reclaim

I wish you were my teacher

Do you mean the teachers get to teach what they want? really it should be the students who decide what they want to learn about.

The NASUWT supports the national curriculum, and believe that every child should be forced into it. They claim that no education can possibly take place outside of the "modern classroom", the curriculum, and "professional teachers". They even argue that "learning outside the classroom" must be curriculum linked.

They're also into 'early identification and intervention', even pre-school, of 'bad' pupil behaviour. The NASUWT supports 'voluntary' schemes such as 'parenting contracts' to address potential future kiddy crimes of, among other things, "lateness, refusal to listen to the teacher, unwillingness to engage with the work, conduct within class and arrival without correct equipment".

Oh, and one of the spokespeople on their behalf, Ron Clooney, said about truancy that "If a parent doesn't send their children to school, they should get a prison sentence".

The NASUWT suck.

The videos on the 'reclaim the classroom' website are horribly twee and patronising, also pretty brain-washy in places, "making sure students are engaged, without knowing it is all about assessment", using the "classic strategy" of "getting the students to assess each others efforts", "the students didnt seem to realise they were learning", etc.

Then there are the kids who have been chosen to stand woodenly in their neat uniform for three seconds for the videos, parroting teacher-speak about developing their listening and communication skills. "When he brings the games, youre just like, dead happy" - yeh, im convinced.

And the teachers are banging on about it being fun! exciting! reclaiming space! Mostly the kids are sat in rows at desks, only speaking when its their teacher-designated speaking time, being given their have-fun-and-learn-from-it! orders by some patronising adult. Some of the teachers talk like cult members, all earnest but dead behind the eyes. Reclaim the classroom' lessons dont look any different than any other days lessons, one of them even repeats herself several times "youve probably done this before".

Calling something a game doesnt make it a game, its just twistyturny people management language. Is it fun? The kids dont look or sound like theyre having fun. They look like they're just going along with it, they look bored, when they dont look distracted by the fact someone is roaming the classroom with a camera. Would they choose to be there if they had other options? If they did express their disinterest or disagreement with the teachers or the lessons the NASUWT would want them and/or their parents punished.

Calling this 'reclaim' anything is just using a 'social justice' buzzword to doublespeak the stupid. If anyone has the right to reclaim the classroom, its kids, and their parents, and the community who the classrooms belong to but who are never allowed to take a step inside, access the resources that are hoarded away in schools. Teachers cant reclaim a space that they've always been the authority in, to a captive audience no less. In the classroom, teachers *are* the bosses.

Why would you want to be in a union that is 'ineffective and right wing'? Whats the point of that? Those wacky fun lessons make teachers look "pointless, parasitic and truly useless", never mind any other bosses.

I acknowledge that youre in a difficult position and that many teachers on some level are trying to do what they think is the right thing. But I'm often incensed by the patronising and misguided 'right thing's that come from a lot of ppl in the education business, so while they might not be my 'enemy' exactly, I wdnt necessarily consider us always 'on the same side' either.

I get why you'd be part of a group who you felt agreement with on some issues but not all. I think most of us do that sometimes.

Do you have any ideas what a real 'reclaim the classroom' might do? Or any ideas for organising one among your particular group? What do you actually think about this one, other than it sucks, what did you hope it would be?

Sorry if you felt personally attacked by what I said before.

There have been some legitimate concerns raised here - particularly with respect to NASUWT nationally. However, as an idea, it sounds quite promising.

Especially if, as some people have suggested, pupils were involved as well in jointly coming up with a plan for the day.

I'm not aware of the background of this - is it a particular day planned at some point in the near future?

Also, presumably with the new NUT-NASUWT agreement NUT should be involved in this action as well. There are a few teachers on libcom - any input/feedback from any of them?

Hi, so did "reclaim the classroom" happen then? That's a shame if it didn't work out.

In terms of staying anonymous, what I and most other people on here do is not mention the name of the particular workplace we are at. Only give the type of workplace and the general location.

If there is a particular local dispute which would identify your particular school, and therefore you, what you could do is either wait to talk about it a couple of weeks later then refer back to it without mentioning the specific time when it occurred. Or you could change details of the dispute to make it more anonymous (i.e. change the town, change the reason for the dispute slightly). Or you could just talk about it straight up but make sure that no one in the school management could stumble across the discussion over Google. So if you don't mention the town or the school name you should be pretty safe.

is there a private forum for people in eao's position? to get advice/sort out their message or proposals for action before releasing anything in public? to help them protect themselves as much as possible I mean. or some page/thread eao can look at for advice on maintaining anonymity, what to do if it is compromised, or how to approach 'going public' (leaving anonymity) safely if they decide to do that.

cos your advice above seems sound but its also brief and its pretty easy to slip up and accidentally make yourself (or have someone make you) traceable.

We have no private forum, nor do we have plans for one. However we should have a page on privacy/anonymity but we haven't got round to it yet.

You can edit out your own comments, look for edit at the bottom of the post.

No one in NASUWT in my school has mentioned it so it has low visibility to my knowlegde.

I'd also agree tat it has potential but all the concerns highlighted are valid. While something like this has a chance of building confidence among education workers, unless it contains a critique of education,a nd the role of modern schools themselves, it'll be destined to fail.

I have no idea why the original poster here has edited out his/her comments. NASUWT has over 200,000 members, and these comments could have come from any one of them. None of the comments even contained any information that was contentious.

There is being careful, and there is straight up paranoia

I don't know about over the pond, but education here is indoctrination, and even if you teach from a leftist perspective your indoctrinating people with leftism, making you no better than Stalinists.

3 jobs no anarchist should take: teacher, politician, cop

I'm 15, and a student, so don't attack me on that front.

As an education worker, iexist, I'm leaving that one alone. Like you said, you're 15, but if you stick around libcom for a while I may ask you to return to this conversation...

Iexist, please read
http://libcom.org/library/assessment-control-teacher%E2%80%99s-experience-pecking-order-schools

Modern schools are absolutely a crock of shit.

But we won't want to get rid of schools, nor teachers come the revolution.

We'll want to control schools, run BY and FOR us. We'll also want teachers. I don't where the fuck you think socially useful things like universal healthcare, transport, and everything else will come from without education.

I agree, its not the teachers I hate, its the education system, where kids are made to sit in rows and have one boss tell them what to do. Its a training group for the workplace. I think that they should be made into free skools or democratic schools

Absolutely, schools mirror the mthods used to discipline workers, and function to prepare students for the shitty exploitative world of work. But not schools per-se, just schools in capitalism - you might enjoy the recent thread on 'what would your job look like?' that RobRay did as it had some stuff on how schools could be transformed. I'll try finding it

edit - there ye go
http://libcom.org/blog/your-job-after-revolution-26042012

I'd like a democratic school, which is a microcosm of ancom society. but your ignoring the issue is it immoral for anarchists to be teachers.

lol, get real.

What do you mean by 'immoral'? Moralism isn't something communists are interested in.

If 'come the revolution' mimics current social/cultural structures, albeit with the leaders/ideology replaced, what is so revolutionary about it?

For something to be revolutionary, shouldn't it question the central principles of the typical?

I don't think schooling can be revolutionary. Reformed, sure, schools are in a constant state of reform, tiny changes to this or that, fads that come and go and are revisited in endless cycles by the dominant politics of the moment.

I don't want reformed schools. I want to reclaim the space they take up for genuinely educational purposes - open them up to the nonprofessionalised, to community groups and individuals of every age, day and night, accessible to anyone who needs a space to read and learn and experiment. The resources currently hoarded by schools should be communal, people should be free to use them to practice and learn, to find a teacher or mentor when we need one, someone who is learned in the topic.

Do you think that kids will be any more into school if the leadership changes? Where small schools and Summerhill type schools exist to attempt a child-led school environment, they are still confined by the
idea that children should be in school to learn and adults should only be there as an authority to control or guide or monitor or whatever the kids.

If revolutionaries are prepared to challenge anything, they should be prepared to challenge everything, most especially the structures they have participated in and take for granted themselves. There should not be any sacred cows, especially those institutions that are as ideologically pervasive as schooling. At the very least, a bit of reflection is needed on the purpose of schools, what they represent, what they claim to want to achieve, and whether they achieve it, and what else they achieve or damage in the process.

Schooling != education. Are there better ways to achieve the latter than the former? Is tinkering reform around the edges the best that can be imagined?

People concerned about protecting themselves shouldn't be dismissed as paranoid. It's not as if teachers who question the system are never targetted, personally and professionally.

Huh? Where did anyone advocate post-revolutionary society mimicking current social/cultural structures? It's almost as if you've never read any of the threads on education.

And where did anyone advocate 'changing leadership'? This is strawmanning at it's worst. Of course we want schools (call them what you want post-revolution) to be truly communal, and as I said run BY and FOR communities. You'll get no quarrel there, and as such I'm not sure which poster you're arguing with here.

If you'd read the thread I'd linked Iexist to you'd have come across the previous discussions where people echo your sentiments.

Choccy, you, above:

this while acknowledging that

(do you think older schools were better?)

and that

but you blame this on "schools in capitalism", rather than schooling itself.

All this, plus the stuff I read of yours on the other thread you linked, which I did read before I posted before - and btw I have read many threads on education here before - shows that you take a reformist position on schooling. Im not having a go at you about that, I just dont feel the same way about it. I dont want schools to be communal, I want the resources that are currently hoarded by schools to be communal. This is not the same thing.

I also dont think that its safe for you to make this conclusion:

This suggests that you think that education == schools and teachers, and that schools and teachers are responsible for all 'socially useful things'. Why do you assume these things to be true? Can schooling take the credit for socially useful things? Where's your evidence? Could those things be achieved in another way, a better way even? If the achievements of schools can be weighed, can we also weigh the failures of schools, even the damage cause by schools? Can these be compared? What does a statement like this suggest about people who havent been through schooling, are they doomed to be socially not-useful?

In my experience, people who support schooling as it is, or in a reformed state, tend to make a lot of these assumptions like those above. Its not surprising because a lot of people are invested in that system, not least for work (not just jobs in education, but in any job that requires credentials earned from schooling). There are ideological investments too, obviously, the concepts of meritocracy, credentialism, etc.

I home ed, my kids started getting told by other kids that theyll 'never get anywhere in life, never get a job' etc without school, when they were probably about six. These are tiny people and they already have strong beliefs about schooling that in many cases already dont fit with their own small experience of it. Its crazy hearing about school from young kids who hate it, who get bullied there, who experience it as a frightening and invalidating place, who go home thinking they're stupid and will never achieve anything - but who nonetheless believe that school is necessary and their only chance for salvation.

You dismiss moralism but schooling itself relies upon and is a form of and perpetuates a sort of social moralism. Schooling is a political religion, conditioning people, from a very young age, to believe that it is the right or only way to do education, rigorously dissuading discussion of or attempts to do alternatives (look at the way the related unions campaign against any attempt at alternatives), always relying on the faith of its followers to not check for real evidence of its 'social usefulness'.

Deschooling Society made direct comparisons between school and religion thirty years ago, its here if youre interested:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29549224/Ivan-Illich-Deschooling-Society

I don't support schooling 'as it is' - where on earth did you get that idea?

When I say 'modern schooling' it's obviously a diffuse reference to the only kind of schooling most of us will have experienced. I made no comparison nor have I praised 'olden day' schooling - again, throwing out another straw man.

And no I don't want to get rid of schools or teachers.
But I do think they'll be completely different places and schooling and teachers in name, only barely recognisable from what we come to experience under capitalism.

Again, for the third time in the thread, I'll refer to the thread on 'post revolution' stuff that I linked Iexist to, it has some interesting comments on what 'schooling' might look like - ie unrecognisable.

I imagine education, learning and teaching could be a lot better, because it would be run for and by workers/communities, on our terms. So we wouldn't spend any time doing pointless shit that trains us to be workplace fodder.

I don't think education=schools, I'm learning all the time. Your interpretation is deliberately misleading, I write about education on here all the time, I learn off here all the time, I learn a lot on my own, I learn from my mates and workmates.

However, do I think we can have the best medical care for everyone under communism without some sort of organised formal tightly regulated (democratic and accountable etc) education? No, I think we'd do these things in a highly, and much better organised way actually. We might even call the buildings that housed them 'schools' or 'universities'.

You won't find me defending capitalist education, read my blog, I think it's destructive on so many levels. I think capitalism is what needs destroying, not the things that are co-opted to its ends.