Having been educated for almost all of my life so far, with a little way still to go, Education is and always has been the cornerstone of my life.

I find the debate too focused on teachers and parents as if it were a manufacturing industry where the teachers toil tirelessly on the production line to produce ready-made intellectuals to the customers’ satisfaction. Teachers are known as the whing along with postmen and farmers, while parents want more and more choice and involvement.

Innovation is something that creeps more and more into teaching methods, which I have experienced firsthand. Having studied French, Spanish, Drama and Geography in sixth form, my teaching was vary varied in its approach.

Geography was evidently towards the classic end of the scale. For Dramas, not only were the teaching methods “innovative”, the marking was even more creative.

Languages are the best model though. There are four simple elements to the teaching; Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. For the last two, there is a classic you-have-two-hours exam paper; for the first two, a recorded one to one interview and a listening to a tape exam.

The emphasis between my generation and that of my parents in Languages has been from rote-learning of grammar to the more spoken elements. That’s innovation for good. Innovation for bad has been the throw the tennis ball around the room to conjugate the verb style exercises, of which I was always deeply cynical. It’s the latter type of innovation that seems to prevail in schools now, fun-and-games to get kids interested.

Before I condemn games though, I will advise languages teachers to invent their own version of Blockbusters. “What P is the third person of the verb that means to be able to do something?”

(No, I’m not in this one, our “language lab” didn’t have glass at the front of the booths)

Returning to my metaphor about the factory, which is the key in the education debate, education is (thanks to parental involvement) not about educating but training and that the purpose of a good degree is for students to be able to survive on the job market.
Since the 80s, when prestige pointed towards the City, the role of University has been to mass manufacture business graduates (of all flavours) and pump them out so they can get “a good job”, where good is use innovatively to mean “well paid” rather than the classic use to mean “to the benefit of society”. (Don’t give me the argument that ‘big business provides jobs and high salaries are good for taxing’ speech, I’ve heard it)

I’m proud to study languages. At the University of Bath, I actually study languages through cultural and political context, so there is plenty of history and suchlike as added bonus.

The aim of my degree is perfect in terms of education, where I was encouraged and given the means to innovate for myself through research and ideas. In the first year, I thought that I was been examined on whether I had listened to them in lectures, and my studies were based on remembering and repeating the notes.

This year passed, I changed strategy. For written exams, I wrote nothing down and instead read the books and journals in the library. For essays, I wrote in very much the same way I write my blog, focusing on my own ideas and solutions to common problems. The result was roughly a 10% improvement, and in some cases 20%, because the more I went about the subject in my own “innovate” way, the more I became interested in it.

As a warning though, that improvement was not across the board; I also found that you just can’t improvise your own grammar and invent your own words.

Contrast this attitude with my experience of political science. Most people wrongly assume I am a student of politics because I am a student involved in politics. Usually it’s the inverse and the people I meet who study politics are least inclined to answer political questions and join parties and DO political activities.

I’ve taken one module from the politics department, which was a classic 100% grade based on the exam. The approach could not have been more different. Not only was the course a lesson in “politics without politics” we had even had a set “textbook” , to learn from, and repeat, which won me a surprisingly respectable 65.

This article was inspired by “The Good Morrow” and his article “The Tyranny of Innovation” in the capacity of my membership of the RSA Bloggers’ Circle.