I turn to wake up

Tags

2014, 7*, authority, breakdown, Carol, determination, doors, dream, Emily, future, heart, Hillside, home, humiliation, identity, innocence, life, managerialism, neglect, power, presumption, pupils, responsibility, sound, streets, teachers, teaching, time, toilet, uniform, waking

the e-mail that clanked dank in my heart
                the report I hadn’t written
                                for so long, for Emily
[her future all depends on it, poor Emily, she is so innocent and so pretty she deserves all the future she can get and You are neglecting her of it with your own languid longevity] but I will

                                NOT be responsible for future lives
                when I am ill from the presumption which doesn’t let me
even crap in private outside my own backdoor pan-in-the-yard
                they have called for me at my front door
                                with the brusqueness of a uniform
                                                with the presumption of amoral (sic)
                                                                even here
                                                the uniform and the outside toilet in my own house:                
                the humiliation could not be more complete so
I pull the hood of my dressing gown over my head
                and sink out of the dream

                                This Will Not Be

                                                I rouse Carol from
                                                                her own dream
                                                and drift somewhat back to …
                                … pupils all around the street
                                                they
                                                should
                                                not be
                                                there but only I
                of all the teachers in my front room
go out to front and tell them –
                command of my righteousness –
                                that they should not be there they should be BEHIND the house
                                                behind the house
                                but they turn languid
                and run round the corner down the street, they know
they don’t have to listen to me and
                I am powerless because
                                I am ill

                                I am so fed up with this
                                                I turn myself to wake up
                                                                I turn to wake up

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: slow enough / to have love
Carol wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
doors & life wormhole: every step I take
dream wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Hillside wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: dear Lucy
managerialism wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
power wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sound & streets wormhole: while
teaching wormhole: dream I // dream II
time wormhole: this time

 

just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment

Tags

2013, agenda, Daleks, Europe, experience, Lost in Space, managerialism, politics, practice, Steely Dan, teachers, teaching, thinking, value-bled education, values, war

 

 

 

just saying, is all V:

                                so, all those with experience
                are experienced in the Old Ways
as if they were Europe before any of the Wars; there is a New Thinking
                which older teachers a priori and de facto cannot respond to
                                              therefore,
                                screen out the older ones
                (“… and pan-fry the Big Ones
                   use Tact, Poise and Reason
                   and gently squeeze them …”)*, neutralise their experience, and if they
won’t go – even if they have good values,
                                even if they have good practice – allow them
                to participate ONLY if they subsume their practice in a
                                              management role (‘keep your enemies closer’)
                                and if they won’t do that (‘… pain …’; sharp intake of breath):
                                              ‘they – will – not – contibute
                                              does – not – compute
                                              danger, Will – danger
                                              exterminate – exterminate’

                                                                                 … systematic and consistent disempowerment

* Steely Dan, ‘Throw Back the Little Ones’, from Katy Lied (1975); used without permission but definite alignment

 

 

 

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

managerialism wormhole: sometimes
politics wormhole: any answers
practice wormhole: really old
teaching wormhole: wriving
thinking wormhole: dream 260815
values wormhole: nothing // matters
war wormhole: Bodiam Castle

 

just saying, is all – III

Tags

2012, 2014, 3*, accountability, achievement, assessment for learning, career, CPD, dialogue, education, funding, GCSE, inclusion, intervention, love, measure, National Curriculum, nurture, outcome-led education, planning, politics, process, professionalism, public service cuts, pupils, results-led education, school, slogans, statistics, subjects, targets, teachers, teaching, vocation

 

 

 

                                                                                    just saying, is all – III

                                              I watched the first generation of pupils sit their GCSEs

                                              then I watched the National Curriculum
                                find a gear
                and crunch-jerk launch the level system of attainment
                                across all the subjects
                                              then I watched the whole dialogue –
                political and educational
                                and the funding that went with it –
                                              shift from process and nurture
                to outcomes and statistics

                                and then I felt the reform of teaching professionalism
                and watched the proliferation
of endless sheets of planning, four – part lessons, Assessment for Learning, Ready for Learning, Every Child Matters, Inclusion, Continuing Professional Development, targetting, intervention, Boulders into Pebbles, Investors in People, accountability, Achieving Together, Be a Part of It, G₂O                      
                                the unforgettable 2 As & 2 Bs
                the Freedom to All Think Along the Same Lines (glorious times)
(and I’m really looking forward to the innovative work to be launched soon by Professor Cobbly from the prestigious University of Fisc’ut, Corporateshire, (not least of all because he happens to be my uncle))

                                              and all the while
                                those who work hard achieve well
                                              in the wash
                those who don’t don’t whether they are intelligent or not
                                if they are going to be angry or lazy
                they will find a way to be so
                                              whether you teach them to their very marrow
                                or just let them alone

                                              most teachers
                                just get through their career
                all of them measured to within an inch of their vocation
                                some keep their love
                                some make a difference
                                              sometimes
                                when no one is … measuring

                                              all kids
                                just get through school
                                most kids do OK
                                some kids thrive

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
education & results-led education wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
love wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
politics wormhole: my life is not your market
professionalism wormhole: the Lamp
teaching wormhole: which is worse

 

management and managerialism

Tags

communication, management, managerialism, OFSTED, organic, philosophy, politics, pupils, results-led education, teachers, teaching craft

Organic management: starts from the communicative, human, open, compassionate, giving, listening, building, creative, containing, widening, eye-contacting, assuring, re-assuring skill/talent/craft of a teacher.*   The experience of practising this skill/talent/craft is pooled into the department – some become specialists, some become cementers, some become fillers, some become pruners, some become diggers, some become sowers, the HoD becomes the tender.   The departments become the areas of delivery which collectively are the profile of the school (the park, with 1600 hills that rise and valleys that bow, with paths that run and oaks that stay, with saplings that promise and bed plants that spread, with water features that sing and exotic plants that wonder, with perennials that deliver with happy, smiling faces), the headteacher is the organiser of the services provided (the architect, the boundary wall and the entrance).

Managerialism: starts with the politicisation of the service provided.   It starts by defining the idealised end-product of a service on a national scale as the needs/aims through which to run the service.   It puts in place an infrastructure to ensure that those needs are met (OFSTED, governors, school management) which drives the process of the service to guarantee that the needs/aims are met.   Anything which is alternative and incidental to the needs/aims is either pruned or left to whither.   Success is a list or a number – the measure of the needs/aims – which are applauded and rewarded; alternative is a failure, and is ignored.   The national needs/aims of the service are incorporated into the provision which inexorably becomes transmissive, cold, convergent, efficient, delivered, didactic, piling, provided, chanelled, propagandising, un-engaging, statemental, repetitive.   Pupils become consumers – they receive their education with little commitment and little response.   They become educated, but in an overgrown, tasteless and over-obvious way.   Once they leave education, they are over-qualified and naïve about work.

* Are teachers perfect simply because they are teachers?   No.   But they participate – to varying degrees of surfing and dancing – in a naturally perfect action: teaching.   Can teachers get better at teaching?   Yes, they can train themselves to ease out their insistencies and certainties, their presumptions and fore-clusions, which make their teaching gnarled, inflexible, preclusive and constrictive.   Do teachers need to be told how to teach?   No, they need to be nurtured.

~~~~—-‘o’—-~~~~

plexity says:

“They become educated, but in an overgrown, tasteless and over-obvious way.”

Like hydroponically grown, ‘forced’ vegetables, they are soft, lacking fibre in their cell walls, vulnerable to predation by insects, fungi and  infections.

The parallel is exact.

m lewis redford says:

… and this is because the ‘means’ of education – the means of achieving the figure-defined ends – is mere process.   To meet targets there is the urgency to not waste time and outcome on anything which cannot be regulated/controlled/driven.   So instead of leading our charges by the hand down the broad steps of acquiring/sorting/arranging Knowledge, of connecting/matrix-ing Understanding, of testing/questioning/playing Evaluation, we do all of the damn work ourselves and force-feed it to them like so much manure – “c’mon, finish up, all of it, it’s good for you!”.   Those that are good at remembering stuff score well, those that aren’t don’t.   We do not teach our pupils so much now as we educationally programme them to behave in a certain way.   ‘Educational behaviourism, it’s the way of the future, don’t bother with all that thinking and study, just sit there and receive.   Mouth open!   Good children.   Comes in glossy books with lots of little boxes.   It’s colourful too!’

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

communication & managerialism & teaching craft wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
management wormhole: Resource
philosophy wormhole: is Koestler important // ?
results-led education wormhole: Now, let’s think this through, shall we? The clunkish philosophy driving today’s education.
valley wormhole: King of the World