Is there any problem left in society that we won’t shovel onto the desks of exhausted and under-appreciated teachers?
Now as political leaders and policy wonks marshal their technocratic imaginations, hoping to reconfigure the education system in the aftermath of pandemic, the idea of extending the school-day is being considered.
School kids and teachers have it hard enough as it is without adding another two hours onto the ordeal. But this is the idea being floated by genuine masochists as the solution to the seemingly insoluble conundrum of how kids “catch up” after a year of disruption.
Firstly, teachers are now expected to perform so many roles and tasks in an educational setting that actual teaching is no longer always the priority. Teachers act as informal carers, counsellors, nutritionists, sex-educators and trauma specialists. I’m all for their roles being widened – as long as their salaries are expanded too.
As for the kids, “catch up” with what exactly?
Let’s first deal with the unpalatable terms in which children of school age are being discussed here. When we say they need to “catch up”, we are referring to them like machine parts on a mechanical assembly-line. This implies that if some kids do not “catch up”, they risk being thrown together the wrong way, developing faults or falling off the conveyer-belt completely.
Essentially, if we don’t run these kids and their teachers into the ground by adding as many as eight additional hours to the school week, we may inadvertently resign them to unplanned obsolescence where the job market is concerned. A bit late to start considering such a possibility, don’t you agree?
After all, isn’t that one of school’s primary functions? School isn’t just about “learning”, it’s also about social standardisation. It’s partly about instilling kids with the values and knowledge they require to accept willingly, unjust and dysfunctional economic circumstances. Don’t kid yourself.
Providing young people with education largely out of sync with their aspirations and natural abilities has been the exclusive preserve of the state since the inception of state education. Unemployment and precarious work are not evidence of malfunction but are, in fact, key features of our economy.
It’s precisely because so many people are always looking for work that so many shyster employers invest and do business here. Our education system offers young people as sacrifices on the altar of “labour-market flexibility”, then subsidises low pay through the welfare state. If I were a kid, I would be asking why I am not being taught this stuff in school.
I realise this reading of education may not conform to your romantic conception of its function, but I’d contend that’s in part a product of your own lousy historical education.
The demand for workers who will accept lousy conditions must be supplied. Surely that is not what kids need to “catch up” to? Are we running short of shelf-stackers? Are sports outlets missing a few teenagers to underpay and mistreat, safe in the knowledge the average kid wouldn’t know what a trade union was if one literally set up a picket-line on their X-Box?
I don’t buy the idea that these discussions are about concern for young people at all. If we were really concerned about young people, we would use the classroom to arm them against (not groom them for) the exploitation that awaits many. Didn’t the exam algorithm scandal already demonstrate in the vulgarest possible terms what state education is primarily about?
Let’s place the notion of running kids and teachers into the ground firmly in time-out before every day is literally a school day.
Class documentary response has me eager for more
The first hour of my new documentary series Class Wars aired on BBC Scotland on Tuesday night.
I was a bit of a nervous wreck prior to the broadcast as you’d expect. When you are given the opportunity to front a programme on the tele, it’s a double-edged sword – if it goes well, you receive a lot of praise but if it bombs it falls squarely on your shoulders. I’m grateful to say that it appears to be have been well received.
Two four-star reviews and very generous feedback on social media so far, all point to the fact that class is not only a relevant topic but also a vital one.
My inbox is rammed with messages from people sharing their experiences of feeling judged by how they speak, conflicted by where they live and frustrated by how much of their background, they feel they must conceal to get ahead. Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me. I look forward to the response to the remaining three episodes, which explore topics like economic exploitation, land-inequality, race and corporate fraud verses benefit fraud. Tune in and please have your pitchforks at the ready.
Not in the public interest
The NHS is to be “overhauled” in England by the same Conservative government that recently under-hauled it.
Great news. I suspect they’ll be opening right up for business, with Burger King and McDonald’s becoming partners in the fight against the virus. Politicians have a knack for locating the opportunity within a crisis, so what better time to put Sports Direct in charge of social care.
I know some of you may balk at the idea of enmeshing public health with the private sector but look what it’s done for America. This is not, as some are sure to suggest, a dangerous pivot away from the post-war consensus and towards a new nightmarish vision of society as no more than a trashy shopping-mall – this is progress.
So, in a few years, when you are going for a £6000 colonoscopy in Wetherspoons, just remember you can’t put a price on public health.
