Teachers Getting Militant

[SNACR]

In real life there are no extra marks for showing your working.

I'm resisting any further comments to avoid being labelled a public sector basher.

[bogbrush]

You did. Trying to debate with you is like talking to a lump of wood.

Don't blame me, I wasn't there when the damage was done.

[Guest absolutezero]

Don't blame me, I wasn't there when the damage was done.

No. You'd written it and then logged off by the time i read it....

[CrashedOutAndBurned]

My, you've got some issues. Careful you don't make yourself ill. You say no-one taught you anything.

Who taught you to read and write so passionately - wouldn't be some teachers would it? I bet you were a difficult, pain in the ass pupil who always thought he was hard done by. The sort that makes teaching so difficult and frankly a cr@p job. Resentment like yours usually kicks off because of anger and jealousy at perceived advantage, but your generalisations are crass.

Your jealousy is misplaced. Teaching is dull and monotonous and singularly uninteresting for the most part, unless you are in a good catchment area with motivated kids and motivated teachers. If you're not, and the kids are disruptive and don't want to know, it's a tedious, stressful nightmare of a job. Yes the holidays are good. If your job offered the same, you would be quite happy, no doubt. And if you feel the superannuation and the dough and everything else are so blooddy good, be one! We all have to make the best life we can.

OK. Then there's the other side of the coin. It sounds like you went to a pretty poor school, and God knows there's enough of those. Successive governments have fuked up education; the curriculum is dull, in my experience a lot of teachers are time-servingly dull (and I mean FUKEING, infuriatingly dull) and de-motivated (or what you would call lazy, although it's actually difficult to be a lazy teacher simply because of the stuff that has to be done whether you can be bothered or not). I remember having useless teachers too, but you cannot simply write them all off in one fell swoop. A lot of them are dedicated and tireless, and no doubt some are inspirational, and you would be surprised how many of them really do have the kids' interests at heart.

Some of them (a small minority) play the "off sick" game shamelessly and get away with it for years.

Some of them are just bad at teaching. Some of them are a bit thick and there are people in education who you would definitely not want influencing or teaching your child. So what about some balance?

You complain that children cannot write coherently, but I notice that you certainly can. Did you have a private tutor?

You complain that teachers waste kids' time for umpteen hours a week, and you are certainly right there in some measure, but remember that there are thousands (yes thousands) of teachers out there who, on the contrary, would love to work in an environment where surly and disruptive children didn't waste the time of teachers who genuinely would like to go into school each day and actually teach them rather than do crowd control. But the dynamics of a classroom are such that if the disruptives have taken over (and it only takes a couple to sour the atmosphere) there's not a lot of learning going on and it becomes very difficult. Successive governments have taken away the power of schools to deal effectively with learning disruption.

So you make valid points, Crashed Out, but a bit of balance instead of naked anger might make your case more effectively.

Having said all that, the institution of the school starts going wrong at the Primary stage, in my view. I have a problem with compulsory institutions anyway. We incarcerate young children in a room all day, sitting them down for more than an hour at a time as much as 4 times a day. It's too much and it's plain wrong and it amounts to child abuse and it p'sses me off. They get ten minutes break morning and afternoon and their lunch break hour, the rest of the time they're largely sedentary.

If teachers are being militant, perhaps they should look more closely to what they are being militant about.

If you look at my earlier posts you'd notice that I don't believe unruly kids should be put in front of teachers - ever. If someone is rude and objectionable you (should) have the right to remove yourself from that situation unless you're, say, a prison warder or mental health nurse. I said that Doctors don't have to 'manage patient behaviour'. Even shrinks don't have to - someone else does the pinning-down and restraining. I don't believe any kids should be forced to attend lessons either. Given that thousands of pupils attend lessons for hours and hours each week yet come away either with vast gaps in their knowledge or virtually no knowledge at all it could hardly be any worse. Let them play football all day, learn car mechanics, climb trees, do higher Maths or astrophysics. I never learned anything by force - yes, I endured some boredom here and there for a bit of paper at the end as it enabled me to go on to something else but that was my choice.

Check out any web forum on serious topics - there are people thirsty to know the driest bit of information but they WANT to know how to use their camera, or construct a grammatical sentence in Russian or configure a web server. That's how people learn. Asking questions, receiving knowledge and sharing it. That doesn't happen in a typical school. 'Learn this 'cos you have to and don't ask questions not relevant to the page we're on today'. So I utterly agree that the curriculum should be utterly overhauled, no, abolished - let a plurality develop.

Anyway, you can't teach anyone anything, unless is with a big stick, as in, 'I'll teach you a lesson!'. You can impart knowledge to people interesting in learning that knowledge.

My school was a 'good school'. It's as if the staff knew that with a greater middle-class intake and rural location free of inner city problems would allow them to be slack yet still preside over pretty good results.

No, I didn't get private tuition, unless you count my mum teaching me how to read (see, I remember that quite clearly but not classroom teaching). From then on it was books, talking, interaction, travel, meeting people and, yes, some formal courses selected by my own choosing. It's forced schooling that I hate - post-16 you start to make some real choices and that's fair enough.

I don't think I was a pain in the **** to teach and was probably fairly anonymous, like most kids at my large school. They liked the ****-kissers likely to get a zillion A-grade exams. They gave prizes to the psychos who'd successfully

turned up more often than the year before. The middle of the road was largely ignored.

Still, the school had only a minority of headcases and the worse could be expelled without comeback so teachers were slack for the sake of being slack, not because they dealt with nutters all day long.

As for the stress and strains of dealing with the decline of western civillisation all day long, well, everyone knows what basketcases many schools have become. It's not a secret. If you 'love teaching' you could go into teaching, say, ESOL students English (who really want to learn), or training staff in some organisation, or to FE colleges where at least people have actively signed up for the courses and not been forced, or if you have the qualifications start your own courses. If you want to 'make a difference to kids' why not do youth work, which is a far less us-and-them interaction? Ah but you don't usually get the same big pile of wonga and gold plated pensions, do you? Or long paid holidays. Or something other than a short-term contract.

As for the money why should they get 10% more, or any more, when so many people are experiencing pay cuts and pay freezes? Yes, public sector workers should get a fair whack but should not be magically excused from the upturns and downturns the people who pay their salaries endure. And why promote some daft myth that they'd all be on loads more in some private sector job? Many teachers would be office-proles or stacking shelves at Waterstones if they weren't taking PGCEs and teaching, not pulling megabucks in the city or industry. The moaning and droning and groaning just gets on people's nerves.

When Frank Chalk started blogging and writing teachers piled in by the hundred to celebrate him, yet his 'deliciously un-PC' writing is filled with snide contempt for the young people in his care - little 'Kylies' and 'Jasons' as he's called them. I've cringed when teacher friends have have made snide, nasty remarks about their pupils - it's like when someone you know suddenly comes out with some appalling bit of racism. So what if you are some struggling parent that's at least trying to get their kids to enjoy and value learning - send them to some sarcastic arsehole like Chalk? Wonderful.

So, to conclude, scrap schools, scrap teachers. Provide fora for real educators and learners to come together. A tall order I know, but I think a voucher system could be the first step - let millions of innovators spend the education budget, not a bunch of central planners and whiney-voiced NUT-types.

Edited April 14, 2009 by CrashedOutAndBurned

[MrsNoelEdmonds]

So, to conclude, scrap schools, scrap teachers.

The problem is that by and large school is seen as the great child care provider in order for parents to be economically active.

Scrap schools and you'd have more non-productive parents which would wind all you HPC'ers up even more.

[bogbrush]

The problem is that by and large school is seen as the great child care provider in order for parents to be economically active.

Scrap schools and you'd have more non-productive parents which would wind all you HPC'ers up even more.

Not me. It would make for better brought up kids, happier parents, lower house prices and a sensible labour market. And happier teachers, as their charges might actually have had some adult supervision by somebody who loves them.

[King Stromba]

Funny, but all the good teachers i know have no problems with their students behaviour.

So maybe the problem isnt with the students, maybe its with the 'retarded' teachers teaching them.

[Mr Nice]

the trouble with teachers wanting more, is that they go out of their way to make sure that they aren't held responsible for falling scores, but want all the credit for being magical special people that educate our young.

if the kids were actually getting smarter and better educated, I wouldn't have a problem with paying more.

the fact that they are getting thicker and thicker every year really adds a sour note to their outrageous demands for more money.

in fact, many of the public sector workers fall into the same trap. police, nhs teachers etc.

they are supposed to be treated as somehow more noble than the average joe, but if you actually try to hold them accountable for the work they do, there is always a load of "reasons" why falling standards aren't their fault.

it really does get old after a while.

[MrsNoelEdmonds]

Funny, but all the good teachers i know have no problems with their students behaviour.

So maybe the problem isnt with the students, maybe its with the 'retarded' teachers teaching them.

My husband has no problems with pupil behaviour. It's unrealistic expectations from 'the powers that be' that irk him.

In fact, the higher up the greasy pole teachers get (i.e into the realms of school leadership) the shitter they tend to be at dealing with kids.

You can lead a school apparently if you're shit at classroom management - just so long as you can speak da management ******** and crap out spreadsheets...

FTR, my other half is noted as an excellent teacher by OFSTED and the LA - in fact he's always been noted as excellent in observations and he's only taught at inner city sink schools. So there.

He's taken on kids in year 9 who've either not been able to speak a word of english, have been diagnosed with serious mental health issues, have seen their mums be murdered by their dads, who've spent a life in care homes and have been child soldiers in somalia - and he's got 'em their C+ pass in science.

How many of you HPCers could do that?

[MrsNoelEdmonds]

they are supposed to be treated as somehow more noble than the average joe, but if you actually try to hold them accountable for the work they do, there is always a load of "reasons" why falling standards aren't their fault.

it really does get old after a while.

I reckon teachers are subject to more scrutiny than many other jobs in the private sector. Not just in their professional lives but in their private lives too.

When teachers are getting company cars, gym memberships, share options and gym memberships in addition to their hard earned salaries then people might have a case about pay.

[TruraBuoy]

Angry teachers ignore ministers

Angry schoolteachers rounded on the Irish Government, claiming they were being hit with pay cuts and tax hikes to bail out bankers and developers.

Irish Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe received a cold reception at the annual conferences of both the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI).

A number at both gatherings staged a walk-out when he arrived in protest at education cutbacks, while INTO delegates refused to applaud the minister and held banners aloft.

INTO chief John Carr warned Mr O'Keeffe should not underestimate the depth of their anger, claiming children were being forced to pay for the recklessness and greed of Ireland's "casino capitalists".

"Teachers who had neither hand, act nor part in the country's economic collapse bitterly resent having their pockets picked to bail out bankers, speculators and developers," Mr Carr said.

"Where once young children paid to see a cowboy film, they now pay for the cowboys. Where once in Ireland young children could play, in today's Ireland they must pay."

Mr Carr said teachers face a 7% pay cut and a 5% hike in taxes this year. He claimed the national wage agreement had not been implemented, promotions were embargoed and a pay award to principals had been sidelined.

Several teachers walked out of the INTO conference hall at the Mount Errigal Hotel in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, when Mr O'Keeffe began his speech.

There was no applause when he arrived and some held banners aloft during his talk protesting at Budget proposals, including the controversial pension levy.

In his first address to a teachers' conference, Mr O'Keeffe told delegates people were understandably angry, and added: "I'm not underestimating these challenges. But I'm asking for your co-operation during these difficult times for our country."

Linky http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/a...l33AbPRW65pgjfQ

[CrashedOutAndBurned]

I reckon teachers are subject to more scrutiny than many other jobs in the private sector. Not just in their professional lives but in their private lives too.

When teachers are getting company cars, gym memberships, share options and gym memberships in addition to their hard earned salaries then people might have a case about pay.

There we go again. The vague idea that the private sector gets all these cushy perks. Some companies don't even have sick pay.

It's not merely the rich that teachers want more dough from but Mr 14k Storeman, Miss Tesco Checkout girl.

[Guest Steve Cook]

Oh have this for a headmelter =-

If the purpose and structure of schooling is to dissuade kids from learning and stop them from being curious.

Then -

This means that those who are at the bottom of the system are the fastest and best learners. Those who give up first are the smartest and those who get no exam passes are the most capable of being educated.

As ever, you set up a false premise and then provide the logical outcome of that false premise.

Rhetorically clever and substantively idiotic as ever.

And very, very predictable

[Guest Steve Cook]

Of course.

They learn so well that they can never rise.

Think what woul dhappen if they were taught properly and their minds not turned into mush by indifferent strangers?

Phobics learn this way as well - a one time event lasts forever (or until therapy.)

Oh Jesus wept....

We are on to the pub psychology again.

I wondered how long we would have to wait.

Have a lot of experience of psychologists do we?......

[Guest absolutezero]

not many,makes you wonder how the country will function when he retires.

you're right,20% pay rises all round,and a three day week.

oh and 15 weeks holiday.

Sounds fantastic to me. Yes please.

[Guest Steve Cook]

That's not smart, that's quitting and giving up and calling it a virtue.

It's weakness and stupidity trying to pass itself off as strength and integrity.

Had a bad experience at school did we?

[Guest Steve Cook]

Who did all this to you?

You really do have some issues there don't you? Are we looking at another of life's misfits who didn't get on with school I wonder? I say this because of the obvious bile of your posts. You need to get a grip and move on mister.

[MrsNoelEdmonds]

not many,makes you wonder how the country will function when he retires.

you're right,20% pay rises all round,and a three day week.

oh and 15 weeks holiday.

What job do you do then? Go on, open up yourself to scrutiny.

It's funny how this whole teacher bashing thread has totally discounted the fact that during the 'boom' teachers lost 6% in pay...

Yes, when my husband was picking up £832 a month in 1997 and working 3 nights a week in a pub to supplement our income we were so f*cking lucky.

D*ckwad.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

Aah, the perennial "Teachers are lazy scum" thread. I'm predicting 14 pages.

[wealthy]

Here we go again, people using a system to invalidate that system.

I might listen to someone who was raised by wolves on this subject, or someone that's gone off to live amongst wolves, but they generally don't post on house price crash forums.

[Doghouse]

When I saw teachers asking for 10% I wondered if they are trying to get their snouts in the trough big time, thinking the government might use this as a way to pump more money into the economy....then again that would be crediting teachers with being able to follow some kind of logic (albeit warped and about as remote as the north pole) Mind you, teachers are one group who might just be stupid enough to carry out Gordons cunning spend, spend, spend plan for him, and willing to keep paying overinflated house prices for their BTL portfolios - every teacher I know has at least one BTL property!!!

I work in the NHS and while I wouldn't turn my nose up at a pay rise, I wouldn't expect or ask for one while this sorry economic mess plays out (unless inflation really takes off of course!!!!) I am not insular enough to believe the public sector is immune from cutbacks. Hubby works in private industry, and if we both come through this with jobs in tact we'll think ourselves very fortunate and count our blessings. But none of the teachers I know show such humility or any appreciation of what it is like to live in the real world.

[Injin]

Had a bad experience at school did we?

Oh no Steve, I have assembled objective data and looked at the facts, as I usually do.

Admittedly it wasn't something I learned at school.......

[Guest Steve Cook]

We live in the illusion of a meritocracy.

Our elites need to perpetuate this illusion in the wider population because we would not be as willing to be so ruthlessly competitive with one another otherwise.

Of course, this ruthless, free-market competitiveness was never intended for them. But, that's another story.

The trouble with perpetuating an illusion of a meritocracy, though, is that you have to make people believe that there are no barriers to success. Firstly, you need to ensure that people believe that there are no social/political barriers to their getting on. However, in order to fully complete the myth, people need to believe that they are all born equally in terms of their innate abilities. This last point is particularly important since, if people did not believe this, they would simply give up trying to compete beyond certain limitations.

So, how do you achieve the above? Well, firstly, you make sure that everyone gets a prize in educational terms and/or you ensure that all of the prizes that are currently available are easier to obtain. In educational terms, both of the above strategies have been employed. Also, it helps to encourage a cultural environment where everyone is encouraged to think that all opinions and beliefs are of equal validity.

However, even assuming all of the above are in place we will still get winners and losers in life. The trouble is, this time around there is nowhere to hide for the losers. There are no excuses since they have been taught to buy into this bullsh*t. They can't claim their failure is because they are members of a repressed social group since we don't believe in socialist explanations any more do we. They can't take comfort in the fact that they have merely done as well as they could given their cognitive limitations since they have also bought into the bullsh*t that tells them they are as able as anyone else. So, what is left?

Frustration and anger.

Someone must be to blame though, surely? Oh I know.....

It's teachers isn't it....!

That's right, play the game by the rules that were set from on high. Blame teachers, social workers, namby-pampy tree-hugging pinkos. Indeed, anyone but your true enemies. And God forbid, don't take any personal responsibility.

I sometimes wonder whether forums such as this have an unusually high representation of the kind of losers in life I have described above. The content of some of the posts on this thread do seem to bear this hypothesis out.

edit to add:

I should also add, I was one of those who did not initially do well in education. Predictably, my reason for low achievement was one of those described above. Luckily for me it was due to social rather than innate cognitive factors. However, it still took me until late into my twenties to realise this before embarking on the long road to educational recovery. however, I am not suggesting that this was the only route to succeeding in life nor am I even suggesting that my definition of success should be shared by others. For me it was, though.

The thing is, I managed to grow up and move on. Whether or not that involves education, this is something that more than a few posters on here need to consider doing.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Steve Cook

[Injin]

Steve - the reason we are in such a mess is because precisely the Nuremberg defence you outline here.

If Mr. Fatcat Elite tells asks you to do something - you are responsible for what you do, not him. Anyone can ask you to do stuff, doing it is your own choice and therefore your responsibility.

If you don't do this you get a tri partite system where no one is responsible.

Mr. Elite isn't responsible because he only asks people to do stuff, they don't really have to.

Mr Active Agent (teacher/policeman/whatever) isn't responsible because Mr Elite has so much power it's impossible to refuse and he doesn't make the rules, he just applies them.

Victim can't beat both Mr. Elite and Mr. Active Agent so he (traditionally) begs Mr. Elite - which just cycles the power round again and fixes nothing. Until people put the blame for poor actions where it lies - with the actual people who do the actual actions, nothing will change.

I'm not holding my breath though.

What does this mean for our teaching example?

It's entirely 100% the fault of the teachers. They are the only voluntary members of the classroom. They could work in McDonalds or on the bins but they choose to break kids in for a living instead.

[SNACR]

I got the best exam results at the comprehensive I went to, but still intensely dislike the current education system and think it holds people back. These results lulled me into a false sense of security as when I arrived at university and fraternised with those who were privately educated I realised just how deficient my education had been.

I already knew the system was a fraud and dropped out of university and stacked shelves in a supermarket and I'm still stacking shelves in a shop now, which I wouldn't change. I could argue the education system did me a big favour by turning me off to it.

An issue I'd take with teachers is that the system is in fact geared towards their own sense of well being. They seem to cling to an idea that they're making a huge difference in children's lives and are the Robin William's character in Dead Poet's Society personified.

I feel because of this too much time is spent trying to greatly improve the lot of some very difficult and disadvantaged pupils and the low-hanging fruit that'd only need a small push to get them on to a good life path are overlooked because they seem to do ok. I don't know what the solution is, perhaps teachers should be paid a tiny percentage of their student's lifetime earnings .

Please Note: These are only my views and are generalisations of teachers I've encountered. Other sorts of inspirational teachers may be available and feel undervalued and misinterpet my points as a direct and personal criticism of them. Teaching salaries may, in real terms, go down as well as up.