The problem with school (here)

Catalonia (and other parts of the world) are discussing the results of the PISA tests, which attempt to gauge children's achievements in school around the globe. Results were not great here, despite more hours of classroom time. I have so many suggestions!

Every afternoon around 5:30pm I am bombarded with stories about school. [Before continuing, I should explain the word 'afternoon' with respect to 5:30. Where I'm from, 5:30 is evening. Here it is the beginning of the second half of the day, when shops open after the midday break, and when kids get home from school. 'Evening' isn't until 8 or 9pm. It is a significant difference in vocabulary, the tip of an iceberg about the differences in the daily routine, which will be the subject of a different blog post. For the moment, understand that it's not the end of the day, but the middle.]

We are not a conventional family and we have not chosen conventional schooling. We homeschooled our kids until adolescence. And though we sent them to school in the US, we often joined in on complaints about rigidity, rote memorization, and a fixation with form over content.

We join in on complaints a lot here. Here are some of the things my kids have told me:

1. Students are periodically required to "passar els punts a net", which loosely translated, since there is no direct translation of such an absurd practice, means "copying your notes over neatly". Not only must they copy them, they must do it in pen, not pencil; create a cover with name, teacher's name, class name, illustration, and date; color coordinate section titles; and use white-out whenever they make a mistake. Any transgression of these rules results in points lost on the grade. Each set of notes might be 8-10 pages long; it's hours and hours of mindless copying.

Notes were never supposed to be neat, nor handed in, nor graded. If the idea is to help kids take good notes—that is, learn and record the important parts of a lecture—than maybe going over some note-taking skills would be helpful. Copying mindlessly is not.

2. My kids have been required to memorize all the principal rivers and mountain ranges of Europe and Asia and the periodic table of the elements, among other things.

Frankly, that's what Wikipedia is for. If that wasn't enough, they were instructed to use one map to study the maps and then were given a map from a different angle and at a different scale on which to put the answers. If you're going to memorize river locations, it's pretty hard to regurgitate that info without context.

3. In typing class, they are required to practice a given sequence of nonsense words—not even real words—until they can type it perfectly without any errors. And they're not allowed to use the backspace key.

I type very quickly and consider my typing class in high school to be among the most useful classes I ever took. And we did not have backspace/delete keys then, and were not allowed to use white out. But typing perfectly without backspace is an unrealistic, useless goal. Let them make errors, and correct them! Which brings me to:

4. They are required to use pen in every class except math, in which they are required to use pencil. They are not allowed to scratch anything out; every child goes through several bottles of white-out each year.

The obsession with white-out is a reluctance to recognize that we make mistakes. You must never admit that you didn't write it perfectly from the start. It's one thing to require certain formats on term papers, but on homework? On exams? Not being able to scratch something out engenders sticking with a sentence or thought even though you've realized you'd rather change it. I wish they weren't so afraid to show that they'd made a mistake.

5. My kids have 13 different subjects each term. That means exam time is a nightmare. We have just been through two weeks of hell, with exams, sometimes multiple exams day after day. It also means that they typically have homework in many different subjects every night. They get home at 5:30pm and spend 3-4 hours doing homework.

I just don't believe this is the best way to learn.

6. The first few weeks of school, all we heard about were grade percentages and what would happen if you got this or that number of demerits. I'm telling you, we spent hours going over tables of demerits. 3 demerits and you had to stay after school. 5 demerits, you stay after and something else bad happens. 10 demerits, and more punishments. What surprised me was that they outline each punishment up to 30 demerits! (You don't get to go on the class trip.) Isn't it clear at that point that the kid didn't really care about demerits?

During the presentation, a mom got up and said, "Shouldn't we also encourage the kids in a positive way, offering rewards instead of only punishments?" And there was absolute silence in the room. The school representative patiently explained that good grades were the rewards and we didn't need to coddle the kids.

7. Each kid in a given grade goes to the same classes. There is no flexibility about different aptitudes or experience. This means that my native-English speaking children take English class, my mathematically-advanced son is doing quadratic equations for the third time, and my youngest daughter who last year studied the parts of the body in Spanish class is this year expected to read young-adult fiction. My oldest daughter who last year was in Spanish 4 in an American high school is now not only reading Góngora, Quevedo, and La Celestina—which is something like reading Chaucer or Shakespeare—but also expected to learn and express herself in Spanish. All three also are in regular Catalan classes, and learning the finer points of Catalan grammar, and also reading Catalan novels. They get extra help in both languages, but it's remarkable how much is expected. I'm sure glad they at least spoke Catalan before we got here.

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You might be asking why I'm sending my kids to this school! But really the question I ask myself is if I should send them to school at all. The truth is, I think this rigidity is inherent in the entire school system here and I have the impression that our school is one of the more flexible ones. They do spend time on art and dance and music, on community service; teachers have been more than willing to help get the kids up to speed and offer extra support; the general school atmosphere is really good: kids care about school and do their best, and have been welcoming to their new American classmates. Finally, I don't think there was a better option.