Wednesday, June 20, 2012
School
Coming home past the large infant primary school at Pound Lane, I passed what appeared to be about half the school having what appeared to be a lesson about how to mount a demonstration. The children were strung out along the pavement, maybe a hundred yards worth or more with sundry adults acting as marshals. Some the children were carrying home made banners, some as basic as a sheet of A4 with some scribble on it, and most were joining in the chanting about road safety near schools as they marched along.
When I was at secondary school we had a modest number of lessons called civics which, as far as I can remember, were mainly about how the Houses of Parliament worked and how bills were passed through them. Nothing about the sort of basic morality which featured in 'Les Malheurs de Sophie': learning to defer gratification and to listen to your elders and betters. Maybe that sort of thing was deemed to have been covered in primary school. But these are the sorts of things which children, as responsible adults designate ought to learn about.
But I am not at all sure that it is appropriate to teach them about how to demonstrate, assuming that that is what the Pound Lane children were up to. For one, it sounds very close to helping teachers promote whatever is on the NUT agenda for the week. For two, even if one thought that it was appropriate to teach such stuff in schools, one might think that an infant junior school is not the right sort of school. For three, what does the school do in the way of more basic morality? The sort of stuff that one used to get under the heading of RI? Parables and other lessons from the bible. Have we thrown the morality baby out with the biblical bath water - in favour of the nice easy option of walking about the streets shouting on a nice sunny day?
Which reminds me that I was wondering about the prodigal son the other day. OK, so it is all very irritating if you are the goody-goody stay at home son, but as a parent one can see how easy it would be to get into feasting the returned prodigal, against dubious promises of good behaviour in the future. Furthermore, without the carrot of feasting is the prodigal likely to return at all?
Irritating in the same way as it might be for someone of modest means who has saved all his life and has to pay for his own care home, while the chap of the same modest means but who chose to blow his on the gee-gees or up against the wall gets someone else to pay for his.
Much better stuff for children of tender years and little understanding than demonstrations.
And then, over the last few days, we have been hearing all about the exploits of a child with a mobile phone and an interest in school dinners. One might think it a worthy project for her to take all these pictures, get them beamed around the world and raise a fat wedge of money for some worthy cause. But, as a teacher, I would think one could get very cheesed off with children having active phones complete with cameras in class. Hard enough, especially in a bog standard comprehensive, which, by definition, is what most of them are going to be, to keep order as it is, without a background clatter and chatter of mobile phones. But how does one ban them in this day and age? One can hardly be searching the children on entry and I guess one would have to be satisfied with the time honoured confiscation if caught at it.
Plus, do I want the bother of having to deal with all the consequences of pictures of me on an off day or of children on a off day getting out into the wide world? Is it what I have been trained for? Is it a good use of my time? Do I want my day to be driven by what some tabloid editor thinks is going to shift newspapers? Do we want our headteachers to be spending a great chunk of their day managing media relations? All this openness comes at a price.
Against that, if everyone is at it, only a very small proportion is going to get seen by enough people to cause bother. The stuff might get out onto the web but who is going to look at it?
When I was at secondary school we had a modest number of lessons called civics which, as far as I can remember, were mainly about how the Houses of Parliament worked and how bills were passed through them. Nothing about the sort of basic morality which featured in 'Les Malheurs de Sophie': learning to defer gratification and to listen to your elders and betters. Maybe that sort of thing was deemed to have been covered in primary school. But these are the sorts of things which children, as responsible adults designate ought to learn about.
But I am not at all sure that it is appropriate to teach them about how to demonstrate, assuming that that is what the Pound Lane children were up to. For one, it sounds very close to helping teachers promote whatever is on the NUT agenda for the week. For two, even if one thought that it was appropriate to teach such stuff in schools, one might think that an infant junior school is not the right sort of school. For three, what does the school do in the way of more basic morality? The sort of stuff that one used to get under the heading of RI? Parables and other lessons from the bible. Have we thrown the morality baby out with the biblical bath water - in favour of the nice easy option of walking about the streets shouting on a nice sunny day?
Which reminds me that I was wondering about the prodigal son the other day. OK, so it is all very irritating if you are the goody-goody stay at home son, but as a parent one can see how easy it would be to get into feasting the returned prodigal, against dubious promises of good behaviour in the future. Furthermore, without the carrot of feasting is the prodigal likely to return at all?
Irritating in the same way as it might be for someone of modest means who has saved all his life and has to pay for his own care home, while the chap of the same modest means but who chose to blow his on the gee-gees or up against the wall gets someone else to pay for his.
Much better stuff for children of tender years and little understanding than demonstrations.
And then, over the last few days, we have been hearing all about the exploits of a child with a mobile phone and an interest in school dinners. One might think it a worthy project for her to take all these pictures, get them beamed around the world and raise a fat wedge of money for some worthy cause. But, as a teacher, I would think one could get very cheesed off with children having active phones complete with cameras in class. Hard enough, especially in a bog standard comprehensive, which, by definition, is what most of them are going to be, to keep order as it is, without a background clatter and chatter of mobile phones. But how does one ban them in this day and age? One can hardly be searching the children on entry and I guess one would have to be satisfied with the time honoured confiscation if caught at it.
Plus, do I want the bother of having to deal with all the consequences of pictures of me on an off day or of children on a off day getting out into the wide world? Is it what I have been trained for? Is it a good use of my time? Do I want my day to be driven by what some tabloid editor thinks is going to shift newspapers? Do we want our headteachers to be spending a great chunk of their day managing media relations? All this openness comes at a price.
Against that, if everyone is at it, only a very small proportion is going to get seen by enough people to cause bother. The stuff might get out onto the web but who is going to look at it?
# posted by Jim @ 4:28 AM 
