To achieve this game changing end, education systems must endeavour to open doors to all eligible children looking for education opportunities. No child should be seen roaming the streets, living or helping in farms or households when their peers are in school.
Pursuant to the same goal education for all in the USA, they say, no child should be left behind. This literally means getting every child into the classroom. It is gratifying to note that the leaving no child behind policy has gained currency and popularity in many jurisdictions and to their credit, education systems across the globe have accomplished a lot in terms of expanding education opportunities to cater for children from all walks of life. This is indeed a remarkable achievement.
However, leaving no child policy cannot achieve its intended purpose if it is erroneously and narrowly interpreted as gaining access to school. The reason is that accessing available education opportunities should never be seen as an end in itself but for what it is – a means to an end. Children deserve to be in school not statistical reasons but to be empowered to navigate whatever challenges the world may throw at them. Access to school can only make a profound impact when accompanied at all times by provision of quality education.
Achieving this end calls for a continuous interrogation of instructional practices to ensure children are subjected to an empowering experience in schools. An empowering classroom service is the one that recognises and makes provision for the uniqueness of each student. More often than not classroom practitioners treat students as a cohort rather than as individual entities.
Here is a common question which does not give individual students freedom of expression. “Do you understand class?” This kind of general question is not uncommon in a classroom discourse. Usually the question solicits and attracts a chorus from students – “yes we understand sir”. This would be a cue for the classroom practitioner to proceed to the next level.
The assumption is that the students have spoken and everyone has understood. But this could be misleading. Not all students are courageous enough to raise their hands to disagree or raise a question to seek clarity. The chorus seals everyone’s fate, drowning and suppressing potential dissenting voices. Those silent or drowned voices stand little or no chance of ever being heard. The student chorus is often led by powerful student influencers who consciously or unconsciously instil fear and panic on low achieving students. Classroom influencers if left unchecked can have the monopoly of the teacher at the expense of other less vocal or docile students. It is very important for teachers to balance the equation by fairly distributing opportunities and making a deliberate plan to check and dilute the domineering influence of high flyers.
The voice of the high flying influencers should not be construed as the voice of the entire class. When designing strategies and interventions, school systems should be conscious of the fact that children come to school as individuals with diverse needs and interests. As Rachel E. Curtis and Elizabeth A. City succinctly put it this way, “the strategy’s focus should be on all children and, at the same time, on each child.” While it is ideal to provide sufficient support to individual students, but insisting on this seems to be a tall order especially in public schools where teachers have to contend with crowded classrooms and an overcrowded content-based curriculum.
The overwhelming student numbers in every classroom do not give teachers sufficient room to sufficiently attend to individual needs while in response to the overcrowded curriculum all efforts are skewed in favour of syllabi coverage (breadth) at the expense of quality (depth). The rash to cover the syllabi, with all its concomitants effects on quality, is a must do job because assessment is designed to cover a wide spectrum of areas across the length and breadth of the syllabi.
The big challenge is that against the spirit and letter of the leave no child behind policy, not all children in the classroom enjoy quality service. Some children are literally left behind and this unfortunate lot walk out of school facing some uncertain future because they would be ill-equipped to navigate challenges ahead. In spite of the prevailing challenges plaguing public schools, teachers should endeavour at all times to meet the unique and peculiar challenges of each student.
There is need to leverage on technology in order to accelerate student support and raise learning outcomes. If treated as individuals and given freedom to express their diversity, students are most likely apply and bring their best selves to the classroom. When feeling valued and respected students will always look forward to the next day in school. It is the duty of every school to make every learner feel good and likeable. Schools where students feel undermined and belittled are characterised by low expectations for students.
