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

[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.