Jamie's Dream School

[londonone]

20 in a class
No curriculum
TV Cameras

And they still piss around! Maybe people will start to get a real idea about how perhaps some of the students are in fact not vitims but the architects of their own downfall!

phew that is a bit of a relief....thanks so muchj!

you're most welcome.

...you have given me a sleepful night. I dont regret doing it (for heavens sake I learned quite a lot, and met people I probably would not otehrwise have done.. and I mean the kids not the celebs!).. but am pretty clear about how easy it is to edit you to look really stupid!
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marybeard, I'm sure you'll be fabulous and can't wait to see your episode. Your article in the Guardian was really thoughtful - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm an English teacher myself and it's bloody hard going at times, even for those of us who have been trained :) And you had a right bunch of characters amongst that lot!

As my granny would say - dinnae fash yersel, hen

Trained to be secondary school teachers I mean, obviously! I imagine you could kick my ass at teaching any day

Thanks Freerange... I just hope the programme shows people that teaching is a skill, profession and craft that you have to LEARN... anyone can be a 'natural communicator" .. but communicating to 20 kids you dont know AND getting them to engage with something difficult needs more than the gift of the gab...(even if that helps).

Who IS this Mary beard anyway?

A 50-something classicist at Cambridge....I am afraid.

lol.
prof beard did that Pompeii doc a wee while back that everyone on here was raving about, withagoat.

Anyone been watching the longer lesson clips on YouTube? They're about twenty mins each and very interesting - they do say that scenes of disruption may have been removed - presumably saving them for prime-time! But they do show the kids paying attention, focusing, and getting masses out of well-run lessons on politics, music technology, cookery, and even poetry. I was astounded that Andrew Motion, the most softly-spoken man on the planet, had them paying attention, talking about, and even writing poetry!

what relevance has she got to anything? ( charming as she is?)

when kids cant spell simple words or sit still i think latin is WAY down the list

( re Motion - just proved that shouting is often counter productive)

I assume it's classics rather than the latin language. The standard defence for classics is that it is the basis for so much of our civilisation and society, and is still referenced in many ways in our daily life. A friend of mine does quite a lot about references to classics in science fiction and fantasy - a fertile source for writers! Also, the Pompeii program was fascinating re the way that people lived in Pompeii itself, and those times generally. History is always important IMHO.

I think Latin's ace, wish I'd got to do it!
dd1 does it as part of the ISSP programme here, and she loves it - it's just a shame it's become something you can pretty much only 'buy', and gives private schools a nice USP to put out there.

i did latin at school for a couple of years, having done so it was a doddle to pick up italian, spanish and french. i am learning gaidhlig now and still using latin constructions to bounce off. it's also a huge help for our own language, i go to France and people are proud of speaking 'good French', here, we''re just happy to be understood.

the 'approach to latin' book we used was a gazillion years old even then but it actually taught a lot of history as well in comprehension paragraphs and of course Rome itself sets out a document for successfully structured society, which is something i think these kids would have really interesting opinions on ideas of citizenship, occupation of foreign land, slavery etc, these are all very current issues. and of course the decline of rome itself was pretty dramatic, which is quite relevant now that the West is hitting the fan...

yeah, so basically, i like latin. i could make the same case for music, btw, what's the point of them kids doin' music wen they carn't parse a sentence..?

We did both Latin and Classical civilsation more generally.. and a bit of language structure (aka grammar). Various interesting things.. 1) they were dead keen to know Latin numerals (because the credits on movies are written in Roman numerals) 2) they did know (even if rather passively) quite a lot of 'grammar'... eg that it would be 'wrong' to say 'I is', or 'They am'... to think about that basic structure through Latin was quite helpful 3) There was also the empowering aspect of knowing why words are as they are.. how our month names are still those of the Romans (and in fact July is called after Julius Caesar and August after emperor Augustus).. Thinkinmg a bit about Latin seem to me to be both interesting and to strike good balance between langauge as something I can control, and langauge as something I need to get right.

Alvin is really good!

Kick Harlem out and her mum, too.

is anyone else finding the headmaster irritatingly wet?

YES!

Alviin was spot on. He should have dismissed her immediately and left it at that.

You can see where Harlem got her massive ego, though.

Ooh, how did I miss Mary Beard joining us? Mary, if you are still lurking, Guardian article was indeed fab and I bet your lessons were great.

Loved seeing Harlem's mother's face when she was confronted with the VT of her daughter's outburst. She changed her tune PDQ! AND got her daughter to sit down, shut up and listen for what was probably the first time in her life.

You got off with only two years of Latin, Aitch?!

I had to go to school with Dominican nuns.

Zero chance of anyone getting off with only two years unless they were only there for two years . . .

the jesuits were changed men by the time i met them, expat.

btw was mb in this week's show? i think the cheeky ch4ers have possibly been fiddling with the running order...

The boys of Strake Jesuit Preparatory School were changed to men by us girls! :o