When you were at school one of your careers teachers may
have mentioned Karl Manheim. (1893 – 1947) He believed that there should be
planned guidance in the lives of people and that this should be on a
sociological basis – with the aid of psychology.
He saw society as a whole and integrated, and education was
something that permeated all its groups and institutions. He thought that the
training of teachers should not be concerned with the tricks of the trade and
with method – but with the fullest possible education of the educator.
In eleven plus terms – would your child benefit more from a
teacher who carefully explained how to do the different processes – or a teacher
who was more involved with helping your child to solve problems?
“But sometimes you do have to tell an eleven plus child how
to do something.” Of course, and who could argue with this statement? It you
have to leave it to the child to try to solve the problem you may never
complete the exercise or the paper or the task. A big change that could take
place, however, is trying to change the emphasis
in an eleven plus session from instruction and learning to thinking and solving
problems. Sometimes a parent could consider guiding their eleven plus child to
an answer rather than telling him or her how to answer the question.
Jacks, writing in Total Education – 1946 - felt that the trained
teacher was too often the untrained human being. He maintained:
“The era of the training of teachers is past; our business
today is with the education of the educator.”
If this is still true eleven plus parents can rejoice. It does not matter if they do not know all the
answers to eleven plus questions. What does matter is that they help their
child to find ways to reason.
