David Gilmour Of Pink Floyd Reverts On The Motif Of His Own Classic: we Don't Need No Education

If you are of the opinion that our education system needs a radical change

, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame has an opinion to share. His We Dont Need No Educationa once-radical song that has lyrics defaming the role of teachers and the methods of learning adopted by schoolssparked a classroom revolt in the 1980s, inspiring a generation of exam-weary teenagers who accorded with Gilmours feelings about his own schooling. However, Gilmour is not happy about the essential theme of his song, not anymore.

What changed his perception of conventional education? Gilmour was brought up in Cambridge, where his father was a senior lecturer in zoology. Speaking about his school experience in Perse, he says that it was a very disciplined school and he didn't like it all. At the college, Gilmour abandoned his exams for his guitar. "I knew that if I got the A-levels, I would be expected to go to university and I wanted to be a musician," he says.

Gilmour has four children from his first marriage. In a bid to provide a less-pressurized education than what he had and to fulfill the wishes of his divorced wife, Gilmour had put his children in a non-conventional schoolMichael Hall in East Sussex, one of 26 Steiner schools in Britain. (Steiner schools have a unique and distinctive approach to educating children, aiming to enable each stage of growth to be fully and vividly enjoyed and experienced.) "But it soon became apparent that my children were neither happy nor learning," he says.

Several aspects of the Steiner system alarmed him. "Steiner believes that six to seven is the age at which to start teaching reading and writing. My son, Matthew, was frustrated by not being able to write his name at seven. When he left, aged nine, he could only just read." Another central plank of the philosophy is that, between the ages of eight and 14, children should remain with the same teacher for the main lesson every morning. This is designed to promote continuity and works well if child and teacher get on. If not, it can be a havoc, comments Gilmour.

Speaking about the flaws in the Steiner system, Gilmour said, "The school had its good aspects, but overall, the system seemed slack. I found the children's knowledge was very patchy, and their school reports, which consisted only of praise, gave me little idea of how they were really doing." Since the system is non-hierarchical, with no head teacher, Gilmour felt there was no one with sufficient authority to resolve his anxieties.

In a desperate move to resolve his childrens educational impasse, Gilmour sought the aid of psychologists. To his astonishment, his youngest son, Matthew, when first examined in 1994, was judged to have an average IQ of 101 but was considered to be seriously disabled in terms of literacy acquisition, with his reading and spelling lying a full three years below his chronological age.

Less than two years later, Matthew was retested. The educational psychologist found him to have flourished outside the Steiner system; his retested IQ was then 124. (Confidence can make a difference to a child's scores on intelligence tests.)

Gilmour found that his three daughters were lagging too in their academics. Sarah, the youngest, was 14 when she was transferred to a conventional school. Her IQ was high, but she had to be put in a class of girls a year younger than she was, where she still struggled. She caught up with her classmates, says Gilmour. "She had far more understanding of what was going on in the world, and seemed much happier studying in a conventional school."

Clare, 18, who has dyslexia, now attends a specialist college, while Alice, 21, left Michael Hall with one A-level in art. Unqualified for a British university, she is about to start college in America.

Meanwhile, Martyn Rawson, spokesman for the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, defends the Steiner approach, saying that pupils regularly achieve above average results in their GCSE and A-level exams. "More than half of our pupils go on to higher education. With the ones that don't, it's often a conscious choice rather than a lack of the necessary qualifications," he claims.

"With a very self-motivated child or one who needs intensive nurturing, Steiner can do a good job. There is great emphasis on feeling and sensitivity, and on first-hand experience of nature," says Peter Gilchrist, one of the psychologists Gilmour consulted. However, he feels that the rigidity of Rudolph Steiner's 75-year-old philosophy can be problematic. Most children, according to him, thrive in a system that exerts more pressure on them. "They need fixed boundaries. Few children are so naturally hard-working that they beg to be given more math problems."

Gilmour is not an outspoken man. But his children's education went so badly wrong that he has now come out in favor of Strict Education to No Education. "When I think of the horrific experience I had, struggling with my children's school, I felt I had to say something," he declares.

by: rajaa

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