Sponsored Content
‘IT is time to bring back the desire for knowledge for its own sake.’
These are the words of academic and tutor Peter Fekete, of Black’s Academy, who argues that education needs to focus on ‘more than just qualifications’ and prepare students for the challenges of life.
‘There is too much emphasis on gaining qualifications for the sake of getting into a university or workplace and not enough focus on whether people can solve problems in business, science or life,’ he said. ‘We need a programme which nurtures students’ own ethical thinking and self-knowledge so that, when they leave school, they are equipped to deal with work and life. Create that appetite for knowledge and self-awareness and the opportunities are endless.
‘A lot of mainstream education is based on a transmission style of teaching,’ continued the Cambridge graduate and former head of sixth form at Victoria College. ‘As a result, a lot of students do not achieve their potential. Indeed, I have tutored pupils who have been told that they will never pass their A-levels and, in fact, they have gone on to graduate with first-class honours degrees from prestigious universities. Some of my students have matriculated to Oxford or Cambridge in four different subjects, and two of them are now university professors at Oxford or Cambridge.’
During a break from teaching Peter wrote, at the request of the Welsh Exam Board, an internet textbook for 13 modules of A-level mathematics. While conducting his own research on the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of the mind, he spent time at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, where he contributed to a PhD thesis on special relativity and logic. He also co-authored a paper on the Yablo Paradox and spent two years studying Boolean algebra.
And, while these subjects may not feature on the Black’s Academy syllabus, his own studies have, he says, helped to shape his approach to knowledge and learning.
‘I think one of the key advantages for students, who are often preparing for a common entrance exam, scholarship or university entrance exam, is that they are learning from someone who has engaged in a very different and high-level way with the quest for knowledge,’ he reflected. ‘While I often joke that one of my hobbies is boasting, it is the students’ results which best demonstrate my credentials.
‘Unfortunately, over the past 40 years, I don’t think that the pure desire for knowledge has been encouraged or nurtured by the education system and its curriculum. As a result, although students seem to be working all the time, they are not doing so efficiently, and they are not learning as much as they should be.
‘If you take the A-level maths paper as an example, its content has reduced by about a third since the UK government changed the syllabus in 2017.’
More critically, says Mr Fekete, the emphasis in the education system is wrong, a point he illustrates by drawing on a much-loved character from children’s literature.
‘The tales of Winnie-The-Pooh are rich in moral stories, which provide so many opportunities for children to reflect on their own habits and behaviours, something which the mainstream education curriculum does not always encourage,’ he said.
‘If you take, for example, the story of Winnie-The-Pooh visiting Rabbit and eating so much of his friend’s food that he gets stuck in the rabbit hole for a week, there are so many lessons within this to be explored.’
But while highlighting these deeper messages, Mr Fekete argues that these are areas often unexplored by a curriculum which largely ‘fails to encourage empathy and emotional intelligence’.
‘Through my transformation methodology, not only do I deepen a student’s knowledge and understanding of a particular subject, but I show them how to develop those so-called soft skills of problem-solving, analysis and thinking for yourself which are so important,’ he added.
More information about the full range of Black’s Academy tuition services is available by calling Mr Fekete on 07957 749336 or visiting blacksacademy.net.
