The Spectre Returns

In the last few days, a real heaviness has come over our house. I’ve felt a bit numb and a genuine sadness in my soul. Debbie, my wife, has certainly gone into her shell, seeming less confident and happy, apologising more. It all just feels a bit sad. It’s the spectre of the new term that is haunting us.

Debbie is an experienced teacher in an academy in Portsmouth. Our girls are 5 and 7 and going into years 1 and 3 respectively; so they get the holidays. For me the holidays are a joyful time, whether I’m working or having a week off. If nothing else, there’s a relief, just a lifting of the daily grind of, before my work, getting everyone to school which just brings a peace to us all. The joy of being able to not be authoritarian and constantly driving 2 youngsters who are oblivious to time by the hands of a clock. But now, here it comes again.

I really hate this system. I hate the way we are pushed to live by it, I hate what it does to me, and I hate what it does to my family. I hate, almost every day, pushing and battling with my little ones to get them to school. I hate that inside I break every time my little one cries that she doesn’t want to go to school today, she’s so small, she just wants to play and dream, I just want her to play. I hate however many hours of my pay just being earned for them to be with a child minder after school. I hate that there’s no burden of evidence that proves starting education or testing earlier brings any more future success, just stupid, stubborn ignorant old thinking. I hate this system of education and what it does to my wife and teaching friends as their self-efficacy and passion is eaten away directive by directive; target by target and budget cut by bloody budget cut. This conveyor belt of education. I hate what it does to the teachers delivering it but more the soulless march into societal and economic usefulness that it pushes our children towards; no room for dreams or quirks. I hate the politicians who with no qualification or right mess with these systems, causing havoc at their whim. I hate the curriculum and constant testing, comparing and ranking one beautiful little soul with another, that they are somehow ahead or above or behind or below. Screw you. What is the point in a testing system where at the age of 16 only an A* or possibly A will suffice. Where schools, sorry, academies, have been set against each other to recruit the smartest and most likely to prosper while free to quietly exclude (read inclusion) or push out those who will only bring the average down or who bring emotional baggage to their budget lines. Where the media will pronounce on a whole year of students comparing them with those years who went before. I am appalled that despite years and years of messing and tinkering in the name of fairness and progress all we’ve ended up with is the most divisive and disempowering system of education you could possibly try to design in a nation such as ours with it's knowledge and experience. I love education. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow, and to those who dedicate themselves to it, especially those who try to shield their pupils from as much of what is passed down from the arse of government as they can. But, ultimately, this system is very little to do with teaching. Real teaching breeds rebellion and challenge, even to itself. It develops thinkers, not automatons; creativity and invention not verbatim answers to nationally standardised questions. It doesn’t teach you just to pass a test but to be able to debate the value of testing. Never mind a GCSE in English if in its place we get something of meaning to say. I genuinely dread what awaits my girls as they grow into this mess, and the pressure they will be put under to achieve and the scaremongering they will be subject to. If only there were another way.

So for now it feels like the wolf is at the door again, Monday is coming.

“There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning, and unless he plays an active role in determining the process of solution.”

― Neil Postman, Teaching as a Subversive Activity