8 reasons why primary school education doesn't matter

Hello again guys, I'd like to continue on the theme of education which is always popular with my readers and I'll discuss a very interesting case study: my Peruvian boss and his family are spending three months in London with the intention of eventually settling in Madrid or Lisbon. They picked London as it was a chance for them to improve their English and they can get a 90 day tourist visa here anyway whilst they sought out their move to Portugal or Spain. Now they have two daughters which they have taken out of their school in Peru and the girls would be enrolled in some classes whilst in London but they are not here long enough to bother with any kind of formal schooling - this would leave most parents appalled as they would assume that such a disruption would be hugely detrimental to the girls' education but I beg to differ. In a recent post, I had a major rant about how so many older teachers in Singapore are terrible at their jobs anyway and slip through the cracks of the system simply because they have been teaching for so many years. So in today's post, I'd like to look at the very interesting case study of these two young Peruvian girls (aged 8 and 10) in London and why I don't think that they would suffer any consequences of being taken out of their primary school in Peru. 

1. How essential are the lessons in primary school (and don't believe the teacher).  

My parents are teachers so I am only too aware of the lies and tactics that teachers use in the classroom - the most basic trick they use is fear. "If you do not learn how to do this, then you will fail the exam and you won't be able to progress to a good secondary school; that will decrease your chances of making it to a decent university and your future will be ruined if you do not pay full attention to my lesson today! The next 60 minutes are incredibly crucial to your future - so if you want to be rich and successful, then pay attention and take notes. If you want to become poor and unemployed, then you may as well leave the classroom now." That's completely untrue of course, most of us adults would struggle to remember the individual lessons that we had when we were in primary school yet we have developed a lot of useful skills along the way that has allowed us to function as productive adults in the working world. An example I always like to cite is when my sister asked me a very flawed question: she wanted to know if I could remember what I was taught in A level economics. My honest answer was no, I certainly cannot remember the details of the lessons from back in the period 1993-1994 - that's just way too long ago. I then asked her why she wanted to know and she wanted to me to help tutor my nephew for his A level economics exam. Whilst I couldn't remember the lessons I was taught back in the day, I have the ability to find the information I needed for my nephew's exams, relearn the information and then impart that knowledge to my nephew. Thus I was not trying to rely on my long term memory to try to remember anything from 1993 or 1994 when I was first taught economics back when I was a student, I simply treated it as a brand new topic to learn all over again from scratch. That's what smart adults are capable of - we can teach ourselves anything without the help of a teacher and in my job, I'm often expected to figure complex things out on my own instead of running to my boss for help. 

2. Short term memory vs long term problem solving skills

The longer these two girls are out of formal education, the bigger the gaps will be in their education but is that a problem? Just because a gap is there doesn't mean it matters or that it can't be filled at a later date  to rectify the situation. I didn't grow up speaking Spanish, I never took a class of Spanish in my life before, no one in my family spoke a word of Spanish yet I am working for a Latin American company today and happily functioning in a Spanish speaking work environment. I didn't wait for a teacher to teach my how to speak Spanish, instead I simply taught myself over the years and when I had to switch to a Spanish speaking work environment, I doubled my effort and studied harder to improve my Spanish. The problem with a lot of primary education is that children at that age are not capable of critical thinking nor do we expect children that age to have any kind of complex problem solving skills. You can't ask an 8 year old a question like, "do you think that Greta Thunberg the best person to lead in our fight against man made climate change?" No, you might just about be able to tell an 8 year old kid who Greta Thunberg is and why she is famous, but any kind of  analysis of her would be beyond an 8 year old. But that's what 8 year old kids do at school, their heads are filled with loads of facts that are stored in their short term memory - some skills are vital like how to brush your teeth properly, whilst others are easily forgotten if that information simply isn't that useful or interesting. What is much more important is the ability to find information when we need it, rather than rely on our memory per se. Hence by that token, it really isn't such a big deal if these two girls are not in a classroom having their heads crammed with loads of information for their very short term memory, as long as they are having a fascinating time in London with plenty of new experiences.

3. What can you afford to miss and still achieve your goal? 

Let's start with a final goal and work backwards: if the aim for the girls is to get a place at a very good university like Oxford or Harvard, then let's ask the question: what can the girls afford to miss in terms of their formal education and still achieve their goal? Say if the girls developed an illness like Covid-19 and had to take some days off school to rest as they were too sick to do anything, would that seriously affect their chances to achieve their goal if they took one week off school? The answer is no, that is not long enough to have an impact. But then what about a longer disruption like 3 months, which is exactly what the girls are undergoing right now? The fact is the pandemic has thrown a lot of formal education at all levels into complete disarray but the question is, has it really damaged a whole generation of students of students then? The answer is, not really - so whilst they missed out on some stuff that would have been temporarily stored in their short term memory until the next test or exam, However, the exams merely adapted to avoid testing the students on the topics that they missed and if it was going to be something so vital for them to apply for a certain course at a university, the students could then fill that gap in their education at a later stage (the same way I learnt Spanish as an adult). Thus what the pandemic has shown us is that you can strip away so much of the curriculum and most of the students will still be okay at the end of the process as long as they take away some useful long term problem solving skills that will serve them well in the working world. Missing 3 months of school might make the girls fail a test at the end of those 3 months, if that test was entirely based on what was taught in those 3 months but would it ultimately prevent them from achieving their goal of getting into a good university or landing a dream job in the long run? No, of course not. 

4. That simple 80s computer game vs a massive national park

Please allow me to describe a simple computer game I played a long time ago back in the late 1980s, the player has to cross a toxic lake of acid by jumping from rock to rock, sometimes you have to also land on a floating log that can move in the acid. If you miss and land in the acid, it will kill you. If you do successfully make it across the lake, then you will move onto the next level and so each subsequent level gets increasingly harder with smaller margins for error. A lot of people actually believe that education especially at primary school level is very much the same format, that there's only a narrow, linear path across A to B, deviate one little bit from it and you will die. Like if you miss one exam and that's it, you won't be able to progress in life. Nah, it's not like that - so many people from refugees to children of expatriates who have had major disruptions to their education but did these disruptions totally destroy their education? Not always, the way I see it, the computer game analogy isn't accurate, instead I see it more like a hiker who is going through a massive national park - in the national park, there are forests, lakes, mountains, grasslands, even beaches and the hikers can seek different kinds of experiences depending on which path they choose to take. Thus there isn't only that one path that you have to take but in fact there are many options that you could explore - so if you start off on the mountain path but find yourself yearning for the beach, then you just change your plans. We should be treating education like a journey of personal development, allowing each individual the freedom to pick their own experiences that will enrich their minds along the way. Within that context, simply sticking to a narrow, linear path can be quite detrimental to a student's development as this becomes a very boring process that would not really stimulate the young person's mind sufficiently. 

5. The working class mindset of preventing an imminent disaster. 

Allow me to describe how my mother grew up in abject poverty in the 1940s and 1950s. Her family was shockingly poor and my grandfather had to go out every day to work - seven days a week, he never took a day off because he earned so little money that if he didn't work, there wouldn't be enough food to feed the family that day. So he had to work even when he was very sick and eventually he worked himself to an early grave. Oh dear, that's why working class people shouldn't have too many children like my late grandfather. That's a sad but true situation facing a lot of working class families living in poverty: it was the 'if you don't work, you and your family will starve to death' and at least within the context of my grandfather, that was very true. However, it isn't helpful when working class parent transfer that same mindset to their children's education - ie. "you cannot miss a single day of school, you must attend every single lesson, do every single piece of homework or else you will fail." That simply isn't true, that's not how education works. I do wonder if it is more a case of getting your money's worth, I can just imagine a working class parent saying, "I've worked so hard to pay your school fees, so much sure you attend every lesson I've paid for and so don't miss any lessons - those lessons were not cheap, do you know how hard I've had to work to get the money for your school fees?" Look, maybe if a student is particularly weak and struggling with a subject, then yeah missing a week or two might make the difference between failing an exam and actually passing it but for most students, they could probably miss quite a lot of lessons then figure out where are the gaps in their knowledge whilst preparing for the exams - as long as those gaps are then filled before the student actually takes the exam, then very little or no harm is done, especially when there isn't an imminent disaster. 

6. Young children are not even tested on the most important skills they learn in primary school.

Let's face it, it really doesn't matter what kids do at school at that age. Like just because an 8 year old boy scores well for a maths exam doesn't mean that he's going to grow up to be an accountant. They are way too young for their education to matter that way - the most important part of going to school at that age is learning to get along with your peers, so the kids actually learn some crucial lessons when they are playing with their friends at school. This process is especially important if the children are from small families and do not have friends their age to socialize with at home - I remember this bizarre incident from the late 1990s in Singapore. I have changed the names of those involved in the incident - one of the friends we knew from church in those days was "uncle Tan" and he had a daughter, Clara. He often sang praises of her, telling us how well she was doing at school and when we finally got to meet Clara, boy she was such a brat. She had no social skills, she was very rude to my mother and somehow, uncle Tan was totally oblivious to all that - in his eyes, as long as Clara was scoring the top marks in her exams at school, she could behave like this obnoxious brat. If I was Clara's teacher, I would write in her report card, "Clara may have aced all her exams, but she is such a rude bitch with no friends in school, everyone hates her (including the teachers). She would have a lot of trouble fitting into the working environment when she becomes an adult - I blame her parents. Teach your brat some manners before it is too late." Yet strangely enough, too many parents and teachers don't really care about this aspect of their children's education in primary school. Thus if my boss' two daughters can get this aspect of their social skills addressed in the meantime (say if we enroll them in a sports club where they could play a team sport like hockey, football or basketball on a regular basis), then at least this important aspect of their social development won't neglected when they are in London. 

7. Education cannot cure stupidity.

I hate to be blunt but the harsh truth is that some children are clever whilst others are stupid - it is called the genetic lottery and it is entirely down to luck. You can't cure stupidity, education doesn't work like that. Even if you sent a stupid child to the best school and gave the child loads of lessons with great teachers, you still cannot fundamentally change that stupid child into a scholar; at best, you could see some improvements in the child's performance in the exams. Exams are merely a means to test a child's intelligence and if the child performs well in the exams, the good results are simply the confirmation of what we knew all along - that the child in question is intelligent. Now let's fast forward the process to the point where the young people have completed their former education and are applying for a job, so what is the older person like me looking for when I am trying find the right person for the job? I would like to hire someone who is very intelligent, someone who has won that generic lottery and I don't want to be stuck with someone who is really quite stupid. I know that it would be nearly impossible to bluff your way through a tough degree programme at a top university, so that's why a top graduate is always a safe bet in this aspect but otherwise I am more than happy to let the candidates prove their intelligence through other means outside the education system. Thus the way I see it, if the girls are intelligent, then great - they will find a way to prove themselves worthy to their future employers one way or another in the future and they don't need to do this via the formal education process. If the girls are stupid, then by that token, no amount of education can fix that stupidity - therefore why waste so much time and money on a process that will only prove that they're too dumb to score well in exams anyway? You may as well take them out of school and let them have fun. Either way, whether they are intelligent or stupid, by that token, they have nothing to lose by dropping out of school. 

8. The luxury of having a lot more control over your child's teachers

Let me take you back to your time at school at the beginning of the academic year - I am sure you remember that experience of learning which teacher you would be getting for which subject and how you like some of them whilst you hated some of the others. There is so much luck involved in this process even in the supposedly good schools in Singapore - in fact, terrible teachers tend to get away with so much more in good schools because a) the students are already smart and are unlikely to just fail if the lessons are terrible and b) their parents are also more willing to invest in private tuition to compensate for the truly terrible teachers. And if these terrible teachers are in a mediocre or below average school, then the bad teachers would simply blame the students for being stupid if they score badly in the exams rather than admit to having failed the students. But if you were to simply take your children out of a school altogether and pick individual tutors for them, then you can implement much better quality control to make sure every single teacher you engage is good and the moment a teacher makes a mistake, you do not forgive that mistake and you replace them at once. This is of course a very expensive way to educate your children but if you're fabulously wealthy then why not? You can simply pay for the best teachers to provide a different class of education for your children this way by avoiding the teacher lottery we all had to play at school. Using private tuition means that your child can never just sit at the back of the classroom and daydream - the child will have nowhere to hide in such a lesson with a private tutor.  Apart from the high cost of this route, the only other drawback would be the lack of social interaction with their peers if they are deprived of the chances to play with their classmates during break time or do project work together and learn to develop friendships. 

So what do you think? Am I overly cynical about the value of early education or do you think that this is actually a very crucial part of a child's early development and if so, how? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.