Problems of Public Education (5): An Alternative Approach

By Sebastian Egerton-Read

This blog is a part of a series, they can be understood individually, but it might interest you to investigate the others if you haven’t already:

#1 Introduction: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-1.html

#2 Constrictions on Human Ability: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-2.html

#3 Subject Hierarchy and Prescriptiveness: 

http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/02/problems-of-public-education-3-subject.html

#4 The Attainment Gap: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/02/problems-of-public-education-4.html

                Our current education structures are based on conformity, a very narrow curriculum based on a narrow view of intelligence and the idea of grading and evaluating people through a rigorous set of standardised tests. The origins of these structures have been discussed in the first blog, they are modelled on the industrialised society of the late 1800s and the dominant ideas of that time are still found inherently in them. Of course there have been adaptions and public education has not remained completely stagnant. Crucially though, the basic ideas and foundations of the systems themselves have not been changed. This is the core problem of the education policies of the major political parties in that they only discuss reforming and adapting these foundations. What is needed is something more. Our systems of public education need to be completely reconsidered, but this time rather than basing the foundations on a model of society as it is, systems of public education should be based on our understanding of how to maximise human potential, society will be shaped by the results of this.

                Now clearly the specific s of any change that occurs to our public education systems should be decided upon through a consultation process between students, parents, teachers and education experts. However, I will venture a set of important principles that are needed in order to make public education fairer and more rewarding for all. These principles are: personalisation as opposed to conformity, changing the culture of schools to a stimulating and positive one, and finally creating a wide curriculum that is inclusive of a far wider range of human intelligence and focuses on personal fulfilment and achievement as opposed to standardised tests.

                Personalisation is something that is talked about a lot in education circles, but very rarely produced. The antidote to the biggest difficulty in personalisation is actually extremely simple, education needs greater investment. Class sizes in most state schools is simply too large. Class size is one of the many reasons that state schools perform worse than private schools in terms of test scores. One-to-one teacher/pupil time is helpful development because a teacher can address that particular pupil’s needs. This is not a revolutionary idea, but it needs to be taken further. As well as more time one-to-one with a teacher, a pupil needs to have a structure where their particular interests and learning styles are facilitated. The only way to achieve this is to abandon the current obsession in schools with a strict timetable. That is not to say that broad templates/schedules shouldn’t exist, but flexibility has to be introduced here. Certain pupils are more responsive at certain times of the day; certain pupils have a greater aptitude for or find certain disciplines more rewarding. These differences shouldn’t be ignored, but in fact used to help each pupil maximise their potential. This personalisation is only possible if we abandon the current industrial model of education for a less rigid, more fluid one and invest more heavily in our education to increase staff numbers. What could possibly be more important and worthy of investment than education?

                The next important principle is that the culture of school life has to be changed, almost reversed. The personalisation of learning will clearly aid this, but beyond that the negativity of the current school environment must be changed to a positive one. Rather than mistakes being chastised and risks discouraged, pupils must be provided with an environment that encourages participation. They must not be afraid of being wrong, and should in fact be actively encouraged to be willing to be wrong. Only by being encouraged to take risks and orchestrating an education structure around adventure and investigation as opposed to fear and cautiousness can young people fulfil their full creative potential, as well as discovering the full extent of their talents and passions. The individualised culture of our current education systems must also go. People always perform better and achieve more when they are allowed to collaborate, when they are in groups. This is not to say that individual work or testing should be eradicated, but group collaboration must play a far greater role. Human beings are a co-operative species and the unnatural state of individualisation created in our current education structures must end.The culture of discipline must also be changed. Rather than punishing pupils for being bored, or for their own personal situations, these pupils should be worked with; they should be stimulated, not separated and forced through processes that are repulsive to them. Crucially, the other proposed changes to our education structures in this blog should mean that schools are stimulating and enjoyable; these two factors are the two most important measures to end poor behaviour and eliminate the need for huge amounts of discipline.  

                The final important principle is to change the current national curriculum. This blog does not suggest that there shouldn’t be guidelines or basic things that are taught to all students. However, a limited and rigid national curriculum does not serve the majority of students. Clearly the specific guidelines of any curriculum would need to be decided on with a consultation between pupils, parents, teachers and education experts. However there are a few crucial ideas that we can set out here:

1.     Personalisation is crucial to a better learning environment; therefore any curriculum must be inclusive of the idea that no pupils learning will be identical.

2.     This could have easily been filed under the need for a culture change, but it is important that the obsession with standardised testing ends. No longer can the curriculum be set out based upon rigorous sets of tests. Assessment that does remain must also become far more diverse and allow more expression.

            Human intelligence is incredibly diverse and the curriculum must be opened up so that it includes a far larger spectrum of human intelligence in both what is taught and how it is taught.

4.      Sciences are not ‘better’ than performing arts and the hierarchy amongst learning must be brought to an end. Subject priority should be based on particular students and their particular passions/talents as opposed to what is judged to be ‘better’, especially when those pretences of ‘better’ have absolutely no scientific grounding.

5.      This blog subscribes to an idea forwarded by Sir Ken Robinson where a curriculum should be based on the idea of disciplines rather than subjects. The idea of subjects is based far too much upon purely subject matter. The idea of disciplines opens up the idea of the techniques, skills and ideas being as important as information/subject matter. This idea also opens up the idea of inter-disciplinary education, where far from being separated; disciplines can be combined to open up even more learning and ideas of intelligence.

                These proposed changes are not actually revolutionary, although they would revolutionise our systems of public education. They are based on very basic scientific ideas and generally common sense. It is not revolutionary to suggest that people work better in groups; it is not revolutionary to suggest cautiousness culls creativity. The goal here is to create an education structure that stimulates those who pass through, personalises the experience so that every individual can find their talents and passions. Learning should not be something that is suffered through as so many children suffer through their education right now. Learning should be enjoyable, stimulating and rewarding and that is the aim of these alternatives. The current structure is out dated and no longer useful, in fact it directly hurts progress in many cases. The goal of educating our children is to maximise human potential and human fulfilment, we need to adapt the way we execute our education if we truly wish to meet those goals.

Problems of Public Education (4): The Attainment Gap

Problems of Public Education (4): The Attainment Gap

By Sebastian Egerton-Read

This blog is a part of a series, they can be understood individually, but it might interest you to investigate the others if you haven’t already:

#1 Introduction: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-1.html

#2 Constrictions on Human Ability: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-2.html

#3 Subject Hierarchy and Prescriptiveness: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/02/problems-of-public-education-3-subject.html

A ministerial report released in July 2010 stated:

‘Over the past decade, the gulf in achievement between the rich and the poor has widened, while the attainment gap between fee-paying schools and state schools has doubled.’

There is undoubtedly a serious recurring issue here and while not all of it is rooted in problems with education, our systems of public education must share at least some of the blame. A supportive family is undoubtedly an important factor in a lot of high attaining students, this doesn’t mean that those students are necessarily able to fulfil their full potential, but a supportive family base does get a lot of children ‘through’ their education. It is often observed that when children don’t have this base, they tend not to do so well in their education. It is also true to say that supportive families are usually families who have benefitted at least in part from education themselves in terms of having gone to university, or having enjoyed some success/reward from their time in education. Less supportive families are often those that have not really benefitted from education and therefore do not particularly believe in the system. These are of course very broad generalisations and there are undoubtedly plenty of exceptions, but they are not unfair and do reveal something about the psyche of people from different social backgrounds. Through this it is also clear exactly why the attainment gap between the rich and poor has continued to increase, and consequently the wealth gap.

Blaming this attainment gap on social problems alone is rather short-sighted though. Undoubtedly a person’s family background plays a huge role in their life. However, by suggesting this theory that a supportive family is the key to achieving in education, surely we are simply admitting that education is something that children need to be helped and supported through? Why should this be the case? Education should be an enjoyable experience; there is nothing inherent in the process of learning that demands it to be arduous. I don’t mean to say that education should be made to be easy. However, it is a lot easier to do something challenging and difficult if it is also stimulating, and the stimulation is something that is all too often missing from the classrooms in our schools.

This brings us nicely to one of the other dominant arguments about education. This commonly held idea that if you work hard, you will achieve. Now, anyone who believes this statement to be true can undoubtedly come up with several good examples of people bettering themselves through working hard, equally people who disagree with this statement can come up with several examples of people who have worked hard, but haven’t been rewarded, or people who have bettered themselves by cheating or backstabbing as opposed to hard work. This debate is rather insignificant since the simple fact as stated in the ministerial report is that the attainment gap continues to widen. It was once suggested to me that this is potentially a sign of a genetically lazy poor population, despite the obvious ludicrousness of this statement since laziness is very much an abstract and subjective thing. It is also worth noting that this can be very strongly likened to the ideas that used to state that black people could not govern themselves and that women were not capable of rational thought. We can now (I hope) dismiss those ridiculous ideas and one day hopefully this notion of poor people being ‘lazy’ will be considered equally ridiculous.

It is also worth interrogating this very idea of ‘working hard’. Anyone will tell you that if you are doing something that is stimulating, or something that you have a genuine passion for, then you can work hard without really noticing it. People can spend hours doing things that they genuinely enjoy and not notice the time at all. What is found at school is something altogether different, because many people will tell you that time during a school day often drags on. This is a phenomenon far more associable with the idea of hard work, which is very different from working hard. That is the reality of our education systems, far from encouraging students to work hard by stimulating and challenging them, school life is actually just hard work for most children and as a rule under these conditions, the ones that have support attain well and the ones that don’t have support, struggle.

It should be noted that there are people who benefit from an education system that perpetuates the wealth gap, but this will be investigated more carefully in the next blog. The other thing that should be noted is that the ‘grades’ and attainment that education policy is judged upon is completely flawed as it only grades an extremely narrow range of human intelligence as has been investigated in the previous three blogs. People who achieve well at school don’t necessarily have the opportunity to fulfil their talents or end up doing the things that they are truly passionate about. However, it is statistically clear that the current education system does nothing but perpetuate the current wealth gap in this country. Michael Gove is right when he suggests that the focus needs to be on this attainment gap, but he is wrong in prescribing a more intense process of target setting and increased attainment focus on people from poorer backgrounds. Dragging people through an education system that they resent will not maximise their potential. To do this the education system must be changed so that it is a stimulating system that emphasises personalisation and becomes a place of enjoyment rather than an institution that people are churned out as if they were on the production line. The education system needs to be something that the population can believe in, as of right now they don’t have any particular reason to.

Language, Thought and Politics: Part 2

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way... The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.
– Noam Chomsky

To think that we are free from indoctrination or propaganda in this country is all too foolish. My belief is that mainstream party politics, the media and its readership participate in a relationship of sorts, where the media (especially tabloid media) exploits the most deep-rooted prejudices and fears of its readership. It scaremongers and blames its way into the hearts and minds of the population, through potent oversimplifications designed to incite emotion rather than understanding. The majority of British people receive news only from tabloids and the BBC (incidentally, the top three daily newspapers for both men and women in Britain are, in order, The Sun, The Daily Mail, Daily Mirror/Record. The Sun’s male readership is 18%, and female readership 13% whereas The Guardian, to take an example, has a male readership of only 2.5% and female readership of only 2.1%). Consequently, political parties pander to the same prejudices and fears. Exploiting our ignorance is their greatest tool.

Recently, a particularly distasteful topic that has been cropping up in mainstream tabloid newspapers is that of ‘the Islamification of Britain’. The Daily Telegraph sees this phenomenon as a result of the approximate 5,000 annual conversions to Islam, despite the fact that growth of British Muslims at this rate (0.0032%) would result in a doubling of the Muslim population every 213 years. The current estimates for the Muslim population of Britain lie somewhere between 2.4 and 2.7% of the whole population. While for me, this mythical ‘Islamification’ of Britain didn’t really seem like a pressing problem, the reason why it proved to be such terrifying news for The Daily Mail readers harks back to a decade of ‘anti-terrorism’ propaganda since 9/11 in 2001, from both media and government.

In the Oxford English Dictionary ‘Fundamentalism’ is defined as “strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs.” Nowhere is their mention of belief in violence, support of terrorist activities and so forth, yet ‘fundamentalist’, ‘terrorist’ and ‘extremist’ have been used synonymously in newspapers for the last ten years, manufacturing a connection in many people’s minds between women in hijabs, Muslim men in traditional dress and negative images of Muslim terrorists. A range of statistics have emerged regarding people’s perceptions of Muslim people; the most source suggesting that three-quarters of people would be unhappy if a mosque was built in their area (British Attitudes Survey.)  

If we look closer into the implications of these words; what does ‘extremism’ actually mean? Answer: it’s a non-word, a sound-bite that means nothing. On an imaginary spectrum of ideas, the ideas on either end are deemed ‘extreme’ but those ‘extreme’ ideas are only at the end of the spectrum because of the way it was drawn in the first place. Those accused of extremism may wish to draw very different spectra. Put simply, an extremist is someone whose opinions differ markedly from ours, and the term asks of no further engagement into the matter. To define someone as ‘extreme’, is to assume that their whole self is extreme – conflating many types of motivation and ideology under one all-purpose sound bite. Finally, the vagueness of ‘extremism’ acts as the ultimate government tool. To set a population against such a broad concept, means that this ‘struggle’ can outlive any mere fight with Al Qaeda. We’re all aware that populations are more supportive of their governments in times of war, so consider the implications of an ongoing struggle that has no tangible goal – just potential successes along the way.

Moving on, think back to the election debates that took place in 2009. The first debate, on domestic affairs, saw another issue that I have seen saturating newspapers over the last few years; that of the plague of youth crime.  Nick Clegg spoke of a ‘conveyor belt from nuisance at the beginning, anti-social behaviour in our communities, yobs on the street corner who then become the hardened criminals of tomorrow’. Newspaper headlines such as ‘A Nation Under Siege’ by ‘yobs ruling the streets’, or ‘100 thugs in siege at police station’, are far from uncommon. One problem is, that because young people are protected by law when having committed a crime, journalists aren’t allowed to name names and so feel free to demonise the youth in question to their hearts content, exaggerating and extrapolating far beyond reality. Indeed, when Clegg referred to his ‘conveyor belt’, and Cameron and Brown were singing the exact same tune, not one of them mentioned the connection between crime and poverty, between crime and poor education in poor areas, between crime and hardship. In fact, the question which sparked the debate was from a woman from Burnley in Lancashire, an area with the highest burglary rate per head of population in the entire country. It is also the second poorest town in the county and Lancashire itself has been historically on the lower end of the wealth spectrum. This wasn’t mentioned, because party politics no longer relies on logic, but on sensational headlines.

As a result of a combination of exaggerated media, existing prejudices in the population, and a self-interested set of political parties, we have what I see as a breakdown of any hope of community whatsoever, a society so individualistic and detached from each other, that it genuinely upsets me. We have ‘The Mosquito’, an alarm that emits a high frequency sound of over 100 decibels that only young people under the age of 25 can hear, stopping them ‘loitering’ in particular places. We have three-quarters of people being unhappy if a mosque was built in their neighbourhood, despite the fact that Islam is a highly rich religion and culture and that we’re supposed to live in a multi-faceted country where people are free to practice any religion they want.

To finish this critique of the media, conbsider the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian and commentator on public affairs;

Rationality belongs to the cool observers – but because of the stupidity of the average man he follows not reason but faith and the naive faith of the proletarian requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which have to be provided by mythmakers to keep the ordinary person on the right course.

I consider this an apt description of mainstream media today; broad simplifications, which we believe because of our unconscious obedience, just as Orwell predicted.

By Kelly Rogers

Language, Thought and Politics: Part 1

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

This quote, from George Orwell’s 1984, outlines the somewhat menacing, but inherent connection between language, thought and politics. The novel predicts the effects of a lexicon dictated by a powerful elite, and what that would mean for the population; i.e. obedience and ignorance in equal measure and to the greatest degree.

The concept of linguistic determinism or linguistic relativity – where language directly impacts thought – is based in a whole history of linguistic and cognitive science. Whereas previous theories focused on the semantic structure of different languages, attributing this to the formation of different world views by the speakers, the latest work has appreciated the importance of the socio-cultural context of human development. Interpretive differences can be rooted as much in the systematic uses of language as in its structure. In essence, language, while sharing a common base with every other language, has cultural nuances that impact on a speaker’s perception of the world in certain respects. Such claims should be used not to argue in favour of mind-control by the media, or but to give greater weight to the significance of rhetoric, which has been understood since Aristotelian times to be a powerful tool in politics.

Orwell was concerned not only with the impact of language, but the way that it could be controlled by powerful groups. So, where does power lie when it comes to distributing media and ideology in our society? Benjamin Ginsberg used a powerful analogy between free-market economics and the ‘marketplace of ideas’;

Western governments have used market mechanisms to regulate popular perspectives and sentiments. The ‘marketplace of ideas’ ... effectively disseminates the beliefs and ideas of the upper classes while subverting the ideological and cultural independence of the lower classes... In the United States, in particular, the ability of the upper and upper-middle classes to dominate the marketplace of ideas has generally allowed these strata to shape the entire society’s perception of political reality and the range of realistic political and social possibilities. While westerners usually equate the market place with freedom of opinion, the hidden hand of the market can be almost as potent an instrument of control as the iron fist of the state.

The journalistic apparatus, in short, works in a way to perpetuate particular class interests. According to Chomsky, the major media are essentially ‘corporations “selling” privileged audiences to other businesses.’ Consequently, the worldview they present reflects the perspectives and interests of the sellers, and this apparatus is maintained by journalists pressured to conform to these ideological pressures, in order to make their way in the business. Furthermore, when it comes to controversial issues such as war, democracy, terrorism, journalists are under pressure to remain within accepted realms; conscious of the potential permanence a ‘bad name’ can have.

Turning to state-controlled media; if we look at the journalistic set up of Iraq during the invasion, there were 700 journalists in-bedded into the military apparatus; resulting in ‘officially-inspired’ news. If they become critical of a particular general, or a member of the pentagon or so forth they will lose their sources; by getting in-bed with the military, journalists give complete power to them in deciding, where they go, how they get there and what they see. As a result, at home the invasion was seen as a vindication. The bringing down of the statue of Hussein became an icon of the freeing of the Iraqi people, despite the fact that the order to do so was given by a US soldier. This fact was never reported. The point I am trying to make by providing this example is that even with this highly charged, and controversial political event; one that has defined a generation, our newsfeed was being controlled by the very elite we should be examining and scrutinising.

Problems of Public Education (3): Subject Hierarchy and Prescriptiveness.

By Sebastian Egerton-Read

This blog is a part of a series, they can be understood individually, but it might interest you to investigate the others if you haven’t already:

#1 Introduction: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-1.html

#2 Constrictions on Human Ability: http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/problems-of-public-education-2.html

Michael Gove’s most recent addition to the English system of public education is the ‘English Baccalaureate’; this is a measure that grades students for achieving ‘good’ passes in ‘good’ subjects. The measure is of how many students achieve good passes in English, Maths, a Foreign Language, Geography or History and two Science qualifications. This further narrowing of an already narrow curriculum will be absolutely detrimental to the future of so many students. This grading of certain subjects above others is based on an extremely narrow vision of intelligence and is not based on the reality of the diverseness of human potential. We have already established in a previous blog that the purpose of education should be to try and maximise human potential. Human potential extends far beyond these few subjects and the establishment of hierarchy among subjects at schools has been, and will continue to be devastating to the opportunity for many students to find their passions and talents.

Hierarchy has been engrained in our public education system from its very outset. Public education systems became essential after the industrial revolution when it was realised that the new economies would need a far larger portion of the workforce to have a more comprehensive education. Maths, Technology and the Sciences therefore started off with a higher status/value as they were the subjects that fed most directly into this particular economic climate. Now it is not fair to say that this has been stagnant, English for example is now considered to be at least as important as these other subjects, especially after the literacy teaching drive during the recent Labour government. The humanities and foreign languages have gained in importance and you might even argue that a subject like technology has possibly been reduced in importance (notice its absence from the Baccalaureate for example). However, broadly speaking the national curriculum still sets out this hierarchal structure where certain subjects are given less importance, while others are prioritised. The idea of picking only one of geography and history is an example of this, and the arts are another large category, which always finds itself at the bottom of the priority list. This subject priority is based on two main principles. The idea that certain subjects feed into the world of work more effectively, and the idea that certain subjects are of a higher intellectual value. The first of these is a simple impossibility since compulsory public education lasts for 12 years, and it is impossible to predict what the job market will look like across that sort of timespan. It also completely ignores the usefulness that a wide range of skills has to any economy. The wider societal idea that certain subjects are more ‘difficult’ or more intellectual is simply a mistake, a mistake that has been detrimental to huge numbers of people. Solving a maths equation does not require a higher level of brain activity than playing a musical instrument or playing a game of tennis for example. Human intelligence is hugely diverse and what is studied at schools must reflect that, rather than the system that is currently in place where only a very limited level of the spectrum is prioritised.

Part of this problem lies in the route of the idea of dividing learning into subjects at all. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson pioneers the idea that a far better way of setting up a school curriculum is through the idea of disciplines. This is far less divisive between different aspects of learning as opposed to subjects. In fact, the idea of inter-disciplinary studies opens up a huge range of possibilities in terms of improving learning techniques and making personalised learning easier and more effective. Subjects are based rather simply upon subject matter and content, and yet there is a lot more to Maths and Music than simply giving information. Disciplines encompass the idea that Maths, Music, History etc are actually made up of a complex combination of skills, processes, techniques. Information/content is just one more aspect of this. All of these disciplines have this basic structure in common and they often cross over, Music is often concerned with similar things to History and so on. This fluidity between disciplines is also far more representative of the world, where people are rarely engaged with the simple rigid ideas of a single subject, but rather deal with a plurality of experiences simultaneously.

The other problem with subjects in the national curriculum has been the over-prescriptiveness that has accompanied them. This blog will focus on the example of English to illustrate the way in which subjects can be hampered by this prescriptiveness and the inability of the curriculum to personalise education. English is a subject that has been elevated during the recent Labour government and it stands out as the humanity that is rated equally in the hierarchy to the likes of Science and Maths. This is obviously because the ability to read and write is extremely useful, especially in the media age. Within English though, there is a strong level of prescriptivism and it is associated to the same ideas of usefulness to work life and of certain aspects of English being elevated as more academic. In English, pupils are expected to write in a certain way known as the ‘Standard English’ dialect. This is one dialect amongst a huge number that exist in the UK; it is no more difficult or challenging linguistically than any other. Yet the same stigma attached to mistakes is applied to ‘incorrect’ grammar, and pupils are effectively forced into adopting one dialect, a dialect that might not be natural to them. This prescriptiveness in dialect limits the freedom of expression and often makes the experience of learning to write, which should be a liberating one, a frustrating and difficult one. A similar story is found in the way that pupils are taught to read, where certain books and writing are prescribed as being more worthy of study or of a higher value. This is in spite of the fact that judgement of the quality of literature is a wholly subjective experience. This all combines to make English an unnecessarily arduous subject and rather unappealing to many pupils. This is also carried on in English through degree level, where an ‘academic style’ is required, a style which is not only narrow, but has a limited association with the everyday language that people speak. This idea of a ‘higher’ dialect of English also influences a whole range of subjects/disciplines like History for example, where often the ‘quality of English’ is equally prioritised alongside content and actual ideas in exams/essays. 

Similar case studies can be done for all of the subjects. Physical Education has a social stigma attached to it with certain sports/activities being valued higher, not just amongst each other, but also between the sexes (Boys play football, girls play netball). Exercise is extremely healthy, not just physically, but also mentally and often socially as well. Physical activity is natural, but the social stigma created in PE lessons puts off a huge number of students not just from the subject, but also physical exercise altogether. If human potential is to be maximised, then the diversity of individual disciplines must be recognised and exploited. The way that these disciplines are then taught to our children must be personalised and must be interactive if students are to discover their talents and passions. This subject hierarchy and prescriptiveness is in part a result of a narrow national curriculum and huge amounts of standardised testing, but it is also based on out dated ideas of human ability and methods of education. Switching to a structure of wide-ranging disciplines will not only create a far more logical education structure that exploits human potential, but it will make the personalisation so dearly needed easier to implement.