some day I'll write this better

[nny]

I have a post brewing somewhere in the back of my mind, and all sorts of things feed into it, but mostly it's about how it fucking sucks to be teaching kids about a world in which you are invisible.

There are things I want to teach them, things I want to challenge and take the time to explain and show them how fucking awful what they're saying is, but I don't have the time or the curricular support or the power to do that.

And I just. When are they going to learn? If there is a time it's this, now, because who's gonna challenge them later? If they go straight from school to the working world, if they think of themselves as grown ups with all the arrogance of unchallenged youth, who's going to teach them to respect women and queer people and different cultures and beliefs?

I am arrogant enough to think I could change their minds (and that it's important - even critical - that I do), and I'm idealistic enough to want to. But I can't do it because 'education' in England is too big a thing to take on, and as a bisexual woman... until they're older, if the hegemony of education has its way, I barely even exist.



[this post exists with the caveat that other people will help them, and that some of them will get a hell of a lot of chances, and that I have it better than PoCs who are denied agency by the way in which history is taught. It also exists with the knowledge that beliefs can be reinforced by the way in which the opposite is taught, with the recognition that glossing over things is often preferable to frank and volatile discussion, and the realisation that sometimes teaching can be a fucking popularity contest, and the teacher who makes the most gay jokes wins.]

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

:(

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Education is a system and the system fucking sucks. I am saying nothing new, but most days I can just focus on the little bit I'm doing?

>:(

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I know, I know. :( It blows. I don't even know how we'd start, with changing it.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

It's chicken and egg. Without changing the systems that shape it we can't change it, but every person who might change it is a product of it, and it's - it takes the exceptional to think outside of what is taught. Essentially it takes the most successful products of education to have a prospect of changing it, and considering it's often the sphere in which they operate, is it in their best interests? Ugh. I make no sense, I'm barely awake right now. XD

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

You make sense to me. :( I'm sorry it's wearing on you. Please don't be downhearted.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I will keep battling on! I suspect I'll be less cynical when I get out of my fucking school, in which they are now removing those students who have Cs in English and Maths and moving them into an additional qualification. It mightn't have any particular use for them, but it looks good for the school! And, incidentally, ruins the kids' chances of improving on their grades in the summer.

What. The everloving. Fuck.

You have no right being in education if you don't value the individual. And it's... designed so that it's really fucking hard to function and do your job to the official designation of 'right' if you do.

SIGH.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Honestly it seems like league tables were one of the most poisonous things that could possibly happen to the education system. :( Schools shouldn't be run as businesses! They're there to bring out the best in people, damn it! ARGH. MY IDEALISM IS CROSS.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Honestly it seems like league tables were one of the most poisonous things that could possibly happen to the education system.

THIS. SO SO MUCH THIS. URGH FUCKING LEAGUE TABLES. Schools are punished for taking on the challenges, and that's why kids are excluded with a fucking slingshot. Like, I swear the school is celebrating the additional funding they've gained by using some of it to allow themselves to get rid of kids that need fucking help.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

This is insane. Why ... what ... ARGH.

AS A FORMER "PROBLEM STUDENT" ...

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I KNOW. I mean, yes, there are people that we genuinely do not have the capacity to deal with. Kids who genuinely cannot cope in a mainstream school, and I get that and I understand that, but at the same time I just cannot deal with the fact that we are giving up on them. The way in which education is designed just Does Not Work with some people, and we should have the capacity to adapt to that, to provide a better option.

I just think. There should be promotion of mentoring and pupils and teachers working together to teach and a flexible curriculum that focuses more on how to learn and how to teach yourself and others about the stuff you're interested in, instead of trying to manufacture well-rounded individuals by just beating them enough that the corners and interesting shapes come off.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Haha, the cynic in me says that teaching a generation to think critically and intelligently is the last thing anyone in a position of power wants. I mean, then people'd be aware of how shafted they're constantly being, and how they do not deserve dick of it.

There should be promotion of mentoring and pupils and teachers working together to teach and a flexible curriculum that focuses more on how to learn and how to teach yourself and others about the stuff you're interested in, instead of trying to manufacture well-rounded individuals by just beating them enough that the corners and interesting shapes come off.

I know. I know. I know. :(

[pennyplainknits.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I'm out of the school loop since I left the library service (I was an outreach worker with failing schools) but WTF!?

Should I by some miracle have kids they're going to a montessori school, committment to public education be damned.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I NO RITE.

I am so beyond disappointed with the school. I've allowed myself to live in a cloud land of nice people, and I've just ignored quite how stupid things are getting there, but no matter how good my department is there are so many things wrong with it.

[kassie-opia.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, this must be so frustrating ):
(for what it's worth, I would much rather have had some teachers like you than the ones I did have, the majority of whom thought gay jokes/discussing the female pupil's appearances was pretty entertaining stuff, and any challenge to that was political correctness gone maaaad. Ugh.)

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The world needs militant teachers. People I knew at Uni said they would never teach in this country, because they were idealists, because the kids over here are so privileged. And I don't deny for a second that they are, but that is why they need their privilege pointed out to them. I had some little bastards the other day deciding that because they were having a disagreement with some of the asylum seeking kids, they should report them to immigration.

It took a while to find the words to tell them how unbelievably ignorant they were, and I wasn't able to do it even remotely as effectively as I'd've liked.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Yeah.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

:( sometimes it sucks. And knowing that there is nothing I can do to make it suck less, except on such a stupidly small scale, can make it really hard to do my job, sometimes.

[pennyplainknits.livejournal.com]

If teachers are making gay jokes, surely, surely, that is a hostile working environment, and totally contrary to all the HR equalities policies. Bring down the boot of rage!

(I know, I know, easier said than done. But it makes my blood boil that they can get away with that)

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I challenge every kid I hear making gay jokes, using gay insults, and generally weaponising the word 'gay'. And then I hear teachers making jokes about boys being too close to each other, and using gay as a joking insult, and I'm not allowed to challenge them in front of the kids, and I am not sure enough of my position to challenge them in private, and I - the cowardly part of me isn't sure I want to come out in such an undeniable way to people I don't much like and don't trust not to use it against me. I will never lie about my sexuality, but when it's so easily used as a weapon it's sometimes easier to just not mention it. I mean, it's a pretty open secret, and I wear a pride band and cut my hair short and, like I say, challenge every gay joke ever, but. You suddenly become the Voice and the Target and the Representative, and I don't know if I can do that as well. Not yet. Not until I can cope with the rest of my job.

I dunno. Maybe I should ask for a slot in an inset day for some sensitivity training. Maybe I should speak to the SLT and see if it's possible to get that sorted. I have academic evidence that the sensitivity training does make a difference, I did my mini-diss on it during my training...

*ponders*

[pennyplainknits.livejournal.com]

Can you speak in confidence in HR and request some sensitivity training? I can't remember (or don't know if I know) but if you are teaching in a secondary school especially, surely it makes sense that kids who are accepting their sexualities, kids who could be vulnerable, know that if they approach their teachers that same teacher isn't going to make jokes about it afterwards.

I totally get not wanting to be the Representative on top of everything else though, I guess you need to pick your battles to some extent.

[batyatoon]

This. If you can't challenge your fellow teachers directly, you should at least be able to talk to the higher-ups about it.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

That last stuff! It sounds like you'll feel a lot better if you do something, and sensitivity training is 1. a good idea anyway whatever, 2. not specifically aimed at anyone and 3. not going to bring shit down on your head.

If it helps also? I don't think this stuff is a One Chance To Change Their Minds thing. I think it's more like water wearing away rock - some of them are going to be made of granite and never show any change, some of them it will take a million tiny things one on top of another to wear it away, but they will. And some of them are one good storm away from breaking free of the rock entirely. And you're part of that.

*hug*

[hestia-lacey.livejournal.com]

I see the things you're talking about happening in schools I know from reception class and up, and I absolutely agree with you about the flaws and faults in the current education system in the UK.

I'm not a teacher, but I am a leader at my local Scout group, and it saddens me to say that much of what you talk about here I see reflected there, too. I find myself in a similar situation in that the more senior leaders perpetuate attitudes and behaviour that I think we should be actively discouraging. The kids will throw 'gay' around as an insult without a second thought, and I've had incidents on camp before where two of my boys were literally hunted and set on by boys from another group because they'd rather sit and help make a camp-blanket with me to earn a badge than play football with them - which obviously made them gay, which was obviously something that deserved punishment. As a female leader in an all-male group, I've had to push hard against their ideas of what women and girls 'should' be just to get their attention.
I try to affect a change where I can, but find myself constantly knocked back by the 'what can you do?' attitude of senior leaders, and the unspoken idea that because we're not teachers in schools, and because we're supposed to be about having fun, it's not down to us to tackle these sorts of issues.

And sometimes, I just plain don't know what to do. One of the group once called me 'whore' because I stopped him playing a game when I caught him cheating. When I tried to explain why that was unacceptable language, he said: 'why? My dad says it all the time.'

Seeing you post about this does give me hope, though, because it shows that there are some teachers out there who are having thoughts about change, and who are passionate about them - however hopeless it might sometimes seem!

[mattp.livejournal.com]

If there is a time it's this, now, because who's gonna challenge them later?

<3 for even thinking about it. I don't know what the solution is, but it's refreshing to know that at least one teacher even gives it some thought.

My lovely daughter

[(Anonymous)]

Just think how much YOU'RE learning! x