20 years of educational fads

[Piggywaspushed]

This article on Teacher Toolkit is actually two years old so I am sure we could update it! (SLANT anyone??) but it appeared on my Twitter feed and I thought MN might find it diverting:

www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2016/07/10/education-fads/

loving that triple marking is declared a fad.

Send to all your SLTs! I dare you!!

Exactly. I think that bugs me the most about the fads. There is some nugget of evidence based truth in most of them. But they are contorted and misused by schools.

Of course its good to praise effort and to teach resilience and to keep trying. But in that school it was like some sort of cult.

Nobody has mentioned that weird phonetic alphabet that was around and I was taught the tail end of. That disappeared after a few ladybird books and then I had to learn to read again.

I'm sure I didn't dream it. I'm off to google it. Some of the letters looked Greek.

That's It! I can still read It! It looks rather beautiful actually.

"And every fad is an attempt to deflect away from the reality that learning is tough and developing a competence is repetitive and by its very nature boring. That's why a hard worker can top an indifferent talent."

"So true and probably one of the most sensible things I’ve ever read about education!

Can you be our education Minister, please?!"


Appuskidu Sadly after 23 years have just given up teaching. I'm now temping in an office.

Well, that doesn't matter spring. the education ministers have never done the job!

Spring :( I'm looking at minimum wage work too post teaching. So demoralizing:(

Suspect we are charting a route for others to follow. Hopefully we're ahead of the game.

Shall we talk about the biggest con perpetuated on education in this country-the commodification of education through academies, free schools and MATs? Education as a businesses run by business people, total incompetents (yes you Mr Young)and those who know nothing about education, purely for profit and the advancement of the few.

True enough but, sadly, I doubt that's a passing fad...

Late to this but enjoyed - if that's the word (!) - the trip down all those ridiculously pointless aspects of memory lane.

I can confirm about the VC headset thingies as I had a young colleague who left to join a company promoting them and is doing well, or so I hear. So coming to a strapped-for-cash staff room near you soon, no doubt.

Can I add PIXL Edge to the list - anyone else had to suffer this?

And PEE paragraphs - these seem entrenched now but have managed to suck the joy/creativity/interest/point out of all forms of analysis over the last 20 years.