Children don’t know where anything is!

I have been teaching for 10 years now and I realised on Wednesday afternoon that children know nothing about Geography anymore. We are producing quality writers and some excellent Mathematicians but when it comes to the basic skills needed for the average pub quiz – nothing. We concentrate on the technicalities of Literacy and the development of problem solving strategies but a majority of my 10 year olds don’t know where Liverpool is.

Most of the work that takes place in todays Primary schools is of an extremely high standard. Talk to any good teacher and they can fill you in with al of the latest developments and intiatives that are supposed to accelerate learning but, are we not losing sight of some important lost arts. Learning is becoming more sectionalised as teachers plan units/themes of work in blocks when they know very well that children do not learn in this way. It is a schools perogative to know what teaching staff are doing and so planning is essential but i keep coming across too many proffessionals that think teaching is about them. You wouldn’t find this attitude in other walks of life. A short time ago, in education terms, the emphasis shifted from teaching and learning. They swaped the phrase around to make it learning and teaching. That shift was huge because it brought child relevant learning to the table. Children will only learn if the work they are doing is directly relevant to them. That is the significant part of the whole process and it makes sense.

We can produce good writers, good mathematicians, investigative scientists and some children that love art and sport. This is proven by endless assessments and league tables etc but, these children don’t know where they are, how they got there, who made it possible and how they did it. Handwriting is in decline – an outdated concept or something that we should retrieve from the skip of learning – dust it down and rediscover its beauty.

I love my job. I try to improve at what i do all of the time and i take great pride in that fact. Next week, the children in my class, will undertake a test to see if they have managed to learn about the capital cities of the world. When asked two weeks ago, the majority of them could not name the capital city of France. If you read this and you have children at school, go and ask them about capital cities and see how much they know explaining the importance of why they should know it along the way.

If we don’t teach children where things are, how can we ever expect them to get there?

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