EASTER HAS COME ONCE MORE. It is a time for remembering Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection; it is a time for stuffing chocolate eggs; as well as the traditional family short break. But most memorable of all, it is the National Union of Teachers (NUT) spring conference; where the great British public can witness for themselves the kind of people they leave their children with to be educated.
First up is a delegate called Tony Dowling[1]. Tony is a teacher from Gateshead whose views are by no means extreme in the context of such a gathering. Tony believes his colleagues should emulate the Arab Spring by organising “mass resistance on the streets”. Rather impatiently, he believes; “We can’t wait until 2015 to get rid of this government,” adding that. “By then education, the NHS and many other services that we cherish will have been destroyed.” He then enthuses upon the possibility of bringing the masses onto the streets to show the government how despised they are.
Also addressing the conference was Jane Bassett, a teacher from Hackney. Her gripe follows the government’s stated intention to link local pay to rates within the private sector. Ms Bassett opines; “We need to resist it. It will lead to factory-style teaching. It will lead to massively demoralised teachers. It will lead to massive recruitment crisis.”
If these two characters represented some kind of militant tendency within the union, then we could dismiss these disgruntled revolutionaries as the dystopian visionaries that they undoubtedly are. Sadly for the children they teach, the majority of the NUT think along the same lines as this pair, all of whom hold the futures of generations in the palm of their hands.
Another union gripe, is the creation of the governments’ successful independent academies, which are proving popular with parents. But the NUT are not going to let the mere wishes of parents stand in their way; so the union has backed a call for strike action in all schools that leave local council control to become academies.
On top of pensions, and boycotting reading tests for six-year-olds, this union shows that it has only its member’s interests at its heart; and those of the children they teach somewhat negligible in their scheme of things. Of course they will go on about how the children’s interests will be ill-served by all the much needed reforms to our children’s education – but it is all self-serving cant: which the NUT would not be the NUT without.
THESE PEOPLE ARE intending strike action on a number of fronts over various issues. One of them, quoted by Graeme Paton, the Daily Telegraphs excellent Education Editor, even declared “It is a fact that we’re living in an unelected dictatorship.”
Democracy and unions are an ill-pared amalgam, especially when it comes to electing a new Labour leader. So for one delegate to suggest that this Coalition government lacks democratic authenticity, is an insult to the people of this country who elected it as an alternative to their bankrupting predecessors, who, as one of its own government ministers, wrote at the time of his own sacking by the people in 2010, “There is no money left”.
To call this government an “unelected dictatorship”, shows just how far away these people are from reality. Even the Coalition’s worst enemies would not seek to undermine its right to govern, let alone use such juvenile and irrational language – so why is this “teacher” still being left in charge of young minds?
In this country today we have over a million young people not in education or training. We have universities complaining about the numeracy and literacy levels of students being enrolled on courses from the state comprehensive sector. Each August, when the exam results are published, charges of dumbing down have been levelled, and until now, to no avail. Dumbing down of exams has happened, but the government’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is set to apply new standards to the A level curriculum to challenge pupils and make their results truly worthy of the grade they accomplish.
TODAY WE FACE A lack of discipline in our schools that the NUT should have put as its main subject at conference. Physical punishment of pupils is no longer acceptable, and the main opponents of such a form of discipline have been the teachers themselves. Yet the teachers are the first to complain about assaults that have been made upon their person.
Our children no longer care about being expelled; they know they have the upper hand over the teachers. Detention can either be ignored or become a source of entertainment for such pupils; and as with an ASBO, a veritable source of honour among their peers in the communities where they live.
If we had kept physical punishment in our schools for use in extremis, then we would not today be confronted by hapless teachers and arrogant yobs. But to try and reinstate physical punishment today would only count among the pupils as a further (higher ranking?)tribute to be compared with an ASBO. Those liberal minded, middle class politicians and educationalists, who sought to ban the cane and slipper from the teacher’s armoury have left them without any kind of deterrent beyond the application of reason which they thought would appeal to pupils more successfully than the cane or slipper.
But all cannot be blamed on the teachers. Parenting is in flux. We have one parent families where the partner has foreclosed on his responsibilities: as well as two parents who were married but divorced. Parents used to put their trust in the teachers. If children behaved badly, then the parents knew that their child warranted the punishment meted out, because they knew what their children were capable of and would be on the side of the teacher.
Today we have parents who have themselves been pupils under the liberal educational regime, and as such have learnt to put two fingers up to the teaching profession, as they did when they were pupils. These are the very parents who assault teachers for disciplining their children – and the teachers and politicians have brought it all upon themselves.
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