"How enterprising - not just giving in to the prevailing ***" Oliver James, Author of Affluenza and Britain on the Couch.
TeachingPEOPLE is a workspace dedicated to restoring people - both those who teach and those who learn - to their essential place at the centre of the educational process.
During the last two decades, education has been appropriated as an instrument of political policy, and this has increasingly removed it from the humanist ethic that has undepinned it since Ancient times: the transmisson of intellectual and cultural capital¹ via an intrinsic love of knowledge and learning, and a belief in the wide benefits that this confers on human wellbeing.
As schools become increasingly technocratic, the broad benefits of a liberal 'education of the intellect' are being lost. Pupils are being reduced to material to be processed, teachers to mere operatives - and the coherent intellectual value of the curriculum has been largely replaced by pick-and-mix social and economic engineering. In my view, this is nothing short of a cultural tragedy, all the more so because it has been couched in language quite contrary to its actual effect.
While teaching in the U.K. arguably needed to go through a period of procedural strengthening, other than by its own internal logic, there is little evidence that this has made education generally more effective. There is little to suggest that people are being more profoundly engaged by the learning process today than hitherto, or that they are any more empowered as a result - even if they do have more certificates. For further progress to be made, we will need to look at different approaches: technocracy alone has severe limitations: excellence in teaching requires more subtle skills.
This workspace is intended to facilitate professional debate on these issues. It will not, of course, change the world, but the internet is a powerful medium, and I believe that a grass-roots discussion of what we are being told to do is long overdue. Those who work in classrooms are best-placed to understand the needs of their students, needs that are are too important for our society to be left to the ulterior motives of policy-makers or career educationalists. We must re-establish the authority of teachers to teach without political or corporate interference.
This is no incitement to rebel, but rather a call for professionals gradually to rehumanise our education system from within. Neither is it an excuse for an educational free-for-all: in fact, quite the opposite. But education is fundamentally about unique human beings, and attempts to systematise it inevitably reduce its ability to respond to individual talents, needs and interests. There are many workers saying as much, and they deserve to be more widely heard. Some of their work is referenced herein.
The workspace was started by a practising secondary-school teacher from South-East England who felt the time had come for a professional debate on these matters. It does not seek to attribute specific blame or criticism², but simply to argue the case for a different approach, which two decades watching real human behaviour in the classroom suggest might work better. If it influences the thoughts or actions of others in some small way, then it will have served a purpose.
How to use this workspace
The workspace consists initially of a number of essays, which will hopefully stimulate thought and debate. All are available as web pages or are freely printable. It is recommended that the first-time visitor begins with the Introduction to the Essays, or you can view a short summary presentation here:
The work was created under a Creative Commons license and is thus available for dissemination, given due accreditation. A small number of resources is also provided for use by education professionals, and it is hoped that the range of material will grow with submissions from others.
It is possible to contribute to this workspace by creating a PBworks account and then adding comments to the relevant pages. It is also possible to request authorial rights from the adminstrator via his email address such that this becomes a more collaborative project. The workspace also has an associated Yahoo! discussion group, which may be joined at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TeachingPEOPLEforum/
² No specific criticism is implied of any school or individual therein, even if I believe some of the policies and practices they are being told to deliver to be mistaken. The staff of a school share joint responsibility for their establishment; I am fortunate to work in a school where the overwhelming majority of the staff work professionally and tirelessly to further their pupils' educational good. This workspace in no way wishes to detract from that fact.
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