The National Curriculum focuses the attention of both teachers and learners on what can be measured and thus squeezes extra-curricular activities into nothingness. By contrast in another country after long discussions in the Ministry of Education, extra-curricular activities were put into the curriculum!
With such thoughts in mind the writer, when teaching a bottom stream class of twelve year olds in the thirties, tried out some experiments which, if they had been carried out in a science laboratory and had concerned the pocket rather than the heart, would have received widespread acclaim. Ambitious teachers shun the bottom stream expecting to find there the unsuccessful, the uncooperative, the unloved and even the unteachable. Teachers tend to find what they expect.
'You mean you just do nothing, just prop up the wall?' Having visited all the homes it was easier to insist, so turning to his neighbour the question was put: 'You tell me what he does.'
'Please sir, he roller-skates.'
The diminutive twelve year old brightened up a little and when it was time for writing he managed to finish a whole sentence for the first time. It was, however, the day when he brought his skates and stood in front of the class holding them in his hands and answered the questions of his interested class-mates which made the day of the year for him. From then on he was easy to teach. Much later the film 'Kes' was produced following this theme. It showed a boy who never got on at school until the teacher discovered that his secret hobby was caring for a kestrel.
After the war, the Birmingham Federation of PTAs took up the task of demonstrating that such exhibitions make for better teaching, provide much more scope and encouragement for all children - that is for the most gifted as well as the least successful at ordinary school work. Head teachers sometimes said that their children did not do anything. Some of them admitted later that they had been surprised by what turned up from unlikely homes.
The most imaginative or creative exhibits at each participating school were chosen each year for the central exhibition at a department store. Teachers learned that it was worth giving out a notice just before holidays began as a reminder of the exhibition the following term. Children found that they made new friends through discovering common interests and learned from them. Parents found that the ideal medium for parent-teacher cooperation is children's leisure activities. Finally, teachers found that they knew their children better and knew how to motivate them. They made personal relations of an entirely new quality. It was Aristotle who said, 'How shall I learn unless it be from my friend?'
In a later development a teacher was appointed to a secondary modern school to work normally in the classroom for half of his time and to spend the rest of his time with teachers, parents or children improving the quality and quantity of the children's leisure activities in and around the homes. It was an enormous success and the headmaster said, 'If we did not have Mr Preston we'd have to invent him.' The exhibition became more varied and dramatic. On one occasion a pet pig escaped and narrowly avoided upsetting a hive full of bees. Two boys made large telescopes in the metal-work room and wanted eventually to use them to photograph some constellations. They turned to the public library and found that one of the three authors was living thirty miles away so they arranged to visit him on their bicycles to ask for his help. Others built huts in their gardens to work at their bicycles or radio sets. There was no end to the variety of the occupations; it seemed that for everyone and not just for those with telescopes that the sky was not the limit. It certainly was not for one boy, deprived though he was. Seeing what others had done with their bought meccano sets, he, at the age of ten, gathered up the tins which his mother threw away and hammered them and punched holes in them to make his own meccano.
In such schools vocational guidance has a much firmer base. This could be the argument which would influence the hard men and women who construct national curricula and know not what they do. Leisure activities form the golden triangle of parents, teachers and children.
Nicholas Gillett, Oakcroft, Cross o' th' Hill, Malpas, Cheshire SY14 8DH (tel 0948 860 213).