‘No’ Your Limits
“Freddy,” says Michael Caine’s character Lawrence Jamieson, in the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, “Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn't very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired.”
He continues, “Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.”
One of the main thrusts of our Food for Thought Programme at Denstone runs completely counter to Jamieson’s wonderfully blunt advice. In a sense, it is good advice: we should keep a duly realistic and humble view of our talents.
But in an academic context it is terrible advice. Children absolutely should not always be trying to ascertain what ‘level’ they are working at, and sticking to it. Earlier in my career, I unfortunately witnessed an English teacher point-blank refuse to lend a child a book he wanted to read, not because the content was age-inappropriate, but because the language was, in the opinion of the teacher, too hard. “You’re reading at a lower level, Jonny. Take this book, instead.” Know your limitations, Jonny…
Teaching absolutely should, to a large extent, be methodical, strategic, properly ‘end-gamed’. But learning often isn’t like that, especially for the sorts of children who are keen to stretch themselves. For intellectually ambitious children (and it is my belief that all children start out as intellectually ambitious), learning isn’t symmetrical either. It often involves sudden rushes of progress in one area, followed by steadier consolidation across the rest of the ‘front line’. We should encourage these daring forays into enemy territory: they are adventurous and exciting, and they are where the thrill of learning really lies.
It would be easy to stick with my reading example here, but I’m also thinking about maths and the mathematical sciences – and I think it is quite an easy link to make. I have long believed that maths is essentially linguistic. It’s not just the weirdo in Radiohead’s Karma Police who ‘talks in maths’: we all do, with more or less fluency. It is easy to miss this fact because of modern mathematical symbolic notation; but I had the (rather dubious) privilege of spending several years researching medieval mathematics, logic and science, before the widespread use of algebra or analytic geometry. The famous Oxford Calculators of the 14th century, for example, had to treat their mathematical subjects as exercises in dealing with truth statements in ordinary language. Modern mathematical methods have given us a more concise symbolic system to express these truth statements; but the essential logical exercise remains broadly the same: and in addition, we now have a specialised language in which to discuss it.
Now, in real life, children don’t acquire language by working at, and sticking to, ‘levels’. Next time you’re at a family gathering, watch the small children and toddlers, and watch the adults too: unconsciously fantastic teachers!
First, none of the adults at a family party would even consider speaking to each other only in words of one syllable when a young child was in the room – we talk as we wish, and the children can watch and join in as best they can. Equally, I claim, paddling in the pools of more complex mathematics and science is good for children, even when they can never understand everything they come across.
Second, “I won’t enter into this conversation because I don’t understand all the words,” said no child ever. Children are not naturally scared of joining in the conversation – they burst in! If they don’t know a long word for something, they find a work-around using the words they do know (often with hilarious results!). Getting them to shut up is usually the hard part. Similarly, then, becoming fluent in the language of mathematics means being relaxed enough to be able to find work-arounds when a direct, obvious solution is not apparent. A real facility with maths comes from being unafraid to start doing what you can do, without worrying about what you can’t yet do.
Third, children pick up a little bit of more advanced language and have a go at deploying it – and they’re not scared of getting it wrong. They’ll keep having a go until they use it right one time, and then they pocket the meaning.
Therefore, fourth, they never have a completely ‘flat’ linguistic profile: it is all higgledy-piggledy: precociously advanced here, sweetly childlike there, and the mixture of those two registers is what makes childish conversation so funny to adults. It is a joke, you may have noticed, that the children themselves never get. That is because they are just learning naturally: it is only we adults, with our own learned, artificial structures of learning that find anything incongruous in it. “It wasn’t funny when you used the word ‘actually’; why is it funny when I do?” the child internally demands. We should, therefore, expect their profiles in other areas to be similarly higgledy and similarly piggledy – and that’s a good thing: it shows that the tide of learning is creeping up the beach of ignorance.
So, I claim that all these traits are, and should be, as true in learning maths, and science, and every subject, as it is in learning language. At every stage, children should be encouraged in their intellectual ambition: jump ahead! Try something that’s too hard. Strike a blow at the frontier of your understanding, even if it’s only a rush and retreat.
Why shouldn’t young children try out a bit of algebra? We are most fluent at the languages to which we are exposed early. Why shouldn’t the First Former pick up a GCSE paper, or the Fourth Former an A Level paper? Why shouldn’t the Sixth Former dabble at degree level? It’s wonderful to see so many of our pupils at Denstone having a go at Maths Challenge competitions and scientific Olympiads. Not all win the top awards, but that doesn’t matter – every paper submitted represents a child beating on the door of intellectual ambition.
As parents, too, I don’t think we should just ‘trust the system’ to educate our children, even when it is a first-rate system in an outstanding school. We must trust their curiosity too. We must grow it, never squash it. I hate to hear the phrase, in response to a child’s question (within the classroom or without), “We’ll come to that.” Come to it now! Fill in the gaps later. Let’s have a bit of intellectual derring-do.
Of course, any educational system must be systematic. There does need to be an order. The blanks do need to be filled in, even if they are back-filled. But that’s only half the story. Through the Food for Thought Programme, we are encouraging pupils to venture boldly ahead of the crowd, into the tangled forests of higher learning. And parents play a major role in helping them to do so.
So in the style of the best glossy magazines, here are my five back-of-an-envelope suggestions for any parents out there who might agree with me:
- Next time you’re tempted to say, “It’s a bit difficult to explain at your age,” don’t say it. Try to explain. By the way, if we can’t, what does that tell us about our own understanding of the topic? Why not find out together how the thing works in simple terms? And by the way, let’s all stop hiding behind Latinate words! “Why do things fall to the ground, Daddy?” “Gravity, son, gravity!” “What does ‘gravity’ mean, Daddy?” “Erm, well, it was Latin for heaviness but now it means that thing that makes objects fall to the ground – now stop asking pointless questions, son…”
- If you have younger children or grandchildren, next time you are in a bookshop and they ask you to buy them a big book, full of text and hard words, and not many pictures, buy it (so long as it’s content-appropriate!). Aged 5, my son knew hundreds of dinosaur names I couldn’t (and still can’t pronounce). He wasn’t scared of the big book with long words – I was scared for him, and I’m very pleased I caved and bought it anyway (albeit on the assumption that I’d find it later being used as a ski-jump for a toy car or something – which it also was…).
- Throw the family something difficult on purpose, in the middle of a conversation. Expect them to deal with it. See what happens. Have fun with it, work together on it, laugh about it. Don’t dumb down – dumb up! Together, you can be equals messing around with ideas and concepts that are above you all. Pass me my phone – let’s look up Quantum Mechanics together…
- Try a MOOC together! Ever heard of MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses. There are free courses out there on almost everything, from internationally respected university departments. Why not pick one and learn something new together with your son or daughter? It takes a time commitment, but it’s also a fantastic way of showing our families that we are emotionally and intellectually invested in their education, as well as financially.
- Have a go at the Food for Thought stimulus packs yourself! There are puzzles and debates and riddles and facts and all sorts of fun. They make for great dinner-table discussions, and the more pupils have enjoyed the packs at home, the more stimulating and fun our seminar sessions are too. Each FfT group meets 3 times a term: 2 of these sessions are based on a pre-released stimulus pack, through the FfT Microsoft Team, so make sure your son or daughter keeps an eye open for the alert telling them the next pack has dropped, and get them to print you off a copy while they’re at it…
So let’s hear a huzzah, yippee, and tally-ho for trying things that are too hard and not caring about our limitations – because if we persevere, all those limitations need only be temporary!
DPB
