Sexual gestures

Well done to our noble PM, the nannies of mumsnet and the stalwart soul savers of Christian Union - all of whom you would really love to have at the top of a guest list for your summer barbecue. Their report on trying to limit the sexualisation of society is all arguably very noble but just well,  I get the feeling that it may just be a little late on the late side. Not being stupid people, I am sure they must have heard stories about  genies being somewhat on the relcutant side concerning being put back into their metaphoircal bottle. To my most sensitive nose it stinks more than a little of pointless gesture politics. It is exactly the sort of initiative our creepy PR exec PM Flashman would have whinged and mithered about had Nannies Blair and Brown tried something like this. The coalition of the chilling are appealing,  like them, to the frightened and fearful hiding out behind their netcurtain far out in the outer reaches of Daily Mailland again.

I wonder if placing modesty sleeves, as suggested,  on those specialist mags for one handed lads will be extended to the freedom loving injunction busting newspapers who back and help subsidise Cameron and his upstanding pals. The popular papers on the bottom shelf, read by those who possibly don't give a toss about such initiatives, and part of their popularity is down to having photos of various girls in their pants on the front of their scandal sheet.  Are they going to be changed? Thought not. Indeed, if you look at the Daily Mail on-line some of their ads are funded by well-rounded bottoms and breasts.

It seems to put the onus on business to self-regulate or be regulated. Fair enough - granted I have not read the report and only read about the initiative . From what I have gleaned, there is nothing (yet) about the role parent(s) who, I am old-fashioned and crusty enough to believe, have a minor role in bringing up their children? (Or have they all given up parenting for being friends).What should they be doing? Well, Cameron is one of the Sons of Thatcher maybe we should be inculcating Victorian values much beloved by his late heroine? Or perhaps going Back to Basics championed by the forgotten John Major who was espousing such virtue while squring the delightful upstanding Edwina Currie.

What about boys who seem, anecdotally at least, to receive their real sex ed from the Internet? Is this initiative indeed necessary or just rancid hot air to detract from the cuts on public services and tax dodging of their friends many of whom are running the businesses that are supposed to be regulated.


...and if they really want to protect our girls either educate them, encourage aspiration or stick them in a burka which, from having worked overseas, would doubtless get adapted and improved by our fashionista girls regardless of advertising, media  or any nanny imposed initiative.

Year 9 adapting the new Cameron / Christian Union inspired uniform

Speaking in tongues

Me and my French teacher

Now being a bit of a traveller and a Francophile I ought to be in favour of languages. I kind of am so long as they are useful to me. Learning languages is difficult, it requires brain power and application. I struggled with French - the teachers were all distractingly gorgeous and pouting (as most young women are to 13 year old boy) and could not get my head around German because of the evil seemingly unapproachable stereotype Frau Cow (ho ho - we were funny) who in later years we discovered was a concentration camp survivor. Then there is also the cultural resistence - everyone speaks English.

When I was working overseas I tried to learn the basics of the local languages but, like our students, eventually saw little point as most people I met spoke some English and so became another lingusitically challenged Brit abroad. Those who did spend time on learning Chinese or Thai pronunciation and orthography all seemed a little affected in some way but their students did appreciate the occasional forays into .their cultures. Respect I suppose

For our students where they go on holiday there is only English spoken in the resorts. Moreover, everyone who isn't middle class dislikes  the French and, as all inhabitants of tabloidland well know the Germans are all goosestepping Nazi bastards and we  are so much better than them because  we won the World Cup in 1966 and a couple of World Wars they don't know the dates of and forget or never knew that other countries made a few sacrifices too.

So why would you want to learn their language? Why would anyone want to teach them? So big respect to our German and French teachers in their uphill battle of trying to give a love of language and alien culture to our charmers. A good 35% of our learners are on the SEN register and perhaps another 10%   should be with them in their attempts to achieve functional literacy with English. You do have to wonder at the logic of making them struggle through three years of speaking in tongues before dropping it as they all do in Year 9, although, like my subject, many have dropped it mentally after the Christmas card made in Year 7.  It seems a terrible waste of time and resources. My year 8 form group whinge on about the value of learning MFL more than they whinge about other subjects possibly with the exception of Superstition and Dance if it's the fat boys.

Nonetheless, the couple of small classes that do go through to GCSE tend to do quite well. Survivial of the fittest I guess. Perhaps if we started languages as a serious subject in Year 1 rather then Year 7 we might get somewhere. What I think I see in MFL in the UK is Darwin in action all around the country EB notwithstanding languages are being junked and have been for years. What is the point when so many people around the world have some English as a second language which is the default lingua franca of so much politics,business, media, IT, told interactive online games and popular culture. French language pop anyone? Perhaps time for a rethink for kids like ours at least - maybe a Key Stage 3 European Studies programme could be organised with some cross-curricula content and at least make Europe seem more than football and foreigners.

Lesbian social workers and money ladies

The stuff of nightmares...

In the amusing yet slightly disturbing dystopian parallel world of the Daily Mail teachers and social workers are up there with beardy leering hookhanded Muslamic kiddy fiddling honour killers in the pantheon of all things evil and perverse. They tend to bring on in the average Maily a terrible fit of the vapours requiring a good cup of Ovaltine and a lie down. Yes, the much maligned social worker is a fearsome ideological lesbian harpy out to either indulge the poor, dumb and feckless; or she (for it is always a she) is there to have her head publically removed and put on a media spike when one the spawn said poor, dumb and feckless is abused or killed on her watch. They stand not a chance and the sometimes boring, mundane and essential and sometimes interesting work they do is never explained. Well, why would it be? Background work is not newsworthy whereas death and depravity is...

The ones I come into contact with through work have a possibly more thankless task than we do in the school. At least the school provides boundaries, or attempts so to do, when what passes for normal home life often doesn't - certainly not from what we come into contact with on a daily basis.

Hereabouts, like many coastal towns - fostering kids is a big business. A nice little earner for many who get the pleasure of looking after the problem children / children with problems usually from the Big City. Respect as da kydz have it. At school I have witnessed fights between various damaged kids over whose care home / care giver is better. We have recently taken some kids that neighbouring counties refuse to have and rumour and conjecture have it that the the Money Ladies in their big air-conned BSF office are very happy at this. Great news - it's just a bugger for the rest of us who have to deal with it.  The Academy it seems means business...

That though is by-the-by as  the social workers do their best to assist the good folk of the once proud  town with basic parenting skills, social skills, caring skills, coping skills and then pass them on to us as a holding bay for a few years before we pass them on a longer-term basis to our good friends Plod whose numbers are about to be cut. Well done to the far-sighted oily Dave and his pet Little Nick.


...and, as we broke up last week it came to light that three Year 10 girls will be needing some of those parenting skills classes soon. All that sex ed in PSHE and putting condoms on smurf dildoes for nought...but on the bright side, in this time of austerity, they will keep some our colleagues in social work in employment as the cycle of stupidity continues.

Useless bankers and sainted soldiers

Hmm - now whatever happened to all those wanky bankers and financial wizards who were supposedly entering teaching following their messing up of the world's economy? Has anyone ever met one in the staff room. I am genuinely interested to know the numbers on this or whether it was just more government and media bollocks.

...and weren't there supposed to be squads of sainted ex-soldiers coming into sort out discipline too? Again, anyone with any insight on that I would be interested to know. After all the boys I teach  like a good virtual shoot up and walked around with barely concealed tumescence after Bin Laden was executed. I don't doubt that for some of them it may be a good thing...

...opps there goes my inner Daily Mail again.

Conjecture, deadwood and apathy

TWH displaying superhero powers

Now as Ofsted has cited Chavmouth Academy is a happy, smiley,  outstanding place to be with lots of happy, smiley outstanding teachers a critical mass of whom are discontentedly muttering plots to leave. If the hot air is not standard oft heard whinging teacher tripe, there is soon to be a worrying dearth of experienced middle rank teachers who just want to get out as TWH continues to develop such superhero leadership skills of distance and invisibility. Inevitably this has lead to much conjecture as to what he intends to do with his new found powers as one of Gove's Academy leaders. Being teachers none of the conjecture is positive. That would take the fun out it.

So TWH has  left  the boring mundane matters of running an outstanding academy to the over-promoted lieutenants a number of whom are younger, less competent and experienced than me...not that I am pushing for a promotion mind. That said they are all overseen by TWH's eyes and ears - the fearsome office manageress known,  by those longer in the tooth, somewhat unfairly as Hattie Jacques. A summons from Hattie is never welcome. No, I am happy (if as seems likely that I have to stay here) to work my passage to rise to exhalted ranks of the old git deadwood in their comfy cardigans or  ill-fitting catalogue dresses, who seem quite serene in the micro-staffroom doing the crossword and contemplating their Saga holiday brochures over a nice cup of Ovaltine and a digestive.

...and it is the near dead among us  who cannot believe the apathy of the youngsters regarding the raping of pensions by the ideogue sons of Thatcher with their inherited millions who will never need one. They cannot believe the lack of anger, fight or cojones in them. About 20 turned up for a joint union meeting at the school (there are about 100 staff) and only two others turned up at the district meeting. Unless I am mistaken, it seems the narrative of nonsense spread by Dave, Gideon and the press that it's all Labour's fault....and we are all in it together has been swallowed by those more likely to vote in talent shows and read gossip mags than be concerned about the massive fucking over (as they say in academe) that we are receiving. That's it - my apolitical, apathetic younger Facebooking, XFactor voting, celeb watching colleagues all of whom are in a Union and can't be bothered to vote for what's good for them. Ah well, how British...sorry how English.

You get what you deserve in the end I suppose.

Squib

...and that was that.

The malfunctioning Wise Head made an announcement over the malfucntioning tannoy just after lunch for the malfunctioning Year 11s to gather outside and well, bugger off. That was that. Five years of alleged education marked by a brief announcement and the Year 11s told not to return apart from exams.

Cynical minds immediately thought that it had nothing to do with the  private study they wouldn't do and everything to do with the absenteeism of the Year 11s having a poor impact on the stats that Ofsted so like...and as an Outstanding Academy that would never do so losses were cut. Probably.

So, various shocked 11s meanedered around the Academy (as it must be called) all afternoon huggingly loving one another, screaming OMG and saying sheepish good-byes to fellow colleagues who pretended that they would be missed.

Sadly but inevitably I got into old git mood and remembered the times past when the kids would, at the very least, get thier Asda shirts signed or have some kind of formal leaving. Failing that they would get to lob flour and eggs around the place and trash classrooms,  generally they would have something to remember. This, the first year of the academy was crap. Sure it may not be so important but yet again I think we failed our kids.

Strike ballot

Agree or disagree with it just bloody well vote. Most of the unions are up for it apart from the NASUWT who knows what they are thinking? Even the heads are up for protecting the pension or deferred salary which is another way of looking at the paltry sums squirrelled away for the exciting looking gardening and Saga years. Some of the meetings I have attended  present eyebrow-raising stats and give the lie to the we are all in it together bollocks filched from High School Musical by the olegenious creep Cameron. They have made the odd u-turn so another is possible. That said whinging teacher bashing is always popular and, if my BSFed micro-staff room is anything to go by, most of my colleagues are very apolitical and actually believes the nauseating narrative of nonsense spouted by Davey boy and his whimpering fag Nick (sit Nick, beg Nick, cry Nick, bend over Nick, self-destruct in a puff of pointlessness Nick) and of course the wailing press with its own partial agenda.

The National Audit Office says the teacher's pension is affordable, it is in fact when which contributes rather than drains the public purse so any arguments claiming we need to cut back are spurious. I can think of many other ways of saving cash...hey, anyone need a consultant?

Still 90% of us are in a union, 40% is the next most unionised. Thatch didn't bend us to her will but the new academies with their own employment terms and conditions might well do. Nationally agreed rates will be undermined by unaccountable heads. It is thoroughly within the realms of feasibility that a condition of employment will include not being a member of a union. It is completely logical in the brains of these right wing nut jobs.

So pay attention, don't be cowed and remember working together and  being in a union does have its advantages so get your vote out.