(WHY WE’RE ALL ELLIOT MOORE WHEN IT COMES TO EXAM ANALYSIS)
Recently I’ve decided to watch more films by the director M. Night Shyamalan. Obviously I have watched Sixth Sense and thoroughly enjoyed the Unbreakable/Split/Glass trilogy but what encouraged me to go further into his filmography was his recent adaptation of a graphic novel called Old. It was an okay film but it had a really interesting ethical debate at the heart of it, linked to utilitarianism. The beauty of M. Night Shyamalan films, whether good or bad, is that they have something interesting to say that makes you think. This gets me onto the most recent film I watched of his – The Happening.
The basic outline of the film is that something in the air has started to make the residents of New York kill themselves. It’s an upbeat plot! Soon the mysterious air spreads across the north east of the United States and the main characters, played by Mark Wahlberg and Zoey Deschanel try to escape the mayhem, with a young child in tow. Apparently it is an analogy for the environmental disaster that we’ve created. Eventually nature will fight back and we’re seeing that now with the large number of wildfires and other extreme weather events that have caused a number of deaths across the world.
I’m more interested though in Mark Wallenberg’s character and how it relates to being a Head of Department or Faculty and I’ll explain why. Every year we are asked to analyse our GCSE and A-Level results to work out the reasons why they are better or worse from the previous year. Did the department do anything different from the previous year that could have impacted the results? It’s a hard question and The Happening reflects this.
Mark Wahlberg’s character is called Elliot Moore and he’s a science teacher. At the start of the film he asks his class about the disappearance of bees across America. At the end of the scene, he reminds the students of the rules of scientific investigations and they all chant it with him – identify variables, design the experiment, careful observation and measurement and interpretation of experimental data.
The reason why results go up or down is really a scientific investigation but unfortunately we can never go through the process of carrying out the rules that Elliot Moore wants us to. We can identify variables (more retrieval learning at the start of lessons or more model answers for students) but alas, from a departmental perspective, that’s all we can do. In the world of schooling, you can’t design an experiment between classes, then carefully observe and measure and then interpret the data. When students’ futures are at stake, you are continually trying numerous ways of improving their grades and it would be rather unethical to try it with some students and not others. This means that when the results eventually come through, you have no idea what worked or what didn’t. You can have a guess but even then, due to the nature of the way grades are distributed, it might not even have anything to do with you. It could be that other schools have done something different or the government has decided to meddle with grade boundaries or parents have more money to spend on tutors.
In the film, Mark Wahlberg ends up being the leader of a group of people trying to avoid the killer air and he’s desperate to hold on to his scientific method to solve the problem but ultimately there are no explanations to what is happening. And that’s what’s interesting about the film. It never fully explains what’s going on and why it suddenly ends. There are no answers. This makes Elliot Moore go slightly mad but in education, we’re all Elliot Moore!!!
Going back to the scene where he asks the class why the bees are disappearing, one student says that it is an act of nature and we’ll never fully understand. Elliot Moore explains that science will come up with some reason to put in the books but in the end it will be just a theory. We fail to acknowledge that there are forces at work beyond our understanding.
When a Head of Department or Faculty gets asked about their exam results, they’ll do exactly what Elliot says. We will come up with some reason to put in the books but in all honesty we won’t know. This won’t please the SLT but it’s the truth and like The Happening, it’s rather frustrating. That doesn’t mean we should give up trying to find out what works or explore new routines in the classroom, it’s just a reminder to be humble, especially if your results have improved. You might think you know what’s happened but you probably don’t.
* You can currently watch ‘The Happening’ on Disney + if you have a subscription. It has an IMDb rating of 5/10 and a Rotten Tomato score of 24%. Bit harsh to be honest.
On Teaching... 