There isn’t really a satisfactory way of translating the Swedish word “bildning”. Certainly not a single word. It means education, or being educated, but that is now such a general concept in English  as to unhelpful. It is easier to understand if we look at a similar Swedish word- utbildning. This means training. And that is what we have allowed English education to become. It is not about creating an educated child!

I am reading  Tony Wagner’s  “Global Achievement Gap” where  he summarises better than I can what we all should know.  

 “What I have seen in our best public schools over the past decade, although our children are learning to read, at least in a basic way, they are not learning how to think or care about what they are reading, nor are they learning how to  communicate ideas orally and  in writing . They memorise facts  and dates in history but they cannot explain the larger significance of historical events. And they may be learning how to add, subtract and multiply but they have no understanding how to think about number. Not knowing how to interpret statistics or gauge probability, not many students can make sense of the graphs and charts they see in the news every day. They are required to memorise  (and usually quickly forget) a wide variety of significant facts, but very few know how to apply the scientific method- how to formulate a hypothesis, test it or analyse  results. Yet this way of thinking is at the very heart of  many kinds of analysis and research. Firstly, I have observed that the longer our children are in school, the less curious they become. Effective communication, curiosity, and critical thinking skills are much more than the traditional outcomes of a liberal arts education. They are essential competences and habits of mind for life in the 21st century”

I would like to think that his view of education in the USA does not completely reflect where we are  in the U.K. However, the obvious implication is that  the way we are training students to pass exams impoverishes the opportunity we have to develop, discuss and analyse the relationships in our world. It’s utbildning not bildning. 

It would be very easy to see that the move to one terminal examination at 16 for all young people will only go to further impoverish the quality of learning. Actually, the system we have now in the England is as bad if not worse. I was talking to a Head of Maths recently who described how a student had been entered and re entered for 8 modular exams; you can imagine the compounded pessimism  it will have engendered and the disruption to the learning journey.

In many countries, the quality of learning is assessed appropriately and at the right point and in as many ways as necessary. The formal examination is used as much as a moderation point as a  part of the summative grading. Tony Wagner’s “global achievement gap” is not really a treatise about narrowing the gap between those who have a less privileged background and those who have a social advantage, but exploring the gap between what our young people learn and what they need to know to be successful. A focus just on external examinations whether modular of terminal, will impoverish learning and outcomes.

I’ll finish the blog with another Tony Wagner quote.

“…..simply ask yourself: How many of your high school teachers demanded that you really think in your oral and written work as opposed to merely memorising and regurgitating?  How often were you required to write an essay in which you developed your own well-reasoned interpretation of a piece of literature or the significance of an event in History? How frequently did you have to develop and test a hypothesis for a Science class or explain your thinking about how you solved a complex Maths problem. How often were you asked by a teacher “So what do you think about ….?. I don’t mean just once in a while, but every day…”

To be fair I do see this in good and outstanding lessons. But not enough and not for long enough. It is the only way to ensure we help young people become critical thinkers and acquire that “BILDNING”

So as we debate where we go from here, can we get beyond summative assessment and  talk about how we create a learning culture that will facilitate more of the experiences that we as teachers know motivate young people and  enrich their learning and understanding. Many other high achieving  international systems already know this!