the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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the Apple

Tags

analysis, cognitive, connection, creativity, educational behaviourism, evaluation, feedback, function, growth, knowledge, learning, learning objective, lesson planning, measure, organic education, play, preparation, pupils, questioning, resource, results-led education, task, understanding, value-bled education

 

 

Teaching and learning can ONLY happen organically – when infused, before, during and after, with an understanding of how a mind builds its cognitive structure.   It’s simple: Knowledge >>> Understanding >>> Evaluation (KUE; actually I wonder if ‘Exploration’ is a better word than ‘Evaluation’, less preclusive, more open).   You can teach unorganically, reductively, intensively (as in, farming), results-led (value-bled).   It is much easier to measure (and therefore be used as political manure) like this.   But the learning becomes Pavlovian – set stimulae, set responses to get the grade – pupils are given the knowledge, and they learn (= remember) it, or not.   Pupils are also given the Understanding and the Evaluation/Exploration, and they learn/remember that as well, or not.   They are not taught, as such, but are Educationally Behaved.   Organic education is … the teacher’s apple (look at the shape of the diagram).

 

Preparing: teaching is the unpacking of (already established and recognised) knowledge.   Unpacking happens every lesson, beginning with the identification of the Learning Objective (Learning Horizon) from the curriculum.   Having focussed on the horizon, the map to it is opened-out by the teacher.   The map is the structure/template through which to unpack knowledge – the components of Knowledge, Understanding and Evaluation (KUE) which are the structure and levels of cognitive learning – and this map is the PLANNED lesson.   The way to write the map is to start with the learning objective and ask three sets of questions which deconstruct it into its constituent cognitive components – what are the facts (K), how do they work (U), what are the issues (E)?   The answers to these questions yield the raw ingredients of the lesson.   This level of analysis is conceptual and learned and requires a mastery of the subject in order to achieve it, clearly and efficiently.

Tasking: then comes the creativity in the lesson planning.   Working from the raw ingredients you ask: how could the pupil find, identify, collect, collate etc. the facts of the topic (knowledge), how could the pupil connect the facts together to see how the topic functions (understanding), how might the connections be tested to evaluate the functionality of the topic (evaluation)?   What is different about this stage of questioning is that you are thinking of questions that enable pupils to make the discovery themselves – the creativity is in the enabling, thinking of tasks that let them work the cognitive way back to the learning objective from discovery (of facts features – knowledge) through linking (the knowledge – understanding) to playing (with the links – evaluation).   If the tasks do not allow discovery/linking/playing then they have lost reference to what they were trying to achieve (the Way to the learning objective) and they become directionless and pointless – there is activity, but it is not clear why it is being done even though it may have some related or recognisable association with the learning objective.   The key, therefore, to this stage of lesson planning, is to build not any-old tasks that keep them occupied for a lesson, but tasks which ‘window’ the discovery, ‘thread’ the linking and ‘allow’ the play: growth.   If you ask the right questions in the lesson, the learning will grow itself.   Once you have got the questions right, only then do you think about resources and delivery – a mere formality after the main work of questioning has been done.

Lesson: then comes the magic of the lesson.   The pupil works as far as s/he can through the lesson (K > U > E) and checks their progress through feedback which is phrased in the same KUE references.   The journey is made naturally if the lesson has been constructed right ( // the questions have been posed organically).   There is no chore here (in the sense of work for a deferred or prospective outcome), there is the momentum of: what-is-it, how-does-it-work, let’s-play-with-it?   The learning should develop through stages of integration: having found things (discovery), you see how those things fit together (how they work, function), then you test how they fit together (practise their use if the subject is a skill, develop their use if the subject is a study).   There should be no sense of having to lead-the-horse-to-water, the only thing holding back the pupil will be h/er current cognitive development.*

*There are some pupils with a measured low cognitive ability (i.e. CAT score), or low ability to develop (SEN), who, indeed, are ‘stuck’, lesson after lesson, year after year, because – I would argue – they have inexorable experience of task-for-no-immediately-discernable-gain which emphasises the frustration that their diagnosis identifies.   Organically grown lessons should enable practice, lesson after lesson, year after year, of meeting the limit of their cognitive and learning ability and then pushing that limit a little further, rather than confirming their limit.   In this way their education would truly be a transformative experience of growth rather than a consignment to limitation.

Feedback: after the journey has been made, the product of the lesson is given to the teacher who measures how far the pupil got and puts a level/grade on it.   Every lesson.   Is this onerous?   No, because the breakdown of the lesson by the teacher should be clear and organic enough that the measure of the progress through it will be one of recognition, of mere identification: does it have those facts, does it show the connections between the facts, does it use/test the connections?   The only ‘new ground’ that might be developed in the pupil’s work (and will therefore need more than cursory viewing) will be the higher explorations in evaluation; but these will be new findings, new applications, and the teacher will want to read them in full.   Will the teacher need to give summative and formative analysis for each piece of work?   Once there is a shared assimilation of cognitive development (K > U > E through teaching, K > U > E in learning) between teacher and pupil, borne through lesson-after-lesson, year-after-year of organic experience … no.   Until then, yes, but make it a learning experience: single-word summations, prods, suggestions, questions, directions related directly to the level they have brought their work to and the next step beyond it.   Again, if the cognitive road-map of the lesson has been constructed clearly and organically then the summative and progressive feedback to be given is clear.

 

 

 

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

creativity wwormhole: relapse
evaluation & knowledge & understanding wormhole: Structure & d y n a m i c
learning wormhole: no biggie:
results-led education: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie

 

the Lamp

Tags

accountability, assessment for learning, communication, curriculum, learning, management, managerialism, National Curriculum, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, resource, responsibility, syllabus, teaching craft

Since 1988 the government has been ‘reforming’ education: to make provision and attainment nationally uniform and transparent equally for the government, schools, employers, parents, teachers and, yes, pupils.   Since 1997 the government has ‘managerialised’ education: it has dismantled the semi-autonomous remit of the teacher to practise h/er vocation, it has redefined ‘professionalism’ away from vocation and value and into process and productivity in the name of ‘accountability’, and it has quantified this process and productivity and called it ‘professional development’ (soon to be ‘licensed’).   This has left teachers estranged from, and distrustful of, the very dynamic that makes teaching happen: the skilful, adaptive, speculative, compensatory, dancing, alternative, bargaining, creative, tentative, controlling, releasing, playing, explorative, human dialectic of communication between teacher and pupil.

How is this ‘reform’, this ‘professionalism’, experienced?*   The National Curriculum has been defined – and is periodically juggled with – into core/foundation/statutory subjects, clearly and simply, so that they could be listed in a pamphlet.   Very quickly these subjects became disseminated out into national/local/exam-board subject syllabi – what needed to be ‘covered’ in each subject, especially when the need to level/grade the content became compulsory as well as statutory (‘so amusing how the syllabi, at this point, became known as ‘specifications’ rather than syllabi).   When the syllabi arrived in schools they had to be managed into a fit state to enter the classroom, so they had to be disseminated again (perhaps, better, ‘dissected’), (or even ‘disembowelled’).   Each syllabus topic to be broken down into differentiated tasks, mapped cross-curricular-ly, and All/Most/Some’d.   The fragmentation going on from the simple National Curriculum to the classroom has been almost exponential.   What was simple at the essential level (government) became overwhelmingly complicated at the practical level (classroom) – it was pamphlet-able at the government level, it became incommunicable, unlearnable, at the classroom level.

* We were having a nice game of football one day.   As with all games there were hard bits, exhausting bits, unfair bits, but we were holding a 1-1 draw.   Then – while we were playing – there were new rules to the game introduced.   The goalposts were left where they were, actually, but we now had to move the ball around the field …on a trolley!   We all had to have trolleys ready for when we had possession of the ball.   The trolleys were fitted with directional wheels to aid mobility around the field, baskets to hold the ball, racks to hold the football boots that we’d need when we had to pass the ball, shoot or defend a negotiated tackle.   We were told, ‘We have given you all this equipment.   In return we want a fast, exciting, entertaining game.’   So we pushed these trolleys around the field.   The wheels mostly got stuck.   The ball usually fell out of the basket.   No one scored any goals.

The pupil thereby received curricula which were overwhelmingly broad and complicated.   They received them in restricted amounts of time (in an ever-squeezed timetable with up to fourteen different subjects including drives on technology, IT, Citizenship alongside the drives within the Big Three subjects) which, even for the most able, required them to develop guerrilla tactics to learn – in, learn-something, get out, next.   The pupil has lost the sense of studying (exploring, wondering … mastering) a subject, it now just receives – it consumes.     The pupil has become passive, incapable of developing h/er skills of independent study – not enough time for it (or rather, not enough perspective to develop any motive other than ‘getting’ it).   The pupils have become overwhelmed, even, with the simple ‘getting’ of education: overwhelmed by content, they have no perspective, or will, to link their knowledge together (to ‘stand under’ their studies to see how they all fit together), and they will become satisfied with a factual-based appreciation of their subjects at best (making A-level teachers scratch their heads at times wondering why on earth some pupils chose their subject).   At worst they will ‘can’t be bothered’ with it all because there is more to be gained in self-esteem by publically rejecting it all rather than the impossibility of trying to master it.

For the teacher: s/he might have been able to rationalise and deliver the disseminated monster that education has become, but it was decided that teachers are fundamentally a-qualified to do the job (certainly, any profession which strikes over pay in the early 80’s needs to be sorted out)!   The nobility of the teacher has therefore been systematically (and publically) dismantled.   Professionalism has been re-defined by questioning the received image of teacher as authority-by-role (both in discipline and knowledge), and even questioning the ‘semi-autonomous professional’, by infiltrating the hallowed ground of the classroom to ensure … measurability of what they do.   ‘Measurability’ of what the teacher does is now quantitative: by input (the production of the paperwork for the lesson which proves that it was planned, what can be seen to be ‘in’ the lesson to be ticked off), and output (professional development is now linked to a performance which is measured statistically – there is so much that needs to be ‘reduced’ and screened out of consideration to make a statistic measurable – even pay is now linked to that same extracted performance).   Teachers are no longer respected but are now accountable (as well as ‘accounted’) to their Head of Department, their Head of Year, their Senior Management team, their School Governors, parents, the government, the public…   The overwhelming proportion of a teacher’s energy has now to be focussed on making sure that they are justified to all parties, before they can start to communicate.   Teachers are now taxed by needing to manage their curricula fit for process and attainment (managing ‘within’) in response to a pervasive management from ‘outside’.   The management of courses has become more important than their delivery.   It is difficult for these courses to be coherent or stepped; it is easy for them to be overwhelming for both teachers to deliver and pupils to receive.   In the past some teachers were inspirational because they could provide the portal to the world of their subject by skill of communication – they knew, through their teaching, what the seed of the subject was that drew a child’s eye.   Now most teachers have a ‘seed catalogue’ and no ‘field’ in which to sow.   Teachers have been ‘accountability’d’ and ‘consistency’d’ out of their skill of communication – out of the skill of drawing the child’s eye – by having to focus on the (measurable) process of teaching rather than the communication of teaching.   Communication has become a rather indulgent distraction in the face of ‘hard’ realities like (selective) statistical results, finance, the school’s PR with parents.    Teachers are left actively paralysed in having to meet impossibly (impractically, needlessly) wide and widening curriculum and (summative) performance indicators.^

                                       ^
                                       The centipede was happy quite
                                       Until the toad, in fun
                                       Said, ‘pray, which leg moves after which?’
                                       This raised her doubts to such a pitch
                                       She fell distracted in the ditch
                                       Not knowing how to run.
                                                     – Marion Quinlan Davis

So how is Assessment for Learning a solution to the atrophying of teacher professionalism?   So many curricular and cross-curricular teaching schemes have been floated during the last twenty years that have shown that attainment (no matter how you measure it) is not affected.   It was necessary to look at the learning in education as much as the teaching.   It has emerged that Assessment for Learning is the mechanism which links the teaching (delivered) to the learning (received) and still enable the measurability so desperately needed (needed, needed) when education has become the political potato that it has.   How does it connect teaching with learning?   It provides a template through which topics can be taught and learnt using the same language.   Topics are delivered broken down into levels 3-8 or grades E-A* and pupils apprehend them at whatever level/grade they can develop.   Both teachers and pupils understand the language of levels 3-8 or grades E-A*.   The skill of the teacher is in providing the ‘field’ of endeavour, the work of the pupil is to cultivate 3-8/E-A* as far as they can.   This co-working, through a commonly understood language and purpose, is called a dialectic; the working of this dialectic is called … teaching and learning.   Assessment for Learning enables that dialectic so that the power to teach and learn can be returned back to their rightful owners.   When Assessment for Learning happens the whole of the edifice which has become education becomes workable rather than impossible – education becomes what it always should have been, an enlightenment.

 

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

communication & performance management & professionalism & teaching craft wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
learning wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
management wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’
politics wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

I don’t think I could do it anymore

Tags

2012, 6*, bureaucracy, career, communication, creativity, disempowerment, expectation, identity, managerialism, performance management, professionalism, question, recognition, resource, teaching, teaching craft, voices

 

 

 

                                              why
                do you ignore what I think
                                then tell me how to construct

                                              why
                do you ignore what I have constructed
                                then tell me how to communicate

                                              why
                do you ignore what I have cognitively modelled
                                then tell me how to be professional

                                              why
                do you ignore the craft of my plan and resource
                                then expect the art of communication

                                              how
                do you ignore the presence of what I think and create
                                then tell me that I am valued

                                              how
                can you work in education
                                and not see the psychology of what you wreak

                                              so
                tell me Principal Principle are you never tempted to get back into the classroom
                                ‘no, I don’t think I could do it anymore’

 

 

 

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

career & teaching wormhole: the Big Stage
communication & performance management & recognition wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’
creativity wormhole: as they wish
disempowerment wormhole: Resource
identity & voices wormhole: in verse / question / m a r k ?
managerialism wormhole; teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
professionalism & teaching craft wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?

Tags

government, managerialism, money, organic education, performance, politics, professionalism, resource, spending, structural time, teaching craft, value-led education, workload

The only solution to teacher workload is to structurally invest time.   Any other spending on education without investing in structural time costs less but is not cost-effective because it doesn’t enhance the provision of education.   The provision of education can only be enhanced by recognising and resourcing the central resource to teaching: the teacher.   The principle resource a teacher needs to do her job is structural time.   The job of a teacher is a holistic job which incorporates many aspects.   The individual teacher must manage those aspects pro-actively, not in crisis, and certainly not compromised into a situation of being exploited.   The teacher does not need to be managed by a system which doesn’t recognise the holistic nature of her job, nor by anyone who is not directly involved in her teaching.   When the job of teaching becomes divided, time-managed, finance-managed, politically-managed, pressure-managed, productivity-managed, then the workload becomes too much.   The cup is not even half-full it is leaking very slowly through numerous hairline cracks and the sellotape used to mend them.

Teachers need to be managed as a human resource rather than as an a-human means of productivity.   When this is done the ethos of teaching will take care of itself.

I see these two strategies (management of human resource; nurture of the ethos of teaching) as being symbiotic: having additional staff to teach the same number of classes will mean that each teacher will have more time to prepare, assess and feedback on the lessons they teach.   It is simply no use at all giving a teacher a full timetable and no structural support time to deliver that timetable.   When no structural time is given to the preparation/feedback of lessons it is left to the individual teacher’s sense of professionalism – in their own, unpaid, time – to provide that preparation/feedback.   If the management of teaching comes to rely on – and expect – that level of professional commitment without either paying for it or supporting it, then it is exploiting teacher’s professionalism.

You would need to halve every teacher’s timetable (// double the amount of teachers) in order to support professionalism rather than exploit it.   Only then could you expect (and receive) true, clear attainment in a school, a year group, nationally and for each individual without at all having to manipulate statistics.   Yes you would have to double expenditure on education but it would be the only cost-effective way of spending that much money.   Saving money by spending smaller amounts on peripheral items of education (yes even on new buildings, computers, status) makes little difference and is soon used up.   A teacher is integral to teaching and lasts for 30-40 years if well-maintained.

The national government ought to do its job (define the Education Act, provision/entitlement – not to stick pins into the system while seeking some other goal); the local government ought to do its job (provide the resources to schools with which to serve the provision/enablement and not have to find ways of saving money but simultaneously expect the same service); and the schools can then do their job: enable.   If this happened there would be no exploitation of teacher professionality, education would happen and there would be no need of bolt-on interaction between governments and schools.   And teachers would work primarily – and happily – with the true sense of professionalism (i.e. vocation) rather than the peripheral effect of professionalism, committed (obliged) hours of (result-only-measured) work.

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

managerialism & money wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
performance wormhole: Continuing / Professional / Development
politics wormhole: management and managerialism
professionalism & workload wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
resource wormhole: teaching performance
teaching craft wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
value-led education 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

 

teaching performance

Tags

performance, performance management, philosophy, resource, teaching craft

There is a delicate balance to maintain when walking into the classroom.   In one’s management of interaction during the lesson, just the right amount of humour, adjustment of the teacher’s responses, adjustment of the activity, responses to individual needs and conditions of pupils etc… needs to be finely judged.   The teacher, if s/he is to perform well, needs much more than the lesson preparation, they need the ‘performance’ which delivers the lesson with the sensitive response of a stage performer performing to a diverse audience.   If the teacher does not feel right – if they have travelled between sites, if they have no guaranteed break during the day (the week!), they are required to fulfil many other administrative/educational tasks in no extra time, if their subject is trashed by individuals, or school management or society, if the media has had a recent dump on teachers exasperated that children, yet again, seem out of control and unfit for the economy etc. – their performance will be off, they will mis-read situations, they will miss individual communications, they will over-respond to some and under-respond to others etc.   The teacher is a performer and needs to be nurtured if you want the care that teaching IS delivered.

~~~—‘o’—~~~

misfits’ miscellanysays: Yes, Sir!

mlr says: And don’t let me have to tell you again – I said I want applause when I have taught you a lesson!

misfits’ miscellany says: Listen for sound of one hand clapping.

mlr says: I am humbled

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

performance 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
performance management wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
philosophy wormhole: management and managerialism
resource wormhole: Structural Time
teaching craft wormhole: management and managerialism

 

Structural Time

Tags

exploitation, investment, Kafkaesque, managerialism, resource

Provision of creative, purposeful, stimulating and organized homework would be something beautiful to see happening.   Nurturing gifted and high ability pupils so that they reach as far beyond and as far wide of the curriculum as their minds will allow is a dream which quickens every teacher’s wistful daydream.   Assessment for Learning which is clear and ‘right’-enough to communicate so that both teachers and pupils can drive would have them sitting, revving the engine.   Cohesive, resourced and creative planning of courses at each key stage should make an education structure which is as alive as the pupils who move through it.   Even a National Curriculum of equality, opportunity and an experience of clear development should give all children the ‘best years of their life’.

But none of this does, or ever will, happen simply because it is being put into place without any proper investment of time.   Not extra time, not paid time, but structural time which sees a reduction of a full teaching timetable to allow the value-added elements of homework, differentiation, assessment and planning to grow holistically rather than modified genetically.   Without structurally-integrated time all of this education development is grafted on to teaching, it feeds on the basic organism, it grows bigger and bigger, but doesn’t become part of it.   It becomes more and more difficult to move about – a jellied mass growing off our back which lurches the other way every time we want to make a turn.

In years to come we will wake up to find that we are a giant insect…

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

resource wormhole: Resource

 

Resource

Tags

disempowerment, management, managerialism, resource, teaching art, teaching craft

It is unskilful to consider – and reject almost as one act – any piece of work and thought from a front line worker.   It is unskilful to appraise it as a whole, end-product.   It is unskilful to see it as insufficient simply because it has not arrived by strategy or management domain.   Its inevitable – inexorable – rejection (its dismissal, its en-irrelevance) will, equally inevitably, significantly damage the worker’s belief in the education system, it will damage their morale, it will damage their confidence.   Their belief, their morale, their confidence will become confused; there will be a despair of thinking that there was any ‘system’ or purpose in education altogether.   The system will be understood – experienced – to be systemically unable to incorporate the very thought, experience, expertise of the service it seeks to systematise.   It – the system – will demand and measure impertinent to the very service it regulates.   A school can only ‘see’ work as ‘ends’-defined (i.e. rather than ‘means’-defined), ‘solution’ rather than ‘process’, ‘result’ rather than ‘mechanism’ when viewed through a managerial model only.   This way of viewing makes things change within education, but not necessarily for the right reasons, because it centres the gravity of activity around the decision and not the resource itself.   To override the resource is a maniacal oversight and waste and produces work which lurches, which is often reluctant, and achieves no momentum.

Rather, any work offered should be seen as a forum/discussion/seminar/exploration, as a ‘let’s see’ rather than a ‘this is it’.   Any development needs to be holistic, recognising the inter-dependent origination of both management and the resource (both the yang and the yin) so that it can produce organic, stable, plan-able, fruitful, reliable work.   The manager strategises and integrates the resource, the resource innovates and practises.   Managers are rewarded for managing/strategising/integrating, resources should be rewarded for innovating/galvanising/catalysing – both of these above and beyond (and amid) the fundamental job of teaching.

A teacher ever was, and ever will be, a resource.   But controlling by over-ruling them, by disempowering their craft, by alkalising their endeavour will surely be a waste for the school as well as for them.   Use them and reward them as a resource, consult, explore, follow their discoveries and applications, then see how they can be managed across the school.   And what is the reward for being a resource?   Take them off a full timetable, it is an absolute killer for anyone that does anything more than just walk into a classroom and ‘DHL’ a lesson.

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

managerialism wormhole: compromised
resource wormhole: Apologia
teaching art wormhole: a bit painful this
teaching craft wormhole: the Hothousing of Teaching

 

Apologia

Tags

agenda, anxiety, AST, Big Picture, bureaucracy, career, compromise, creativity, dialectic, education, management, managerialism, organic education, performance management, politics, professionalism, resource, responsibility, results-led education, truth, value-led education, values

After years of struggle, isolation, stonewalling (Hadrian-walling!), silence, evasion a teacher might, quite out of the blue, be offered a role or responsibility so that their work might be developed and disseminated for the benefit of educational- (for the Benefit of All!) provision.   At last, recognition!   But then, minutes later you are being led to your desk in a temporarily-divided corridor room (in which you will have to battle for desk space by pulling back the desk through the temporary wall), there where you will practise your advanced skill (by bottling it up into a tube and sending it through the tube system), your very own prison cell …

Recognition (in the system which has systematically repulsed work which is not constructed, developed or packaged in the pre-scribed manner) is the opportunity to be exploited.   Responsibility is the means through which you will be exploited (given with laurel and epaulets into your own hands).   Opportunity is the (‘very interesting’) work of making your skill ‘fit’ into the Big Picture.   Experience is the history of compromise through which values and ideals will be lost into the Big Picture.

Success in the Big Picture Bureaucracy entails that truth is an agenda over which you have no control, principle is declarative, creativity is a formula, debate is a compromise, influence is an exercise of power, delivery is an over-riding Tough Decision, professionalism is the exercise of abstraction.   A skill (in teaching, say) is developed (despite Continuing Professional Development) through a dialectic between the Provision (the Teacher) and the Receptor (the pupil).   This dialectic yields truth which is explorative within the service (not pre-defined or even pre-determined), a principle which is exercised freshly, uniquely and adjusted-ly each time, creativity which comes from the minute detail of the dialectic, debate which is the (means of the) dialectic, influence which is an agreement, delivery which is the nurture to see the dialectic through, and professionalism which is effective (dialectical) giving.

The compromise is not evil, but it is misguided, borne out of an impatience with the progress of organic education, wanting to direct and control the progress of an education which has become ‘intensive’ as a result.   Why was there an impatience?   Because education came to the attention of politicians (themselves caught in their own compromise borne of neo-conservative power-control-agenda in the face of emergent globalisation) and the regulation of education became a propaganda (both ‘outside’ and ‘in’ the service) through which to justify Global Truth as Control…

Therefore I offer my work – itself borne despite recognition, support, investment, enthusiasm from the School – not to the school but wide open to the world of anyone who might culture it.   I will publish it (with a view to balance the paucity of alternative-values educational publication compared to the whole wash of government-published material), I will not make money or career out of it (in order to avoid the Compromise), I will offer it anonymously (as long as I can, in order to avoid becoming a Voice which must be accountable to an agenda item and not the dialectic).   I will cast it as a seed.   Let it stick in the dirt.   Let it grow.   Organically.   If it will.

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

compromise wormhole: just what
managerialism wormhole: nightmare
professionalism wormhole: there was a call and far from no response
resource wormhole: the ghost with open wound
results-led education wormhole: ‘once upon a quarter century …’
value-led education wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
values wormhole: the path / no echo

 

the ghost with open wound

Tags

2010, 2012, 8*, Allen Ginsberg, assessment for learning, career, CPD, criteria, Howl, learning, madness, management, managerialism, markbook, performance, performance management, professionalism, resource, society, targets, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft, UPS

edited and reposted from the ghost with / open wound, 6th January 2012

 

 

 

the ghost with open wound

I

                      I grieve for my stillborn children
                      the markbook the yinyang learning
                      delivered and left in the theatre
                ‘how beautiful those babies are!’ said the people in the gallery
                      but the surgeon had left the room
                talking urgently with his staff about something else
                      much more important

        I grieve for the upbringing I gave to them anyway
        all of my mother’s thought and striving
        all of the creativity I put into them
                lesson after lesson
        for only adventitious and unexpected gain
                like a mother from the wrong minority in the wrong neighbourhood
                raising her children to have pride and dignity
                to have their place in this fair and equal society

                                     not openly condemned
                                ‘for we are a righteous, civil profession’
                           but silence’d awkward-ed false-smile’d
                                ‘it-must-be-so-difficult’ed
                           ‘if-there-is-anything-I-can-do’ed
                                ‘how-are-your-children-getting-on’ed
                      while all the newspapers and televisions ask and debate
                                openly, transparently and so very fairly
                      what exactly these minorities contribute to our fine society
                           which aspires to be an Outstanding society
                      to stand proud in posterity …

II

                      … I am Rosa Parks
        tired of having to give way
                                even though I am sitting on the right seat
                in Montgomery I am Steve Biko still
chanting with my bloodied lip
                                     face down on the cell floor
                           in Port Elizabeth I am Solzhenitsyn blowing
        warmth onto my hands
                      far far across the Archipelago I am the
                Chilean mother with pictures
                      of my sons tied around my neck
        in Santiago I am a Vietnamese family
                                split up and adrift
                      on several boats in the South China seas I am a silent
        Thich Quang Duc sitting
                by the Austin Westminster I am an ex-monk
                           on a tour around the restored Jokhang in Lhasa
        China I am a
                                ‘best minds of my generation’
                succumbed to madness

                           and I howl silently
                      against the society that put me in this cell
                      but told me I am free
                           I am tired but push on
                                even pick up the pace a little although
                I forget: I am weak
                      no one cheers me on
                      others only notice
                           when I stumble

III

                twenty five years ago I was scurrying about
                      trying to pick up the pieces of a dream
                but the wind kept blowing them out of my reach
                      as I kept bumping into fences and walls
                ‘stop the wind!’ I complained in longer and longer documents
                      although no one would hear me
                      through the noise of the machines

        ten years ago I offered up a lightweight
                latticed bin with which to tidy up the yard
        ‘what is he carrying that bin around for
                while we are trying to push the leaves into one corner’
        they shouted to each other from their walls and towers
                ‘I wish he’d get out of the way?’
                      ‘but the bin’ I said
                           something whole integrative dialectical webbed adjustable

                clamour excitement
                      I could hear the crowd grow to a roar as I ascended the steps
                the torch held high I lit the beacon and …
                      … absolutely nothing.
        No beacon no crowd no stadium no roar
                the tumult had built and built and
whmmph! –
        not even an echo remained

IV

                           Where am I?
                           Was I in that stadium
                           did I run those steps
                           was I going to light
                           that whole stadium?

                           Surely I didn’t imagine it all!
                           Surely there were steps
                           the stadium the beacon
                           all those people.
                           Surely all those things
                           were there!   Why else
                           was I carrying the torch?

                The torch I kept.   I kept it burning.
                I burnt it more and more efficiently
                      – clean, pure, bright.
                I fashioned a lamp to keep it in.
                It sent out light beyond itself and
                I wandered around this bardo.

                                     But most of it is gloom:
                                     odd voices odd shadows
                                     strange noises and chants –

                           seepeedee                youpee-ess
        ay-yeffell                      arr-aygee                      geetoo-ohpe
                      errf-ormanst                      argits-cry
                                     tear-eearrrr

                      From time to time I could see
                      people calling me to account
                      I moved between them, I held up my lamp
                      but they couldn’t see me, couldn’t hear me.
                      And then they’d turn and talk to me
                      they’d look me in the eye and tell me
                           – so that I understood clearly
                           that this was urgent –
                      what society needed now
                      how deficiency was related
                           directly
                      to what I – face fixed
                           eye-contact name at the top
                           of the document   You!   Me?   Now!   Already?   Criteria!
                           But…?   Proe-fesh-shun-all –
                      did and what I did not do

                      and then they would Team me
                      three more heads turn and fix me
                      six heads – heartbeat self-conscious
                           ‘I’m noticed at last I’m here’ –
                      advance towards me
                           ‘I can act again’
                      bear down on me
                           ‘I know I’ll…’
                      and walk right through me –
                           whuphh, mphhwaphhwumpp, phblphbdphbdph…
                      … agghh!

                      held up the lamp
                           almost blew the wick out
                      quick turn it down turn away under my coat
                           shield it keep it alive
                           hide it

                      I am alone again
                           just the noises
                      keep it alive hide it
                           keepitalive hideit
                      keepitalive hideit

                           I – am – keeping – it – alive – !

                                space all
                                around
                                no echo
                                no denial
                                no light
                                madness

        I saw the ghostly stadium the neon beacon
                (‘bulb needs changing. A flame would be much better)
        people blurring past and through me
                I held up my lamp but it lighted up nothing
        people ran through it –
                almost put the flame out

                                          I died a living
                                          active yet muffled
                                          for ten years then
                                          twenty not sure
                                          how long and
                                          every so often
                                                                                              I go mad

V

                I have been in, but not part of, the stadium all this time.
                It is here, all about and above creaking and flapping
                      I had thought it didn’t exist at all.
                It is cardboard and canvas standing up
                against the inevitable winds and snow.

                So much construction, so little structure, so little warmth.
                It is cold here in this wasteland.

                I am still cold but I sit to one side now –
                      out of the way –
                and try to stuff my ears to the noises the voices.
                I still have a lamp.   I try to keep warm by it.

                I can’t see them – out in the night and cold –
                but are there other souls wandering lost
                      feeling their way?
                Is there anybody else out there?
                Please come and join me over here.
                If we sit together I can get quite a lot of heat
                from this lamp.   It is powered by …
                      fire.
                Let’s see – what wounds have you got?

 

 

 

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

(hidden) Allen Ginsberg & career & teaching wormhole: my life / of others
assessment for learning & markbook wormhole: ‘let everything go …’
learning & targets 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 …
management & managerialism & performance & teaching art & teaching craft wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
performance management wormhole: Failure
professionalism wormhole: Struck
resource wormhole: dry rot
society wormhole: lobby