It’s been a while…
And I know as I sit here and type this, come the end, this might be a futile effort that just ends up in the trash… unpublished yet exorcised… we shall see what courage remains…
I lost my confidence writing.
I lost my confidence full stop. Echoes yet remain… doubts about the intelligence of my frustrations, education and right to voice opinions…
“It all needs supporting with evidence or it becomes a rant”…
I’m of the conclusion now that I am the evidence… I live this… have recorded this… feel this…
Like the images we create… records of our passing time…
It may well be unsubstantiated, but for me is real and relevant…
I make no apologies to the academia.
I’ve spent my time contemplating… observing… considering…
My head is full… needs release, create a vacuum so I can start again…
Tangled inconsistencies may well spill out… bare with me please… let me heal the jigsaw…
In his first film as director and actor “The Man Without a Face”, Mel Gibson’s character Justin Mcleod who is portrayed as gifted and inspiring teacher, is questioned by the authorities, and in response to a certain set of questions questioning his professionalism alongside accusations of pedophilia, retorts with the shrewd statement “You just simply don’t get it”…
In these times of Mr Gove’s educational reforms, I find this fictional testimony extremely profound and relevant…
Mr Gove; You simply don’t get it!
Education parallels and constructs society – though politicians would have us believe otherwise – politicians aren’t the “Kingmakers”… yet at present the de-professionalizing of this once well-respected vocation is crippling the moral and very fabric of what it offers. The relentless pressure to measure, assess and compete is not fixed by removing or demoting subjects that offer respite. “ Non academic” now describes this subject we work so hard to promote…
I sat this morning with my Year 11 pupils… mock exam… 5 hours off timetable to start work on their final piece of their final course work… an admitted luxury… but real life… as professional artists work…
Their ideas evaporating from the worked pages of their sketchbooks, vying for position to be constructed onto their once blank canvases… those creative threads teased directly out of their heads, made magically to appear for me like a conjurers trick… the culmination of a seasons work.
I sat and considered their futures… tomorrows visionaries, designers and curators of planet home…
I considered my part in their arrival at this point… the worth-whileness of it… the privilege of formation… instruction…
…and I looked into a blank, possible future where this ceased to exist or was conditioned to be marginal…
…and I wondered…
Why don’t we ask them?
Why presume we know best?
In Year 9 we have something called options… where Year 9 pupils decide what they wish to choose to study for GCSE for their final two years of secondary education. Historically the presumption is then, that 14 year olds are capable of doing this – with the guidance of their parents – but ultimately (for the sake of argument) their choice…
So the precedent is that they are capable…
I don’t have to sell Art to my pupils. My numbers stack up. My Year 10 GCSE cohort this year is just below half of the year group and at present next years numbers are looking equally as good…
But there is an undercurrent…
What would you do if your school were to be judged on the outcomes in 8 (academic) selected subjects? As an educator? As a parent? Is there an inevitability here that the most able will be syphoned off for those 8? Pressurized? The “non academic’s” serving as holding pens?
The Chambers Dictionary has as one of its definitions for academic as: – “Theoretical only, of no practical importance or consequence”!
Do you read this in the same way as I do?
That’s a bit umm… unfortunate… isn’t it?
I repeat…
Mr Gove; You simply don’t get it!
