Am I Already Dead?

I teach physics in a secondary school; GCSE* (for 15-16 year olds) and Advanced Level(for 17-18 year olds). I've been doing this on and off for the last 39 years.

I have always been regarded by colleagues as a fairly effective teacher. My pupils normally achieve satisfactory or better grades.

When I first left teaching in the early 1980's I was a head of department. I found that I did not like the way things were shaping up with the Thatcher government. When Sir Keith Joseph suggested that voluntary extra-curricular activities (training a football team and taking them to a match on Saturdays, say) be written into teachers' contracts that was, for me, a final straw.

Schools run on good will. This is basic.

Out of where on earth did this Philistine crawl. He looked like a nervous intellectual type. The system was in his hands....yet he appeared to understand less than nothing.

In those days, it must be admitted, I did not understand much myself.

I worked in the building trades as a self-employed operator until my body gave out about 10 years ago. I returned to the classroom.

It pays the rent.

It has been horrible but fascinating to observe the changes that have taken place over the decades. I, like many others, loathe the culture that now predominates inside schools (and, seemingly, more or less everywhere else). Yet I have, painfully and perhaps shamefully, survived inside this system (not including an episode of being sacked for 'gross misconduct' then winning in court under the 'Whistleblowing Act' a year or so later....but that's another story).

However, over the last year or two I have found myself struggling in new ways. Some of this is due to way I upset some (a minority of) staff by voicing opinions about bankers, think-tanks, politicians, Ofsted and our collaboration with the programmes of social engineering we are all required to inflict on the innocents in our charge.

......but now there is another factor. I feel I don't quite know how to teach my subject any more. I am increasingly aware that the GCSE exams have become simply quizzes, like an episode of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?". There is no noticeable testing of understanding of the subject. I had a lesson inspection and did not score well (4 on a scale of 1 to 5).
My head of department (she has been teaching for 5 years) said, "You strayed outside the syllabus once or twice".

I said that I was answering questions from the class that required me to do so.

"You should not do so."

She said, "Also, some of the children were confused occasionally."

I replied that " It's physics. This is not unusual. Some of the concepts are difficult."

"You don't have to bother with all that. Just go through the information required by the syllabus. It's all on two pages of the revision guide. That's all they need to know. There's no reason they should be confused." (I truly promise I am not making this up)

"What about the formulae? Don't the children need to understand those?"

"No. Just show them how to put the numbers in."

"So", I asked, "You are asking me not to try and help students understand the subject. They must learn to simply repeat facts that they need to know and learn how to select formulae from the list at the front of the exam booklet (given in words not pesky symbols. Correct units are on the exam paper in the space before the gap for their numerical answer), then put two numbers in to find the value of a third.

"Yes", she said.

I thought to myself.

"Am I already dead?"

The appalling thing is that I know she is right. This is what the system now demands of a teacher......and we are expected to prepare multi-media differentiated lessons delivered in a variety of teaching/learning styles (hands on/group activities/practical/paper exercises/didactic) to impart information during the lesson that is little more than a stupifying fact-fest.

This is how the system wants children (and citizens) to function.

DON'T BOTHER YOUR HEAD TRYING UNDERSTANDING ANYTHING. THAT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S BUSINESS.

KNOW WHAT WE WANT YOU TO KNOW.

FOLLOW PROCEDURES.

THIS IS HOW YOU WILL FIND SUCCESS IN LIFE.

NOT THROUGH DEVELOPING YOUR MIND AND YOUR GOD-GIVEN TALENTS.
NOT BY ASKING QUESTIONS(THAT WE WILL REFUSE TO ANSWER, BY THE WAY).
NOT BY LEARNING IN THE AGE OLD WAY, FROM YOUR OWN MISTAKES AND EXPLORATIONS BY TRIAL AND ERROR.

BE OBEDIENT.

(shouts)FOLLOW PROCEDURES AND BE OBEDIENT.

Of course, the system will never admit that this is what is going on. The system is all for 'real education' and 'improving standards'.

Bogus Bulls*it.

Standards! standards! standards! Poor teaching! More inspections! More self-regulation! More progress assessments! More performance assessments! More targets! More Exams!

For the last 30 years politicians and teachers have talked of little else but raising standards.......and this is where all this often intense and bullying blather has taken us.

Let those who would weep, weep now.

The important parts of the process are subliminal (but becoming less so) and recognised keenly by the unconscious mind that understands instinctively what it must do to survive.

I got quite angry about this and about another issue (a 'performance management' booklet I had disrespectfully filled in). I realised I was, by my behaviour, in effect offering my resignation. It would have quickly come to that. My HOD, being a kind individual (who had not disagreed with any of my objections but who is keen to please her superiors and has read ALL of the OFSTED literature), asked me to think again and gave me a couple of hours to reconsider my approach to these issues. If there was anywhere to go, an alternative, I would have resigned. If I had the money I would not have resigned, I would have walked.....but this culture is everywhere and indeed more savagely implemented in other institutions. I had to either make myself unemployed (again) and, probably, unemployable, or swallow my pride and compromise my integrity (excuse me for that self-regarding joke. I still prefer to believe I have some integrity left.....but I'd better face it. We are all compromised by our participation in this culture. Maybe I'm just learning to get a little more honest about a situation that has been much the same for many years, though I do know this. They couldn't have got away with this 'quiz' sh*t 10 or 15 years ago. People would not have stood for it. Now, however, we are that much more inanimate. That much less confident, more discouraged, more helpless. These people know what they are doing. They proceed with caution. Step-by-step. Softly, softly, .........catchee monkey.......and here we are.....)

Almost nothing can be done within the system. The lockstep is in place. We are now surviving within a 'soft tyranny'. It is conform or lose everything.

It is obviously the same within our political culture at large.

We are being trained into helplessness and until something major changes, that is exactly what we are.

Helpless.

I have been told by Bishop Williamson, a friend, that " It's all over. The game, for now at least, is lost."

" Man has turned from his God and this is the consequence."

I'd like to think there is still a point in trying to organise resistance to the bankster plutocrats, to these creators of wars and financial collapses, to these Luciferians who would displace God, to these destroyers of our children's futures, to these degenerate parasites who rob humanity of the fruits of their labour, to these fiends who have driven Christ from our communities, to these devils who have undermined social cohesion through faith, family, race and nation......

.......to these Frankfurt School-Communist-Globalists who understand that the way to destroy us is to redesign the style of question in science examinations.

Here's one from last year (this is from the 'chemistry' section, OCR board GCSE)

Q8. Mr Roberts painted his door red.





(Half A4 page-sized picture of the front of a detached house, windows, a garden, a tree, a nice bright sun, Mr Roberts and, of course, a door......in case you are having trouble imagining a door in context.)








(a) Why did Mr Roberts paint his door?



(There is a definite answer to this by the way. It is on page 161 (or something) of the Revision Guide.)


YOU! AT THE BACK! STOP LAUGHING. IT'S NOT FUNNY.



It really isn't.











(thinks again)

"Am I already dead?"


PS
Quotes from Bertrand Russell's book, "The Impact of Science on Society", 1953

"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda.

“Of these the most influential is what is called 'education.' Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part....

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment."

"Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class.

“The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.

"Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible."

“When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."




PPS September 11th 2010

Really can't cope with any more of this stuff. Resigned.

Leaving Christmas.