Teachers strike

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Teaching is a bit like Nursing and the NHS.
Systematic failings in Hospitals and Sir David Nicholson manages to slime his way out of responsibility......next news is David Cameron suggesting that nurses should 'learn' compassion by doing up to 12 months as a Health Care assistant before they can go on and train.

Most student nurses supplement their bursary by working as HCA's........and, can compassion be learned?
If we need to teach compassion to nursing candidates then we are choosing the wrong people to put into Uni.

NHS/Teaching...both political footballs. Directives issued from political leaders who have no concept of the problems at the coal face.

Think we've travelled down that road before Margaret, you can't teach or learn compassion you either have it or not, and its easy to see too, It never takes me long to find out if any nurse lacks compassion, funnily over 30 years off being an in patient in 7 different hospitals I've come across very few thankfully, but it certainly something you can't teach. In a way its the same with people who work for care agencies, I've been quite lucky really I've had the same agency for going on 4 years now and I've had some really genuine people coming into my home, I lost my first carer when he was taken ill himself, since then I've had two more, both top rate and one girl and now I've got another male, so I've been very lucky in with this.

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by DaveinGermany

Aye, that was in the days before leftist policies of everyone's the same & there shouldn't be any disparity regardless of the individuals abilities to learn. Insidious & disruptive thinking like this just exacerbated the situation & emphasised the differences between the capabilities of the kids causing further consternation & upset for those not so gifted & quick to learn, shattering their self esteem & heightening their sense of inferiority making them resentful & disruptive.

Net result, no interest in learning, or such a feeling of disillusion that they couldn't get away from education & the chance to make their future better fast enough. And the upshot of this we can see everyday in city centres throughout the Country.

Great post Dave, spot on with that, there was nothing wrong with brighter kids going to Grammar Schools, they'd found their level, to hump everybody together in comprehensive schools did nothing in the education of kids it held some back whilst making others feel inadequate.

[Eric]

Originally Posted by accyman

this is actually good news

theres beer in hell

That's the good news ... bad news is that Hell is a Massey's House.

[Gordon Booth]

Originally Posted by Eric

That's the good news ... bad news is that Hell is a Massey's House.

No such thing as bad ale, Eric. And if you end up in Hell you'll not cock your snoot even at a pint of Massey's.

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

No such thing as bad ale, Eric. And if you end up in Hell you'll not cock your snoot even at a pint of Massey's.

Nope ... Masseys is a circle of hell whose horror not even the fertile imagination of Dante could depict.

By the way ... the education system is beyone fixing; kinda like democracy "Education" stopped being "education" a while back ... it's little more than job training. In fact, it is failing so badly it doesn't even qualify as job training. Which doesn't matter, 'cause there ain't that many jobs to go around anyways. Civilization ... whatever that is ... has got where it is today because of man's creativitity and his willingness to take risks ... wimmin too, of course, they are equally to blame ... or one could say that we and the world we live in is as screwed up as it is because we have too much smarts and not enough sense to handle them right.

[cashman]

Originally Posted by Eric

That's the good news ... bad news is that Hell is a Massey's House.

Aye but they did a good Bottle Eric. The owd Bass Blue.

[Guinness]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

No such thing as bad ale

You've obviously never had a pint of anything in Blackpool, closest thing to hell for an aesthetic drinker on this planet

[egg&chips]

Did they do something called Jennings gold medal at the Elite? It did not taste god.

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Guinness

You've obviously never had a pint of anything in Blackpool, closest thing to hell for an aesthetic drinker on this planet

I can go one better Guinness, Fremlins in Kent. Once called in a pub in Beniden, my mates brother was the landlord and working near by we called on the way to our digs We both ordered a pint of bitter, Trev shook his head saying the Guinness is good. A few minutes later a couple of local farmers came in and he served them bitter, as he put them on the bar he just looked at us and we understood why, there were floaters in it and looked the most appetising drink I'd ever seen

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by egg&chips

Did they do something called Jennings gold medal at the Elite? It did not taste god.

I occasionally drink a natural beer brewed by Jennings, which is quite tasty

[Studio25]

Originally Posted by accyman

what i never see addressed is what if you have a good teacher lumbered with a bunch of thick kids.They dont get a payrise because the kids make them look bad....

"Thick kids" aren't the problem. Teachers can be assessed on levels of progress so that they're all assessed equally, or at least as equally as possible. You don't assess the teacher on the final grades the kids get, you assess them on how much the kids have improved.

Disruptive kids are a problem, but if they can't be dealt with, maybe teaching is the wrong profession for the individual? I got an IT management job quite early in my career and got walked all over by my staff. I got out and waited another 7 years 'til I had more experience. It happens everywhere, and in all those other jobs you have to find ways of motivating people without the threat of a stick.

Originally Posted by jaysay

...when I went to school we respected teachers, we had to, teachers can to school looking like teachers can't remember a male teacher back in those days who came to work without a collar and tied, but that all changed in the seventies when teachers started looking like hippies and the word was don't call me sir call me Jim, things went downhill from then on....

Not in my school! I was schooled in the 70s and 80s and the cane was used (at primary), and board-rubber missiles (at secondary, as a precursor to the cane).

Originally Posted by DaveinGermany

...some parents certainly don't help with their attitudes towards academia... And finally the child must also be apportioned some blame for lack of achievement in their studies, not necessarily due to outside influences, but their own basic laziness & disinterest.

Teachers should be able to handle laziness, but the disinterest is the responsibility of parents and, ultimately, government. There are plenty of kids at my son's school whose attitude is "I'm going to spend my days after my school career getting free money and watching Jeremy Kyle - what's the point of working hard now?" That's a problem that can't be fixed in school.

Originally Posted by egg&chips

One thing that really bugs me about education in politics is the tendency to compare the attainment of children in different countries by some folk and their campaigning for the implementation of some educational aspects from one country being used by another...

They don't just do it on a nationwide political level. OFSTED compare a school to "similar schools" to make decisions on whether there's a performance issue. It's bad enough comparing one year's results to another, as you can get a different incoming level of education each year, but to compare with another school based on the fact that eight years ago, you got a similar set of results to them is just ridiculous.

Originally Posted by egg&chips

And to just to cap it all, we now keep 'em there till they're 18 just in case they manage to get a position in a job at 16 that could have done them some good and given them a decent start at a career...

Apprenticeships count - so kids can still leave school at 16 for work if that's their plan...

[egg&chips]

[QUOTE=Studio25;1050552]"Thick kids" aren't the problem. Teachers can be assessed on levels of progress so that they're all assessed equally, or at least as equally as possible. You don't assess the teacher on the final grades the kids get, you assess them on how much the kids have improved.

True, but my school is still considered as being at risk because of us missing floor targets last year. We did not get a big enough percentage attaining at the right level. This despite being in the top 1% nationally for achievement - the progress they make.

[egg&chips]

They don't just do it on a nationwide political level. OFSTED compare a school to "similar schools" to make decisions on whether there's a performance issue. It's bad enough comparing one year's results to another, as you can get a different incoming level of education each year, but to compare with another school based on the fact that eight years ago, you got a similar set of results to them is just ridiculous.

Again agreed. It's not the OFSTED judgements I treat with disdain, but the sages at institutions like the OECD whose research is the used by octogenarian press barons to bring back learning sines and cosines by rote.
World education rankings: which country does best at reading, maths and science? | News | guardian.co.uk

[Eric]

Just crossed my mind that teachers used to strike all the time ... in fact, I've been struck by many teachers. Ben Johnson used to make a ritual of striking; and each morning he would announce his intention to strike numerous boys in order to get his day off to a swinging good start

I've come to the conclusion, slowly, and over the years, that all one needs to learn is language ... and as the most obvious lingua franca on this planet is English, that would be the language to learn. Once one has a firm grasp of English and an understanding of its almost limitless potential, then one can learn anything else. In fact, one can look at other "subjects" as merely languages that one can access through English. Mathematics is a language ... it just uses short forms. Those daunting words "some assembly required" are not all that scary for someone who can read and comprehend written instructions ... unless, of course, those instructions were badly translated from the original Chinese Language is power.