Thought for the Day - 4 December 2013

Good Morning,

It seems that we’re not doing very well in school. Again. 26th out of 65 countries? Not quite at the back of the class, but no improvement on our position of three years ago. Meanwhile we’re way behind those high fliers – Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea - whose pupils have once again outshone ours in maths, reading and science. The message seems to be that we must try harder and be more like them if we want to succeed.

While people debate whose fault this is, I wonder if coming top in these tests is a garland we should be striving to win? Yes. We want a productive, rounded and fulfilled generation. But is making children brilliant at passing examinations - whatever the cost – the way to go about it?

Watching a television report on South Korean students, I sincerely doubt it. To make the grade they have to go to school twice, working with barely a break from 6.30 am to 11pm. Their results are exemplary, but they’re left too tired to play with friends, hang out, or just simply be. ‘But look at the success of their economy,’ people say. Of course, good education correlates to economic success; but education isn’t merely a system for improving GDP. Do we really think- like Dickens’s Gradgrind in Hard Times - that ‘all girls and boys need are facts – nothing else?’ I hope not. South Korea has the highest rate of youth suicide in the developed world.

We’re such an inventive, creative nation. Yet many of the things we’re good are hard to measure or forge in an exam room. How many of the Turner Prize contenders would make the PISA grade? How many musicians, novelists or entrepreneurs have an IQ of 130 or above? Indeed, there seems to be a deeper cultural confusion about what intelligence is, limiting it to a measurable IQ whilst ignoring other qualities such as emotional intelligence.

Surely we need both. This was perfectly illustrated When Lady Ashton helped negotiate a seemingly impossible deal between the US and Iran; it was her ‘great emotional intelligence’ – her ability to perceive, evaluate and control emotions - that was singled out as making the difference. After all, what’s the use of having an intellectually brilliant but socially inept person trying to negotiate a peace treaty between former enemies?

Emotional Intelligence is nothing new. Indeed I’d suggest that it’s a form of wisdom. Even the utilitarian Gradgrind wondered if there was ‘a wisdom of the head and a wisdom of the heart.’ But the poor teacher - ‘who supposed the head to be all sufficient’ - realised too late that it wasn’t.

In scripture wisdom is seen as a syntheses of creative skill, discernment and understanding, as well as a reverence for God. No wonder the author of Proverbs urges us to seek it ‘though it cost all we have.’ For wisdom, he suggests, is the garland we should want for our children.