Having a recently turned 14 year old sitting his Standards and Intermediate 2's in the next few weeks, a whole two years earlier than I did in the late 1970's, I've been a bit perplexed about the ups and downs Scottish education has taken over the last few years. The reason given for my son taking his standards in third year is as follows: "second year is a waste of time and this way he gets two years to study for his Highers." ...so far, so more educational philosophy by the committee of jolly japes and wheezes.
Those of you of a similar age to me will remember our primary education being blighted in the late 1960's - early seventies with the introduction of the phonics system, whose acronym, memory has thankfully scrubbed from my mind. I do remember one day learning structures, verb endings, what nouns and plurals all meant, all delivered in scratchy black and white, only to find the next day a garish colourful card system with words delivered by manic, alliterative, animal cartoon characters. My delectable teacher, poor Miss McDonald, with her flowery neck high smock and bouffant hair do, never looked more perplexed...
Brave new schemes and super whizzy ideas from think-tanks and forums come and go every blinking generation and it is those poor sods who want to help, teachers, who are handed the responsibility of preparing our little darlings for their academic and societal future. Woe betide them if they ever get it wrong!
With this in mind and the Scottish government, as noted by Ms Go Lassie Go still twisting and turning in trying to be all things to all people by finally introducing the well trumpeted Curriculum for Excellence amidst wholesale discord, confusion and empty promises. I decided to ask a friend who is a musician, an artist, a photographer, a traveller, a bon-vivant and a teacher of great repute for his views on CfE.
Naturally, he writes anonymously, we wouldn't want anyone in education to oppress an actual educator for expressing a viewpoint different from their overlords...
It might surprise some people that I, an English Teacher of some years, agree for the most part with the idea of Curriculum for Excellence, (CfE). However teachers are stubborn and wary refusniks. They avoid prescribing of teaching methods like a vampire swerves garlic and loathe being told how and what to teach. This is as it should be.
In my experience classroom teachers encourage and challenge young people in thankless circumstances with limited resources. They play the fool. They mother their babes. They act as psychiatrists, nurses, surrogate parents, good cop and bad cop.
Every cycle a new initiative comes along telling them how mediocre they are and how they need to raise their game. Here lies the central issue as some see it; why must we be beholding to our betters who, without the training or experience, have pointed out to us -in expensive glossy green folders- how we may approach Excellence?
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and a coterie of chalk-face draft dodgers have a bare-faced cheek assuming that they can set their colleagues on a track that they, the work-shy and the inept, couldn't see with a compass, map and GPS guide. I have seen teachers wrestle with steam powered PCs. I have seen teachers still using overhead projectors (buying their own bulbs). I have seen Literacy and Numeracy incorporated into PE lessons and HE lessons. I have seen prison classrooms for Young Offenders. I have seen S6 pupils who do not care a jot being paid to come to school, money which could be directed elsewhere with more efficacy. I have seen all manner of dedicated and unique teaching styles but none of these people who actually 'can' teach are ever chosen for secondment to prepare and inform these cyclical PR scam/schemes.
The CfE, like the LTS, is an overpriced and glossy fast-track for those teachers with a nose for promotion, the poachers turned gamekeepers, the gutless wonders who couldn't maintain order or teach anything other than hypothetical classrooms with idealised behaviour. Let's face it, we already have CfE, or we did, and we could augment the quality teaching that we have if we directed funding from these glossy folders towards ICT that works, towards classroom assistants and towards those skilled wonders who provide Additional Support Needs to kids who want to learn but do not fit into the standard classroom square peg. We all want excellence; I'm just not convinced that CfE is anything more than an overpriced glossy statement of wishful thinking.
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