Over the years, I’ve noticed a number of trends in differing trainees. Usually, this is differences in age groups. Young learners are used to absorbing new information from school, whereas older learners, returning to try a new skill struggle. There are benefits and downsides to both, of course. the older learner can be hard work as they struggle to learn new tricks, so take up much more time; but listen carefully to instructions, whereas the younger learner absorbs new information like a sponge. Easy, you would think. Not necessarily. One of those trends has manifested itself recently. I’m having trouble lately with younger learners and their listening skills – and, another slightly disturbing trend, a tendency to focus on what is going on ahead and not taking in what else is going on around them.
On one occasion recently, I refused to issue a CBT (compulsory basic training) certificate. My trainee had managed to get through the morning’s manoeuvring exercises and when we went out on the road, seemed to have a basic grasp of machine control. Not that this was especially difficult with an automatic moped.
I realised that we had problems when he sailed past a junction despite my giving directions twice over the radio and talking him through the observation, signal and position sequence on approach. Indeed, he started to take up the correct road position then swung back to the left, carrying straight ahead with the indicator busily flashing right.
These things happen of course. Students get a bit confused – they used to do that in the car when I was sitting next to them. I recall a student who took ages to get to grips with turning the wheel with her hands and operating the pedals with her feet simultaneously, so navigating was way down on the list of her priorities. So, no biggie, navigation isn’t the object of the exercise. However, this was a portent for what was to happen later – a failure to listen, leading to a failure to improve road craft skills.
So I took a diversionary route and during the subsequent debrief he explained that he didn’t understand what I meant by “junctions”. This threw me somewhat. It isn’t exactly a complex word and is fairly common in usage and, not least, we had used the term when describing road layouts during the morning session. So I explained it again. I also picked up on some road-craft problems and we set off again. As the afternoon went on, the same underlying lack of road-craft surfaced. The context was different but each time it was the same problem; a failure to read the road ahead. And as he explained to me and to one of the other instructors during the morning, he had difficulties with taking in complex instructions.
And there’s the rub. The instructions aren’t complex. Indeed, telling someone to stop and look behind them before carrying out a U turn is what I would call simple. Several times, I found myself repeating the instruction to stop before carrying out the manoeuvre and on each occasion he would turn across the road with nary a glance over his shoulder. An observing instructor remarked that he had a suicide wish. She had a point; he frightened me because there seemed to be a compete lack of awareness of the road around him unless it was directly in front in his line of sight.
So, after two and a half hours with minimal road-craft improvement, I had no option but to decline a CBT certificate and insist that he return for more training. A decision I found difficult as I knew it would cause disappointment, but easy because I knew that he simply was not yet ready to be let out unsupervised, indeed, the decision almost made itself. His mother who picked him up was happy enough with the decision and my debrief, so that is what is going to happen. Hopefully having slept on it, he will improve and succeed next time.
For me, though, I am left wondering just what is going on. My colleague blames modern education. She says that children today are not trained in comprehension tasks, learning to concentrate, for example. We, she reminded me, had to learn things by heart; poetry, dates, times-tables. While I’m not entirely sure that was always a good thing, the point she made struck me as being sound. After all, at one point during the afternoon, I found myself wondering just what this lad found so difficult to understand in the command to stop.
Attention deficit disorder, they call it I believe. Certainly there is a deficit of attention. While this was a fairly extreme example, it is certainly not isolated as we do find ourselves having to repeat instructions because students are not listening, yet demonstrate an aptitude for learning. That is, youngsters rather than the older, middle-aged types coming in to gain a full motorcycle licence – with them it is a different problem as they sometimes find it difficult to learn new skills.
I’m beginning to think that my colleague has it nailed, our modern, so-called education system, is failing a generation of youngsters who leave school unable to communicate effectively and unable to listen to simple instructions and take them in. Or am I being unfair here?
According to an experienced retired primary teacher in the family, the rot set in with the growth of mass childcare in nurseries and playgroups.
Instead of being over-awed on their first day in the classroom and looking to the teacher for reassurance and instruction, children simply take it for granted that they may get up and wander about at will as they did at nursery and that listening to the adult in the room is entirely optional.
Add to that the group seating that ensures at least a quarter of the class will be sitting with their backs to the teacher until the age of 11* (woe betide any school that presumes to place desks in rows!) and you have a recipe for institutionalised attention deficit – not a disorder; just an ingrained habit.
Oh, and your colleague is spot on about learning things; nursery rhymes have largely diappeared from the playgroup curriculum (too middle-class or eurocentric) and the outcry against DWEMs (Dead White European Males) means that young children are bombarded with modern free verse so devoid of rhyme or rhythm that no-one expects a young child to learn it by heart. By the time they meet anything else, the potential skill has been lost; it has to be learned before the age of about 6 or 7.
(Sorry – I’ll get off my soapbox and slink away quietly …)
*Or beyond; I’ve had to deal with this when working in other people’s classrooms even up to GCSE or A level.
Although the English education system is terminally broken, and why I gave up teching, (see anecdote below) this may not be the cause in this case.
Some people are awa’wi the fairies, I’m afraid!
People who have been given VERY CLEAR instructions, with the map in front of them, then, 30 seconds latyer, drive off in totally the WORNG direction – I’ve seen it.
So this one probably should not actually be on the road, in charge of any vehicle.
My wife works in a demanding technical job (Tax accountancy for a firm) and they need juniors.
Three turned up last week, all with shiny “degrees” from ex-polys ….
They ALL failed the basic maths/English comprehension tests set them (apprently “O”-level equivalent)
Whereas a lady of 59, who joined early this year, having been out of regular employment for 30 years, sailed through.
There is also the matter of “grade inflation”, but let’s not go there right now, shall we?
I have a fifteen year old daughter who went to nursery school, a CofE primary school and is currently at a technology college. Almost all of our experiences regarding her education have been positive. The exceptions have generally been due to staffing problems at the schools. She is very bright and among the high acheivers, it is possible that schools are failing their more moderately intelligent students, but blaming the education system for the failure of one single student failing the CBT seems perverse.
I’m not doing what you think I’m doing. See my comment to Lerxst below.
You may be right, but I don’t think one case can be taken as proof. I can think of older acquaintances of mine who are just as bad at grasping apparently simple instructions, from a relative who does similar maddening things on the road, to another who, even after several years of computer ownership, can’t consistently copy & paste correctly. As Greg says, some people are just awa’wi the fairies!
I’m not trying to prove anything, merely using an example to illustrate an underlying trend I’ve observed. A trend I did not encounter twenty years ago when teaching people to drive cars.
This is not an example of the type Greg mentions. I’ve come across enough of those to recognise them pretty quickly.
” My colleague blames modern education.”
I suspect your colleague is bang on the money. It would be interesting to see how he copes with, say, a complex computer game.
I suspect fairly well and it might be contributing to the lack of spatial awareness as a computer screen is directly in front. Just a thought.
There is something in that. I have noticed that younger folk don’t understand how I can see what they are doing when I am not looking directly at them. ‘Peripheral vision’ is something they either no longer have or no longer know how to use.