So here we are – the last post in the Why School Sucks series. In this culminating post, I will reveal the crux of the argument about why school sucks and what we can do, or at least what the first step could be, to fix the suckiness of schools, but first a quick recap. The first post in this series focused on how schools should be places of learning, but that many of the structures that we see as essential in schooling, are not actually requisite or even relevant to learning. The second post in the series was about motivating students and the lack of focus school has on the student experience. Essentially, schools have become a place where teachers go to work, and the students the subject of that work, rather than the students going to school to learn and the teachers becoming the facilitators of that learning. This last post in the series follows on the from the first two, but the real reason why school sucks is because…. Wait for it…. students say it sucks! Students know school sucks because it’s a place that lacks freedom, some even compare it to a prison (Gray, 2009). In the US, a recent study (Moeler et al., 2020) from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child Study Center found that nearly 75% of the students’ who responded had negative feelings about schools and high school students had negative feeling 60% of the time. Although not as recent, a report by the Grattan Institute in 2017, (Goss & Sonnemann, 2017) found that up to 40% of students were disengaged and unproductive.
The evidence is clear that schools and school systems are not adequately reaching all students and, in some cases, more than half. This is a serious problem and one that I think most of my blog posts have tried to address in some way or another. Whether it be a more comprehensive understanding of the system and its contradictions, or understanding the difference between a learning theory and a teaching practice, the fact is, we need to do better. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all model for how that occurs, but as educators or those who are interested in education, we need to stop repeating what we’ve always done and expecting better results. Hey, here’s an idea – how about we ask the students? What a radical idea! What if the students actually had a say and a voice in their own learning? Does this sound revolutionary? Well, it’s not!
There are a number of schools that have taken this approach with mixed, but often very positive results. Do I have evidence that giving students more autonomy and equal say in their education will raise NAPLAN, TIMMS, PISA or other standardised test scores – no. However, as discussed previously, standardised test scores are not the purpose of school. What I can say, is that giving students agency in what they do and some choice regarding their own education has many advantages. There is plenty of evidence on the benefits of schools that choose an alternative mode of learning and teaching by giving the students a voice in their own education, but most of those schools choose not to participate in the standardised testing, because it is not part of why they believe students are in school. Imagine if you asked a student if they wanted to sit and take a three-hour test that has nothing to do with what they are currently learning, but will provide “governments, education authorities, schools, teachers and parents [information on] whether or not young Australians have the literacy and numeracy skills that provide the critical foundation for other learning and for their productive and rewarding participation in the community” (NAPLAN). Doesn’t that sound riveting? If you were a student, would you opt-in to that scheme?
We need to get with the program and start really thinking about what school means for the students who attend and how we can make it relevant, engaging and worthwhile. We don’t need objective evidence that school sucks, rather we need to start listening to students’ subjective experiences of school, and make a concerted effort to make school less sucky!
If you’d like to read more about the sorts of schools that give students real agency, here is a great article from The Conversation about Democratic and other alternative schools.
And here is some evidence of the benefits of these types of schools:
Maximising Student Potential 
Nice work Doc. In your previous post you referred to Ryan & Deci’s work around Self Determination Theory (autonomy, competence and relatedness). Dan Pink makes this slightly more user friendly when he turns it into Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose and Dan Haesler and I really emphasise Belonging which we believe is the garden bed in which Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose can grow. If kids don’t feel safe, valued and welcome and that there are adults at school to whom they can turn when they have a difficulty at home or in school (a high sense of belonging) then all else is pretty much a waste of time. And lots of kids don’t have the good fortune of feeling this way. Once the belonging is strongly valued and established and cultivated in ur schools then the other elements come into play and chief amongst them is the autonomy/volition/choice you speak about here. And of course unless you know why you are doing something and where it is going and its inherent value (Purpose) and you have the opportunity to improve and grow to a satisfying level (Competence/Mastery) then why on earth would you bother. SDT is a theory of motivation and engagement. Schools talk about motivation – but only when criticising students for not being motivated. And they talk about engagement which they unwittingly confuse with compliance and again use as a stick against kids in their reports by saying to their parents that if only they were more engaged then they would behave better and score higher grades. As it turns out, most teachers didn’t get the memo that said that engagement and motivation are actually their responsibility. This isn’t about kids abdicating any responsibility but it is about what is incumbent on teachers – don’t be boring, don’t be dismissive, don’t be punitive, don’t be a freaking robot. As Sugata Mitra wisely noted, any teacher who can be replaced by technology should be! The Sydney Swans and many other male dominated sporting teams have a ‘no dickheads’ policy. Maybe it should be a consideration in our educational reforms where we develop this as the culture for the adults in our schools.
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