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THE sky is the limit.
Widely believed to have been adapted from a line in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, this expression is now regularly used as a motivational quote.
But while the sentiment behind it is not without merit, the likelihood of achieving everything that it represents can sometimes feel remote.
This can be particularly striking in a classroom environment where, as the former head of sixth form at Victoria College and founder of Black’s Academy Peter Fekete explains, some students can struggle to grasp certain concepts.
“Often exacerbating the student’s difficulty is a fatalistic view that people cannot achieve anything beyond a certain level because of an underlying, and probably genetic, condition,” he said. “I do not subscribe to that view. In fact, I would argue the opposite and support the arguments in Stephen Jay Gould’s seminal work The Mismeasure of Man, in which he argues that there is no such thing as IQ.
“Even if people believe that genetic factors influence a child’s ability, you cannot overlook the role that the environment plays and therefore, if you develop a teaching method which tweaks that environment, there is still tremendous potential for students to learn more and develop new skills.”
Critical to the unique teaching methodology which Mr Fekete has developed are two key elements: faith and the theory of brain plasticity.
“At the core of my approach is the inner faith that you can always achieve something,” he said. “Quite often, if a child is experiencing learning difficulties, the root of the problem goes back to their early childhood. In some cases of extreme learning delay – cases where I am already seeing palpable results – it is clear that some of the physiological developments which you would expect to take place during the early years have not happened.
“At this point, I have to apply the theory of brain plasticity and recognise that the brain will adapt and build the right structures if I get the stimulus right. This is where being at the coalface is a great advantage, as I can see how the student is learning and build a bespoke course, with appropriate materials, to cater for their needs.”
With his teaching approach having gained glowing testimonials both from students and their parents, Mr Fekete has been inspired to hone his methods further in the hope of accelerating students’ learning skills.
“One of the key areas I’m working on at the moment is language acquisition, and I am very much hoping to accelerate this process by at least six months for all students, not just those with learning delays,” he said.
“Educational literature suggests that it takes between two and two and a half years for children between the age of four and six to learn the alphabet. To me it seems that there is a spurious dispute between two approaches; ‘phonics’ and ‘look and say’. My own experience demonstrates that both methods must be used.
“A letter such as ‘s’ is more difficult to recognise on its own than in a word entire. However, one must also generalise from letters to sounds to build word recognition of things that are not physical. In ‘I see a cat’, the cat is something you can point to, but you cannot point to the seeing itself.
“It takes a huge amount of learning vast number of resources to enable students to yoyo between these two aspects of learning but, through the method I am developing, I believe that I am building a secure connection between the two which will accelerate the overall learning process. Existing programmes, particularly remedial ones, are massively under-resourced.”
Key to the methods which Mr Fekete employs across all subjects and with all students – from those with learning delays to those preparing for entrance exams to higher-education institutions – is the use of visual devices.
“Visual stimuli not only enable me to alternate between tasks which work the left and right hemisphere of the brain but are also critical for helping students to develop their mental power and concentration, and I run a number of exercises with pupils to help them to train their brain to make it more efficient.”
Overall, as Mr Fekete stresses, each method and teaching resource has been designed to help students and their parents to realise that the sky truly is the limit.
“You have to have faith and believe that improvement is possible,” he said.
“The brain can always adapt and attain higher levels of knowledge and understanding.”
