هل من فاعل خير [الأرشيف] - منتديات الجلفة لكل الجزائريين و العرب

aminabch

2009-01-08, 11:43

Architects not teachers caused school failures

16 Jul 2007
The lack of space in halls, gyms, canteens and other areas is to blame for many problems which blight today's secondary schools, according to a University of Manchester study.

Naomi Breen, who is studying secondary school buildings for a PhD, says school design impacts on the curriculum and encourages gender stereotyping, bullying, anti-social behaviour and alienation.

Mrs Breen, who is also a teacher, surveyed 18 secondary schools - nine in Burnley and nine in Berkshire - gaining access to historical records and documents which threw new light on the issue.

A root of the problem, she says, is the shortages of space and overcrowding created by the raising of the school leaving age to 16 planned in 1944 and implemented in 1972.

In 1944, architects were not allowed to plan and build schools for future changes in educational approach, use or size.

The shortages were compounded by 1950 government regulations to save space and costs resulting in dual purpose areas such as combined hall and dining rooms and merged corridors and classrooms.

She said: "The problems in building design provide a powerful illustration of how secondary moderns were inevitably inferior to the established grammar schools.

"Unlike secondary moderns, many grammar schools had sixth forms which meant they were large enough to offer a full five or seven year secondary school education.

"As a result of chronic lack of space, multipurpose rooms are still common in many of these schools today, despite the problems of food, mess, noise and waste.

"After 1944, the shanty towns of temporary school buildings became a permanent feature of many modern secondary schools and this impacted on their effectiveness."

She added: "Teachers had little or no say in the design of schools and interpretations of the architect' s work lay firmly at the feet of educational theorists.

"Educationalists wanted architects to design buildings to fulfil their latest theories, but that posed problems when those theories fell out of favour.

"For my research, I'm currently analysing responses to a questionnaire on my website on people's experiences in secondary school education.

"So do visit http://www.secondarymodern.co.uk/ if you would like to make a contribution."

ON BIKE SHEDS AND TOILETS
Mrs Breen said: " Because of the cost saving requirements, rising populations and lack of consultation with teachers, new buildings were too small and schools were forced to expand.

"But that meant the original shape was lost and the ability to enforce discipline diminished.

"Temporary classrooms, bike sheds, toilets and other out of sight spaces became sites for bullying, hiding, smoking and other anti-social behaviours."

ON DINING AREAS
Mrs Breen said: "As space became a premium, it soon became apparent that the 1944 promise of the single purpose dining room in each school had to be abandoned.

"Local education authorities were encouraged to reduce costs of building programmes by adopting dual use dining rooms that doubled as entrance halls, corridors or classrooms.

"One result was that before 1944, teachers were usually expected to eat with pupils and act as role models.

"But as modern schools emerged, welfare staff and dinner ladies became responsible for pupils manners and behaviour and teachers were able to eat separately.

"Dining areas became noisy places, where poor behaviour and indiscipline were inbuilt - a fact recognised by the schools themselves.

ON HALLS
Mrs Breen said: "Before 1944, many schools had daily whole school assemblies for prayer, communal discipline and a shared cultural experience.

"But the lack of space in many secondary problems put paid to that.

"Halls became a source of considerable noise and disturbance to the whole school."

ON GYMS
Mrs Breen said: "Gyms also suffer from dual use of space.

"In many schools, gyms are used for examinations - not exactly the ideal environment for such important activity for what has become a central educational activity.

"There is also a detrimental impact on the physical education curriculum.

"This is virtually unheard of in established grammar schools where the exam has always been central to a school' s function."

ON LABS AND WORKSHOPS
Mrs Breen said: "Workshop and science labs are masculine spaces which mirror ' work' whereas textiles and housecraft rooms are female spaces which mirror home.

"That accepts and embellishes gender stereotyping."

ON CORRIDORS
Mrs Breen said: "Teachers thought long corridors wasteful and inconvenient.

"The distance a pupil at a school must travel between one subject and another has become so vast that time spent in corridors and out of lessons has increased."
Notes for editors

An outline paper is available

Naomi Breen is available for comment

Mrs Breen is a teacher at Hulme Grammar School for Girls, Oldham

An image of Mrs Breen is available

For more details contact:
Mike Addelman
Media relations Officer
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

November 3, 1999
Public School Failures
Boy Home Schooled Due to Death Threats
It’s a weekday and Matthew is not in a cafeteria, because two years ago the 12-year-old and his mother, Susan, decided to leave public schools for independent study at home.
That came after the boy received death threats in elementary school from another student and was told by school officials that he and his mother were overreacting when they complained...
“Violence was a reason I kept my son home. When he was in first grade, a child went up to him and told him he was going to kill my son,” said his 38-year-old mom, who takes her son to Covina-Valley Unified School District twice a month for independent testing.
“I know I can’t protect my son forever, but he’s getting a good education and in a safe environment.”
(Excerpted from “Student stays home for education,” by Justino Agulla, San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune,August 24, 1999.)
Science Textbooks Don’t Make the Grade
The most widely used middle school science textbooks flunked an evaluation by the nation’s largest organization of scientists [the American Association for the Advancement of Science].
The analysis said the texts “include many classroom activities that are either irrelevant to learning key science ideas or don’t help students relate what they are doing to the underlying ideas."
“This study confirms our worst fears about the materials used to educate our children in the critical middle grades,” said [George] Nelson [director of Project 2061, which evaluated the books].
(Excerpted from “Science Books Not So Good,” by Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press, posted on www.abcnews.go.com, September 29, 1999.)
American Have Lower Confidence in Public Education
Education is America’s preoccupation, and has been since the launch of Sputnik shook the nation’s intellectual self-esteem. With the space race long since won, anxiety has shifted to a different kind of global competition-economic-and there has been renewed mistrust of schools. The percentage of Americans who have confidence in public schools has dropped from 58 percent to 36 percent in just the last two decades; a third of parents and 59 percent of employers believe a high school diploma is no guarantee that a student has even learned the basics. The
criticism runs in both directions; 81 percent of teachers say parents do a poor job bringing up their children.
(Excerpted from “The Shocking Truth about Our Public Schools,” by Jon Marcus, Boston Magazine, www.bostonmagazine.com, October 13, 1999.)
Blumenfeld: “Experts” Redefine Literacy
[E]ducators tell us that “10 million U.S. students are classified as ‘poor’ readers. According to the NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card, 68 percent of 4th graders in high poverty areas fall into this category.” Yet, Marva Collins, in her private school in Chicago, has 100 percent of the students reading well, despite the fact that these children come from high poverty areas. How come Marva Collins can achieve such outstanding success while the public educators can't? The readers of Educational Leadership might have learned something if Mrs. Collins had been invited to write an article on how well intensive, systematic phonics works in her school. But that’s not what the education establishment wants to hear.
The proof is also massive and overwhelming that Whole ******** has caused a literacy catastrophe among the school children of California. The March 7, 1996, issue of L.A. Weekly reported,
In the eight years since whole ******** first appeared in the state’s grade schools, California’s fourth-grade reading scores have plummeted to near the bottom nationally, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Indeed, California’s fourth-graders are now such poor readers that only the children in Louisiana and Guam⎯ both hampered by pitifully backward education systems⎯ get worse reading scores.
(Excerpted from “The literacy war goes on,” by Samuel Blumenfeld, World Net Daily, October 20, 1999.)
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