Acceleration - The dirty word of education right now!

Gosh I have absolutely had enough of this word acceleration.  Such a insane term, that means absolutely nothing and makes no sense for people that absolutely understand how learning actually happens.

Why does our system have an obsession with meeting certain standards by a certain time, who invented these standards and what do they even mean in terms of learning.

So what if a six year old is reading at a green level, what does this even mean, does this make them a better learner than the six year old who has not started reading yet, but just happens to be resilient, curious, creative, happy and able to come up with their own big ideas.

So what if they are 'green' if they can't generate their own thoughts, questions or wonderings.  So what if they are green if they are totally dependent on a teacher defining learning for them.  What benefit is there to the child, so they were green at six...by the time they are eight their peers who had not started reading have either caught up or sped past them...what does green mean then?

Acceleration is a dirty word, it is spoiling education for so many of our struggling learners.  An obsession around speeding up areas of reading, writing and maths very sadly means a loss to the areas that actually matter.  It means we are missing out on seeing our learners for who they actually are, relegating them to numbers and meaningless measurements.

Does this mean that I advocate for 'free ranging learning' well, yes indeed this would be a much prefered option.  But within this, we can still know where our learners are at, we can still keep an eye on their progress, we can still provide support later on when they need it in Year 4...but this data, this tracking should be a tiny snapshot of what we are doing.  Kind of like a safety net, it allows us to ensure no learner will slip through, in the meantime allowing them to fly free high above without even knowing or caring that the safety net is there.  If they do end up needing the safety net, it is a fun place to fall, that enables them to bounce right back, back to where they are meant to be.

Tracking in this way, knowing as  school who needs extra support as they go into Year 4 is our business, it is not something that should negatively impact on the view a learner has of themselves.

The word acceleration implies that if we force the pedal of learning down harder, if we just do more, if we force more into that learning, it will speed up.  Yes it may, but in most cases because the learning being accelerated was being forced on the learner who a)wasn't ready or may not feel safe or happy b)wasn't interested or c)saw no point in it as soon as we take the force off the pedal, the progress usually reverts.

This is similar to what I have seen in the time we used to do reading recovery.  Children were put on reading recovery, as if they were actually in need of recovery, children who were not even ready to learn to read yet...they were accelerated, showed progress, but when they returned to their class this progress faltered, or in many cases they reversed in their reading.

When does this type of intervention work?  a)when a child is developmentally ready
b)when they are feeling safe and happy and have a strong relationship with us
c)when they are interested
d) when there is a point for it and they can see it.

In fact, when we get these things right, there will be no need for 'acceleration' in fact learning will come quite naturally, in its own time and it will be stuck because it was learned when the child was in a state of readiness, not a state of stress.

Acceleration smeleration!

Acceleration, a term to be archived in my opinion!