What I've been up to lately

Well this may be only 24 hours late but here is a bit of an update. Back in September I started a PGCE. For those not in the UK that is a qualification taken by people who wish to train to be teachers.

The last term has been like a typical rollercoaster. There have been good days and bad days and I have discovered a number of things. Firstly I don't want to teach in an ordinary comprehensive school. This is because I am too old and too set in my ways to put up with all the hassle of teaching people who don't want to learn. There is for my money too much hassle and bureaucracy in the profession and too much emphasis is placed on things like 3 part lesson plans and other 'great ideas'.

I find the actual course also to be tedious and unnecessary. There are lectures which I have attended and for which I won't ever get the time back. The course propounds more pointless theories and does not concentrate on actual teaching.

In the next few days I start on my second placement at a grammar school but I am already looking for jobs outside teaching. If I stay in teaching it will be in the independent sector or in the FE sector. But I am also looking for jobs in the legal profession for which I am trained as well or in training somehow. Whatever I do I want to somehow end up in Ireland which is where I feel at home or if I stay in the UK somewhere more rural and in a bigger house.

I went into teaching with the idealistic aim of changing the way that kids think and thus hopefully changing the future of the country. What I have learned very quickly is that there is no place for idealism in the profession. Teachers are their own worst enemy by signing up to every crackpot idea that comes along. I heard one lecturer criticise a teacher just because he didn't appear to sign up to a type of assessment. This teacher had twenty years plus of experience and the lecturer said openly that she felt that he didn't understand assessment. On the contrary he probably understood it better than she did.

In the legal profession in England and Wales you are given a small inch thick A5 book which contains all the professional rules to which you must adhere. You sit a small exam and you either pass or fail. After that you are deemed to know the rules. Nobody will check that you have read the rules but if you infringe any you will be held to account. In teaching you have to produce portfolios of evidence to show how you meet each of the 33 standards. This is just needless paper creation.

Until teaching starts to behave like a profession in the way it treats its members then it will never be considered to be one of the professions.

Evidence

Over the last couple of weeks I have come across people who apparently seem to have ignored what evidence actually is. The first offender was a member of Friends of the Earth who uses the governmental interpretation of the word. The debate was with this green type and a farmer and it was about whether or not GM foods are a good thing or not. The governmental interpretation of evidence is that there is only evidence if it has come through research and scientific investigation. Whilst this is to an extent true, it ignores the fact that anecdotal evidence is still evidence and this green advocate was dismissing the farmer's own experiences and knowledge because they didn't fit her argument.

An academic once criticised part of one of my best presentations because some information came from personal knowledge and experience rather than from the groves of academe.

Almost the next day there was a debate about the Kelly Report into MPs expenses when it was leaked that allowances would be lost and spouses not allowed to be employed. The MP's complaint was that Kelly had clearly not listened to the evidence he had given because he had reached a different conclusion to the one he wanted, Politicians are forever doing this. The current furore over scientific advisers is also part of this. The evidence would seem to support the scientist's conclusions it is just that what he said was ludicrous but accurate.

I don't mind people using evidence to support their argument, it is what I have trained to do for 4 years, what I do object to is people denying that contrary evidence exists or stating that unless evidence is gathered from a scientific research program it is invalid. Evidence simply is. You may vary the weight you give to different types of evidence but evidence is evidence and to deny this simple fact is irritating and pointless.