Summer is a time of tests and examinations and autumn of league tables. Throughout the year we have inspections. All three have one thing in common. Achievement. God help children if they fail and thus threaten their schools/academies with a lower rank on the national league table. God help schools/academies if they fail their Ofsted inspections. The education culture in our country appears to be obsessed with success and terrified of failure. I question whether this is the culture we should be promoting.
Education is sometimes compared to a three-legged stool. The first leg constitutes the disciplines/subjects that are taught, often, discretely, subjects such as mathematics, history, geography and music. The second leg is each of the cross-curricular themes that help develop children in a rounded manner – such as expression/language and the ability to think. The third leg is the way education is promoted, e.g. how teachers teach (e.g. telling and teamwork) and enabling children to learn (e.g. discovery, imitation and observation). The late Professor Ted Wragg of Exeter University ascribed a different metaphor to this calling it the cuboid curriculum.
But there is a fourth leg (going by my analogy) or dimension (going by Professor Wragg’s one) – i.e. the qualities that we wish to promote within our children, a key one being resilience. Intrinsic within resilience is managing and coping with failure. Because every school/academy wishes to be at the top of its league table, governors, headteachers and staff do everything it takes to succeed. This desire is both, intrinsically and extrinsically, passed on to the pupils. And when they fail, their skies come tumbling down on them – as it did with chicken-licken in the toddler’s story.
