Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #377 Under Pressure

Transcript

#377 Under Pressure · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
0:07
Speaker 1: time poor parent who just once answers.
0:10
Speaker 2: Now, at the end of the day, with all of
0:12
Speaker 2: our searching, we have not found the school that takes all.
0:15
Speaker 3: The perfect school doesn't exist. I'm copious of it.
0:17
Speaker 2: I don't think it does.
0:19
Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
0:22
Speaker 1: and Dad.
0:23
Speaker 3: So every now and again something pops up on social
0:24
Speaker 3: media that just has to be talked about on the
0:26
Speaker 3: Happy Families podcast. And last week it was Rebecca Sparrow,
0:30
Speaker 3: a wonderful friend of mine and somebody who if you're
0:32
Speaker 3: not following on Facebook, can I just recommend check out
0:34
Speaker 3: Beck Sparrow. Rebecca Sparrow on Facebook. She talks all about
0:38
Speaker 3: raising tween and teen kids, mainly girls, but a bit
0:42
Speaker 3: of boy stuff in there as well, and she's just fabulous.
0:45
Speaker 3: She posted the following it and I'm going to read
0:47
Speaker 3: the entire message. Okay, it's a couple of paragraphs she says.
0:52
Speaker 3: A friend of mine took her son to a year
0:54
Speaker 3: seven orientation the other night at he's soon to be
0:57
Speaker 3: new high school. The parents and kids were told that
1:00
Speaker 3: there was an expectation that the kids would be doing
1:03
Speaker 3: ninety minutes of homework per night. Then Beck says, ninety
1:08
Speaker 3: minutes of homework per night for twelve year olds? Has
1:10
Speaker 3: the world gone mad? I wasn't doing ninety minutes of
1:12
Speaker 3: a homework in year twelve, she says. Meanwhile, another friend
1:15
Speaker 3: has a child in year twelve who is now madly
1:17
Speaker 3: trying to memorize all kinds of information for the upcoming
1:20
Speaker 3: end of year twelve exams. What possible benefit is they're
1:22
Speaker 3: enforcing kids to memorize all this material. It's twenty twenty one,
1:25
Speaker 3: for Pete's sake, and I'm going to just throw And
1:27
Speaker 3: has anyone heard of Google? Like you can find whatever
1:29
Speaker 3: you need to know? And a year ten girl I
1:31
Speaker 3: know said she's planning to do the suicide six in
1:35
Speaker 3: years eleven and twelve. We've heard our kids talk about
1:37
Speaker 3: this as they've gone through these senior years. That's the sorry,
1:40
Speaker 3: back to Beck, that's the nickname given when you choose
1:43
Speaker 3: to do physics, biology, chemistry, English, Maths B, and Maths
1:46
Speaker 3: C in your senior years. You know, says Beck. I
1:50
Speaker 3: see all this talk about how worried schools are about
1:52
Speaker 3: our kids' mental health. I see politicians talking about it,
1:56
Speaker 3: and education boards, but we're running in the opposite direction
1:59
Speaker 3: to what our kids need need. Sorry, but this is
2:01
Speaker 3: all BS. Our kids well being in their future careers
2:04
Speaker 3: are not reliant on single scores at the end of
2:07
Speaker 3: year twelve. Do not buy into that message. Year twelve
2:10
Speaker 3: scores are about school marketing, brochures and universities using scarcity
2:15
Speaker 3: as a tactic. There are so many different pathways to
2:17
Speaker 3: take after school. Well, first of all, I love what
2:21
Speaker 3: Beck said, but have we got some stuff to talk
2:24
Speaker 3: about here or what?
2:25
Speaker 2: So a couple of years ago, we had our kids
2:27
Speaker 2: enrolled in a really expensive, expensive high school.
2:31
Speaker 3: We're sending us broke and they're not there anymore.
2:36
Speaker 2: We loved what the school had to offer.
2:38
Speaker 3: Beautiful school and a beautiful community and incredible resources, and
2:43
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the kind of thing that you look
2:44
Speaker 3: at and think, I want my kids to have this
2:46
Speaker 3: kind of a learning environment.
2:47
Speaker 2: And for one of our children it actually was a
2:49
Speaker 2: really positive experience. But one of our other children really struggled,
2:54
Speaker 2: and she has anxious tendencies, and we watched over a
3:01
Speaker 2: very short period of time those tendencies becoming more and
3:05
Speaker 2: more prominent and her feeling more and more pressure and
3:09
Speaker 2: weighed down and she was.
3:11
Speaker 3: Just miserable, miserable.
3:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely miserable, and so we made a really really tough decision.
3:17
Speaker 2: Part of it was financial, but part of it was
3:19
Speaker 2: just looking at the kids and watching how they were
3:21
Speaker 2: dealing with life.
3:22
Speaker 3: It was hard as well from an ego point of view, right,
3:24
Speaker 3: because when you've got your kids in a really nice school,
3:26
Speaker 3: there's something nice about saying, oh, my kids go to
3:28
Speaker 3: this really nice school, and reputation kind of matters. So
3:32
Speaker 3: it was hard from that point of view. But we
3:34
Speaker 3: were drowning financially and the kids were struggling, especially this
3:38
Speaker 3: particular child.
3:39
Speaker 2: And so we made a really really big call to
3:42
Speaker 2: pull them out, and we talked to them and gave
3:43
Speaker 2: them options of the schools that were around, and this
3:47
Speaker 2: particular child decided she wanted to go to the local
3:49
Speaker 2: school just around the corner, and we really struggled with that.
3:53
Speaker 2: It was a really really big deal for us to
3:55
Speaker 2: put her into a public school after she had been
3:58
Speaker 2: at this beautiful, very well manicured.
4:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that it's important to highlight here.
4:04
Speaker 3: I always said that our kids would just go to
4:05
Speaker 3: public schools because my parents put me through a private
4:07
Speaker 3: school and all of my siblings, and it was such
4:09
Speaker 3: a waste of money, Like none of us, none of
4:11
Speaker 3: us did anything with the private school educations that we
4:15
Speaker 3: received at all. The private school education did not benefit
4:18
Speaker 3: a single one of us, and it just seemed like
4:20
Speaker 3: such a waste of money. But anyway, that's where they
4:22
Speaker 3: ended up for a range of reasons that we don't
4:24
Speaker 3: need to go into now. And just the difference of
4:27
Speaker 3: the local public high school and primary school compared to
4:29
Speaker 3: that school. Nothing not saying anything bad about it, it's
4:33
Speaker 3: just you can't draw a comparison because you've got this
4:35
Speaker 3: very expensive, hoyty toity school with all the lush surroundings
4:38
Speaker 3: and all the just you walk in and you go, ah,
4:41
Speaker 3: this is lovely, and then you walk into the local
4:43
Speaker 3: public school and it looks and feels like a local
4:45
Speaker 3: public school. No disrespect at all, but it was such
4:48
Speaker 3: a contrast after what we'd experienced for the last couple
4:50
Speaker 3: of years.
4:50
Speaker 2: It was and just before the holidays, she received her
4:54
Speaker 2: report card. It's been there for nearly eighteen months now, yep,
4:58
Speaker 2: and she was ecstatic.
5:02
Speaker 3: Yep.
5:03
Speaker 2: Pretty much, straight a's straight a's across the board. She's
5:06
Speaker 2: in a couple of extension classes and has just absolutely
5:11
Speaker 2: nailed it.
5:12
Speaker 3: Almost almost zero anxiety, just a little bit of self
5:16
Speaker 3: self imposed anxiety, but no anxiety from the school. There's
5:19
Speaker 3: no pressure from the school or anything like that. So happy,
5:22
Speaker 3: great group of friends like seriously. Putting her into the
5:24
Speaker 3: local public school has been one of the best education
5:27
Speaker 3: decisions we've ever made for our family. Right, just so
5:30
Speaker 3: so good, and the pressure has come off.
5:32
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing is we've talked to other families
5:35
Speaker 2: from our old school who have all started to feel
5:38
Speaker 2: exactly the same way, and one of them, in particular,
5:41
Speaker 2: I've been watching their daughter just get squashed, absolutely squashed
5:45
Speaker 2: with anxiety and all kinds of other challenges associated with
5:49
Speaker 2: the pressure to compete and to perform at a certain standard.
5:53
Speaker 3: So this all started in about grade four, grade five.
5:56
Speaker 3: They're now finishing grade eight.
5:58
Speaker 2: And her mum just sent me a message the other
5:59
Speaker 2: day she said, tell me about the public school. She said,
6:01
Speaker 2: because I feel like we need to do something, we
6:04
Speaker 2: need to make a change. And my comment to her was,
6:07
Speaker 2: just at the end of the day, with all of
6:09
Speaker 2: our searching, we have not found the school. We have
6:13
Speaker 2: not found the school.
6:14
Speaker 3: That takes all the perfect school doesn't exist case, I
6:17
Speaker 3: don't it.
6:17
Speaker 2: I don't think it does. But what I will say
6:20
Speaker 2: is the pressure has been taken off my child. She's
6:23
Speaker 2: performing at a higher level than she has ever performed,
6:26
Speaker 2: and she's motivated out the anxiety or us pushing her, because,
6:30
Speaker 2: like you said, she's absolutely one hundred percent motivated.
6:32
Speaker 3: I don't think I have ever literally, I don't think
6:34
Speaker 3: I've ever said, hey, got any homework? Like she just
6:38
Speaker 3: doesn't work because she likes being there, she loves being
6:40
Speaker 3: around her friends, and the learning is actually enjoyable for her.
6:44
Speaker 2: So I'm really interested in having a conversation with you
6:46
Speaker 2: about Bex Barrow's comments on social media and how that
6:49
Speaker 2: relates to this immense pressure that our kids are feeling
6:53
Speaker 2: at the moment, and how we can help parents if
6:56
Speaker 2: they are watching and seeing their children feel this level
6:59
Speaker 2: of anxiety around performance and competition.
7:03
Speaker 3: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
7:05
Speaker 4: Imagine a home where discipline got results without anyone having
7:09
Speaker 4: to feel bad or in trouble. The Do's and don'ts
7:11
Speaker 4: of discipline as a webinar to help parents set limits
7:14
Speaker 4: with love, compassion and humanity. Find it now at Happy
7:17
Speaker 4: families dot com dot au.
7:19
Speaker 3: Slash Shop.
7:21
Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
7:23
Speaker 2: poor parent who just wants answers.
7:25
Speaker 3: Now, I really wanted to do that today.
7:27
Speaker 2: Is that right?
7:27
Speaker 3: Yeah? But that's fine. You've got it. Hey, we're talking
7:29
Speaker 3: about it.
7:29
Speaker 2: Do a really good job of that line. I can't
7:32
Speaker 2: do any other lines.
7:34
Speaker 3: If you practice the enough, you get there. Rebecca Sparrow
7:37
Speaker 3: has made really a really big splash on social media
7:41
Speaker 3: in the last week with this comment about how much
7:44
Speaker 3: homework kids should be doing as they enter high school,
7:47
Speaker 3: how much pressure we're putting on them in terms of
7:49
Speaker 3: their schooling as they move through those senior years, And
7:52
Speaker 3: we've decided to weigh in one hundred percent behind what
7:55
Speaker 3: Beck had to say. Kylie, how much homework did you
7:58
Speaker 3: do when you were going through high school? Oh?
8:01
Speaker 2: I think I remember vividly taking a block of chocolate
8:06
Speaker 2: into my room one night and doing it all nighter.
8:10
Speaker 3: Right in grade twelve. Okay, But I'm asking how much
8:13
Speaker 3: once once? You did it all night at once? Okay?
8:17
Speaker 2: Was and that chocolate was my survival.
8:21
Speaker 3: So I've written an article which you can google. In fact,
8:25
Speaker 3: we'll link to it in the show notes about kids
8:27
Speaker 3: and homework. I can't say this clearly enough. Children in
8:30
Speaker 3: primary school, there's just no credible evidence at all for
8:32
Speaker 3: them to be doing homework other than reading. And reading
8:34
Speaker 3: shouldn't be homework. It should just be what you do.
8:36
Speaker 3: You shouldn't be rewarding kids for homework. You shouldn't be
8:38
Speaker 3: coloring in the coloring in wheel and saying, yeah, you've
8:40
Speaker 3: got your twenty minutes. You know what happens when you
8:41
Speaker 3: say twenty minutes of reading, off you go. They spend
8:44
Speaker 3: more time looking at the clock. It's kind of like
8:47
Speaker 3: when my parents were forcing me to do thirty minutes
8:49
Speaker 3: of piano practice every day, and I just winged and
8:51
Speaker 3: whined and I sat in front of the keyboard. I
8:53
Speaker 3: didn't really practice. I just watched the clock until the
8:55
Speaker 3: thirty minutes were up and I was allowed to leave
8:57
Speaker 3: the room.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think my parents thought I was really awesome
9:00
Speaker 2: doing homework. What they didn't realize was I started doing
9:02
Speaker 2: my homework and I had really good intentions. But I
9:05
Speaker 2: always did my homework on the bed and without fail,
9:07
Speaker 2: life fell asleep. Did you really I'd always have an
9:09
Speaker 2: afternoon sleep.
9:10
Speaker 3: Is that where you get that from?
9:11
Speaker 4: Yeah?
9:11
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, what's how boring? It was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, Susie, so read a textbook. That's the fastest way
9:18
Speaker 2: to fall asleep.
9:19
Speaker 3: When you look at what the research evidence shows, homework's
9:21
Speaker 3: probably one of the most reliable ways to make a
9:23
Speaker 3: child hate learning. Yeah, I mean, it just really is.
9:27
Speaker 3: And here's the other thing. Kids don't really see the
9:28
Speaker 3: relevance of what they're learning when they're doing high school.
9:31
Speaker 3: And with no disrespect at all to the wonderful, wonderful
9:35
Speaker 3: educators who are out there doing such a challenging job
9:39
Speaker 3: teaching our kids, I think that quite often education is
9:42
Speaker 3: as challenging as it is for teachers because a lot
9:44
Speaker 3: of kids don't see the relevance. They don't see the purpose.
9:46
Speaker 3: They're not really that into it. They just want to
9:49
Speaker 3: learn the stuff that they want to learn, and so
9:51
Speaker 3: much of what they have to learn doesn't feel relevant
9:53
Speaker 3: at all. Not saying it's not important, I'm just saying
9:55
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel particularly relevant. I literally remember zero from
10:01
Speaker 3: my schooling, Like when I look at what I do now,
10:03
Speaker 3: other than the basics of reading and writing and basic mathematics,
10:07
Speaker 3: very little of my schooling has been important for either
10:09
Speaker 3: my radio career or my subsequent psychology life. It's what
10:13
Speaker 3: I learned at university. Once I was at UNI for
10:15
Speaker 3: the right reasons that they became important. Now I know
10:17
Speaker 3: that a lot of education in primary school and high
10:20
Speaker 3: school is important to provide the foundation for that university study.
10:24
Speaker 3: But gee, we push it really hard. We put so
10:26
Speaker 3: much pressure on the kids to get their grades up
10:28
Speaker 3: so they can get into these courses at UNI, so
10:30
Speaker 3: that they can, I don't know, have the career that
10:33
Speaker 3: we dream that they'll have.
10:34
Speaker 2: I was thinking about the last time I used anything
10:37
Speaker 2: from my maths class.
10:39
Speaker 3: Your math maths teachers get such a hard time. Let's
10:43
Speaker 3: just acknowledge maths is really important. And if you want
10:46
Speaker 3: to be an engineer, or if you want to do
10:48
Speaker 3: something architecturally, anything at all to do with I mean,
10:51
Speaker 3: maths is really landscape gardeners, builders, they need to know
10:57
Speaker 3: how to do maths. It's really important.
11:01
Speaker 2: Well, by the time I had to use anything from maths,
11:04
Speaker 2: yes in life, was obviously when our children started needing with.
11:08
Speaker 3: Their home right and you got to about grade four
11:10
Speaker 3: and we're in trouble totally, and I've.
11:12
Speaker 2: Completely forgotten everything I'd learned anyway, because I never.
11:14
Speaker 3: Had to use it until then they changed it as well.
11:17
Speaker 3: They changed it. I think they don't do that. It's
11:18
Speaker 3: the same way they used to when we were at school.
11:20
Speaker 3: But here's the other thing, just this this idea that
11:25
Speaker 3: our kids well being and futures rely on the school
11:29
Speaker 3: that they get at the end of year twelve. I
11:31
Speaker 3: love what Beck said. She just said, don't blame into
11:33
Speaker 3: that message. It's so so breathtakingly irrelevant.
11:39
Speaker 2: I think your life story and the life story that
11:41
Speaker 2: we've created has really helped take the pressure off our
11:45
Speaker 2: children as we have parented them. You know, you've shared
11:50
Speaker 2: many times that high school was not a place that
11:53
Speaker 2: you wanted to be. You almost dropped out, completely bummed
11:57
Speaker 2: out at the bottom of you know, the wrung speak.
12:00
Speaker 2: And yet you know, a handful of years later, realize
12:04
Speaker 2: that you actually have something to offer to the world
12:07
Speaker 2: and you want to do something, and that internal motivation
12:13
Speaker 2: to learn changed everything. Was a game changer.
12:16
Speaker 3: So there's a handful of things to bear in monment
12:18
Speaker 3: it comes to getting the kids into university, assuming that's
12:20
Speaker 3: what they want to do. First off, about one third
12:22
Speaker 3: of Australians actually have a university a degree. That means
12:25
Speaker 3: two thirds more. In fact, it's twenty nine to thirty
12:27
Speaker 3: percent of Australians have got a university degree, which means
12:29
Speaker 3: that about seventy percent don't and they're getting along just
12:32
Speaker 3: fine in the world. You don't have a union degree,
12:35
Speaker 3: I think that you're still a pretty amazing human in
12:37
Speaker 3: spite of the fact that you don't have that little
12:38
Speaker 3: piece of paper that says you completed three or four
12:40
Speaker 3: years of study after high school. It's not the bill
12:46
Speaker 3: and end all. It's not the most important thing, and
12:47
Speaker 3: there are plenty of people who have extraordinarily successful financial
12:50
Speaker 3: outcomes as well in their lives without getting that university degree.
12:53
Speaker 3: In fact, sometimes it does the opposite. The university degree
12:55
Speaker 3: kind of puts you in a box and that's where
12:57
Speaker 3: you stay. So I don't think that we need to
12:59
Speaker 3: be looking at things and saying my child must go
13:01
Speaker 3: to university. Why because I went to university, so everyone's
13:04
Speaker 3: got to go to university. UNI is not for everyone,
13:06
Speaker 3: and kids don't belong there. It's a place I think
13:08
Speaker 3: for adults, for mature learners who really know why they're there.
13:11
Speaker 3: As a former university lecturer, I can tell you right
13:14
Speaker 3: now I used to love teaching mature age students. They
13:19
Speaker 3: were just they were a different caliber of person. They
13:22
Speaker 3: had a couple of years of maturity or more, and
13:24
Speaker 3: they had this innate desire to learn. They knew why
13:28
Speaker 3: they were there, and they weren't messing around. They were
13:30
Speaker 3: there to learn stuff. They asked good questions, they submitted
13:33
Speaker 3: amazing assignments. But most of the kids that were straight
13:36
Speaker 3: out of year twelve, not all, but most, they were
13:39
Speaker 3: a little lost. They were just kind of there because
13:42
Speaker 3: they had to be there. It was really exciting when
13:44
Speaker 3: there was some who were truly motivated, but that was unusual.
13:48
Speaker 3: They didn't tend to be highly motivated.
13:50
Speaker 2: Over the weekend, Emily and I are seven year old,
13:54
Speaker 2: went along to an outdoor program for kids for young kids,
13:59
Speaker 2: and she was able to play in the mud and
14:02
Speaker 2: climb trees. I mean, these days, being allowed to climb
14:06
Speaker 2: a tree in a school setting is almost unheard of,
14:10
Speaker 2: and it was so awesome to see. They had spray
14:12
Speaker 2: painted the limbs of trees at you to the safe point,
14:18
Speaker 2: and so they had some rules and it was just
14:19
Speaker 2: you always had to make sure your head was below
14:21
Speaker 2: the yellow line. So climb the trees as much as
14:24
Speaker 2: they wanted until that point and I just loved watching
14:27
Speaker 2: the kids navigate it and then all of the loose
14:29
Speaker 2: parts where they could build things and the life skills
14:33
Speaker 2: that our children learn if we just let them be kids. Yeah,
14:36
Speaker 2: it actually helps them be curious.
14:38
Speaker 3: Think is yeah, yeah, play, explore, spend time with friends,
14:44
Speaker 3: figure stuff out together, tinker.
14:46
Speaker 2: It just makes such a difference to their learning. We've stopped,
14:49
Speaker 2: we've stopped encouraging our kids to be curious about how
14:53
Speaker 2: things work.
14:53
Speaker 3: Well, we've got to get the standardized test scores up.
14:55
Speaker 3: That's why. Hey, so let's wrap this up with a
14:58
Speaker 3: final couple of notes on what Beck had to say.
15:00
Speaker 3: First of all, kids and homework. I don't encourage using
15:03
Speaker 3: your kids to do homework. If they're motivated, if they
15:05
Speaker 3: want to do it, they can. If not, just make
15:07
Speaker 3: sure that they're reading in primary. If you want more info,
15:09
Speaker 3: have a look at the link that we've put in
15:11
Speaker 3: the show notes. Secondly, when it comes to school subjects,
15:14
Speaker 3: don't worry about the suicide six or the toughest ones.
15:18
Speaker 3: We've consistently said to our three kids who are old
15:20
Speaker 3: enough to be making those decisions. And a fourth one, shortly,
15:23
Speaker 3: don't worry about what your friends are doing, and don't
15:25
Speaker 3: worry about what's going to be scaled up or scaled down.
15:28
Speaker 3: Choose the subjects that you want to do most and
15:31
Speaker 3: enjoy being there. Enjoy the learning, Enjoy the subjects, enjoy
15:34
Speaker 3: the experience. Who cares what grade you actually get at
15:37
Speaker 3: the end of it, Just enjoy your schooling. Third thing,
15:40
Speaker 3: I reckon the idea that you're supposed to bust your
15:42
Speaker 3: butt as you go through those senior years of school
15:45
Speaker 3: to get the highest grade is pointless. I think that
15:47
Speaker 3: it's unfair to kids. It robs them of some of
15:49
Speaker 3: the best years of their lives. I would say, instead,
15:52
Speaker 3: make sure that you have a go, get some work done,
15:56
Speaker 3: enjoy life, get a job, develop some skills. And if
16:00
Speaker 3: you don't get the grade that's necessary to get into
16:02
Speaker 3: the university degree that's important to you because the university
16:06
Speaker 3: has manufactured this false scarcity, then get into UNI and
16:10
Speaker 3: follow an alternative pathway. And if it takes you an
16:12
Speaker 3: extra year or so to get your GPA up and
16:14
Speaker 3: to work out if this is what you truly want
16:16
Speaker 3: to do, I think that's a good thing, not a
16:18
Speaker 3: bad thing.
16:18
Speaker 2: As we look back on your educational journey, there were
16:21
Speaker 2: times where we kind of look at each other and go,
16:22
Speaker 2: why are you doing this? Yeah, like, what's the point?
16:25
Speaker 2: And yet the reality is all education leads us somewhere,
16:29
Speaker 2: and so at each step of the way, as you
16:32
Speaker 2: learnch different things, it added to your capacity to learn more.
16:37
Speaker 2: If it takes an extra year to get where you
16:39
Speaker 2: want to go because you haven't actually worked it out
16:41
Speaker 2: or you just were kind to yourself in the process,
16:44
Speaker 2: is that the end of the world.
16:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.
16:46
Speaker 3: I've got a book on my bookshelf called Range by
16:48
Speaker 3: David Epstein, and it basically argues that the more experience
16:51
Speaker 3: you get in life, the better off you're going to
16:52
Speaker 3: be later on. It might slow you down in the
16:54
Speaker 3: short term, but it's kind of like the hair and
16:55
Speaker 3: the tortoise racing on a head. But being so single minded,
16:59
Speaker 3: single focused, arrow in what you're doing, it can actually
17:02
Speaker 3: it can actually turn against you as you get older.
17:04
Speaker 3: Whereas people who have got a lot more range, a
17:05
Speaker 3: lot more experience, they tend to do better once they
17:07
Speaker 3: get a little bit older. Last point, scores. I've got
17:11
Speaker 3: to make one last point about scores. Scores lack relevance.
17:15
Speaker 3: No one has ever asked me what my academic transcript
17:20
Speaker 3: shows no one's ever asked me how many high distinctions
17:23
Speaker 3: I got and how many you know, the old saying
17:25
Speaker 3: pees get degrees. No one's ever asked me how many
17:28
Speaker 3: passes I got and whether or not I just scraped
17:30
Speaker 3: in as it happens. If you're curious, I did get
17:33
Speaker 3: a first class honors.
17:34
Speaker 2: I was going to say, you mean you busted your
17:36
Speaker 2: guts for all of that, and nobody even cares.
17:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of. Although again, at a university level, if
17:42
Speaker 3: you want to get into the postgrad bits, you do
17:43
Speaker 3: kind of have to get the right grades to be
17:45
Speaker 3: able to there. But that's a different situation. We're talking
17:47
Speaker 3: about kids. We're talking about school age children. We're not
17:51
Speaker 3: talking about adults who are actually trying to develop their
17:54
Speaker 3: knowledge in a particular way. Now, some school age children
17:56
Speaker 3: want to, but for the most part, the scores lack relevance.
18:00
Speaker 3: It's the love of learning that matters.
18:02
Speaker 4: Well.
18:02
Speaker 3: We really hope that you've enjoyed the Happy Families Podcast today,
18:05
Speaker 3: and thanks very much to Rebecca Sparrow for her thoughts.
18:07
Speaker 3: Starter on her Facebook page. Make sure you check out
18:10
Speaker 3: Rebecca Sparrow on Facebook. The Happy Families Podcast is produced
18:13
Speaker 3: by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our
18:16
Speaker 3: executive producer. If you would like more information about making
18:19
Speaker 3: your family happier, visit happy families dot com, dot you