Daisy Christodoulou on Education

[jean]

Knocking teachers is a favourite sport for some. Not me. But I have sadly come to the conclusion that the proportion of teachers in a secondary school who are truly competent and inspiring is not as high as it should be. And if kids in a primary school get landed for a WHOLE YEAR with a dull, boring teacher who has been indoctrinated by 'the system' then they are likely to be brain dead at the end of it.

Not you? Really?

[Barbirollians]

Ms Christodoulou has a point but it is obscured by her ideological approach . I don't abhor the teaching of facts far from it but teaching them by rote is simply ,save for the child with a spectacular memory , just a chore

. What , however, in my profession I have come across in trainees and young members of it is not an inability to assimilate or learn facts but to think laterally , to look at the policy behind a statute for example . Thus there is more evidence of too much Christodoulou like teaching than a lack of it .

[ardcarp]

...Ms C's main point surely is that long-term memory, a full and varied long-term memory, is absolutely essential for the brain to make connections, form new ideas and, as you suggest, Barbs, to think laterally.

Jean. Mrs Ardcarp and I have raised three of our own children (the oldest being 10 when the youngest was born) and now do the same, as sole guardians, for two of our grandchildren. I don't mean to sound pompous...I know I do...but we have seen much of the insides of schools, of their teachers and their heads. One doesn't need great powers of perception to sort out the brilliant from the mediocre. If you are a teacher (and I guess if you are, a very good one) I suspect you will have experienced, nay been exasperated by, colleagues who don't cut the mustard.

[jean]

I don't mind you 'knocking teachers', ardcarp, but why pretend that's not what you're doing?

[Ockeghem's Razor]

More jargon words:

strategies
outcomes
engage

The examiner's report on the last O & C A Level General Paper contained this statement: "Education is about truth and excellence; educational jargon conceals mendacity and mediocrity."

[ardcarp]

Well good for them. Very refreshing. Has anyone taken any notice though? I've just received, on behalf of one of my charges who is just beginning the VIth form, a booklet from Exeter University entitled Exeter Progression. I can forgive its manifold split infinitives and constant wrong spelling of 'focussing'. These don't matter. But all the issues around, subject area strands, pathways,etc, etc, just make for dense reading. It seems the demons have entered the higher realms of academe.

[jean]

I can forgive its manifold split infinitives and constant wrong spelling of 'focussing'. These don't matter.

Don't mention them, then.

Besides, I am not so sure that the spelling of focussing is not subject to possible disagreement.

http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammar-tip/is-it-focussed-or-focused/

[Ockeghem's Razor]

The report which I quoted dates from 1988. No-one noticed. The General Paper had been abandoned in its then current form and the chief examiner who wrote the report retired to 'devote his declining years to watching cricket and reading Tacitus, two areas of life on which fashionable educational jargon cannot impinge.' I left secondary teaching after thirty years in various schools and six years before pensionable age because what had been a delight had been turned into a spiritless box-ticking exercise by assorted politicians. I then enjoyed ten years with the WEA and local authority adult literacy classes although even there it was becoming harder to escape the tentacles of Gradgrindery. Quite how it can be changed I do not know.

[jean]

The report which I quoted dates from 1988. No-one noticed. The General Paper had been abandoned in its then current form...

How would we 'notice' anything if we didn't know that?

[teamsaint]

Well good for them. Very refreshing. Has anyone taken any notice though? I've just received, on behalf of one of my charges who is just beginning the VIth form, a booklet from Exeter University entitled Exeter Progression. I can forgive its manifold split infinitives and constant wrong spelling of 'focussing'. These don't matter. But all the issues around, subject area strands, pathways,etc, etc, just make for dense reading. It seems the demons have entered the higher realms of academe.

They are " Profit centres" these days.

[Ockeghem's Razor]

How would we 'notice' anything if we didn't know that?

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I should have made clear that 'no-one noticed' referred to Ardcap's earlier question asking if anyone took notice of the examiner's condemnation of educational jargon. I am not setting a quiz