From a recently retired grammar school teacher:

“In this first decade of the century many teachers have reached the end of their careers with the feeling that education in this country has lost its way, that the ambitions they had as young teachers have been thwarted and that opportunities have been wasted.

From the top down, educational provision in this country has too long been permeated by short-term utilitarian aims. The perceived need to keep education spending on a tight leash, for instance, belittled the enthusiasm and willingness of at least one generation of teachers, thereby changing the nature of teaching and the quality of classroom experience for all. This in turn has led to sullenness, exhaustion, financial uncertainty and – ironically – more expenditure, e.g. on the army of classroom assistants, and the social fall-out resulting from wasted talent amongst the young. The obsession with control in the educational sector (contrasting nicely with the lack of such controls in the banking and financial sector ), the enforced introduction of targets, inspections, key-stage tests, micro-managed course ‘specifications’, competition between schools, league-tables, one-shoe-fits-all qualifications, over-emphasis on academic ‘success’ for all – all this has dehumanised the teaching and learning process. To adapt a legal phrase: decision-makers have perverted the course of education.

As the Briefing Paper demonstrates, for many years major decisions affecting the everyday life of schools have been made without any reference to human psychology – to how pupils, parents and teachers will react to initiatives handed down from on high. Every teacher, after a few years in the classroom, knows the value of experience and adaptability based upon the needs and capabilities of their charges. Political decisions affecting education have, on the contrary, frequently been made in haste, based on little research, if any, and with for short-term political goals. The affects of such decisions last for decades, and politicians bear a heavy responsibility for the poor standing of British education today. There is an underlying assumption that teachers are merely production-line operatives and pupils merely their raw materials.

There exists, at the heart of all political thinking, a fundamental distrust of teachers. It may be that an independent, intelligent, generally unselfish body of individuals is deemed to be a threat to the establishment, especially when put in charge of the next generations of thinkers. It may also be that half-baked childish notions about teaching are continued into adulthood and affect decision-makers. Added to this, and supported by the press, there has also been an increasing tendency over the last few decades to ‘keep teachers in their place’ because of their long holidays – a kind of national envy. For whatever reason, the teaching profession has been cut adrift from society, and needs now to be reconnected.

If the nature of teaching has been debased, so has the nature of learning – ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d’ in a curricular straightjacket which has strangled any initiative on the part of either pupil or teacher. Modular courses, lock-step teaching, exam-factory mentality, retakes, re-retakes, examination papers which insult the intelligence or merely confuse, haphazard marking…. Small wonder the youth of today is disaffected – they have been deprived of the experience and freedom of those who educate them. All is now counted, ticked, unadventurous … small-minded.

As a recently retired teacher, I can only regret that the research and conclusions of the 21^st Century Learning Initiative as set out in the Briefing Paper were not available 40 or 50 years ago – as the mid-20^th Century Learning Initiative.”

Read the Briefing Paper

This article is tagged: briefing paper.