An educational conversation for these times?

Pupil and student learning needs change, and what I now see as practical, would have been unthinkable to me ten, five, or even less, years ago, but the altered circumstances of the Sultanate, and my reflections, have led me to offer this opinion.

Most kids here attach little or no value to learning English, they don’t need it, they don’t want it, they can’t understand why they learn it, yet it’s a fait accompli. Few speak English at home, at play, with family and friends, and it has a puzzling irrelevance in their lives. Few mums and dads, grandma’s and grandad’s, uncles, aunties, or cousins speak it, and if they do, rarely at home, so the kids are not getting the linguistic exchange necessary to develop their English language.

English in basic education has outstanding textbooks that effectively represent Oman and the world beautifully. The subject is taught passionately and enthusiastically in several schools and classrooms, grudgingly, reluctantly in many others, and with disdain, as an inconvenience in most, and who is to say who is right or wrong? But there are insufficient English teachers for effective English teaching. This sees pupils graduate to secondary schools with insufficient English skills to handle their workload, demotivating them. Most ‘hang in’ to the modest programme demands to somehow progress to higher education. Here they enter a Foundation program, where the learning process, the psychology of learning, in all subjects, is hindered by the vast disparity in English language skills between those who know and understand English, and those who made it ‘by the skin of their teeth.’

The Foundation programme initiates students in higher education, where caring, professional, teachers, confront diverse student intakes with English vocabularies from ten, to ten thousand English words, with the less able expecting their teachers to be like Harry Potter... to wave a magic wand and teach them to learn English overnight! These teachers are fantastic, make no mistake, but they are not magicians! Here students must pass the English language focused course in English Reading, Writing and Grammar, also Math, Life Skills, and IT components. The Foundation course confirms that the student has sufficient English skills to function effectively in higher education, and the sooner a student can satisfy that requirement, the sooner they can go forward to their major studies.

This is where, academically and intellectually, “The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer,” a clumsy analogy maybe, but certainly the ‘ten thousand words’ capable English students, display an exponential dominance of the classroom despite teachers’ awareness of the need to support all students equally, seeking to modify that dominance. It is human nature if you are good at something, to want to be better, and to show that you are, and do. Meanwhile he ‘ten words’ students, while not left behind, are overcome, psychologically, and culturally, at a time in life when they want to be full of the joys of life... Many feel betrayed, they become embittered, disruptive, demotivated... their punctuality and attendance fail, and worse... they stop caring for, and about, themselves.

In my opinion, Oman’s society does not prepare its young people for life in or beyond education by denying the realities of educational need by only ‘sampling’ English, and I believe the answer must be to provide a basic education system, without English, for all pupils... at... this... time. The well-intentioned English focus was just exactly that, and it was a great concept, poorly resourced, now beyond redemption. Pupils, students, and parents who have specific, English speaking goals should patronize private, international schools, and training providers can assume English Language studies prior to higher education, as the “cloth must be cut to suit the means,” in the current financial climate.

Few of the young genuinely aspire to science, academia, diplomacy, or finance... so why English? There are many more words to be written and spoken on this topic, but the time is right for this conversation. Isn’t it?