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Episode 6: University and Teaching
11 Plays1 year ago
Today, John and Dejan are joined by Physics and Maths teacher Jonathan, discussing the purpose of Education and whether University holds any relevance in 2024.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the sixth episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
00:00:11
Speaker
Today, me
Purpose of Education
00:00:12
Speaker
and Diane will be revisiting the topic of education, delving specifically into the purpose of education, teaching, student voice and university.
00:00:22
Speaker
They were also joined by a special guest who's a teacher and he teaches at one of the UK's leading schools.
00:00:29
Speaker
However, before we start the episode today, we'd like to encourage everyone to try and listen to the whole episode, hopefully, and also to leave some suggestions for any future episodes.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello, everyone.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hi, Dan and John.
00:00:40
Speaker
I am Jonathan and I'm a physics and maths teacher in a secondary school.
00:00:48
Speaker
So, well, thank you for joining us today.
00:00:50
Speaker
And today's podcast, we'll be talking about something that I'm sure you know quite a lot about.
00:00:56
Speaker
And this is education and specifically the purpose of education, the role of students, university and a career in teaching.
00:01:04
Speaker
So
Debate on Education's Role
00:01:05
Speaker
technically, the purpose of education, I think, is to pass on some skills from teacher to student and to prepare the students to have a job in their lives and then pass on their knowledge, so on and so forth.
00:01:18
Speaker
But it's not that clear cut anyway in our modern day.
00:01:22
Speaker
So what do you think, Jonathan?
00:01:25
Speaker
What's actually the aim of education nowadays?
00:01:28
Speaker
I think when you say imparting knowledge, that's like a big part of it.
00:01:32
Speaker
But if we think about from, let's start with like a student standpoint, right?
00:01:39
Speaker
If I was a student when I was studying, I would be thinking about, okay, can I get a job out of this?
00:01:44
Speaker
Or can I get some satisfaction in...
00:01:47
Speaker
in studying this or some kind of success in some degree.
00:01:51
Speaker
Like, for example, oh, I did this physics paper really well and I feel good about it.
00:01:56
Speaker
So, like, that's one of them, right?
00:01:58
Speaker
I think about teacher.
00:02:00
Speaker
I think it's very similar because, like, we want our students to succeed.
00:02:05
Speaker
But also, like, I think teachers will want their student to succeed in more like a
00:02:12
Speaker
personal way like as in like I know you're a student I'm teaching you I am passing on in quotation marks knowledge to you and I want you to be able to use this skill to succeed but if we stand from something like a society standpoint it would be like
00:02:27
Speaker
Okay.
Critique of Testing Methods
00:02:28
Speaker
So imagine you're playing a game and you're like, you're in control of, say, the UK.
00:02:32
Speaker
And you're like, okay, what do I want my students to have?
00:02:36
Speaker
Like, I want these young people to have some kind of skills so they can contribute to the society, either economically or socially.
00:02:47
Speaker
So in that case, in that sense, like it comes back to like testing, right?
00:02:52
Speaker
Because now you have trained, you have trained some students to do like a sort of job and now you're testing on their skills.
00:03:00
Speaker
So, well, John and Dan, how are your tests going?
00:03:05
Speaker
Well, we've got GCSEs in less than a week time.
00:03:09
Speaker
But I think they're going well.
00:03:11
Speaker
I think my main issue with,
00:03:14
Speaker
the sort of testing is that it relies a lot on just memorizing mark schemes.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
It doesn't really test if you truly understand something or if you just know.
00:03:24
Speaker
So, you know, the loudspeaker question, for example, I don't think everyone understands what's actually going on, but they know you need to say changing magnetic fields, et cetera, et cetera.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, me neither.
00:03:39
Speaker
I'm
Education's Economic and Social Impact
00:03:40
Speaker
joking.
00:03:40
Speaker
I do know how it works.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:44
Speaker
That's the point, right?
00:03:45
Speaker
As in, like, when you study a subject, it's like a vessel of, like, testing of how well you do other things.
00:03:54
Speaker
Like, if you can...
00:03:57
Speaker
like memorize the mark scheme, know what to put down.
00:04:01
Speaker
Say when you are in a job and you have to like fill in some Excel sheet or you have to like draft an email for someone, then you can do exactly that.
00:04:11
Speaker
So it's like one of the skills that you have in real life.
00:04:13
Speaker
It sounds really cynical, I know.
00:04:15
Speaker
but it is kind of there because they want you to be able to kind of replicate these skills in your future life.
00:04:23
Speaker
So it's tests are basically like a, a thing where it examines on how well you can express things, express the knowledge that you learn rather than how much knowledge you actually learn or creative out of the box thinking.
00:04:44
Speaker
So I,
00:04:45
Speaker
I don't know.
00:04:45
Speaker
For example, if, say, in English, you've got a play or something.
00:04:50
Speaker
Let's say a person.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, V from a bitch.
00:04:55
Speaker
I think when I was doing this English test, it was Tempest.
00:04:59
Speaker
Then it was like, if someone knows the play a lot, like, have a lot of understanding of it, but they can't express it, they would get quite a low mark.
00:05:09
Speaker
For example, I don't know.
00:05:11
Speaker
Let's say I know...
00:05:14
Speaker
say the story of a tempest, I know the underlying meaning.
00:05:18
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I know exactly why Shakespeare wrote it that way.
00:05:24
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But then let's say when I'm answering my question, I trip up my grammar.
00:05:29
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I don't use the right key terms.
00:05:32
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I don't write.
00:05:33
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I don't remember the exact words.
00:05:35
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I paraphrase them.
00:05:37
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Then it will become a problem, right?
00:05:38
Speaker
You'll get a lower mark.
00:05:39
Speaker
So that's one thing that the test
00:05:44
Speaker
can't and don't test on is like not the true underlying like knowledge or understanding but rather a more quotation marks superficial skill of reiterating expressing this knowledge
00:06:01
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Yes, I was going to say, yeah, I agree with you there.
00:06:04
Speaker
I think a lot of education, especially towards testing, is learning the information in a certain way that's relevant to the test, but not relevant to the outside world.
00:06:15
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So as you said, Diane, for things like learning how certain mechanisms work in physics, you basically just need to regurgitate information onto the page.
00:06:26
Speaker
And that's the same with English.
00:06:29
Speaker
Even if you have a good understanding of the text or the book, it's primarily about how you write about it, not how great your knowledge of the book is.
00:06:39
Speaker
I was also going to say the importance of education alongside the purpose of it.
00:06:44
Speaker
And you earlier alluded to this, but it is really the silver bullet for development.
00:06:50
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And it's essential for any economy because, you know, you're educating the next generation, the next generation who will develop your country.
00:07:01
Speaker
And unless a country has got, and if a country hasn't got a good education system, then the economy will definitely decrease because you have less intelligent individuals, you can access less good jobs and bring a less good economic outcome.
00:07:17
Speaker
I was also going to say that I also asked you guys about this, but education is also quite important in increasing things like gender equality.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
And there's lots of also sort of other benefits of education, more so than just learning, let's say, math equations or science equations.
00:07:37
Speaker
What do you guys think of this?
00:07:40
Speaker
I think it's...
00:07:43
Speaker
Definitely about gender equality, but also social equality in terms of saying that one of the purpose of education is to kind of level the playing field for different people that are born in different backgrounds.
00:07:59
Speaker
So say if someone has a poor background and an unfortunate childhood, but however, if they do well in the test, they will be able to access jobs that are higher income or jobs that give them a higher quality of life.
00:08:16
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And that's definitely one of the benefits of having a good education system.
00:08:24
Speaker
But I think one more thing is that
00:08:29
Speaker
When we are educating children, there's also a problem where, I don't know why I can't make it back to the test again, but better schools or more well-funded schools are definitely going to have an advantage into producing better results.
00:08:49
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just because of how much resource they put in, in terms of lesson time, making sure that students actually attend the lessons, making sure students have good resources or electronic devices in order to help them to learn.
00:09:07
Speaker
So even though education definitely helps with this equality thing, it doesn't achieve it on its own.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
00:09:19
Speaker
we were talking about this, John, in our last episode as well, how independent schools generally do produce better results and do produce children, really, with better degrees and then better jobs in the future down the line.
00:09:36
Speaker
I think that's also, as Jonathan has said, due to the fact that more resources are being put in, the teachers are being monitored, I think, Jonathan, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but...
00:09:49
Speaker
there's
Challenges in Education Systems and Teaching Pressures
00:09:50
Speaker
definitely a bit of a higher pressure I think.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's definitely a pressure but I think this pressure mainly kind of teachers give themselves that pressure but there's also pressure from more senior leadership.
00:10:09
Speaker
yeah we as a teacher well because we have like league tables right like it's like oh this school is better than that because of results and you can see it in not just in secondary schools but in universities right so one of the main goals of my school is to okay i'll say how many of my gcscs gets uh seven to nines how many of my a-level students gets uh a star studies and it's
00:10:34
Speaker
I think it's not entirely a bad thing, if you think about it.
00:10:38
Speaker
I mean, there is some kind of motivation for teachers to think of better ways to teach.
00:10:44
Speaker
But as you say, there is a certain pressure to them.
00:10:49
Speaker
And now moving on, we're talking about universities.
00:10:51
Speaker
Jonathan,
Role of Universities in Personal Development
00:10:54
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do you think there's any point of people going to university in 2024?
00:10:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:03
Speaker
Could you explain why I'm... Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few things, I think.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think universities is... Okay, so I think the biggest thing for me, personally, is universities give you a time to think where in secondary schools, it's just super hectic and you just don't have that time.
00:11:27
Speaker
And also, you might not have that kind of...
00:11:32
Speaker
you might not have exposed to other things, other people that is away from your circle.
00:11:39
Speaker
And this time to think is so important in personal development.
00:11:44
Speaker
If you have time to just sit down, think about what your worldviews are, and also be able to talk to people that have different viewpoints.
00:11:53
Speaker
Because when you go to university, if you're lucky, you meet people that are
00:12:01
Speaker
that are from different backgrounds, they have a different upbringing, or even if they have the same background upbringing or a similar background upbringing, they will have different stories because ultimately, I do think human individuals are made up of different stories, like everything that happens in your life that contributes to who you are right now.
00:12:21
Speaker
And that way really helps your society to kind of like gel well together.
00:12:27
Speaker
I can't find a better word for that.
00:12:29
Speaker
And...
00:12:31
Speaker
I think there are a couple more minor ones.
00:12:32
Speaker
I think one is like you are away from your kind of safety net from home because like as children, you are rightly at home with your parents because, well, you have to be protected from other people.
00:12:51
Speaker
But once you go to university, you lose that kind of protection and you learn a lot of real life skills in that way, where you have to, okay, you have to perhaps cohabit with three other people that you barely know or just, well, really just daily things.
00:13:10
Speaker
But that's a bit of a minor point, I think.
00:13:13
Speaker
And lastly, you do learn about what you like, right?
00:13:17
Speaker
I mean, after all, you get to choose what subjects or what field you go into.
00:13:22
Speaker
So you can learn more about that.
00:13:24
Speaker
You can work with leading experts in the field on that.
00:13:28
Speaker
So that's a rare opportunity.
00:13:30
Speaker
Like if you do not go to university,
00:13:34
Speaker
maybe the most senior person you know that knows about a subject is your teacher.
00:13:39
Speaker
Teachers are great.
00:13:40
Speaker
Teachers know a lot about their subject, but are they active researchers?
00:13:45
Speaker
Most of them are not.
00:13:46
Speaker
They're not active researchers on a certain field.
00:13:50
Speaker
Well, I definitely agree with you there and how on the sort of social side, university is a great transition, I'd imagine, from schooling to working life.
00:14:00
Speaker
And it bridges that quite large gap from, as you said, a protected family life to the real world.
00:14:07
Speaker
I was also going to say that I think university is really essential in any era, in any year for people entering highly trained professions.
00:14:16
Speaker
Obviously, you need people who are entering medicine, law, science, dentistry, things like that.
00:14:24
Speaker
You need them to be highly trained by on a level higher than what secondary schools can provide you.
00:14:30
Speaker
And I think this level of training can only be accessed through a university.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:36
Speaker
And, you know, even if perhaps your degree, you aren't going to pursue it for your job, let's say, especially if humanities degrees, this is more prominent.
00:14:46
Speaker
You definitely get more knowledge about that subject, which you can apply to the outside world.
00:14:52
Speaker
And you will find yourselves, I'd imagine, using skills that you learn in your degree and knowledge that you learned when you get a job.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, Diane, what do you think of it?
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:15:03
Speaker
I think education is hugely important because you also meet people who are likely to be in your fields and then you can build those friendships and collaborate in the future as well.
00:15:14
Speaker
But the main issue with it, I think, nowadays, and some people find this an issue,
Student Participation in School Decisions
00:15:20
Speaker
is the rise of a lot of course and modules that perhaps have zero applicability to the world, frankly.
00:15:29
Speaker
again, John's right, more prominent in the humanities, English subjects.
00:15:34
Speaker
I think they still do give you some knowledge, as you said, John.
00:15:37
Speaker
And now moving on to the purpose of education and why students are very important to achieve the purpose of education.
00:15:49
Speaker
Jonathan, what do you think students should have a say in how school runs or any school activity, really?
00:16:01
Speaker
I think this really links well with the university point.
00:16:04
Speaker
In terms of like in university, you take full ownership of your own learning.
00:16:10
Speaker
Because think about it, like lecturers, they literally, they have like one hour per week where it's like clinic time where you can go to the lecturer to ask for help.
00:16:20
Speaker
Otherwise, it's just lectures, them talking to you and you writing notes on a device or something.
00:16:28
Speaker
So you are basically a lot of universities learning the subject yourself-ish.
00:16:34
Speaker
So this is something entirely different from school, because in school, students are basically forced into the classroom and then trained.
00:16:45
Speaker
And that's kind of how it is, because you think about in the classroom, you say it's 9.50, you go to your physics lesson, the teacher talks to you, gives you activities, you guys talk to each other, gives you worksheets to do.
00:16:59
Speaker
All of this is basically on a schedule, but in universities, it's quite different.
00:17:07
Speaker
And that comes to how students have basically no say in how the school is run.
00:17:14
Speaker
You think about it in a maybe not the best analogy, but school is kind of like a prison in a sense where there are mandated activities for you to do.
00:17:25
Speaker
There are mandated time for you to sit down and self-study for four-six formers.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:35
Speaker
And that is not necessarily a bad thing, because if we think about what schools need to do for children, so there's like three.
00:17:44
Speaker
There's like protection, protecting you from malicious intents, people with malicious intents.
00:17:52
Speaker
There is provision, where they're providing you education, give you enough food, and taking care of your mental health, well-being, et cetera.
00:18:04
Speaker
But also, I think schools are really bad at encouraging pupils to participate, at least in, well, I say in this country, but I think that's just how it works right now in 2024.
00:18:20
Speaker
So say, what is participation?
00:18:24
Speaker
Think about if you can, if you can decide what you want to learn,
00:18:30
Speaker
and when you want to learn.
00:18:31
Speaker
That is participation.
00:18:33
Speaker
But then once I say this, I know a lot of people will be like, okay, well, that's just impossible, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
That's impractical, right?
00:18:39
Speaker
You give a 14-year-old child a choice to go to lesson, to do the homework, or don't do that.
00:18:47
Speaker
They will obviously choose, don't do that.
00:18:49
Speaker
And I totally get that.
00:18:51
Speaker
So I think it's kind of like a balance that we create.
00:18:53
Speaker
For example, you know in schools, they have...
00:18:57
Speaker
They're like food committees where they kind of decide on, you know, what lunch you get.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:02
Speaker
And there's like student councils where students kind of come together and talk about, well, what issues are important to them.
00:19:13
Speaker
But these are like very limited measures because like everything in a student council, firstly, a lot of student councils are not elected.
00:19:21
Speaker
Some are, a lot aren't.
00:19:23
Speaker
Most aren't, I'd say.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
Hmm.
00:19:26
Speaker
So if they aren't, then basically it's just your teachers saying, okay, well, I got this, this, this, and this students.
00:19:36
Speaker
They are model students.
00:19:37
Speaker
They do all their work.
00:19:40
Speaker
They participate in extracurriculars like sports, art, and music.
00:19:43
Speaker
They do that well.
00:19:45
Speaker
Okay, I will choose them, and we will have a chat about school.
00:19:50
Speaker
Is that the most effective way?
00:19:52
Speaker
Maybe not, because once you choose someone to be in a position, they are very unlikely to say something or to have an opposite opinion to you.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, because when you empower someone, they will be like, okay, this person empowered me, I will just do what they say.
00:20:12
Speaker
That's a bit of like human nature.
00:20:16
Speaker
as well with the head of schools and head of house as well it's pretty much the same thing I don't think
00:20:25
Speaker
Transformative change is very easy to do, especially because everyone's like, oh, well, I can't really go against the head or the second head because they've given me this role.
00:20:40
Speaker
And it's sort of a cycle of small changes that don't really impact anyone that much.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you both there.
00:20:49
Speaker
I think school is really almost like the feudal system in a way.
00:20:54
Speaker
You've got the students at the bottom and as you go up, you've got less people and it works its way up to the heads.
00:21:01
Speaker
But I don't think it's necessarily too bad a thing because...
00:21:04
Speaker
Especially I see this as I'm going through school.
00:21:07
Speaker
I think student participation and the role of students in what they want to learn becomes far greater.
Increasing Student Choice and Teacher Motivation
00:21:15
Speaker
So, for example, in the United Kingdom, we have GCSEs.
00:21:18
Speaker
In that, you can have a few choices about what you want to learn, what you don't want to learn.
00:21:22
Speaker
And then you go to A-level where your education is sort of further streamlined.
00:21:27
Speaker
At A-level, you can really decide what you want to learn.
00:21:30
Speaker
And in fact, you can decide if you don't even want to learn in reality, you can decide not to pursue education.
00:21:38
Speaker
And then ultimately, you go to university where it's even more streamlined as you're choosing one thing.
00:21:43
Speaker
So I do think the student role does definitely, your choice in what you want to learn, I mean, definitely increases the older you get and the older you sort of mature.
00:21:56
Speaker
one more point I was going to say quickly is that I think the role of students in schools has definitely changed probably from a historical perspective.
00:22:04
Speaker
When you watch those films about, you know, schooling in the Victorian era, you always see the teacher at the front writing on a blackboard.
00:22:12
Speaker
However, nowadays, I always feel like it's more sort of classroom debates, more discussions and a lot more participation, which I think is far more effective.
00:22:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's definitely a
00:22:26
Speaker
I don't think this way of teaching is new, promoting discussion.
00:22:30
Speaker
But I think from a teacher standpoint, it's effort.
00:22:34
Speaker
Because you have different pressures from different people.
00:22:37
Speaker
First, you have a very broad curriculum that you kind of had to push through in an exam subject.
00:22:45
Speaker
But secondly, trying to have class discussions can not backfire, but not work as well as you intended.
00:22:55
Speaker
Because sometimes it will, as a teacher, you're responsible for, say, 20, 30 kids, right?
00:23:03
Speaker
And your ideal situation is everything is under your control and you can not micromanage, but kind of micromanage what they're actually doing.
00:23:13
Speaker
But when you have class discussions, it can often descend into...
00:23:18
Speaker
well, I use this word chaos.
00:23:22
Speaker
And from a teacher standpoint, it's a lot of mental strain.
00:23:25
Speaker
So definitely it's a mix of both.
00:23:28
Speaker
So that's why I think the best kind of practitioners do have like a balance of
00:23:33
Speaker
of both pursuing how much curriculum we are going to push through and also like how much room for debate because I do think learning is like a social process and you can only like truly learn when you kind of like exchange viewpoints with your fellow classmates.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah so the final question that we have today is why did you want to become a teacher and what made you pursue this career?
00:24:02
Speaker
Thanks.
00:24:06
Speaker
I think it's a multitude of things.
00:24:11
Speaker
I think one is, or the biggest thing, is the personal enjoyment in terms of I do like seeing younger people learn.
00:24:22
Speaker
because you can see them transforming from knowing little to knowing a lot.
00:24:29
Speaker
And seeing that transformation gives myself a lot of satisfaction, um,
00:24:36
Speaker
And I came to kind of that conclusion when I was, when I, when I finished university and it was, well, it was COVID times and then I was doing some tutoring and, and I found, okay, that teaching might be the way to go.
00:24:52
Speaker
So, which I guess comes back to like all of the things I've said, like I do want schools to be more
00:24:58
Speaker
dialogical a lot more dialogues involved like if students can kind of like students and you know teachers they can like share some of the decision making like feeling the school as like a big community where everyone have a voice they can discuss these and yeah well I guess the second point is like I am a huge democrat in terms of like I do agree with democratic principles and I do think like schools like
00:25:28
Speaker
Educating young people is a very important step in that process because if you are in a democratic society, if people are not informed or they cannot assess the information given to them,
00:25:44
Speaker
then democracy will not be as strong as it should be, basically.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's my two points.
00:25:51
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:25:52
Speaker
That is the end of the sixth episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
00:25:56
Speaker
Thank you to Jonathan for coming in as a special guest this episode.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yes, thank you as well.
00:26:02
Speaker
That was really interesting to have another perspective on this very relevant debate and discussion to young people.
00:26:10
Speaker
Also, I'd encourage everyone still listening to follow the podcast, perhaps give us a five-star rating and also leave us a comment on the episode or for a future episode.
00:26:20
Speaker
Thank you very much.