On of the weirdest things about teaching is how aware one ends up of the multitude of contradictions and paradoxes that infuse education, and do so at so many levels. In a sense I think this is an expression of a very deep expression of the complexities and contradiction inherent in adult expectation of children. Parents not only want their children to well, but also want the same children to face down the ghosts those parents were haunted by a generation before: More than that their kids give then younger eyes on the world again, a world that has shifted from when they were young, a shift they want the education of their kids to reflect (but not too much).
Moreover the wider adult community is incapable of seeing kids for the tangle they are. It rather resolves them, and what we teach them into crypto mythological debating points, about behaviour and standards, and duties and success and failure:: A constant stream of platitudes from the media/political classes that is about ideology, or perhaps mythology. It is an a series of statements and expressions, tied together in a loose argument (but really a legend) about where WE (Britain) are in the world, and the FEAR about where likely to end up... We as a nation project then our fears of failure on kids, and what we teach them.b All of which in a sense is ok, and natural, but adults are so pompous about all these feelings, and think that they must not confess them to their kids (who know them anyway), or to themselves....
From which it follows that the 'debates' we think we are having are frankly senseless or at least so abstract as to become pointless, be they about standards or teaching method or whatever. and the result is of course by and large a lot of pointless meaningless, if passionate discussion, which is more about the society 'living' being a democracy, than it is anything real (and so a myth). It certainly does not really reflect life teaching. The only direct link that exists between the two worlds comes when one of these debates creates a movement in the syllabus which rips though the class room, changing what is taught (and forcing the school to by new products or send teachers on training days - so spend money)... Occasionally one scoops the gold with these reforms. Those of you have read my blog will know I am a fan of the current GCSE syllabus, finance and tax is so much better when taught by mathematicians who really understand the maths, than it is by any other set of teachers (or at least that is my prejudice). It also allows one to generalise and to show how maths and our treatment of statistics underlines the way we think about society.... but the reform clearly will not last very long, and we will be back to the mythology of teaching soon.
As a teacher one is therefore attempting to hold down all these fears and allow them expression, while also actually helping individual kids learn about the world they are meant to be learning about. That is the topic one is also trying top teach them. The problem of course is that this topic is so far down the agenda. One has so much more to manage first. For as I said before kids know that what they are being taught has more to do with adult fears and feelings than actual reality, and they really resent it , and why not. It is after all an abuse of power, if one made in the name of education. Getting them through this antipathy and towards what actually matters, and showing them that some of what they are being told is useful and even vital, is for me the hardest part of teaching. The problem is one of trust, as much as anything. A trust that this mythological debate with all its inappropriate passions does not help at all.. The problem is therefore one cut through all the guff to the actual reality of how how helps another person restructure their minds (for that is what teaching really is).
Or to put it another way, we have created in schools a real paradox. In most human history, myth and education are the same. The myths structure then mind and that is it. But here and now, in our schools, teachers must run counterfactual to this age old truth as they teach. Our knoweldge is almost opposed to the myths we have about it (or at least it is in maths). This single fact makes teaching so very much harder, but if I am honest it also makes it so much more fun!
