I wrote this book fourteen years ago when I retired from teaching. It’s been burbling away achieving some glowing reviews but unfortunately didn’t change education across the world! We continue to fail to see the wonder of education as a transforming force. Young minds can be expanded and the world can be improved. Education should be enlightening, wondrous, exciting and fun. All too often it is robotic, stifling and plain boring.
I wanted to do it right!
(I noticed on Amazon that the price for the book had gone up ridiculously. I price my books so that they give me £1 profit. Amazon had put their costs up and that impacted. I’ve addressed that. In the next few days the price should more than half).
So here is an extract from the introduction:
A passion for Education – The story of a Headteacher
. Education is all things to all men/women. To politicians it is a way of maintaining social order, reinforcing class or enabling mobility and addressing the economic needs of the country. To many it is purely about careers while to others it is about expanding minds, opening horizons and creating wonder. I’m very much in the wonder and awe camp. I am also of the repairing damaged kids persuasion. All my students were equally important and equally valuable. I hope I succeeded in making some of their lives better. That’s what I set out to do. Their chosen career and economic value was secondary to their self-esteem and happiness.
Before starting this I checked on ‘Rate my Teacher’, a scurrilous website that has given a voice to some rather dubious individuals, but one which reflects how some others see you. It offers a modicum of objectivity. It was a little unsettling to see oneself described as an obese penguin from the CIA but on the other side there was also the recognition of the care and respect. It showed a career that was not entirely wasted.
I worked in Education for thirty six years and prior to that I was largely a victim of it for twenty plus years. My experience of schooling gave me the impetus to get involved and change it. My disgust at the education minister and the Tory attempt to belittle all the achievements of recent decades and drag education back to the appalling 1950s is my main reason for writing this. Children should be valued as human beings and not seen as mere economic units for the employment market. Education that is not developing all aspects of human empathy, and creativity as well as expanding minds is wrong. Most leading fascists have been highly educated – after a fashion. It was their empathy, compassion and warmth of spirit that was allowed to atrophy. Any education system that fosters elitism and the smug arrogance that stems from it should be resisted by all caring people. A system that ignores the promotion of human feeling and sound moral and ethical values in order to focus on exam league tables and economic performance is flawed. The society created would be cold and bitter.
I have fought against that limited view of education all my life.
I have fought for the warmth and light.
I’m glad the kids had someone like you, having a good teacher or headteacher can really change lives.
I had a few teachers who had a big impact on me.
You may not have changed education, but you made a difference in the lives of children.
Yes – That gives me some fulfilment. I changed the school for a while and showed it could be done.
Cheers to all you did, Opher! You should definitely feel fulfilled – I’m so glad.
You’re still doing it Jennie!
😀