Will school help you get smarter?

Helping a child become smarter – does the school set itself such a goal?

Certainly puts. The task of any school is to develop the abilities of children, and intellectual ones in the first place. The question is what do we mean by the term “smart child”. There are no smart people at all, such a representation is an abstraction.

You can only be smart in something: in mathematics, in the humanities, in manual labor, in human relations. But the traditional mass school, in which most of our children study, is designed in such a way that it develops mainly the executive side of the mind – the ability to act according to the rule and instructions, but weakly develops the creative ability to apply rules in non-standard conditions or discover new laws.

And social and emotional intelligence – giftedness in communication, control of one’s emotions and understanding of the feelings of others, in general, a sense of belonging – are not in demand at school. The school does not notice these aspects of the child’s mind. Although already in the primary grades it is clearly visible in what exactly the child is “smart”.

For example, a girl who ties everyone’s scarves and fastens tight buttons in the locker room will most likely not be noticed as smart in empathy and help. But many of her classmates (if they had a choice) would like to sit at the same desk with this – if not the smartest – girl, because her presence helps to collect her thoughts.

What do students get at school besides specific knowledge

The traditional school, if it uses all its pedagogical reserves, perfectly develops performing abilities. Most of its graduates have internal discipline: if they have a goal in front of them, there is a solution algorithm, they can outline a plan, consistently carry out all the planned actions, bring the matter to the end, control the result … But they rarely set themselves new goals on their own, on their own impulse.

If there are no instructions, they stop and wait for instructions. At school, children receive knowledge in finished form. The child’s mind does not work on how to get this knowledge, he is spoon-fed and dressed in a kind of pedagogical diapers.

It’s not about the teachers – the school has a lot of smart, kind teachers who love children. The reason is the traditional teaching style: it not only does not develop the mind of students (in the broad sense of the word), but also reduces their intellectual potential, since it does not create conditions for children to be proactive in learning, have their own opinion, and critically perceive information.

But it is precisely initiative, independence, responsibility, the ability to be responsible for one’s choice that are required today from an intelligent person. No wonder these qualities are written in almost every resume.

Is there an alternative to the public school?

Fortunately, in innovative schools, teaching is structured differently. Compare, for example, two history lessons. In a traditional school, the teacher is likely to ask you to learn what the textbook says.

The teacher of the innovative school will offer students to study documents from various sources (memoirs, archival materials, editorials of party newspapers …), and then organize a round table among the students.

Such a teacher wants children to be able to compare different points of view, to have their own opinion, to be able to defend it in a discussion.

International comparative studies of the quality of education (PIRLS test data) show that today 9-10-year-old Russian schoolchildren better than their peers in other countries understand, for example, the meaning of what they read. So, everything is going well with primary education.

But the results of Russian 15-year-olds (PISA test data) are among the worst in the world: in particular, our high school students do not know how to extract information from a text when reading. In other words, after a child has been taught to read and write, nothing happens. Children are given thick textbooks and are told: read, answer questions, retell …

School does not teach learning

And this is the paradox of the modern school. It seems to be obvious to everyone: in order to make yourself smarter, living through each new life situation, you need to be able to learn (teach yourself).

And for this, first of all, you need to better understand yourself, be able to reflect, be able to determine what is unclear to you, and know where and how to look for the missing knowledge, skills, and abilities. In other words, you need to understand the limits of your capabilities, be able to reach these limits and go beyond them. But this is not taught in our school.

Regardless of how the school will end – with the usual exam or the Unified State Examination, a lot of things should change in it. And it is absolutely indifferent how the knowledge of graduates will be tested. A single exam in the form of tests is as much a fact of modern civilization as an internal combustion engine. Both good and evil at the same time.

Particularly radical “greens” would probably be happy to destroy all internal combustion engines. But it is more reasonable to look for ways to use them environmentally wisely. Another thing is that today’s USE is such an engine that is still far from modern world standards. This is still a craft, assembled, as they say, “on the knee.”