10 years? - seems longer. much, much longer.
Today my old boss dropped by with a shiny new watch for me. Because I've been with the company 10 years. Wahey. Free watch. And my ex boss is younger, prettier and much more successful than me. And points out she's never stayed anywhere for 10 years. And suddenly its less of a free watch and more of another nail in the coffin.
Still, only 23 more years & I can retire.
Still, only 23 more years & I can retire.
posted by Old Man Rich at 11:59 AM
3 Comments:
i didnt think anyone was prettier than you
x
Which boss was that then?
Someone commented the other day that I should stop complaining about how schools are run and try being a manager myself. Well, I like teaching, and I like being in the classroom, so the leadership route isn’t available to me. But I do accept that firing ironic words from the sideline doesn’t really affect the outcome of the match, so in the interest of fair play (and extending this metaphor) I’m going to run onto the educational pitch for five minutes and have a kick at the learning football.
If I were in charge of Education, what would I do?
Well, and this is the point at which I hoof the ball towards the net, what follows are my five suggestions for improving education.
Firstly: I’d reduce secondary school sizes to no more than six hundred.
As soon as staff don’t know and don’t recognise individual students, the students are at liberty to form their own sub-cultures; these can be healthy and normal, and let’s face it, everyone is part of some sub-group or other, but when we reach that point where the sheer mass of pupils means they gain an invisibility which gives power to peer-pressure and reduces to negligible the influence of the school itself, we’ve lost the battle.
Along with school size, I’d reduce class size to no greater than fifteen. For the reasons above, of course, but also because logistically, if you halve the pupils in your class you double the amount of time you can spend with them. The quality of learning improves geometrically in a small class. On top of that, behavioural problems are dissipated.
There’s a reason why fee-paying schools have small class sizes: they work.
Secondly: I’d drop the obsession with targets. For this reason: it isn’t working. Sure, we’re putting students through an educational sausage factory and squeezing them out of the other side with five C’s. But all they’re doing is acquiring statistics. They aren’t learning anything. They certainly aren’t learning to learn, as we spoon-feed the appropriate information to them, lead them by the hand through their coursework and devise ever more cunning ways of short-circuiting the examination process.
Currently we’re judged on C-grade GCSE passes. Nothing else. And the problem with targets is this: we meet them. But it’s what we have to jettison in order to meet them that’s deeply worrying. Stuff like wider learning. Stuff like values. Like knowing what it takes to become a good person.
Thirdly: I’d introduce an apprenticeship scheme into schools. Those students that we euphemistically label ‘kinaesthetic learners’ should be spending half of their week learning skills; working with their hands. They should be with adults, learning about work, learning social skills.
Instead we stuff them into low-set classes and keep them at bay for five years with the learning equivalent of a chair and a whip. It’s no wonder that by the age of sixteen they’ve become fully-fledged members of the under-class.
The penultimate suggestion is a biggie, so prepare to be offended.
I’d have rules.
I’d re-introduce the concept of right and wrong. Of what you can and can’t do. I’d set out clear, adult expectations of how to behave. I wouldn’t abdicate responsibility by, for instance, suggesting to a naughty thirteen year-old boy, ‘You decide on your behaviour and the appropriate sanctions will follow’ because, well, he’s a naughty thirteen year-old boy and he probably doesn’t know what’s best for him at this moment, or in the long run. We’re adults. They’re not.
Besides which, students actually want to know. They want to be told what is right and what is wrong. They might still misbehave, I certainly did when I was at school, but at least they know they’re misbehaving. Sadly, the liberal experiment is failing us; being extra-nice to extra-naughty students doesn’t work. They just get worse. Turning a blind eye to disruption and abusive language; tolerating speculative and false allegations, jostling teachers, carrying weapons, low-level drug dealing.
We should deal with this stuff.
Students are joining adult society, we aren’t joining theirs. In adult society there are rules. To bring up teenagers to believe that they don’t have to follow society’s rules is foolish in the extreme. It doesn’t equip them for real life.
Finally: The curriculum.
Governments come and go, and their decisions are often political, uninformed and bear little relation to the job we actually do, which is teach. “Learning for its own sake is a bit dodgy”, an education minister said in a speech a few years ago. In response, I would ask, should we really trust the management of education to people who spout stuff like this?
In my view, learning is not a threat, it’s a cultural blessing, and it shouldn’t be fiddled with by ministers on the political make. So when it comes to the business of learning, if I was in charge, my decision would be this –you, the teachers, would decide.
Because that’s what you’re good at.
Post a Comment
<< Home