How to Fatten a Hog

• Teachers who have not been expected to be inquisitive themselves are not likely to respond kindly to alternative thinking from their students. If we fail adolescents we are screwing up the education system and, indeed, our future. The authors site research that shows how factors outside school are far more important in determining future performance. They also note that as families are more at risk, society itself is more at risk. The trend is not good as about half of our children are brought up by a single mother. In 1980, this fraction was one out of eight.
• In response to lack of family and community support, politicians placed increased responsibility on schools, expected teachers to do better and to stick to what government advisors told them to do. This included ever more testing. The quote from a farmer says it all. “If you want to fatten hogs, you feed ‘em, you don’t weigh ‘em.”

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