Learning to the MAX!

  My Son who is now 10 and 4 days old, came home this weekend with a book that has the following sentences in it:

“A man, too frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shouder (sic), swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden”       and

“They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust”.

Of the page he read to me, I would be surprised if there were more than 3 sentences that he was able to read without stopping.  When I asked him what the story was about, or what he had read he had no idea.  What is the point in this nonsense?  This is a book that has been specifically bought by his school and graded for his particular reading ability.  What is going on here?  “Step by step how to put a child off from reading for the rest of his life”.  Challenge him with new words, grammar, and styles by all means, but for heavens sake make it enjoyable!

Striking the balance of new learning, continued improvement, whilst also making it enjoyable is a tricky business.  I want my Learners to experience new, unfamiliar routes, encounter a variety of situations so that they continue their learning but still enjoy themselves.  In my 3 years so far I believe I have let down 2 people specifically on this point.  They started with me at different times, about 2 years apart but were remarkably similar. 

Both were absolute beginners and both were progressing slower than average – which in itself is not unusual, I’ve had plenty that fit into that bracket so far.  They had booked a course of 10 driving sessions.  They found the feet/hand co-ordination very difficult to control.  Normally I would expect a Learner to get to the standard of driving to/from their home within 3-4 hours, yet both of the above took 7-8 hours.  One packed up after his first 10 hour block booking, the other after his first 15 hour block booking.  The feeling of disappointment to lose them is very strong, even thinking about them now, a long time after the event.  I worked hard, really, really hard with them; probably the hardest I’ve had to work.  Although they were in a safe environment, they would have worked the car hard too, straining the clutch/gear mechanisms and bashing tyres against kerbs – in their efforts.  This makes it all the worse really, I know that I worked really hard to get them progressing, and yet, both decided to quit after their bookings.  I also feel kind of robbed, robbed of a challenge.  Despite the fact that I found them both really hard work, I really enjoyed their sessions – the feeling I got when I saw their faces when they achieved a particular objective will stay with me for a long time. 

But I would be naive to think that I will appeal to all.  I wonder if in my eagerness to help them progress, I dropped the ball marked ‘fun’, and it all became a bit too much for them. 

It’s a little bit like my Son with his ‘inappropriate’ book.  I dare say that theoretically, yes he could sit there with a dictionary by his side, and on each and every occasion of discovering a new word, he looks it up, reads the appropriate meaning and then go over the sentence again, and make sense of this new word in the context of the story.  And yes, I dare say he will learn some new words in that way.  But at what cost?  If this process means that he struggles to understand the story, or it takes him 2 months rather than the expected 2 weeks to read the book, then you have to wonder whether he is learning to read so that he can enjoy books for the rest of his life, or whether he is being force-fed to tick that book title off a list.  It’s exactly this lack of attention to detail that, in my humble opinion, is creating the problems we have in education right now.   It’s possible that book was incorrectly selected, it may have been incorrectly graded in terms of ability of reader, or my Son's ability was incorrectly assessed, or perhaps, despite it being formally stamped up and identified as a school book, perhaps it was donated to the school.  Whatever the reason, as I know only too well with my Learners/PDI’s, if learning is not enjoyable, then it will be ineffective. 

The DSA are telling us on their website that there is a worryingly high proportion of newly qualified drivers that feel ill-prepared for driving independently after they pass their test.  It makes me wonder if there is a connection between that situation and some young adults coming out of education being unable to perform the most basic maths for example.  It seems to my untrained eye, that much emphasis is being placed on passing tests, with little regard for how well the subject matter is applied post-test.

The other side to this subject is ensuring I stretch the more abled too.  This is something that I believe can be easily overlooked in the training of PDI’s.  Most PDI’s will readily grasp the concept of the phase 1 and 2 on the Part 3 test representing Learners of differing abilities.  Generally speaking, with a ‘phase 1’ Learner, nothing is left to chance.  They are tightly controlled.  A ‘phase 2’ Learner is generally asked what his/her actions/considerations are in order to deal with a ‘soon to be’ eventuality.  But how many ADI’s will place as much emphasis stretching an ‘able’ Learner as they would meeting the needs of a less able Learner?  It’s an interesting point.  A more able Learner will learn with less effort, quicker, and better.  So theoretically, should they not go to test sooner and pass with less attempts?   Or, if they are not being given the opportunity of going to test sooner, should they not be passing with less driving faults?

This is where the continual assessment really comes into its own.  Only by taking the time and trouble to log your performance, monitor it, and assess where it fits into the bigger picture, can you have any hope of bringing your goals into fruition on or before schedule.  When a Learner gets in the car without their Drivers Pack, they have nothing to show me as to what they did last time, or overall what subjects they have covered, or how well they felt after the previous session, so reviewing the previous session becomes hard work and we haven’t even turned the engine on yet.  Monitoring your progress is an absolute key component of achieving goals, especially if you add a timescale to it.