Learning is vital no matter who you are and it is the backbone of life. If we don’t understand more about ourselves, our lives and the lives of others around us, then how can we ever learn important life skills. In recent years schools have been put under a lot of pressure to reach education targets and this has come under fire from both teachers and parents. It appears that rather than developing learning and life skills that will help them become young adults, schools are teaching children how to pass tests.
There is no shame in teaching kids to pass exams as long as they understand the subject as well but while many pupils may know the right answer, is there much point if they can’t understand it? The real concern however is coming from the business sector who have said that university graduates that they are getting straight out of University can’t cope with the working environment and simple concepts like their life skills aren’t developed enough. The concern with this is that employers are limiting the number of inexperienced candidates in favour of those with experience as these candidates are usually multi skilled and won’t need additional training like presentation skills training.
Those of you have a learning disability like dyslexia and go to a specialist independent school then you might have an advantage over others. This sounds strange but this is because independent schools can set their own syllabus and teach different aspects of subjects. As well as this it means that pupil’s individual learning methods can be catered for so kids with dyslexia can be taught in a way that suits them. This type of teaching can usually only be found in specialist dyslexic schools but it allows dyslexic pupils to learn and understand more.
A typical problem with examination based learning is that pupils who have had to change schools a number of times often get left behind as a result. This is particularly true for children who have an army background as their parents are often sent to different military bases at both home and overseas. If you look into the military genealogy of families that have a history of service in the army, you will often see that the educational performance of the individual family members is typically poor unless they have spent their exam years at one school.