Are Universities the Problem with High Schools?

standardised admissions as the crux of the problem

A Glimmer of Hope at the Bottom

If there is going to be a revolution in education, it’s going to rise from the bottom up.

I teach high school, but for a short period of time I grew downwards into early years education. I was part of a primary school start-up, designing curricula and working as a classroom teacher. Coming from an ‘academically selective’ private high school that pushed students very hard to produce top grades, the time I spent in primary school was a breath of fresh air. The learning curve was steep but I loved the student-led approach which permeated our activities. In our primary school, students had agency, voice, and freedom of expression. Because there was less ‘teaching’ (not to be mistaken for learning) there was more time for questioning, relationship-building, and observation. The needs of the students came first.

Compared to my high school experience, primary school was liberating. Educational transactions weren’t being forced by standardised curricula, there was no teaching to mark schemes, no past-paper revisions, and no cramming to fit more content than could be reasonably stuffed into a 90 minute block. I never had to rebel against the expected lesson plan to teach from the heart.

The pedagogies of Reggio Emilia, Montessori, and home schooling (amongst others) have permeated the garden beds of early years education, encouraging creativity, self-expression, agency, emotional well-being, and mature conflict resolution strategies. I know that not all primary schools enjoy such freedom and I find it worrisome that measuring academic performance is increasingly the norm for young students, but there seems to be a sliver of pedagogical hope in these early years that can be built upon to infect high schools with a healthy dose of humanity.

Why is it, given some of the great work being done in early-years education, that most high schools are such a mess? Why do the priorities of parents shift from ‘I want my child to be healthy, balanced, and self-expressive’, to ‘My child needs to perform well, get great grades, find a career focus, and get into a good university’? Why do schools shift their priorities from individual development to cohort GPAs and university admissions statistics?

Process Over Outcomes

I don’t want to over-idealise early ed.; I know there are a great many flaws in our primary school system as well. It’s just that I see in early ed. a standard of individual care that is greatly diminished in high schools. I also don’t want to demonise academic performance or ‘the pursuit of excellence’; I hold myself to a high standard and work diligently to improve my capabilities. My academic achievements have added value to my life; albeit, less than perhaps was promised.

I believe that we find self-expression through our competency with skills, and through skilled self-expression we find joy and meaning in life. Through the development of our minds we can enrich our experience of life. These virtues are not in question; however, the pursuit of self-development should be innate and authentic, rather than imposed and expedited on a timeline that doesn’t facilitate a natural process of learning.

The Trickle-Down Effect of University Admissions

It’s the imperative of high schools to create opportunities for students to continue their education in universities. This is not a bad thing in itself, but in many ways, this agenda has come to supersede learning for the sake of understanding and self-development. While I agree with John Dewey’s statement, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”, I find myself more taken by Richard Feynman’s, “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.” This is not to say that both learning and university preparation can’t be done simultaneously, but that university admission should not be the reason for learning. The only reason to learn anything is because you want to explore ideas, understand the universe we live in, and enrich our lives through knowledge and competencies for self-expression.

Unfortunately, we have oriented our learning so deeply towards university admission that our students often don’t have a clear idea as to why they are learning what they are learning. We challenge our children from an early age, asking ‘What do you plan to study?’, ‘What is your career path?’, etc. Alan Watts often spoke on this theme, stating "No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." How differently would high school learning look if there were no universities; if all the education they could formally receive ended at high school graduation? I don’t say this to discredit universities, but as a thought experiment to make more of high schools as a process unto themselves.

The grades and content requirements for students to get into universities has come to determine the pace and content of high school studies. Not only is there little time for anything else, there’s not even enough time to properly meet these requirements. High school curricula has largely become rushed information transfer, where memorisation trumps understanding. Learning is a digestive process and not all students are able (nor enjoy) to consume at the same pace. When driven by passion, learning can move very quickly, when uninspired learning moves painfully slow; at the moment, many of our students are uninspired by the product that education is doling out. What’s the hurry?

The Fiat Currency of Grades

When we arrange our high schools so the aim is to receive suitable grades for university admissions then we must standardise learning so students can be fairly compared against each other. Grades are the fiat currency of such a scheme, where their extrinsic future value is being inflated away by the gold standard of the present experience of life. In a time when the future is profoundly uncertain, it is not surprising to see increasing grade inflation on the side of teachers and decreasing investment in grades by students. I would contend that ‘good grades’ are often a greater priority for parents then for students.

This graph was shamelessly stolen from Andrew Barron’s excellent Post, Are College Entrance Exams Good for Something? (Edweek)

This situation may not be so tragic if it were limited to the economics of grades, but there is far more than economics at play. Grades are often laced with shame and guilt, anxiety and insult, transforming the privilege and pleasure of learning into a battlefield for self-worth and acceptance. We must also not forget that most grades are awarded according to the subjective evaluation of the teacher. Far from the cold calculation of monetisation, grades are warm-blooded estimations of perceived worth.

The High Cost of Standardised Curricula

While grades are flawed at best, I find the greater travesty to be standardised curricula. Comparative assessment of students for university admissions requires a (not-so-) level playing field, which is a primary reason for standardised curricula and its examination.

Yes, there are good reasons why we have ventured down the path of standardised curricula. Dylan Kane makes some great points about this in his Post Don’t Talk to Me About the Factory Model of Education, where I find value in the balance brought by his premise but am not fully aligned with his position. We must be wise enough to improve when we see our systems are no longer working for us; more so when we represent the business of learning. For me, the greatest single reason we should not standardise curricula is that it presumes standardised humans, and it is most evident to me that this is not the case. Life’s great strategy is biodiversity. Each human is unique in design and potential, where to standardise humans is to work against the grain of life. I believe (and I don’t expect anybody else to share this belief) that the great game played by Life is to explore all possible possibilities. Whether by accident or design, our social endeavours to utilise the magnificent plasticity of humans so as to produce standardised expressions, reasoning, and abilities is more than a tragedy, it is a constraint on the very genius we seek to unlock.

How might a school look if its principle aim was to unleash the unique potential of every student? How might classrooms look if every teacher designed curricula that expressed their unique lived experience, insights, and individual gifts? We are confounded by our inability to teach curiosity, creativity, an imagination because our utilitarian pragmatism is interfering with our ability to perceive our own unique potential. We profess to encourage self-expression while practicing uniformity.

The Locked-In Syndrome of High Schools

Between the self-expression nurtured by early ed. and the vocational freedom of choice offered by our universities, we’ve positioned high schools as a foundry for conformity. The critical evaluation point for students is university admissions, and to achieve the ideal of standardised excellence high schools are bound to a standardising methodology.

To be clear, I am certainly not an opponent of rigour; I feel that our ability to harness student engagement has fallen woefully low. Perhaps students would be far more invested if the work they undertake is an authentic expression of their interests and ambitions. I don’t believe it would be very difficult to create a system for university admissions that provides a richer account of a persons capabilities and achievements than what is offered by standardised exams, CVs, and letters of recommendations.

I am an advocate of student portfolios for this purpose, which inspires far greater student investment than a report card. Student portfolios allow for greater agency and self-expression than grades, they provide a narrative that tells the story of a life, rather than statistical data points. I also believe that there is a place for certain instances of standardised testing, but not in the format it currently exists.

I am not trying to idealise primary and university education; I see deep flaws in education at all levels. (For example, ‘Teaching to an empty hall’: is the changing face of universities eroding standards of learning? and The existential threat facing UK universities) Instead, I’m pointing out a significant constraint on the ability of high schools to become more wonderful.

High Schools Unbounded

Changing this single point of conformity could unlock a cascade of high school reforms that would enrich the experience of schools for teacher and students. Rather than chasing after the future, students could immerse themselves in the process of life-crafting in the present. Rather than chasing grades, students could value process. Removing the obstacle of standardised acceptance would free high schools to experiment with new incentives for a new era of learning, unlocking the repressed potential of talented teachers and inspiring students to become who only they can become.