This report on BBCi hints at some of the problems faced by British teachers these days.
It's a kind of bugbear of mine, as I wanted to be a teacher once, and still would love the chance to do it.
Teaching has become way too political though, and way too dangerous. Slowly, teachers have had so many rights stripped away from them, and have been so lumbered down with new work and the demands of an ever-changing syllabus, that they have lost control in the classroom. They ca no longer demand respect, or follow up a threat with effective action.
I'm not in favour of corporal punishment, but I do think teachers should be defended for making and acting on the decisions they make during class time. There are situations you can't legislate on, and a busy classroom is one of those situations.
I was given another example this week too. As my savings from my last job (the one with the Bitch Assistant Manager) have run out, and as we've got a holiday booked for the start of July, and as Charlie's CFS is bad again, I've had to sign on for benefits. Well part of the signing-on process now is a simple test - the reason for which (I was told) is to spot and offer assistance to the more incapable people.
I pointed out that this was perfectly obvious to the "Claimant Advisor" conducting the interview. My Advisor agreed. I also pointed out that it was thoroughly ridiculous. My Advisor emphatically agreed. I continued by predicting that this faddy waste of time and resources wouldn't last very long beofre being scrapped in favour of common bloody sense. You can guess the reaction to that one.
There is a disturbing, sly, quietly increasing tendency by government to control every aspect of our lives through more and more complex legislation and harebrained schemes like this. I don't tink, however that things would get better under another government - I think it's the trend of the moment, and the desire to have desperately accurate figures to turn into meaningless statistics so that someone in an ivory tower somewhere in Whitehall can look at them and work out exactly how many idiots it takes to change a lightbulb.
