Oana Moraru: “Dear parents, don't brag about your Comper scores! That's not where knowledge is!”
You know those “high ambition” grades P-IV from “ladies” schools who “perform”, eat math papers and picks on bread, or give dictations from Preparatory class?
Those classes where parents desperately crowd their 35-40 “lucky” children and where, sometimes, they pay “full” for Christmas, March 8, birthdays, end of the year, etc.? Those classes where if a more sober parent starts to open his mouth in the meetings, he is cut short with “you know why you brought him here; leave if you can't handle it!”?
These classes are a phenomenon in Romania, in all cities. There were also in my time, although the communists still distributed, in order not to see the rudeness of choosing children under the table, “without interventions” students. They were so embarrassed…
3% are really performing. The rest, spoil
Over a hundred children from such classes came to our assessment workshops. A sufficient sample for me to venture to observe:
- Fast-forward to school makes kids look smart like a glittery coat can hide a patchwork tank top: they solve a lot and quickly, but without critical thinking. If you take them logically, on a dime, as it were, on mathematics, for example, they have a lot of concepts left absolutely in the air: they do not understand the “equal” sign, nor the decomposition of numbers, nor why they “borrow” in additions or subtractions. Learn multiplication and division strictly from memory, without logical application. They find the unknown term of additions or subtractions after training their reactions by recognizing the type of exercise. The same with problems, more on the recognition of typology than on the analysis of logical relationships.
- In Romanian, the same. Read a lot and well, but not aware. Schematic expression.
- Emotional, and worse: superiority and inferiority complexes, fear of failure, lack of spontaneity or risk-taking, fear of authority and the anxiety of discovering one's own and imaginary imposture.
Not everyone is like that. There are also performing children, tonic and capable of accelerated and deep learning. They are about 3%. The rest – spoilage, for the sake of the family's or the teacher's portfolio image. Good, spectacular children, but on a path that condemns them to the accumulation of irreparable “gaps”, of judgment and concept.
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