Duncan Gillies: Education and ideals at odds over the stroke of a pen

Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

Education is a funny thing. Or a tragic thing, I'm not too sure. I was away or not paying attention the day they explained exactly what it is.

I know it's something, and for me it was something like nothing else anybody I knew ever experienced.

At primary school, different teachers at different times tied me to my desk, taped my mouth shut, and drew a circle around my desk and told me I wasn't allowed outside of it.

That's right, try as they may, they couldn't stop me coming top of my class. Okay, so the last bit isn't true (Okay, couldn't be further from the truth), but the rest is.

It didn't get much easier at high school, by which time I had discovered coffee and seemed to be spinning out of control.

It must be said, though, that the brothers at Campion College in Gisborne seemed to be aware of my limited attention span and so tailor-made a study programme for me which basically consisted of the phrase, "Gillies, stop chewing gum and tuck your shirt in."

And it is essential that schools show that sort of flexibility to adapt to a student's needs as well as the changing times.

Take Hillcrest Grammar, Stockport, England, for example. This week it banned GCSE students from using fountain pens in an effort to improve their exam technique.

It may not seem much of a leap into the future when you consider students in many schools can take laptops into classrooms and email assignments in to teachers.

Headmaster Jack Williams points out, though, that this is a big move for the school, which has an annual fee of £8250 ($17,270) and has a roll of 350 pupils aged from 3 to 16.

It had previously enforced the use of fountain pens while banning the use of ballpoint pens. Fountain pens were preferred, Williams said, because "it produces a much nicer final product".

But, with all exam boards now requiring students to use black ballpoint pens in examinations, Williams knew the school was fighting a losing battle.

I personally had a problem with ballpoint pens when sitting exams. Like the students at Hillcrest, I wasn't used to using them. Not because I had used a fountain pen but because it was hard to take notes when your teacher had tied your hands to the legs of your chair.

So when it came to exam time, the pens I used seemed to be guided all over my exam papers in much the same way spirits guide a planchette around a ouija board. And for the sceptics out there, I have the results to prove it.

Williams' main concern, however, is that the computerised marking systems used for GCSE exams often miss the penstrokes of fountain pens.

Blobs or smudges may be misinterpreted as something the student meant to write while commas, quotes and full points might be missed altogether.

So, rather than dig his heels in and wait for the day when education officials would throw out all their high-tech marking machines and their fancy ballpoint pens, Williams has turned his back on tradition.

It seems a shame, though, for a school that places such importance on tidy handwriting, as old-fashioned as that may seem, to be forced to change just because a scanning machine might make a mistake.

Meanwhile, for some of us, education is a struggle no matter what pen we use.

If I were at school today, I'd be labelled ADHD (which means I am easily distracted because I see the world in high definition) and would have teachers pleading with my parents to shoot me up with Ritalin every morning. But, if I were at school today, I'd be able to choose my own medication as I am now 42.

And anyway, my parents were the type who were convinced their children were just special and destined for great things. Sorry mum, dad.

Williams, though, in acting against his instincts and opting for ballpoint pens, is putting his students first.

"It goes against all my principles, but I want to make sure my pupils do the best they can," he told journalists.

And that is why teaching is such a noble profession. Teachers, at least the great majority of them, want their students to succeed.

I know most of my teachers wanted me to do the best I could, although I'm sure there were a few who just wanted to see the back of me.

And I'm sure some of them would be pleasantly surprised to see me working at the New Zealand Herald, where regularly I am told, "Gillies, stop chewing gum and tuck your shirt in."

* Duncan Gillies is the Herald's foreign sub-editor