The booklets in the photocopy shop

In September, the photocopy shops near the schools in Dokki fill up with summary booklets. Model answers, laid out question by question, ready to be learned by heart before the first exam.

The booklets sell because they work. They work because the exams reward them. And the exams reward them because the subjects were drawn up a long time ago, around what could be set, marked and ranked. Dates. Formulas. Definitions in the exact words of the textbook.

Almost nobody defends this arrangement on its merits. It continues because it is what school has always looked like, and because changing it would mean deciding what school is for.

So try deciding. Think of the people you would most like to work beside, buy from, live next door to, or see stand for election. What can they actually do? Tell a reliable claim from a loud one. Explain an idea so it lands, and listen properly when one comes back. Keep their word. Make a sound decision without every fact in hand. Find out what they do not know, which matters more now that almost any fact is a search away.

None of that is in the booklet. Very little of it is on the timetable. A child can spend twelve years in good schools, do well, and arrive at adulthood having practised it only by accident.

There is a sensible objection: these things are hard to test. That is true. It is also the reason they were left out, which is not the same as a reason to keep leaving them out.

If these are the qualities we look for in everyone we trust, the question is not complicated. Why are we teaching something else?