new blue porsche

Tags

2018, 5*, blue, cleaning, ducks-in-a-circle, investment, management, managerialism, performance management, public service, quiet, reform, results-led education, silence, speech, teacher, teaching, vacuum-cleaner

                one day
                some poor bastard
                got handed a broom
                and was told to
                clean the place up

                but I’m a teacher
                he said no you’re
                a janitor but we’ll
                pay you well if you
                keep it clean and quiet

                so he pushed some dust
                around and lo when
                he turned round it was
                there behind him
                so he invested in a

                state-of-some-bastard-
                industry vacuum-cleaner
                sucked up everything
                that wasn’t bolted
                down, whirling around

                in the drum all in the
                same direction and then
                switched the power
                off; everything was
                quiet and squeaky clean

                and all the right colours
                and he wondered at the
                eiree silence but not
                for long as he drove about
                in his new blue porsche

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
management & performance management & teaching wormhole: someone’s got to do it
managerialism wormhole: I turn to wake up
results-led education wormhole: what wounds have you got?
silence wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
speech wormhole: presence

 

Advertisement

someone’s got to do it

Tags

2*, 2018, bankers, bullying, management, performance management, public service, retirement, shoulders, teaching

                you didn’t manage me
                you just tried to shove me

                to where you needed me to be
                to get your next pay rise

                while shrugging shoulders
                and blaming the bankers claiming

                someone’s got to do it

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

management wormhole: listen willya
performance management wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’ — Private
retirement wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
teaching wormhole: so where have I got:

 

so where have I got:

Tags

2017, 4*, Avebury, being, dynamic, inverse relationship, measure, public service, talking to myself, teaching, travelling, value

                so where have I got: I took
                three threads on this short trip:

                once anything is measured it loses
                all value; value is dynamic and

                integral to the happenstance;
                measure is limited and quantitative;

                there is an inverse relationship
                between measure and value, there

                ought to be balance for there to
                be a public service … in and

                out the Avebury Stones, can’t
                seem to find a sig … nal?

 

see: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
talking to myself wormhole: to arms, then;
teaching wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
travelling wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

Tags

2013, 4*, accountability, career, compromise, expertise, just saying, listening, managerialism, message, politics, principle, production, public service, responsibility, work

                just saying, is all VII:

                the drive to de-power the worker
                in public service; you cannot
                call-the-shots-because-you-are-an-expert
                … because you are the worker

                if you are calling the shots you must be
                a manager of some thing so that
                you can then be held accountable
                for the shots you call – kept on message.

                If You Are not a Manager you Cannot
                Call the Shots. Even if you are a genius;
                ‘take a responsibility, then we’ll listen
                to you’, I wouldn’t on the principle they

                wouldn’t listen to, they didn’t listen on the
                principle that I had no voice without responsibility
                compromise; de-experting workers
                is inexorable to production, in fact

`spolitical

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: wakeoutofadream
compromise wormhole: gone black
listening wormhole: within
managerialism wormhole: seen but not heard
politics wormhole: this sodden land
work wormhole: weight

 

holiday

Tags

2015, 5*, career, Herstmonceux Castle, holiday, identity, meaning, public service, talking to myself, teaching, tide, work, writing

                holiday

                OK, pal, you’re on holiday
                you’re supposed to be a sense-r
                making write of the world

                which tends like a tide
                to declare all need made manifest
                through all manner of glossy

                pamphlet and prestige position,
                brokering career by meeting it –
                more or less, more for less –

                you’ve no time to lose at work
                made stupid by my very placement
                and awkward to the very service

                I practise; go on with you, find the sense
                sat there at the tea shop table with
                the plastic tablecloth in the wind

 

first of a four-part triptych – you’ll have to read them all to figure how that works; all set within Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex; while I was still working as a teacher and wondering when I could have the weight of my own communication; I will publish the rest sequentially but not necessarily daily

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: while
holiday wormhole: magnificent salad
identity & talking to myself wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
meaning wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
teaching wormhole: reading // unstirred
work wormhole: Open – All – Ours
writing wormhole: breathing out

 

listen willya

Tags

2012, 7*, allowing, anxiety, budget, buildings, business, care, communication, consumerism, creativity, David Cameron, education, evaluation, exploration, extension, flag, Have, history, inclusion, innovation, investment, justice, knowledge, learning, lesson, life, listening, love, management, Margaret Thatcher, market, money, nurture, ownership, politics, privatisation, professionalism, prospect, public service, public service cuts, reform, slogans, society, speech, statistics, status, talking, teaching, time, tolerance, Tony Blair, understanding, value-bled education, value-led education, values, vision, wisdom

                                listen willya

                David Cameron, Tony stupid Blair, Margaret bloody Thatcher,
                and all your snivelling Secretaries of Career, and learn this, now –

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

                you’ve created a RIGHT MESS trying to make it go
                and you’ve spent a QUARTER CENTURY trying to make it go

                trying to work it out with long division, taking everything apart
                to make it go; it just has no value anymore

                nothing has any value anymore, no one cares anymore, we are
                all just anxious; dy’know

                you said KUE* every lesson, I said don’t be so silly,
                I spent five years making it work, I said I’ve made it work

                you said don’t be so silly – it doesn’t influence the statistics;
                I have to go to school now and pretend I’m a professional

                in all sorts of ways to make it look like it goes,
                but it just doesn’t; y’know we’re going to have

                to start all over again if we want anything like education in society again,
                right back to the drawing board; and no history; let’s see –

                                                           _creativity_
                                              nurture ) education

                                               exploration_
                                listening ) education

                                                          _wisdom__
                                              tenure ) education

                           _inclusion_
                vision ) education

                                                                    _innovation_
                                              management ) education

                                                    _extension_
                                exploration ) education

                                 _allowing_
                creativity ) education

                                                            _tolerance_
                                              wisdom ) education

                                                       ___love___
                                              care ) education

                                   _prospect_
                investment ) education

                                        __justice_
                                love ) education

                oh I could go on and on; and – no offence – but stuff your statistics
                and your statuses and your budgets and your slogans

                and your privatisation and your reform, screw them up
                into one huge ball and throw them

                in the bin, and let’s just have some
                honest communication now; you, all of you, went wrong

                as soon as you thought that public service should be value for money,
                (should save money, should make money), but no –

                                               ___don’t go!___
                                business ) public service

                a society that is alive, and rugged, makes money
                to build public service, not own it, to run public service,

                not demand of it, gives service to the public, not a market,
                gives life to society, not just consuming it

                you lot don’t know the first thing about big society, none of you,
                public service should absorb money, it should be

                soaked with money, it should lose money: the only reason
                money should exist is for public service,

                because the service it gives is always far more important
                than a big building and a flag;

                so, stop playing your endless games of balance and measure –
                you’re wasting far too much human –

                and start saying something alive, start doing something truthful;
                c’mon now, you look ridiculous

 

* Knowledge Understanding Evaluation

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

it might well be that the above format won’t make any sense if you are anywhere under the age of 45: it is the revered and ancient way of setting out division calculations in Mathematics; it ‘reads’, “business [divided into] education [=] don’t go”, where you might more readily have “5 [divided into] 60 [=] 12” … the result appears ‘on top’, leaving the space below to do the working out of long division (“17 [divided into] 43.6299 [=] 2.56646470588”; ‘show your working-out, boy’ thwackk)

I first wrote this in 2012 when there was industrial action over teachers’ pay and conditions – just about the time I started completely losing my emotional marbles at work; I have slightly reconfigured the piece and re-posted it on the day that the NUT is taking industrial action over teachers’ workload, pay and budget cuts: what does the government respond: ‘we are spending more than ever on education’!? … ‘show your working-out, girl’ thwackk!!!

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

allowing wormhole: need
anxiety wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
buildings wormhole: the policies came to nothing
communication & politics wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
creativity & life & love & society & teaching & time wormhole: ashramas
education wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
evaluation & understanding wormhole: the Apple
Have wormhole: Jericho
history wormhole: currency of generations
justice wormhole: dedication
knowledge wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
learning wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
listening wormhole: plop!
management wormhole: dry rot
money wormhole: tired
professionalism wormhole: dash
speech wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
talking wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
value-led education wormhole: Totnes
values wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,

 

portrait

Tags

2013, accountability, Braque, managerialism, portrait, professionalism, public service, public service cuts, ugliness, value-bled education, valuelessness

 

 

 

                                                      portrait

                           that suit and chic of yours
                           that cleans and cuts to
                           assure such a tender
                           profession accountable
                           from all possible angle

                           makes you ugly as a Braque

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

managerialism wormhole: disappear
professionalism wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II

 

… anymore

Tags

2014, advertising, brick, building, career, educational behaviourism, identity, infrastructure, lintel, loss, managerialism, message, politics, public service, shadow, slogans, sound, speech, teaching, time, value-bled education, values

 

 

 

                      this velvet coup worming
                      silent and diseased through
                      all possible infrastructure of
                      any manner of public service

                      I was
                      once good then I refined and developed
                      over 27 years to become
                      barely satisfactory; my values and value

                      shadowed away under something, sounded like crisisinourmidst
                      (New Improved Formula – whiter than white, kills all known germs –
                      dead) under some hammered-up dry-walling – forgotten and mouldy –
                      listening to the bish-bash-bosh of Educational Behaviourism

                      being delivered (reverse lights, hazards, weird-sounding alarm
                      with patently self-obvious message; beware)
                      and wondering why I cannot control a class the way
                      I used to when I am not in the same room

                      but they hammered and they plastered
                      on time with only the cheapest materials – some nails
                      bounce out of the batons, some corners crumble, held by noxious sealant
                      (… oh, I see, Work Experience, Giving Young People a Future)

                      so that by the time it all comes down
                      (and it’s … justabouttocracking) the damp
                      will be all through the bricks and lintels and no one
                      will remember how to stagger bonding to begin anew …

                      … anymore

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: CV
identity & speech wormhole: block ‘n’ role
managerialism & politics & teaching values wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
shadow wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
sound wormhole: 1963
time wormhole: Summertime, 1943

 

plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)

Tags

2014, 21st century, 8*, breath, communication, cubism, feet, green, hands, Have, humanity, ideas, identity, infection, law, living, love, madness, public service, sex, society, talking, thinking, thought, war, words

 

The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002); writer: Frank Miller; artists: Frank Miller, Lynn Varley

 

 

                              plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)

                                                            human store
                              bloated to homunculean proportion
                                   when glimpsed

                                             human whore
                    clenched to butt-round shouldn’t tantalus
                              when communicating

                                   human law
               infected with green lobes and infinite pixels
                              when serving

                         human war
          sputum-bilious from the love which couldn’t Have
                              when living

               human core
     mad as a food whisk masticating what it speaks
                              when speaking

     human spore
profligate of claim and statement to Have as currency
                              when building

                              with hands that span
                              and feet that stand
                    the planes that ‘scape and kaleidoscope
                              breathlessly

                              thought contorts and twists
                    involuntary-contrary to the atomic space it seeks to bridge
                                        free for those who ride the writhe that releases when
                                                  the atoms disperse

                                                  as they always do
                                        as they always will
                              vain and vein to the maintenance of world
                                                  and self

                              beings talk with thought
                              creatures think with will
                    and denizens of the 21st century Have everything
                                             but ideas

                                                       no wonder
                                        everything is so big and gaudy

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breath wormhole: … walking down the street
communication & Have & identity wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
feet wormhole: the Avengers
green wormhole: 1966
hands wormhole: dream / 130207
living wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
love & talking wormhole: axis: bold as love
society wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
thinking wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
thought wormhole: as they wish
war wormhole: 220712
words wormhole: window

 

Now, let’s think this through, shall we? The clunkish philosophy driving today’s education.

Tags

education, politics, professionalism, public service, results-led education, stress, teaching craft, workload

The philosophy with which education (and all public services) has been treated in the last 15-20 years is one of treating service as business.   The service receiver is the client, the service is the product.   Simple.   This philosophy, begun by Tory-thought constriction, consummated by retentive New Labour (Frankenstein-monstered by the Coalition), has shaped the provision of public service.   The insidious result is that education, teaching, has become a process and stopped being a practice.   Workload has increased exponentially while the education that ends up in pupils’ heads is unaffected by all this work and continues to go round and round again like a badly loaded washing machine.   It is the wrong philosophy to use in a service.

The issue of workload is annoying because it is inextricably linked with the job we do.   If we try to identify particular jobs that we could not do within teaching it only slightly relieves our workload, if at all, and it will often leave yet another liaison to have to manage anyway.   There are two ways in which workload can be understood: one is simply an ‘accumulative’ model that more and more discreet jobs are just added to the basic job – the crisis point occurring when the proverbial last straw is added.   The other way of understanding it is seeing successive refinements and developments of the job as an integrated and necessary component of doing the job ‘well’, an ‘integrated’ model.   The accumulative model applies to jobs which are ‘piece-meal’, the workload is regulated either by hours of productivity or rate of productivity – efficiency can be realistically measured and enhanced but cannot easily be exploited: overwork will affect the rate of production.   The second way applies to ‘professional’ jobs whereby productivity is usually in the form of a service.   Service cannot easily be quantified numerically, it can only be measured by the degree of customer satisfaction for her investment.   Ways are found to modify the service to meet the needs of the customer.   Overwork is controlled by regulating the number and weight of client cases (when one’s case load is full one can either begin a waiting list or delegate).

Public service jobs are neither piece-meal nor client-controlled services.   However they have been administered over the last 15-odd years as a perverse mixture of the two, although neither model, together or individually, is an appropriate way to treat a public service.   This perverse philosophy has worked its way through education and I believe is becoming apparent most in the issue of workload which can neither be addressed ‘piece-meal’ or ‘performatively’ because it was the wrong philosophy with which to run the public service in the first place.

The experience in teaching is one of more and more jobs just being added on and added to.   ‘Productivity’ is more and more forced to be numerically-based.   Jobs are being added on/to in the name of enhancing the service but are seen as integral to doing the job, they are not so much ‘add-on’s’ as ‘doing properly’s’.   Extra work in teaching is not regulated by number and weight of the ‘customers’, the number of pupils we teach grows both in class size and in the number of classes we teach as more and more is squeezed onto the timetable.   The ‘customers’ do not directly invest in education anyway, they haven’t directly paid to be there at all, they are just there.   The regulation of what happens to them comes from the management of the school/LEA/Government*.   You cannot take off jobs because this would be the undermining of the service; you cannot refuse to do the work because this would be unprofessional.   The regulation of workload is established by the holding to ransom of the education of pupils in the name of ‘professionalism’.   There is consequently no check on the hours it takes to achieve the target productivity nor any negotiation about the increase in productivity envisaged.

The whole notion of treating the education service the same as a business is a fundamental philosophical mistake.   Business exists fundamentally to provide a service to meet the customer’s needs.   The customer responds to the business by buying the product.   The dynamic involved is that of the market force which requires the business to make a response to the market and to establish the most efficient way of providing a service in order to maximise its profits.   The aim of the business is to meet a need in order to get from the customer.   Within education you are involved in providing a service to give to the recipient.   Therefore education is not subject to the market forces as is business.   In being in the position to give to someone, that ‘someone’ must lack it in the first place, and you must have what that someone needs in the second place (the facilities for health, education, advice, protection etc.)   Because these ‘someone’s’ do not have and you do, then you are the determiner of when and how and how much etc. to give; you must decide this because they cannot.   To give them the same sort of power as the consumer – that of having a say in the transaction, the when and how and why of the transaction – shows the absurdity of the comparison; the recipient of the service cannot determine the nature of the transaction.   That stroppy pupils, with some vague sense of empowerment to do so, will arrogantly criticise the methods of teachers; and even more when parents who do not understand the nature of education come in to ‘fight for their rights’ and compare the school adversely to a badly run business, then the damage is complete, irreconcilable.   The philosophy does not work.   That the school has to run its service under this perverse philosophy is never going to work when looking at the service as a whole…

… and it doesn’t work internally either.   In running education like a business the governments are setting up a business mechanism which inherently wrong-foots the whole profession.   When we are responding to ‘targets’, ‘initiatives’, ‘budget concerns’, ‘drives’, ‘parent-response’ etc. we are involved in a business-dialectic which fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the education service, that of the professionalism of the service provider.   Teachers are not business people, they are givers.   But when we are responding to ‘targets’ etc. we are conducting our ‘giving’ like a business. And this establishes an inherent dissonance in our work which is irreconcilable and destructive.   The feeding from Government to LEA’s to schools to school’s management to HoD’s to teachers to pupils of ways to improve ‘productivity’ simply produces pressure, from Government down to pupil.   There has been a huge amount of work in recent decades in schools trying to enhance teaching and learning, much of which is done on the assumption that because there is a perceptible lack in some aspects of education (literacy, numeracy, teenage pregnancy, ill-health etc) it must be the fault of the means of production, the teachers.   Therefore we are constantly ‘training’ and developing ‘professionally’, and still the ‘productivity’ is unaffected, and the sense that we don’t really know what we are doing in teaching becomes stronger in the classroom, in schools, in households, in the press.   But I wonder if you stop treating education as a process and rather as a growth, where teachers become nurturers rather than operatives, where schools become greenhouses rather than factories, then literacy, numeracy, teenage pregnancy, health will maturate as it will, rather than mutate as it is forced.

* This was written well before the dismantling of LEAs all over the workplace floor, and the junked-together creation of Academies with no bolts or screws; no one is sure how to put it all back together again, even if they wanted to …

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

professionalism & results-led education & teaching craft & workload wormhole: I think I know why I don’t like teaching, even though I quite like teaching and am quite good at it, even if I do have to say so myself