Teaching is to Emancipate

It’s funny how things change. Kirkcaldy High School’s rector, Lindsay Roy, has shattered staff morale at the Prime Minister’s Alma Mater by announcing that he is seeking nomination as the Labour Party’s candidate in the by-election for the Westminster seat forced by the death of John MacDougall.
I can’t pretend to know Mr. Roy’s mind, nor be in his confidence but I have been fortunate enough to have been the beneficiary of his support and advice both during my time at Kirkcaldy and since. What I know of him is his capacity for work, his organisation and dedication to the task. These are the qualities that have brought him the success he has had in starting the turn-around at Kirkcaldy High in the few months he has been there. Facing his staff this week must have been for him like strangling an unwanted puppy.

See also The Times, The Guardian and The Courier.

According to that august organ of authority, the Daily Mash, the Advertising Standards Authority has banned a teacher recruitment advertisement claiming “… there would be banter” with friendly children. This on the back of an earlier ban on an advert “which suggested teenagers were able to construct whole sentences and demonstrate an interest in anything other than themselves.”

I wonder what your experience has been?

Picked this up from Lifehacker… a neat little toy to instantly add speech bubbles to your pictures. As if there wasn’t enough lame comedy on the web. Get it at kyolo.com.

… some pupils doodle on the blank back page. One pupil made this contribution on the back page of a Physics Radiations NAB (Unit Test):

I thought it was brilliant. (She passed the test!)

Teachers - good ones - are particularly good at helping each other. Sharing good practice, sharing resources and making things easier for each other to make the education experience of our children as good as it can be so that they can become as good as they can become.

One example of this is my good friend Martin Cunningham. He spends a lot of time producing really good coloured resources for the children. These he has shared through his former Local Authority employer’s website free of charge. I’d like to think that my own efforts are well received around the country, and judging by the traffic (about 15 thousand separate sessions this week) , that’s not an unreasonable conclusion to reach. I was particularly pleased to find a plug for my site on the side of a bus in one of Martin’s booklets:

It’s interesting and informative to notice how this file has been modified, without permission, as it appears on the Fife Council website:

Well, what do you think of that? I think that on the anniversary of the blocking of this website by Fife Council, and in the deafening silence that meets my attempts to get it reinstated, all I can do is laugh and give thanks.

Thanks to Krysia for tagging me with this meme, which has attracted some inspirational blog entries around the world.

My picture is about the excitement in teaching outside of the comfort zone: taking the risk responsibly, engaging in life with the children and being prepared to allow them their own individual discoveries in the context of a supported learning environment - in this case, up a tree.

Meme: Passion Quilt

I take the liberty of tagging Ollie Bray, Neil Winton, Tess Watson, Andrew Brown and Sinclair MacKenzie.

The rules are simple.
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

It’s well known that teaching and learning improve whenever teachers get together. We saw fantastic sharing of good practice in new technologies and other things at Teachmeet07 at the Scottish Learning Festival and when the event was exported to BETT in London it became a global institution, attended physically and virtually by educators from around the world.

Next week sees the Teachmeet series return to Scotland. Speakers and lurkers are signing up on the wiki already (including myself). Come along, share some great ideas, see some new technologies and meet some great people - people like you - in a stimulating environment.

What’s a teachmeet? Read all about it and how to set up your own local event here.

Oooh! Oooh! Looks like it’ll be available on flashmeeting!

I have a great deal of time for our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. We do not necessarily agree on politics - I actively opposed his introduction of IR35 when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, surrounded as he was at the time by the likes of Dopey Dawn Primarolo - but I know him to be an honourable and charitable man of principle. What happens, then, to such a man when promoted to the highest level of authority and influence in the land?

Take his latest article in the Grauniad, for example. He speaks valiantly about the importance of education:

we can be the first generation to commit ourselves to offer all our young people the fullest possible chance to make the most of all their talents

and yet he scatters his thoughts with such utter tosh as

Globalisation dictates that the nations that succeed will be those that bring out the best in people and their potential.

It is evident that Globalisation means economic anarchy: you’ll see more stories like Young’s shedding workers in Scotland where the prawns are caught because it’s cheaper to ship them to Thailand and back than sustain our home economy. The nations that succeed will be the ones that always succeed: those that pay no heed to moral rectitude, sustainability, principle or shame in the same way that Britain built its Empire.

This is the age in which the First World became the Third World. Whilst education sets you free of the bonds of ignorance and bigotry, naive self-delusion from some kind of apologetic, politically correct sense of fair play will consign you to the underdogs of the new society.

I would like to see our Prime Minister and all those who are in a position to do anything about it, grip the nettle firmly and tackle what ails us directly:

• Education fails because it is damaged by inclusion of those who don’t want it
• Children don’t want it because they often don’t need it (welfare and the black markets provide)
• Parents are the ignorant product of the damaged system of the last 30 years
• Cheap imports destroy home economies
• Centralisation destroys Public Services
• The Chinese do not care how much damage they do to us or anyone else because of the principles of their own constitution
• Forcing children to remain in school until they are 18 will cause further damage to an already struggling education system

Perhaps it’s time we had our own Constitution, a set of principles upon which a society can be built, although I think we’re a little late for that. We live in the age of expedient and immediacy and therein lies our downfall. There is time for men of principle - like our Prime Minister - to exercise those principles in the duties they perform if we are to preserve the civilisation we currently enjoy. Failure to do so will mean this state of civilisation is merely an ephemeral summer, to be longed for in years to come like a previous generation remembers the summer of 1939.

Don Ledingham’s latest post reminded me of a time when I was in industry. I was a Project Manager for a supplier of Visual Systems for Flight Simulators (big ones, not your PC toys) and had to deal regularly with clients, one of which was British Aerospace. My opposite number there seemed a difficult character: sometimes he would be pleasant and others, downright truculent. I could never tell what he was going to be before a call or visit.

A while later, we became colleagues at British Aerospace and I learned a great deal from him in the manner of the Second Lieutenant learning from the experience of his Sergeant-Major. He quickly confided that one of the best ways to keep the suppliers on their toes was, when the phone rings or a visit is planned, toss a coin - Heads for “Warm and Fuzzy” and tails for “Cold and Prickly” - thereby explaining his seemingly erratic nature. He was right about it - although I did my duty to all of my clients properly, I always took extra care to be 100% on the ball when it came to British Aerospace.

Draw your own lessons from this. Needless to say, although we are both now some time out of our times in industry, Brian and I keep in touch and I often bring to mind the lessons he taught me.

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