The Leadership Coach's Blog
This leadership coaching blog, considers the story of Edinburgh pupil who has won the right to listen to her Ipod whilst sitting for school exams.
Leadership Coaching - Nick Seaton: This Is Ridiculous!
Its Nick Seaton from the Campaign for Real Education...'this is ridiculous!'. He is referring to the judgement from Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, that an autisitc pupil can use an Ipod during her exams, as an aid to concentration.
Seaton takes the view, that exams lose their integrity if some pupils are afforded preferential treatment.
So what if a young person sings quietly to themselves, or hums whilst they concentrate during their exam. What of this technique, as an aid?
Of course he would have no objection to this. So why shouldn't a student use music to aid concentration. It seems a remarkably sensible idea.
An exam is meant to be a test of a persons thinking skills. How they respond in a 'pressure' situation, to question that challenge their knowledge, understanding, memory and perception.
Nick Seaton is locked into a very old model of thinking. As if somehow divorced from the modern age. Real education is about how people respond to real life situations. Not their ability to memorize facts and regurgitate them on exam day.
The leader in this story is not Nick Seaton. But the autistic child who has broken a stop situation, and made exam day a little more bearable for others with concentration challenges.
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