Please don't feed the trolls.

 I am a subscriber to The Times online - which is great for reading articles I wouldn't necessarily have the time or inclination to otherwise read. I wouldn't buy a newspaper every day, but I do have time to click on the odd article that catches my eye. 

I should have known better than to post a comment on the (deliberately inflammatory) article reporting on the new demands of the NUT; 'Teachers should be in school for 30 hours a week maximum, says NUT.' (I won't link as it's £.) I'm not a member of the NUT, so although I find it a bit hard to get behind this particular demand, I do get the general gist of it. I realise that 'I chose this job'. It isn't a 9-5. I would go mad if it was. It's a job where I am -each, and every day - challenged, delighted, frustrated, but never, ever bored. However, it is also a job in which I have to give 100%, and frequently this means my husband, family, friends and myself come second. I am lucky; I work in a supportive school, within an incredible department. But the pressure is there - it comes if anything from myself. People have entrusted me with their most precious thing; their children, and it's my job to help them to learn, to achieve, to mould themselves into the people they deserve to be. Increasingly, I find I am not just the imparter of what the word 'hyperbole' means and how to pronounce it, but also counsellor, mediator, surrogate mother. Friend. This is ok - it is what I signed up for, and it's what I love. 

So it was in my ignorance, or perhaps indeed my arrogance in assuming that, as a teacher, I could have an intelligent point of view - nay - even an opinion on what it's like to be a teacher in a British school that I posted a comment under the article, explaining that actually I did, often, work upwards of 50 hours a week, over weekends, and during my (apparently endless) holidays. 

I should NOT have fed the trolls. 

Let alone some of the less stable suggestions as to what teachers should do (my favourite was 'North Korea, all of them. Let them live out their socialist fantasies there. The REAL workers here won't miss them' or something to that effect), some of the replies directly to me were as follows: 

   'Are your working conditions standard in the teaching profession?  I live next door to one and a friend is also a teacher.  Your job should be a 08:15 to 16:15 job with an hour for dinner.  I have spoken with my neighbour and friend at length about teacher salaries and pensions, both generous, and you are way out on your own with your claims of working a near 12 hour day, an extra 1-2 hours extra per night and most of Sunday. If you do as much time as you say you do, you are over doing it. I recommend you buy another, reliable, watch.'

I love the 'I live next door to a teacher'. That makes you qualified to comment...? I live next door to a pensioner but I'm not sure that qualifies me for anything. I also found this: 6 teachers give their own accounts. They're probably workshy liars too. I would love an hour for dinner though. Especially on Wednesdays - that's Debate Club day. How much would we be able to get covered? I digress. 

Silly old me, I also posted a pithy, yet funny email that has been doing the rounds about value for teachers (I had it sent to me but the original, American one is here.) Wow. What a silly thing to say. Look, alright, I kind of knew it would be feeding the trolls. I didn't expect this: 

   'Your spurious comparison of value vs a babysitter was unfortunately not bolstered by the repeated (and somewhat sinister I find) use of capitalised words [...] if I found out that you were teaching my children I would withdraw them from class immediately. The skewed and somewhat self-serving value system you seem to possess could be dangerously contagious.' 

There we go people. Capitalising DOESN'T denote you STRESSING A POINT, it's SINISTER. Sorry chaps, did that frighten you? I am sorry, too, if my value system is 'dangerously contagious'. Actually, I'm not. I'm pretty secure, in fact, in thinking that I am helping to turn out well-rounded, balanced individuals who understand that you need to work hard to achieve something, that some things are worth going the extra mile, but that, also, a good teacher is one who has a life and isn't sleep-deprived! 

My favourite comment of all though, is this: 

   'I don't think you are a teacher [...] this is all a joke. A sad, unfunny joke.' 

There is a joke to be had there... (I must resist the obvious 'didn't realise I had stumbled onto the Mail site...) But I think my 'Learning Outcome' here is simple. I MUST NOT feed the trolls. 

Should I do lines...? 

My husband and I. Every day... 

                                

Dear Mr Gove...

As I write this, I am aware that tomorrow I will have the beast of OFSTED  breathing down my neck. I am lucky; my school welcomes, rather than dreads inspection, and I suspect I will be one of the keen beans hanging around my door longer than is strictly necessary to collar the poor chap and show him what happens in my classroom.

And yet, according to Gove’s tub-thumping epistle yesterday in the Daily Hate (sorry, Mail) I, and the people I work with are simply ‘Marxist... Hell bent on destroying our schools’.

I have a few points to make in reply to our esteemed member of the Cabinet.

Firstly, I’ll be printing his torrid article in order to teach the power of rhetoric in writing to argue – so thanks for that, Govey. But I’ll be at pains to explain that in writing an argument for the GCSE exam, it’s fine to ‘make up’ facts and figures, cast aspersions, and speculate; the examiner will never know you have. Unfortunately, for an elected member of Parliament to use these kinds of GCSE-level features  is woeful. Whipping up the (already rabid) readers of the Mail isn’t clever; isn’t fair; isn’t even accurate in its reporting.

Secondly, an ‘Enemy of Promise’? Does Gove have any inkling (or indeed the inclination to find out) what happens in schools up and down the country? That though we are indeed paid to mould our nation’s future, we are not paid to be nanny, secretary, counsellor, baby-sitter or indeed friend? Yet we do all these things, every day, uncomplaining... because we chose this job; nay, vocation. Unhappily for my non-teaching husband, most of my friends and my mother are teachers. So what do we talk about? School; what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, what we could change to make things better. Not for ourselves – but for the students we work with. So actually, far from being the ‘Enemy of Promise’, I might re-label this profession as the ‘Promised we’ll do it.’ Promised, when we signed up, that we would work as hard as could to do our  best by  -and for - our students.

I quite agree that education is the key out of poverty – indeed to ‘take their place as confident, modern citizens’. So why is it that the new reforms planned for our nation’s children seem designed to doom so many to failure? Indeed, the lofty proposal that students should be learning and reciting poetry by heart is a worthy one (though you might like to read Michael Rosen’s excellent thoughts on the subject here   and yet, a more out-of-touch policy could not have been advocated for the youngest in our schools. More than ever, students are arriving at school unable to use the toilet, use a knife and fork, or indeed with mastery of day-to-day speech. How will it help those students to learn the English Canon? At five?  Already – the divide. It’s a shame that India Knight has blocked me on Twitter for daring to disagree with her stance in her ST column (£ per view I’m afraid or I’d link) because – actually – this point

‘Gove wants to give everyone a proper education, of the kind often described as “privileged”. “Shakespeare at school?” those parents will cry. “Far too difficult.” They won’t mention that they’ve been reading Tales from Shakespeare to little Portia since she was three. It’s so dishonest.’

was one I quite agreed with.

Additionally, I take umbrage at the woefully cheap jibe levelled at the 100 academics who wrote to Gove this week; doesn’t this line seem a bit, well, tired and contrived? ‘What planet are these people on? A red planet, if their published works are anything to go by’. Have we suddenly entered a time-slip? Pleased though I would be to have the Doctor come to rescue me were this the case, we’re – happily - not in 1950s America... perhaps someone would like to mention that to ‘McCarthy’ Gove. As I see it, making cracks about the political leanings of your opponents is simply appealing to the lowest common denominator. After all, it is these very ‘guilty men and women’ who have spent a career learning and teaching others about the pedagogies we in schools know to be right. Furthermore, should it not be these very people who Gove should be seeking the opinions of? Oh, wait, he did... and then rejected all their proposals. I just can’t see how it’s healthy for education to be run on ideological lines, which is the dangerous game being played by Gove in mentioning any political leanings as a smear.

I am at a loss to understand why, exactly, Gove appears to feel so much revulsion towards us teachers, over any other profession. Commendable though his intentions to ‘give children the tools they need’ undoubtedly are, the best tool for learning is a great teacher. It’s difficult to see how that tool can remain sharp and true when it’s being constantly chipped at and worn away by such platitudes as we’re all tired of hearing; the ‘endless holidays’, ‘gold-plated pensions’, ‘coasting schools’ ‘out the door at 3pm teachers’. I would like any of these to be true. And yet, they’re still not the things that drew me to this profession. In fact, it was the thought of working with our future doctors, plumbers, teachers, musicians, lawyers, hairdressers, writers, artists and (dare I say it?) politicians that excited me. I want to be challenged – in my classroom, by a sparky 13 year old. Not by a politician with not the faintest idea of what I do and why I do it.

On a side-note – Gove’s performance on Question Time last week both worried and amused me; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the inexplicable thickening of his Scotch accent whilst talking about his (only initially) State education, though my feelings were certainly more decided at hearing his response to Emily Thornberry’s point – does anyone say ‘Yadda yadda yadda’, unless they literally have no concerted response?

This post has been quite long, and ranty. Sorry about that* (*not sorry. This message needs to be out there).

I should probably cite quite a lot of things I read whilst writing this but I have OFSTED tomorrow, I’m tired, and I have 5 lessons to prepare before I speak to my husband and feed my cat. You could look here, here or here if you wanted to find out more.