It has been a long time since I blogged last and I thought I ought to start up again - popping in things I am doing rather than waiting for long stretches of time where I can compose something and develop it.
As a starter, here is a piece concocted as an aside to presentations we did on the assessment of writing for the 2016 session (no doubt more to say on that shortly). As a joke, I started to see how many of the national curriculum's year 5 and 6 words I could use in a piece of writing. the idea of concocting a piece of writing which allowed all the descriptors to be covered has some appeal and this was a step towards it, given that spelling the words correctly is a criterion for working at the expected standard. Having done a paragraph or two, I thought I would see if I could use all of them , so I did. I have emboldened the words from the word list.
As you, especially,
may appreciate and recognise, I am determined, sincerely
and in all conscience, not to be a nuisance, nor to embarrass, harass or criticise any individual. I do not wish to raise the temperature of the debate, to
exaggerate the issue or to reawaken an ancient
controversy, but I do wish to make a
conscious objection to parliament’s belief that English language teaching, in all its variety, should be reduced to matters
of correctness and, if spoken, of received pronunciation.
Persuaded by a government overly attached to a disastrous education policy, MPs,
in one committee or another, missed
an opportunity to prevent immediate disaster occurring.
Apparently ignoring
the recommendations of the teaching profession, an aggressive education
secretary is content to use muscle
(political rather than physical) to
overpower any opposition, using any
available means to bruise their
opponents. Mischievous and desperate comments, rooted only in prejudice, have been accompanied by unnecessary interference
in the work of the classroom. Excellent
teachers, whose existence and very identity are rooted in their desire to
help children, are frequently forced
to stomach a system they despise and
labour in a hostile environment.
Although they are keen to accommodate any
attempt to benefit the school and its neighbours
in the community while encouraging
children to achieve, they do not see
government interference as relevant.
The explanations, to which ministers
have put their signature, are not sufficient to convince them otherwise.
The programmes
of study do not allow teachers to help pupils communicate effectively but force them to sacrifice a thorough
introduction to the rhymes and rhythms of an English language, which
has no competition for its
flexibility and beauty. The assessment system,
now in its tenth or twelfth version,
is a hindrance to any attempt to develop curiosity about language
or the browsing of a dictionary or
thesaurus. It seems to have been designed by an amateur who scribbled it down on a restaurant menu or when taking his or her leisure aboard a marvellously
well-fitted yacht moored in some
foreign resort. No doubt it was done
at the convenience of an overly familiar magnate.
Teachers will definitely
soldier on and shoulder the
burden imposed upon them. They know the curriculum reeks of the cemetery in which good teaching is
interred. According to the DfE,
teachers should occupy their time
coercing the average child to
compose awkward sentences; a process
corresponding to no known category of good practice and guaranteed to confuse with lightning speed. These programmes interrupt learning and are merely vehicles carrying cohorts of forty plus to some dark destination.
Children are treated like vegetables
in the bargain basement of some
bizarre greengrocers, where they queue
for the privilege of being weighed
and bagged. Their silence, I suggest,
is a symbol of how ill-equipped they could become as users of
language.
