So, exam results came out recently, and teachers have been returning to school again.
I started this blog thing to try and write more creatively, to focus on communicating in a more structured form any ideas that I'd like to put across. Maybe more 'sports casual' essays than blogs I suppose. What I've discovered so far is this: It's hard.
I've not done anything like this since school, and that goes for all the way through the shitty college courses I took too. Example: for a certain unnamed Music Management diploma at Stow College (oopsy- cat, bag!) I simply took a colleagues final hand in disk of an entire years essays- I think there was about 25 in total- and changed the first paragraph, the first couple of lines of the second paragraph, and the final paragraph of each of them then handed the lot in at once. Passed them all (thank you Jamie). Or, for another also unnamed Music Production course, also at the same college (oopsy again!) on a couple of occasions I handed in a set of blank disks along with the required description of what the composition on them was supposed to sound like. Passed those too. Barely wrote a note, written or musical for the whole course.
I came to this working approach because previous to this I had worked my hiney off on another project which had a lot of content (a fairly flash multimedia CV designed around 50's Blue Note album covers if you're interested, which you're not), handed it in knowing you would need to spend a bit of time to see exactly how much work I'd put into it, and had it handed back to me within 4 minutes telling me I'd passed. This pissed me off, and did not exactly inspire confidence in my tutors.
Now I'm not for a second about to start slagging the extremely poor quality of lecturing and guidance that's like a wet rot in many of our educational establishments. From the above evidence I'm really the last person that could comment on whether these places are populated by slouching losers, so obviously disappointed with defaulting to teaching when becoming a geologist/ novelist/ missile scientist didn't quite work out for them. What right do I have, having not gained a qualification since secondary school*, to whale on the education system I crawled through cheating or blatantly avoiding for years?
Well, now that second has passed, I'm about to slag the education system to fuck. I have loads of right.
I blame the teachers. I blame so many of them for wanting to get into teaching because of the reasons above, and not because they want people to learn. If this all sounds a bit Good Will Hunting I couldn't really give a Donald, I'm sorry. If you are a teacher and do not want to teach, to make people learn, you will have lasting damage on their future, far, far beyond that of them choosing between History or Geography at standard grade. This is the truth. Children, despite almost every fucking teacher you meet telling you to the contrary, are not stupid. Regardless of actual intelligence there is an emotional intelligence that will pick up whether you want to be there or not, and this applies from primary schools upwards.
But before the teachers I blame the grading system in schools. There has been much trumpeting of A level passes being on the increase this year, but what does that really mean? That there has been a sudden surge in interest to learn by all the post- pube hoodies out there? That children have caught the smarts off parents suddenly more interested in Panorama than Jeremy Kyle? Or that, under increased pressure from governing bodies and league tables teachers have just 'found a way' to make more passes, to make their class look good, to please the head of the school, to get more departmental funding, to please his boss further up the chain who finally gets his bonus when he submits said score to the Schoolboard hot 100?
Believe it or not, for a short time I taught part time music technology to some children in St Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Glasgow. Yes, I know, me. As you can probably tell there was a few lies on that CV. But what became apparent to me is that the education board in secondary schools is just a group of in fighting whiners desperate not to get their funding cut for the coming year, with departmental rivalry leading to me hearing things like 'if Mrs X gets the net ball courts resurfaced before I get those digital recorders for room 6 I'll walk this time, I swear to God'.
The same applies for colleges and universities. How else would you explain the plethora of Music Technology and Media courses that appeared at the end of the 90's? To get people to the college, to get more bums on seats, to get more money. To get Kids jobs in the 'music industry'? The only real job a music tech course will get you (if you are lucky) is a job teaching music technology in a college, probably the one you were taught in.
If there were no grades, no markers for how many kids have to pass per class for the school to pass up the league table, or how many had to pass in a college to secure more funding for the next year, then the bleak cynicism that pours out of almost every teacher you meet if you talk to them about their job would not be there filtering down to the receptacles they are supposed to be helping towards a brighter future.
Children want to learn. Adults want to learn. But the UK education system is such a forced upon, 'you have no choice' style of system, for the children and the teachers, it is no wonder so many of them don't want to be there. It should be about choice. Young children don't want to sit around doing nothing. they always want something to do. Give them a subject they want to do, that they have chosen, and it will knock onto something else that they will also want to learn, and in turn learning will become easier and easier. They will have pride in their work, and gain in confidence, and by knock on teaching will become a job people want to do rather than the mid twenties response to not having made it in the world of Autocad.
I have chosen to start writing this stuff, after so many years of doing nothing, because I want to learn how to write again. I think I was okay at it at school, but after such a long gap it's very, very difficult. But I'll continue to try because I want to do it. Not because anyone else wants me to, and I think that is the key.
I picked up a guitar because I wanted to, because I saw guys in bands write songs and i thought 'I could do that'. I thought also it might help me lose my virginity, and I wanted to do that too. That was inspiration, and that's what a teacher should do- inspire (not take virginities, obviously). It wasn't the music department in school that inspired me to continue with music- I hated the music department in school, they ruined everything exciting and creative I thought the subject was about, because to them it seemed like just another job. It was Mr Mcgregor (RIP) from the school art department that encouraged me towards the elements of music that excited me rather that just treat it with the disdain of a subject. To make the subject into a part of you, so by default you will want to learn more and find your own pathway through it. I didn't even take art as a subject. I was shit at art.
I think I'm lucky to have met a teacher who instilled in me that you really only learn what you want to to learn under your own power. By learn i mean retain the information, hold it dear and enjoy it, find it useful. There will be a million people out there who have crammed for exams and then instantly forgotten it as soon as the subject is passed. Is that any good? Does that prove anything beyond having the discipline to apply yourself to pass something you will instantly forget when you don't want to use it again? I think if the teaching system allowed a freer way of thinking instead of forcing graded marks out of kids too young to know what they want to do with life, never mind choose the subjects 'that will affect your entire future', everyone would benefit, from the ground up- children, teachers, the country, world peace etc. Utopian and completely unmanageable? I don't care, I just think it would work. How can this be done? I'll leave the logistics to someone else.
What I do know is this- I left school with a love of something, music specifically, and I still enjoy it as much to this day as when I was listening to Michael Jackson in primary five and almost choking myself trying to do spins wearing headphones in the Listening Centre. I'm grateful that I still have this love. I don't resent it, unlike so many teachers up and down the country who think they deserve better. They do deserve better, they deserve a system that makes them want to teach children that want to learn. A system that inspires some free thinking independence from an early age rather than an a patronising oppression that makes learning a chore. A system that doesn't instill disillusionment from secondary school onwards.
Or you could just blame the parents.
P.S apologies if this is a bit of a heavy chat. Next time I'll do cunt filled rant about Sting or something to make up for it, promise.
*I Passed everything except the second fucking marketing module would you believe, so never got that career defining Music Business Advanced Diploma. Sorry mum, if you ever read this, It was a lie. But to be honest you will have probably read the previous 'cunt' festooned post and can't think much lower of me anyway.
