It is a strange feeling, teaching the new maths syllabus.
On the hand one is teaching a course that is actually very worth while - in the sense that the maths that allows one to fill in a tax return or work out a fuel consumption is always good, always useful. More than that it, teaching the kind of methods that one needs to work out real world situation demands one actually teaches thought, rather than simple 'you do this then that, then this.' The philosopher me really revels teaching this syllabus, as it really demands pupils think and presents the teacher with the challenge that we teach the links between topics, rather than the formal topics itself.
On the other hand, it is very very strange to teach, if one understands teaching in its old formal sense. That definition of teaching was very class room based, and what it taught reflected the classroom situation. One taught methods inside topics and during formal lessons - one did fractions then percentages, then ratios, and left it to minds of the smartest to work out that these are really the same thing. One could use the connection between the different elements of the syllabus as a signifier for smartness: A's were given to those who link topics, and as teachers we conspired that it was so.
The strangeness for me, is that while the first stratagem for teaching is for me preferable, it is as a teacher much harder to work out both what you are doing, and what the long terms effect of what teaching be. I mean you are teaching to something that is integral to humans, namely their real understanding. The pupils therefore really comprehend what you are saying, which is just as well as the bite sized ' you do this then that in this case' approach cannot be formally taught as such. There are no simple methods or internal 'one-size-fits-all written answer calculators (that is very few formal written methods). One is therefore never really sure, until the next week or week after, of the power ones teaching:- If you like one is always flying blind, as one cannot read another's mind, and there nothing on paper to read. If you like maths teaching has become intuitive! Which for my money is no bad thing....
The only trouble is, of course that this being blind makes the teaching slightly weird for the teacher as it is (potentially) good for the pupil- and problem is that education is run by adults, as is basically for adults: Teaching is so often an expression of adult anxiety, and not what is good to learn. It is then surely only a matter of time before we turn back to what is easy for adults to teach, asses and so judge both pupils and teachers. A fact that makes teaching the new approach all the more odd. I know even as I really get my teeth into how to teach it, how to think it, that the knowledge will soon be useless, and swept away in the interest of tradition.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Leaders....Follow the leaders
It is one of the strange, and very hidden dangers of teaching - any teaching - namely the problem of power.
Power is always at stake in teaching; without it the very ability of the teacher is questioned - authority breaks down, and with it trust in what is being taught; and once that has gone, then all teaching ceases: all that are imparted are a random sequence of half truth.
Power matters therefore to teachers, we need it.
And yet, power warps the powerful, of course it does. It is so easy for a teacher to assume that somehow the power they wield is justified and right. All the more so as the power is often hard won, and potentially problematic in itself. It needs therefore to be substantiated, by an assumption that the power is somehow justified and simply 'right'; the implication then being what that power breeds, what abuses or assumptions are also necessarily right.
Now in the past the relationship was of crisscrossed by voilence. Teacher could wack children and did often. It then went through a period where work itself became the issue. If one wanted to enforce authority, then one made the students work harder, or pointlessly. And now of course we express the same abuse in terms exams, and endless regulation. we make kids feel small, by making them feel stupid: By revealing that stupidity, not only to them, but also their peers...And at the same time of course, on a slightly bigger picture, the 'powers that be' in education (politicians and regulators) wield their own power over teachers. The struggles of kids and teachers, are then caught up in a wider struggle of politicians, with all that entails...
Of course one has to be so very careful in all this. Power and teaching goes together, of course it does - and power and abuse goes together, just as naturally; for once one has power it is next to impossible to pitch it right. Indeed the anarchist in me thinks it is impossible for power to be otherwise. There is no point, one moment its righteous exercise becomes an abuse. On the contrary, the two sides of power are caught up together, abuses are justified, from other angles, or if the mood music changes...
The problem any epoch in education faces is therefore where it draws its lines of power - and how it links learning to discipline and so to thought. There is probably no right and wrong here, only exercise and consequence. The fatal mistake that adults make is that kids do know what is happening and why. Of course they do, they are just pragmatists and accept it all - but then of course of judge it and its justifications in their own way and in their own time. A thought I think that is so difficult for adults to encompass, that they ignore it - much to the cost of the over all system.
Power is always at stake in teaching; without it the very ability of the teacher is questioned - authority breaks down, and with it trust in what is being taught; and once that has gone, then all teaching ceases: all that are imparted are a random sequence of half truth.
Power matters therefore to teachers, we need it.
And yet, power warps the powerful, of course it does. It is so easy for a teacher to assume that somehow the power they wield is justified and right. All the more so as the power is often hard won, and potentially problematic in itself. It needs therefore to be substantiated, by an assumption that the power is somehow justified and simply 'right'; the implication then being what that power breeds, what abuses or assumptions are also necessarily right.
Now in the past the relationship was of crisscrossed by voilence. Teacher could wack children and did often. It then went through a period where work itself became the issue. If one wanted to enforce authority, then one made the students work harder, or pointlessly. And now of course we express the same abuse in terms exams, and endless regulation. we make kids feel small, by making them feel stupid: By revealing that stupidity, not only to them, but also their peers...And at the same time of course, on a slightly bigger picture, the 'powers that be' in education (politicians and regulators) wield their own power over teachers. The struggles of kids and teachers, are then caught up in a wider struggle of politicians, with all that entails...
Of course one has to be so very careful in all this. Power and teaching goes together, of course it does - and power and abuse goes together, just as naturally; for once one has power it is next to impossible to pitch it right. Indeed the anarchist in me thinks it is impossible for power to be otherwise. There is no point, one moment its righteous exercise becomes an abuse. On the contrary, the two sides of power are caught up together, abuses are justified, from other angles, or if the mood music changes...
The problem any epoch in education faces is therefore where it draws its lines of power - and how it links learning to discipline and so to thought. There is probably no right and wrong here, only exercise and consequence. The fatal mistake that adults make is that kids do know what is happening and why. Of course they do, they are just pragmatists and accept it all - but then of course of judge it and its justifications in their own way and in their own time. A thought I think that is so difficult for adults to encompass, that they ignore it - much to the cost of the over all system.
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