The Dangers of Remote Controlled Education
Essentially, Labour's education policies amounted to a de-skilling of teachers by forcing every school to follow a National Curriculum in the questionable pursuit of standardisation.
This National Curriculum was supposed to be an example of "best practice". This was a term borrowed from quality management. The National Curriculum reads as if it was thought up by one particularly conformist pedagogue in the bath. Why should every teacher follow the lead of a "paragon' s" ? It doesn't work in theory or practice. Some of the best teachers are incredibly eccentric.
The vital thing you have to understand about teaching, and I speak as a teacher trainer who started training in 1988, is that every teacher needs to be aware of their own teaching style when they teach. Different teaching styles derive from different personalities and outlooks on teaching. Where does conforming to the ideas and thoughts of one personality match this eclecticism? It doesn't. The New Labour educational programme demonstrates basic ignorance of the real nature of the teaching and learning process.
Teachers live by their creative professional judgement. Teaching is an art and not a science. Teachers are dealing with the whole human; with human minds and emotions and motivations. Once teachers are trained and educated; once they have reflected for a few years on their practice, only then are they are in a position to make the best judgements possible about what to teach and how to teach it and about the order in which to teach it - to decide how to adapt the methodology and materials to individual students needs and to the demands of the course and the institution and to meet stakeholder expectations.
Teachers, like lawyers and doctors have to rely on their professional judgement. The National Curriculum dumbs everyone down. Perhaps it does provide a template for more inexperienced teachers for a time, however, once they get their bearings they don't need the curriculum for much longer and it becomes a hinerance.
Think of all the energy, resources and time the New Labour Government has wasted on this vanity project - on making the hundreds and thousands of young people conform to their idea of what young people should be. Think of the awful instrumentalism of the process, of its crudity and terrifying mundanity. Think of the waste: miles of glossy paper, millions of plastic CDs full of gobble-gobble-gobble, websites full of guidelines, useless training courses aimed at making sure everyone knows the bleedin' obvious.
The quality control Parasite
And then came the SATs and the other national examinations - They all made sure that what was taught was tested, in an awful self perpetuating cycle of stupidity. Those of us who have actually studied management at postgraduate level know that quality control systems are dangerous because they have an enormous cost and that they can quickly turn parasitical. New Labour public administrators, though they were enamoured with managerial speak, didn't understand this basic fact about quality control systems.
Think of the inspectorates, the self perpetuating educational equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, there to make sure that the whole palaver operated according to the government's top down impositions.
What conclusions can we draw about the reasons why New Labour perpetrated this remote controlled educational system from a sofa in Downing Street?
Strategic planning is not curriculum planning
Strategic planning is not curriculum planning. Mission statements and overarching objectives from government should never convert directly into educational plans. All the education departments wrote their strategic plans based on these handed down, top heavy objectives and these objectives were broken down in turn into SMART actions. Everyone had to fall into line willy nilly with the puerile and vapid "visions" that Tony Blair and his associates thought up on the couch.
New Labour perverted the British educational paradigm
The New Labour Blairite government sent too many fact finding missions to replicate the approach and methods of the US education system: Bloom and Gagne rule in the US. In other words learning produces measurable behavioural outcomes. That's why the fools have so many multiple choice tests and we don't.
But if you understand learning and the learning process then you know that the whole concept of descrete measurable learning outcomes is quite laughable - especially for subjects like English and history. New Labour perverted the whole humanist philosophy that underpinned the education system in the UK.
New Labour introduced the Academies as a first step to privatising education. The Tories are very happy with this model and want to expand it to every primary school; possibly to every secondary school. Mr Balls, your lot did that.
But there is one thing New Labour did not do that it should have done. New Labour did not bring the public schools into line. It left the independent schools to their own devices. This private school system is the elephant in the room. It is the core of the problem of inequality in Britain and you and your bunch, Mr Balls, did nothing to change that.
Essentially, Labour's education policies amounted to a de-skilling of teachers by forcing every school to follow a National Curriculum in the questionable pursuit of standardisation.
This National Curriculum was supposed to be an example of "best practice". This was a term borrowed from quality management. The National Curriculum reads as if it was thought up by one particularly conformist pedagogue in the bath. Why should every teacher follow the lead of a "paragon' s" ? It doesn't work in theory or practice. Some of the best teachers are incredibly eccentric.
The vital thing you have to understand about teaching, and I speak as a teacher trainer who started training in 1988, is that every teacher needs to be aware of their own teaching style when they teach. Different teaching styles derive from different personalities and outlooks on teaching. Where does conforming to the ideas and thoughts of one personality match this eclecticism? It doesn't. The New Labour educational programme demonstrates basic ignorance of the real nature of the teaching and learning process.
_____________________________________________
The New Labour programme demonstrates basic ignorance of the real nature of the teaching and learning process.
_____________________________________________
Teachers live by their creative professional judgement. Teaching is an art and not a science. Teachers are dealing with the whole human; with human minds and emotions and motivations. Once teachers are trained and educated; once they have reflected for a few years on their practice, only then are they are in a position to make the best judgements possible about what to teach and how to teach it and about the order in which to teach it - to decide how to adapt the methodology and materials to individual students needs and to the demands of the course and the institution and to meet stakeholder expectations.
Teachers, like lawyers and doctors have to rely on their professional judgement. The National Curriculum dumbs everyone down. Perhaps it does provide a template for more inexperienced teachers for a time, however, once they get their bearings they don't need the curriculum for much longer and it becomes a hinerance.
Think of all the energy, resources and time the New Labour Government has wasted on this vanity project - on making the hundreds and thousands of young people conform to their idea of what young people should be. Think of the awful instrumentalism of the process, of its crudity and terrifying mundanity. Think of the waste: miles of glossy paper, millions of plastic CDs full of gobble-gobble-gobble, websites full of guidelines, useless training courses aimed at making sure everyone knows the bleedin' obvious.
The quality control Parasite
And then came the SATs and the other national examinations - They all made sure that what was taught was tested, in an awful self perpetuating cycle of stupidity. Those of us who have actually studied management at postgraduate level know that quality control systems are dangerous because they have an enormous cost and that they can quickly turn parasitical. New Labour public administrators, though they were enamoured with managerial speak, didn't understand this basic fact about quality control systems.
Think of the inspectorates, the self perpetuating educational equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, there to make sure that the whole palaver operated according to the government's top down impositions.
What conclusions can we draw about the reasons why New Labour perpetrated this remote controlled educational system from a sofa in Downing Street?
Strategic planning is not curriculum planning
Strategic planning is not curriculum planning. Mission statements and overarching objectives from government should never convert directly into educational plans. All the education departments wrote their strategic plans based on these handed down, top heavy objectives and these objectives were broken down in turn into SMART actions. Everyone had to fall into line willy nilly with the puerile and vapid "visions" that Tony Blair and his associates thought up on the couch.
New Labour perverted the British educational paradigm
The New Labour Blairite government sent too many fact finding missions to replicate the approach and methods of the US education system: Bloom and Gagne rule in the US. In other words learning produces measurable behavioural outcomes. That's why the fools have so many multiple choice tests and we don't.
But if you understand learning and the learning process then you know that the whole concept of descrete measurable learning outcomes is quite laughable - especially for subjects like English and history. New Labour perverted the whole humanist philosophy that underpinned the education system in the UK.
New Labour introduced the Academies as a first step to privatising education. The Tories are very happy with this model and want to expand it to every primary school; possibly to every secondary school. Mr Balls, your lot did that.
But there is one thing New Labour did not do that it should have done. New Labour did not bring the public schools into line. It left the independent schools to their own devices. This private school system is the elephant in the room. It is the core of the problem of inequality in Britain and you and your bunch, Mr Balls, did nothing to change that.
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