A progressive analysis of politics and the arts.
Norfolk-based education workers belonging to the National Education Union (NEU) have won a hard-won victory, after working with other trade unionists across England to force the government to close schools to the majority of students. This follows a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, particularly amongst school-aged children.
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The only way to make the word ‘politics’, that great indicator of all manner of corruption and trickery, more contemptible is to plonk the word ‘student’ in front of it. It almost feels like you‘re not pronouncing ‘student politics’ right if you do it without a sneer, or at least a shudder. Student politics has an image problem.
By Dan Davison
Examinations are woven into the fabric of student life. From the ‘Key Stage’ National Curriculum assessments I sat in childhood through to the tests I took as a Master’s student, every stage of my education has known the familiar cycle of revision, testing, marking and grading. It was not until I became a precariously employed university tutor that I realised how dangerously uncritical we are of that cycle. By this point it seems so natural to make people sit exams at various points in their lives that it scarcely occurs to the public consciousness that students and teachers might be better off without such a regimented approach to learning.
by Laura Potts
The TARDIS programme at Chapel Break Infant School is an exemplary example of creative education and an inspirational learning environment. For 10 years, the programme has transformed classrooms into imaginative environments for young minds to explore and develop in. TARDIS stands for ‘Thinking Arts Reflective Dialogue Imagination Studio’. The aim of its resourceful staff is to immerse the children in philosophical and creative enquiry:
‘The learning consists of the development of a range of skills, including speaking and listening, debate and discussion, a variety of thinking skills, social skills, independence of thought and action and persistence. It builds a knowledge and experience of the visual arts beyond those that can be offered within the usual classroom setting.’
by Against Borders for Children
“…this proposal has all the hallmarks of racism…Children are children, and to use their personal information for immigration enforcement is disingenuous, irresponsible, and not the hallmark of a tolerant, open and caring society”
– Lord Storey
Against Borders for Children (ABC) is a coalition of parents, teachers, schools and campaigners. Our aim is to reverse the Department of Education’s (DfE) policy to collect country of birth and nationality information on 8 million children in England in order to ‘create a hostile environment’ for migrant children in schools, primarily by encouraging a mass boycott of the School Census.
Igminae a wlrod wree the wetrtin wrod is as hrad to raed as tihs. Imagine that written word is in your first language, not a second or third. Imagine the difficulty it presents every day, how others perceive you, how exhausting it is to read, and understand. Some of you reading this won’t have to imagine. This is the world of a dyslexic.
Often people think of dyslexia as word blindness, or even attribute it to a low intelligence score. When I was a Primary School teacher I often heard people referring to dyslexia as a “nice way of calling middle-class children slow”. This attitude horrified me. Many attitudes in school staff-rooms towards learning horrified me. As a child, I remember my mother would explain out to my teachers my dyslexia at every parents evening. The same teachers, every year, and it was always a surprise to them. As an adult and an educator, I had hoped attitudes had changed, but in my experience this is not the case.Continue Reading
by Cadi Cliff
Wednesday was Budget Day and George Osborne set out plans for a huge shake-up of the schools system. He announced that schools in England must become academies, independent of local authorities, by 2020. It’s farewell to your old council-run comprehensive and hello to corporate sponsored academies — and no, you don’t get a say in the matter.
Along with junior doctor contracts, the majority of the public have not supported the government’s argument on academies — so the Tories have gone and imposed them anyway. Democracy, right?Continue Reading
Disclaimer: One of the reasons I most enjoy writing for the Norwich Radical is the freedom I get to make sweeping generalisations and the ability to dress up my ‘reckons’ as hardened, well researched fact. With this in mind I invite you to continue reading and take a tour of my most recent ponders and speculations.
Universities are the place where the leaders of tomorrow are squashed into being. The people that pass through university doors go on to be the business owners, the entrepreneurs, and the politicians. They go on to be the citizens who, on average at least, are more likely to be those people who shape the lives of many others. So what do these people look like? Well, even I’m not brave enough to try and generalise all students into a homogeneous group but there’s certainly some conversations to be had about the changing ‘average student’.
The way we view ourselves as a part of (or not a part of) the society around us really shapes the way we act. The way we view ourselves alters the view of our neighbours, near or far. So, how do we create ‘good’ citizens? (If I can fall upon a perfect enough definition we might come back to what a good citizen looks like…) Let’s take a whistle-stop tour of life before uni.
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