Phil Beadle is very cross. Last week on Can't Read, Can't Write, he was cross because he attended a lesson for English as an Additional Language, and found it boring. He felt the learners weren't learning anything. The woman who ran the course pointed out that they had results which suggested they did. Mr Beadle went off and smouldered.
Then he attempted to teach his adults and I became very cross. I became cross with his insistence that the school system has exclusively failed these people. Maybe it has failed some of them. But not Linda. Linda is old (46) and she is by turns truculent and weepy. Linda is the kind of person who, when she finally learns to read, complains that the world is full of words and she can't shut them out. Linda is a pain in the arse.
Phil spends the first episode dancing around Linda like a lovesick schoolboy. He gives her special learning tools - albeit pipecleaners - and tells her that her "barriers to learning" are not in her, but in the way she's taught. There are only nine people in the class, and yet Linda is getting taught on her own. In the second episode, Phil attempts to explain commas in a traditional "chalk and talk" sesh, and, rude as usual, Linda first interrupts and barracks the lesson, and then storms out to the accompaniment of Phil saying he's pissed off with "this" (which I took to be her behaviour). This viewer very much concurred.
When he visits her and eats humble pie she tells him that she lost all respect for him when he did that, as he should be the adult. It seems to have escaped Linda's notice that, at 46, (older than her teacher), she has long left behind the privileges of childhood. Being a learner does not mean you are supposed to be a social or emotional child, or a rude shithead. Still, what does it matter, as a calligrapher was despatched to help Linda at home, and a lesson of spacehoppers planned for her greater engagement.
Meanwhile, James, 28, whose mother won't help him and who has taken sick days off with stress about his failure to do his homework, is still sitting in his corner feeling confused. Because he is not a shit.
This is one of the things that pisses me off about the education system in this land; pains in the arse get more attention. Poor behaviour and vile manners are consistently rewarded. And this begs the question, well, are they worth it? I think not. Some people are just difficult and selfish, and as children they crap all over the learning of their classmates, and as adults they turn into self-righteous souls whose fault it never is. Treating them like little nuggets of gold does nobody any favours except them. Others, like James, make no trouble, and are marginalised and ignored as a result. Look who isn't learning.
I know that this is perilously close to talking about the "undeserving poor", but some people choose to be horrid, and why anybody owes them anything is beyond me. Teach the nice. The selfish should be sent off to think on their sins. Because if we have 5 million functionally illiterate people, and some are slow and some are just a pain in the arse, the odds are the slow ones are being held back, and the teacher driven to nervous breakdown, by the mouthy selfish ones (who are ALWAYS in a numerical minority, in my experience.)
And who's worth it? The utilitarian answer is surely to teach those who are willing to try and not those who aren't. Looking at Linda, it seems all they want is a wider consumer choice of grievance, and surely that they will find with or without education.
For further information - the link below deals with Euro-wide illiteracy. Quake with fear, Eurolings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/feb/19/furthereducation.uk1
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