I did grin and bear it. Had I written the piece on my own behalf, there would have been much more about what went on at the Department of Educational Studies. I would have written about the inane lectures, or the mornings we PGCE students spent playing games like (for example) a cross between catch and rock-paper-scissors — good fun, but what did it have to do with being a secondary English teacher? But honestly, who cares if an adult wastes 10 months of her life? The tragedy is that millions of young people are wasting the most important years of their lives in a failed system. I wrote the article for them.

Josie recommends making a difference in another kind of school, which is what’s what I’ve done. I don’t think it’s possible for one person to make a difference in such a thoroughly rotten system. That’s another reason why I wrote the article: nothing will change in these schools without pressure from outside.

Readers might be interested in the following posts from various sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4486306.stm:

My stepson is supposed to be an above average-GCSE candidate and yet when he had English coursework from the school, essays appeared to require just filling in the blanks. A sheet was provided with a sentence followed by room for him to write in a line or sometimes two lines of his own text. They were even directed to the lines in the book/play that were needed. When he couldn’t work out what was needed to fill in the gap I quizzed him about the plot and he wouldn’t know. He hadn’t even read all the book/play.
A school can legally use this scaffolding technique but yet the pupils therefore don’t actually have to know anything. It wasn’t like that in my day, although I believe we were the last year to get 100% coursework for English Literature GCSE due to cheating! I personally don’t believe that any child who hands in an essay that has been “scaffolded” should achieve an A or B grade – what credit should a child get who has achieved an A grade without scaffolding?
Bec, south Wales

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/merit-based-pay-for-teachers/#comments:

June 18th,
2007
9:38 am
…I am all for rewarding teachers for good work, but the manner in which this is done needs to be carefully considered. I used to work as a teacher in the US and now work in the UK. We have performance based pay related to student achievement that is measured on standardized tests and a coursework system that is “moderated” externally by an exam board. I, my department and my school are all judged on those results. I am encouraged to “bump up” grades on pieces of coursework that can’t be moderated and I spend my time making kids rewrite every piece of work that doesn’t meet their target grade. It is miserable for them and miserable for me. I often feel that I am even misleading society by coaching students so that they achieve grades on written work that I know they would never achieve on their own. I actually would prefer not to have the performance related pay and maintain my integrity as a teacher. However, as my school and department are also judged, I get a lot of pressure from above…
— Posted by Teaching Overseas

MarkHoward – 10:58pm Dec 22, 2004 GMT (# 120 of 121)

Far worse than anything Prince Charles may have said about people not getting ideas above their station, I heard from two right-on school teachers.

We were giving our time to help Coventry Trades Council celebrate its 100th anniversary.

One of the trades unionists said, “let’s sponsor a debate between schools about the role of unions today”.

The teachers piped up: “Ooh, can’t have debates. Elitist. Grammar schools and all that.”

I was gobsmacked. “What about Ben Tillet,” I asked, “the shoemaker whose eloquent speeches inspired the London dockers? What’s so wrong about learning to speak and inspire people? Don’t working class kids have the right to be taught to communicate?”

There was silence from the right-on teachers. They were not the first or the last enemies of knowledge that I met in the teaching trade. But they were enemies of talent, enemies of aspiration, enemies of children.

[from a comments board on The Guardian's website]

(The links are probably dead by now.)

With reading i can read more or less anywhere but with music I sometimes have to be in a certain place to fully appreciate it such as with classical music i would have completely different emotions listening to motzart in my flat as to listening to it in liverpools anglican cathedral!
Although one day I would love to read wuthering Heights on the moor think I’ll save that one for the lighter nights

‘I wear my mask for warmth’

‘Believe, but leave the truth untested still’

last stanza – less and less, ripening to excess, all in balance stilled
I may say, you may guess – yes, “leave the truth untested still” check-mating all her line by line contraindications yet also confirming their human shape in words and image

she’s moved

She is hard to fathom – which is what she wants. It is to do with herself, or ‘myself’ as we all think; the contradictoriness of our nature, the two voices within us, often enough, but, also that which has to look out to the world – and which the world pries into. Difficult, vulnerable and resilient – she clothes a deeper message – all the check-mating of her line by line contraindications, confirming what the human heart and soul recognise in ‘this business of living’ – that words can dispute any absolute synchronization between each yet simultaneously bind them, in this, our temporal world