SCHOOL DAZE Written a short while after Tony Blair first became Prime Minister in 1997 - which is to say 16 years ago. I still think there is food for thought here, and I am more sure than ever about my own thoughts and observations. I would welcome comments from those who care about education, young people, the future... I remember only two things from my lectures at teacher training college. The first is being told how to catch a missile aimed at oneself without losing one’s composure, dignity or control of the situation. All this was to be done in the most casual manner whilst continuing to teach the class. Eye contact was to be employed so that the offender would know instantly that he or she had been found out and would be punished later - out of sight of the others for whom the aeronautical display was intended. It was perhaps the most useful thing I learned in my three years of preparation for work at the chalkface. The second thing I recall is the occasional discussion about whether schools are agents of social control or catalysts for the transformation of society. Was our role as teachers simply to prepare pupils to conform to the expectations of the dominant culture and to fit them into the society that was, after all, funding their education? Or was our role to encourage a critique of the status quo and stir up a longing for a Utopia, a New Jerusalem, yet to unfold? Put simply: how revolutionary was our contribution anyway? Fourteen years have passed and, frankly, I cannot remember the last time I heard such notions discussed among teachers. Questions of the relative roles of social control or transformation are risible. What you will hear in the staffrooms of our nation are the outpourings of a demoralised workforce, overworked and undervalued. If you bothered to take the time to look beyond the phenomenal good humour, courage and commitment that still greets anyone who enters into school life you will see people who feel trapped, exhausted, bewildered by what is happening to them and around them. These are men and women for whom radical idealism is something they discarded with flared trousers. Today the burning questions are: Can I get through another term? Can things really get any worse than this? The answer, more often than not, is yes on both counts. And the response must be another question: But for how long? Teachers cannot complain that no one takes an interest in what they’re up to. On the contrary everything teachers do, and in particular fail to do, is under the spotlight. Scrutinised, criticised and vilified, never a week goes by when some politician isn’t pontificating on what he or she thinks about this group of pariahs. There is probably no other job that gets so much media attention. With the possible exception of the politicians themselves no group has come under such sustained public criticism and harassment. The media, parents, the pupils, are on their backs and the government seems to concur. Apparently we have too many poor teachers who are putting at risk our children’s education and hence their futures. Someone has to get tough. Apparently what 18 years of Tory rule couldn’t solve New Labour will. Under the Conservatives schools saw the introduction of contract cleaners. You may be forgiven for thinking that Labour has sent in the contract killers. With no evident understanding of what is going on in our schools the pressure is on to fast-track ineffective teachers out of the system. Failing schools are being named and shamed - forcibly sat in the corner and made to wear the dunce’s hat. Make them feel bad enough and they might become good... Meanwhile there is a crisis waiting to happen in our schools that is beyond most people’s ability to imagine and which no amount of tough talking and knee-jerk reactions are going to avert. Such a dramatic statement may not often find expression in educational journals. It is a statement that can be made quite easily once you have escaped the system. There are many competent, dedicated teachers who know that this prediction is accurate, its fulfilment imminent. They understandably choose to suppress these dark apocalyptic visions because to play with them is to remind them of their own future. In my experience many, many teachers would leave the job today if they could. But mortgages and children force them to carry on. What Tony Blair and David Blunkett appear blissfully unaware of is that these are not the ‘failures’ they wish to flush out of the system. Rather they are teachers who have stood their ground for years, who rarely take time off, who work unceasingly for the children they are paid to educate. They are highly competent in most cases - and desperate to find a way out. But the Department for Education and Employment proceed unhindered by reality. They actually appear to believe that if they sack a few teachers and keep the antics of the others in their sights all shall be well. They have all the right performance indicators, which tell them what they think they need to know. But no one questions what it is that teachers should be achieving anyway. We have no idea of the role that our schools can and should play in society. The government line is easy enough to grasp. Schools are there to educate a future workforce. Ineffective teachers must be sacked because they hinder young people’s development as good contributors to our economic prosperity. And there we reach the heart of the matter. The impending crisis in our education system is about the fact that we haven’t stopped long enough to ask where we as a society are headed. What values sustain and motivate us? Alvin Toffler, social commentator and secular prophet, asked in his book, Future Shock (1971), “Where do we want to go?” This is a question of moral and spiritual dimensions. It takes seriously the unique needs and aspirations of every individual. It suggests that there might be some overall vision that we need to recapture. We need to ask the question more urgently now than then: where do we, as a society, want to go? Only with an answer to this, some sort of vision to which we can give ourselves wholeheartedly, can we even begin to ask meaningful questions and effect constructive change in our schools - and beyond. Tony Blair stated in the lead up to the election that Labour’s priorities were ‘Education, education, education’. The Liberal Democrats’ position was that Labour’s ambitions won’t be realised without an extra penny on income tax. While it should be obvious to anyone that education needs more money and that the penny on income tax was the obvious way to achieve that, I know enough about classroom realities not to fool myself that money is the complete answer. The next general election is four-and-a-half years away. With such a massive majority the Labour Government ought to be able to bring about the changes it is determined to push. Education is at the top of its list of priorities at least as far as the rhetoric is concerned. Nobody doubts this priority because education is foundational to a renewed and improved society. Perhaps in 2002 the Government through tough actions, sweeping reforms, and a radical clean-up of our schools will have brought about a revolution. We may well see schools achieving better results and equipping pupils to go out and function more successfully in the work place. As a nation we may have climbed the league tables of competitive and economically successful nations. Britain may well once again be the envy of the developed industrial nations - its educational standards leading to greater economic prosperity. But I am left wondering: Did Tony Blair reveal rather too much with that snappy little sound bite he used just days before the election - ‘the more you learn, the more you earn’? Is this all that we want and need from our schools? Is this enough from a man who claims to grasp the value of the human spirit? Should we expect from our schools nothing more than collusion with a materialist worldview? Or do they have a role in encouraging creative thought, a moral challenge, for the transformation of the status quo? Schools do exist as a socialising force and it is illuminating to see what these microcosms of society reveal about the real issues that confront us at this pivotal time in our history. Educational reform without sight of this is little more than a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic...
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 13:59:38 +0000
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