As an Australian teacher who reads MN

[AllThreeWays]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/trendy-teachers-cheat-the-poor-and-lay-the-groundwork-for-riots/story-e6frg6zo-1226143966471 this is an interesting read. What do you think?

There was an interesting article in TES about what some NQTs (Teach First, so in challenging schools) would do if they could wave a wand over schools. The one that had the most discussion was the imparting of knowledge. Their experience had been that they were spending their time teaching children to think (I suppose, like a computer, developing processing power) but not imparting knowledge (filling the database) and so one of the ideas was adding "general knowledge" to the curriculum.

I'll link it if I can find it online.

Here it is.

touch our beloved cherubs unless they have been CRB checked to within an inch of their lives

GOOD

Would you prefer people with criminal convictions for extortion, with the aggravating factor of violence being threatened against primary aged kids, working in your school ?

Or how about somebody being given a post with very young children ( that promptly started getting slapped silly at school) AFTER her own child was removed from her for neglect and abuse ?

I'm sure protocols come with their own limitations and irritations caused by implementation, but surely the concept of CRB checks beats the alternative hands down?

belgianbun - what sarcasm?

Could it be my traditional education of 6 a.m cross country runs, daily rugger practice, church 8 times a week, rote learning Latin verbs and cold showers that gave me a poor grasp of the softer interpersonal skills?

I've no truck with the principle of crb checks for limited sets of people. But let's be honest, CRB checks have become mandatory for so many jobs now that it's become farcical.

When plumbers get CRB checked so they can work in a school, when parents are told they cannot visit school without CRB's, when headteachers are threatened with dismissal because they got caught fishing without a license, you know something's gone drastically wrong.

And that's my point. It all fuels the idea that kids are these precious little people who can't be touched and they can do what they like, when they like with no recourse.

Plus what does a CRB check prove exactly? Only that the person has been caught in the past. Melissa George managed to pass her CRB check didn't she?

morebeta it's amazing how for such a small country so many of our institutions are either the best or worst in the world

Our worst schools are no worse than many others in the developing w

morebeta it's amazing how for such a small country so many of our institutions are either the best or worst in the world

Our worst schools are no worse than many others in the developed world, and certainly better than those in most of the developing world.

And if our best schools were really the best in the world I'm sure they would be full of rich Americans, Germans and Swedes etc. rather than the offspring of arriviste Russians and Chinese as they appear to be these days.

"no worse than many others in the developing world"

I didnt even realise we were setting the bar that low!

Mind you, China and India seem to be doing well enough with traditional rote learning and many parents in both countries send their children for a traditional British public school education if they can afford it.

When the rich of the developed world start sending their kids in droves, then I might believe we have the best schools in the world.

The current overseas contingent at public schools suggest merely that we have better schools than China, India and Russia. Big deal.

Australia, NZ, USA and Canada have private school runs on the same lines and same values as traditional British boarding schools so they dont need to send their children here.

I went to school with many children from Hong Kong, Germany, Scandinavia and the Carribean.

I agree wth belgian bun.

Personally, I never bothered to learn my times tables, it was extremely boring rote-learning and I saw it as a complete waste of my time. I still got the best maths grades in my secondary school, and carried on with 'real' maths to a high level.

Actually I never learned anything by-rote, I just learned the interesting/fun/useful things, and this has stood me in good stead.

by the way, I didnt read much of the article for the exact same reasons.

I can only say, the article very much reflects my own experience in an inner city school. The worst thing is that the good pupils don't get a chance because of the continuous, and I really mean continuous, disruption. No matter how hard you try, there is no denying, that it will have a major impact on especially the good pupils. They are being held back as a result. That is sad, really sad. And yes, their parents won't realise that this is happening, because it is not something you are going to tell them unless you want to get the sack.

hmm well as a historian, I have really seen deficits in school teaching of history, that much I can say for a fact. It may not be a subject that parents and teachers place much importance on, perhaps that is why but it is true IME of teaching university undergraduates that they come to university lacking the general knowledge they need for a degree in the humanities. They also IME, for the most part, lack the background subject knowledge for it. There is no time in the course of a regular full-time first degree to fill all those gaps. Definitely learning, writing and thinking skills are important but so is a certain body of knowledge. You need both otherwise you are simply not equipped for it.

She is deeply deeply annoying and allegedly has quite a few vested interests

I was a guest lecturer at a university recently. An ex-poly in London. Friend of mine who does rather more lecturing there than me warned me about chatting and texting during lectures but actually the students, first years, were lovely. Very polite and keen to respond when I asked them questions.

This Tory teacher has her own peculiar agenda and her own experiences but they don't represent the entire state sector, nor 93% of all our children. Certainly nothing like the senior school next door to ds's primary, nor the teenagers I see around my small town in the South East.

Yes, I thought this was Ms Birbalsingh Burbling on... She is a mountain of vested interests and loves the grand sweeping statement. I am sure that there are some pretty awful schools around, but to tar all state schools with the same brush is foolish at best, malicious at worst. My DDs are at very ordinary state schools and always have been, and they benefit from a wide range of learning methods, from the 'trendy' (which - gasp! has actually taught them the art of independent research and critical reading) to the traditional (times tables, spelling and grammar, reading aloud to teachers).

The problem the UK faces is one of the enormous wealth gap, which is (co-incidence?) much, much smaller in Northern European societies where the outcomes in the state education sector is much better. This government is doing nothing to address that, quite the reverse instead - they seem bent on keeping the poor in their place. Katherine Birbalsingh is part of the problem, not aprt of the solution.

There were more and worse riots in the olden days when presumably traditional teaching prevailed.

I agree with most of what you are saying, amicissima but KB is implying that 93% of children in the UK are getting a substandard education, and that is just plain rubbish. I do agree that poor schools should be tackled, but we have to be realistic - teachers can only do so much when there is no support at all in the home, and that can't be addressed by bringing in free schools, Academies with fancy (and expensive) uniforms and other window dressing type measures.

There isn't an easy fix, but introducing a minimum wage that one can live on would be a damn good start.

She taught in Camberwell, didn't she? There is a world of difference between inner city schools in a fairly deprived part of London and what you'd find in eg small town in the South East.

I suppose Mossbourne is the example of what she'd like to see more of.

I am just amused by people who think the recent riots are a sign that society has gone downhill- from some supposed golden age when riots were unheard of . Would that be the 1990s? Or the 1980s? The 1970s perhaps? Or should we be looking as far back as the London mob in the Victorian Age?

Sometimes I think the one thing that has gone downhill in this country has got to be the history teaching.

Cory that would be the 1980s when they sued to keep a riot van on one of the local estates and police cars travelled in threes (one to go in, one to escort it, and one to hover around the edge because the locals had a stinger and they could rescue the running officers afterwards).

State schools where I am are fine; to the extent that the cheapish private struggles and only really gets used by people who need wrap around childcare. I went to a shitty sink school in the seventies where I saw teachers attacked by kids and parents and where zero progress was assumed, I did not want that for my boys and whether here in semi rural S E Wales or on the estate we lived on in England beforehand, they have received pretty good old fashioned schooling most of the time.

The times they did not were caused by poor leadership from an absent or temporary Head. I personally think the Head is everything. DS1 attends a Base attached to a comp on an estate that is pretty deprived and where the primary is appalling (a friend taught there as a locum recently: kids climbing on the roof, swearing, and she was told to accept it lovingly and not upset them - WTF). The comp head really does seem to turn the kids around- a very firm (snow day off = come in and make time up in holidays / insets) but fair ahnd has certainly won ds1's respect, a fairly impressive feat.

I agree that riots come and riots go in Britain, but I don't think that should be a reason for complacency, especially in light of the reminder from upthread that statistics on education show so much of the 'best of' and 'worst of' and have consistently since the dawn of universal compulsory education. Maybe a tendency to riot is part of the 'British character', or maybe the tendency is fueled by the perception of 'them and us' that existed before the establishment of the educational system and endures because the lasting inequalities of society are still mirrored in how schools operate, what they expect of students within their walls, how the system seems to work like a massive shape sorter.

OTOH, where are the parents in all this? An old friend from the US taught in a rough school in a really rough area and left after three years. He got tired of providing out of his own pocket paper, pens, pencils, markers, gloves, hats, winter jackets, socks, morning snacks. At first he made the mistake of letting the children bring the writing supplies home so they could do homework, only to have the children turn up in school the next day without either homework or writing supplies; to his shock, the same went for the winter jackets, and in a region famous for its harsh winters. The jackets and hats and gloves were used for playtime only. Over the course of his three years he had four parents turn up for parent evenings. He said the one thing parents and unions and educational administrators alike could never, ever say was that a lot of parents are feckless idiots. It was the elephant in the room, and the difference when he got a job in an area where parents cared was all the difference.

Peachy any head making my child come in during holidays because the weather had been inclement would be told by me exactly what they could do with that idea (politely, of course). Schools should be able to help children catch up snow days without ruining family holidays - many of which would already have been planned and paid for. Completely utterly stupid idea, nothing to do with discipline or respect at all.