Why are people so upset with Mr Gove?

[nlondondad]

An invitation to people to give an explanation as we can take it as given that people ARE upset.

Note: Two kinds of possible answers to this question.

1. Why you think other people are upset
   

1. Why you are upset...
   

Answers which do not give reasons, will be marked down.

Now to go away for a bit, I wonder what will happen while I am gone?

[MajorBumsore]

For Hamishbear- I've not read the whole thread, so apologies if your erroneous understanding of the L6 English paper for yr 6 has already been debunked.
For a child to achieve level 6, they have to pass not only the SPAG test at L6 (which I and the 10 students I put forward his year for the level 6 test all agreed was easy) but also an extended writing task (30 mins) plus a reading comprehension paper (focusing mainly on use of language).
If you wish to see examples of the papers, please do so via the DES site, where you will find sample papers for the literacy and the maths.
HTH

[CatherineofMumbles]

I saw your "experts in education" recently described as "the blob", complacent, left-wing, resistant to a more demanding curriculum, defensive of their own status, happy to see disadvantaged children suffer so long as their ideas remain unchallenged. No education secretary has managed to dislodge its control, hence herewith after many years, we have the standards bemoaned by employers and universities. Gove has a fight on his hands, I hope he wins.
CrumbledWalnuts well said.

[Crumbledwalnuts]

Thanks :) I think the Blob is quite a well used term among educational reformers.

www.edreform.com/2012/09/what-it-is/

[BoffinMum]

That's crap, Catherine. Teachers are as diverse a crowd as the rest of the middle classes, constituting 10% of the graduate population. The idea that they have formed a left wing fundamentalist regime hell bent on low achievement groupthink at all costs is totally bonkers. Listen to yourself! Just because the Blob article sells copies of magazines does not mean there's any truth or even sense in it.

[Crumbledwalnuts]

"Teachers are as diverse a crowd as the rest of the middle classes"

You wouldn't think so. Also don't forget many of them have been taught at an impressionable age about the "child led "philosophy at universities so probably bought in without question. Many too will have been victims of a poor primary education themselves and don't see anything wrong with it, just think it's normal.

[BoffinMum]

While I am at it, can I just say that the Enemies of Promise quotation was taken completely out of context and was originally intended pretty much the opposite to what Gove indicated. Another piece of journalist folderoy from a former leader writer who is a better polemicist than he is cabinet minister.

[ipadquietly]

copthall I was just about to make the same observations about my O levels. In my 7 years at a girls' grammar school, we remained blithely ignorant of colons, semi-colons and ellipsis, along with all the structural aspects of the English language!

As you so rightly said, it was all about regurgitation of dictated notes. I even did calculus in my physics A level, even though I'd not done it in maths - I just copied down the nice patterns! It was a memory test - fabulous for those of us with good short term memories. Pub quiz education at its best.

There was no discussion or debate, which left many of us at a complete disadvantage when we arrived at university.

[ipadquietly]

What 'child-led' philosophy would that be crumbled?

[BoffinMum]

Do you even know what child centred means, Crumbed? Or the origins of this as a theory?

It actually was developed a century or so ago as a way of bringing order and structure into the lives and education of the deprived working classes. The middle and upper classes later appropriated it as a more humane system of learning than memorisation twinned with physical punishment. It was also a force behind the initiative to train people who worked with children, for the first time, led in time to educational equality for boys and girls, and led to a more modern system of education that lends itself pretty well to an economy not focused around most people working in factories etc engaged in repetitive tasks whilst being strictly timed and controlled.

Most learning in schools has now embedded the equality/creativity aspects of this approach, but moved on from the rest of it. Learning now focuses on different theoretical basis, namely deep vs surface learning.

If people are going to slag off education like this, at least define your terms properly instead if just spouting poorly informed bigots. Otherwise you are just being intellectually negligent.

[BoffinMum]

Plus if this country spent as much searching for and supporting scientific and mathematical talent as it did dubious creative/sleb talent via X Factor and Big Brother and Britschools and so on, we'd all be a lot better off. But oh no, we blame the teachers. Even though they are just about the only people in this country bothering to nurture any of the nation's academic talent at the moment.

FFS

[ipadquietly]

Hear, hear boffin.

Gove and DM journos often quote (with derision) the 'child-led approach to learning' that we all so ardently follow, and the country recoils in horror.

The power of the media, eh?

[BoffinMum]

Give me child led over journalist led education any day.

[noblegiraffe]

Is he talking about union opposition to academies and independent schools?

Who knows, because it sure as hell isn't clear from his article.

[BoffinMum]

Also Crumbed, it is immensely fashionable to slag off experts of all persuasions at the moment. But just think for a minute. Why do you think they a) bother to become experts, and b) get consulted by others on a regular basis, if the expert is effectively surplus to requirements?

[BoffinMum]

Unions are against adverse selection as well as slashing their members' pay and benefits.

Interestingly MPs are known to play this game quite regularly in their own interests as well.

[BoffinMum]

Crumbed's gone quiet. Perhaps she's actually doing her homework on this.

[Feenie]

From our school's Ofsted inspection last week, I can tell you that theiy are extremely keen on child-led education, and want more - more child led enquiry, less teacher input.

[Feenie]

they

[Copthallresident]

I would just like to add that all these supposed Marxists are doing a really poor job of indoctrinating our youth. We have to lay on special seminars to educate our Master's students in what Marxism actually is, before they embark on studying a country run by actual Marxists. Actually one of the country's whose education system Gove admires

[Crumbledwalnuts]

Gosh, I didn't post for an hour, shoot me now.

Funny how teachers always bemoan "blaming the teachers". I see teachers blaming everything for dropping standards - change, cuts, society, bad upbringing, parents, children themselves, changing statistics, lack of resources (during all that time money was pumped in under Labour and nothing improved?) Never - what we teach and how we teach it.

Is it fashionable, Boffin, I had no idea. Mind you as a teacher I would have thought you approve of people thinking for themselves. Hoist-petard and all that.

[ipadquietly]

I think the phrase 'child-led learning' is used by Govey and journos deliberately to mislead. People assume that it means that there is no teaching taking place, and that children are just choosing what to do each day. There is no mention of 'deep vs surface learning', which, as boffin explained so well, evolved from child-led learning.

I actually remember doing 'real' child-led learning in the late 60s at primary school. My friend and I were given a triangle and were told to find out things about it. it took weeks, and we had a little special folder to keep the triangle and all our triangle-related discoveries in. Needless to say, it was a very empty folder (apart from our triangle, of course). We received no teacher input for weeks. I have a vague memory of it being Nuffield maths?

[Crumbledwalnuts]

Perhaps you aren't a teacher Boffin, but I won't call it "doing you a disservice". Because I don't think it is.

[fivecandles]

Thought I should point out that Gove's half-baked ideas are as much hated amongst right wing independent school teachers and parents as they are amongst 'the blob'.

[Feenie]

I see teachers blaming everything for dropping standards - change, cuts, society, bad upbringing, parents, children themselves, changing statistics, lack of resources (during all that time money was pumped in under Labour and nothing improved?) Never - what we teach and how we teach it.

KS2 test results in 1997 (when Labour were elected):
English 63% Maths 62%

KS2 results (after all that time under Labour when money was pumped in):
English 80% Maths 79%

Not very accurate to say nothing improved then, is it?

I realise that good teaching could never be the reason for the improvement, of course not.

I am not particularly a Labour supporter, btw - just bored of even more lazy pontificatiing which is, as usual, short on facts.

[Crumbledwalnuts]

fFive candles - not quite true.

Feenie - that all depends on whether you think things really did improve or whether they were just made to look like they improved.

The facts as you see them may not actually be the facts.