From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Anarchist teachers
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 12:41:24 +0100



>Somebody has asked me to set up an "Anarchist Teachers" page at the
>Mid-Atlantic Infoshop. Are there any folks on this list who fit that
>category? Do you have any thoughts on this idea? Would you have any use
>for this?
>
>If i set this up, I'd need volunteers to help maintain the page. After
>all, I'm not an anarchist teacher.
>


Like Carp, I wouldn't want publicity in the wider world though my leanings
are well enough known among my colleagues.

There are several issues in the UK where practical anarchy is relevant. Two
big ones:

1] Failing schools: we have a group of Skool Inspectors called OFSTE D
[Office for Standards in Education]
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/ofsted.htm for the extent of their hideousness -
read some of their reports on schools. These people can deem schools as
"failing" because their kids do not achieve raw examination scores/targets
set by the gov. These targets make no allowance for the difficulties a
school faces and are wrong. OFSTED just chucks out sound-bites that inner
city kids deserve as good an education as everyone else. For example one
school failed because its scores at 16+ had declined from what would have
been expected given the scores of the same year group at 14+. However, 50%
of this London school's intake had changed in the two years [transient
population, massive refugee intake, over 40 mother-tongues], so the
judgement was invalid but maintained nonetheless. The schools are then
"named and shamed" thus labelling the staff but worse the kids in the
schools as "failures".

A Professor Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon at Durham University [who has read her
Malatesta] is currently on a drive to persuade schools to take their
monitoring into their own hands by using more scientific methods of
measuring how individual kids progress. She quotes Popper with approval [who
in his accounts of meeting with Marxists says "it taught me the wisdom of
the Socratic saying, 'I know that I do not know'".] and says "perhaps only
ex-Marxists should be school inspectors."  She goes on to say that "Lack of
knowledge is dangerous to human life and so is false belief - the pretence
to knowledge." UK schools are currently suffering a slow death by sound-byte
and by inaccurate definition of success/failure relying on pretence and
political whim.

Part of her suggestion is that "The people involved in running the system [I
would include the community-including parents and students in this] are the
people best placed to improve it..." She starts from a basis of measuring
what each child can do, and then measures how they might progress, avoiding
broad sweep targets and benchmarks.

2] Concomitant with this is the way that budgets are devolved on a per
capita basis to schools which compete for pupils in a rigged market. This
means that rich schools get richer and poor get poorer. My wife's school
raises maybe $800 from its summer fair. My kids' school in a "medium" area
gets $8000. However H.M. Gov rigs the rights and responsibilities thing so
that schools are to blame for poor buildings and lack of IT, not the
government, under the "You can spend the money how you wish " mantra.

In short, good idea, but the need is a bit of cage-floor expanding as well
as fine words about educating children. A network that might also take
participants into a forum for discussion other than our weaselly trade
unions would be nice.