I am a 21 year old, 1st year student Studying BA Hons Education and would just like to say that o thought the education system failed me and many people around me. I come from a lower class community, my mother a cleaner and my father(divorced) on disablilty. My role model (older sister) fell pregnant at 19. I never had a goal and felt school only wanted me to get them results. I suffered with bad anxiety all through school and only recieved help this year through councelling. Teachers didn't know my name after years of teaching me. I never wrote a thing in half my classes and I hardly ever got stimulated. The only thing I knew how to do was drinking, drugs and partying at 14 years old. I wanted to learn but felt no motivation or support off anyone. Is this what education is? I believe small alternative schooling such as Steiner Waldorf and Montessori schools is the way forwards. In successful nonmainstream schools, staff members consider counseling students as a part of their job, follow up daily on absent students, model positive behaviors for students, and use individualized, hands-on curriculum, and goal-setting with students. Tony blair has just released a new proposal that seems way behind the game towards this kind of learning,including self-governing and alot more community and parental involvment and control. Why are we holding back from bringing these therories into practice? Am I the only one who can see the light.
