must be *so* nice to finish work at 4pm.

Eliza Bennet

This is why making number of pupils going to Oxbridge a feature of school league tables is a great idea. I went to an average comp in the 90s. Though I got effortless straight As in everything all the way along, no teacher ever suggested Oxbridge. In fact, they preemptively began discouraging the idea, telling me, and my parents, that I wouldn't like it and that state applicants didn't stand a chance. Once I asked one too many difficult questions in class, and a teacher ridiculed my (purely imagined) aspirations in front of the class: "well, aren't you smart, I suppose you've been sitting up reading about this, getting ready for Oxford or Cambridge or somewhere you think will be good enough for you." I didn't apply there...my friends would also have called me a snobby Tory if I had...and actually did go to Bangor for my BA. There, conscientious lecturers advised me to go on to Cambridge, which I did. I went on to a job at Oxford.
If you are academically inclined, Oxbridge is where you will be most likely to be happy. It is the only remaining arena in this country where being bookish doesn't make you an object of suspicion. My colleagues and I who do admissions really are not biased against state school applicants. Left-wing to a man, the picture of Oxbridge admissions as elitists is laughably far from the truth. But while a blend of chippyness, laziness, cod politics and misconception leads teachers to discourage state students from applying, we can't get them in. Except in the most extreme, clinical cases, a teacher's primary role is to encourage intellectual achievement and academic success, not to offer a counselling service on optimal life-work balance. If it is four o'clock and you are tired, you should question your own motivation if you feel drawn to offering that kind of help.

Jan Cosgrove

The kid was simply being asked to think about more than his As. And people shouldn't be up their As so much. The author observes rightly that kids get overstressed and it isn't good for them to be on Plus all the time. He's 17. I doubt the teacher wants him to go to Bangor and be miserable, I have no doubt that, if it can be achieved, he wants the boy to go to Cambridge with his As and be ecstatically happy. A teacher has to deal with kids in the round, not as exam fodder. Trust the right to make something negative of this. Oh, play-based learning, that bete noire of the right, credited with starting the rot from the permissive 60s onwards, is making a come back. I've worked in play (that non-job) for 30 years but all we did was, after all, just useless, namby-pamby molly-coddling. They never learned anything with us ...

Sir Everard Digby

Misquoted,misunderstood or not, this scenario is hardly a good lesson in life is it?

Assuming this aspiring pupil gets a private sector job,they will find that being 'weary' at 4pm is not usually a consideration, nor is where ones University degree was obtained. What will be judged is thought processes,stamina and determination. This piece reads like the antithesis of those qualities.

I suggest anyone exhibiting such qualities needs the maximum encouragement as they will take an individual a long way in there own right.

Qualifications are now the be all and end all of teaching it appears. They are not necessarily the be all and end all of being a successful member of society.

Ron Todd

Stress is part of life. A good degree from anywhere will give a wider choice of jobs. Many of us have to take what jobs we can get. The well qualified can pick from high level high stress jobs or jobs they can do without breaking into a sweat.

Fergus Pickering

Shame on your teachers, Eliza. I wouldn't have applied to Oxford if it had not been for a teacher of mine, a brilliant man who had recently spent a year as a 'schoolmaster studemt' (he was 52) in Oxford. His own enthusiasm, against the wishes of the Headmaster (whom he hated), he got seven or eight of us into Oxford in four or five years. Then he died and, doubtless, things reverted to the way they were before. The main obstacle in the way of education are the teachers who are low-achievers and wish everyone else to be the same. After all, in the sixth form you probably knew more than they did.

alexsandr

Ummm

not sure the teacher wasnt trying to instill a bit of work-life balance perspective. As has been said above, people need to realise we dont live to work we work to live, to put food on the table etc.
Or as the old adage went, all work and no play, makes jack a dull boy.

Scotty

Isnt it sad that our childrens futures are being guided by these jobsworths who are desperately avoiding the possibility of failure and denying the satisfaction of trying trying and trying until you succeed. There is one thing for sure, if you dont try you wont either succeed or fail.
But the socialist of this world have only one strategy, evening society by bringing us all down to the same level of not trying.

Mudplugger

What's the point, when it is about to be proven to all children that someone who admits to being functionally illiterate, with the writing and spelling skills of a 2-year-old, not understanding money and an inability to use a computer, can become England's top football manager, earning millions, some of it taxed, and with every chance of a knighthood subject to some limited success ?
Now try to explain to your young child how important it is to excel at reading, writing and arithmetic to enable his or her future wealth and success in life. Game over.

Fergus Pickering

Ah, alexandr, but that is not true, or not for everybody. I presume that ld saw means we work so that we can have nice holidays.

Ron Todd

If it is true that Cameron has once again given in to the Liberals and is going to let them appoint one of their own to be in charge of university admissions then in the small gap before the good universities are ruined having a good x-factor style sob-story will be as important as good A levels in getting into any university course that still has an academic component.

Corinium

Why are pupils addressing teachers by their forename? To this day I struggle to address or refer to my former teachers by their forenames. In fact, my late mother, who trained as a nurse before the war, to her dieing day called all doctors 'Sir'. She could do no other. OK, times have changed and slavish deference has gone. My own children had a much more relaxed relationship with their teachers than I did. But I do not believe that excessive familiarity between pupils and teachers is a good thing.

Cynic

Dear Eliza Bennet, your tale is not an endorsement of quotas for Oxbridge, rather it is a justification for a sea change in education practices, where aspiration and the pursuit of excellence become the norm.