The primary purpose of education – A passion for Education – The story of a Headteacher

Posted on by Opher

Throughout my teaching career I saw my role as trying to make students think and question. I wanted their brains stimulated. I wanted them to enjoy learning and to find it mind expanding.

I am very idealistic.

And – do you know what? – It worked!

This book is about what I believed in and how I did it. It’s real. The anecdotes are real.

A passion for Education – The story of a Headteacher

In my teaching experience I have known students with lower intelligence, destined for poor grades and lowly jobs, but possessing a range of qualities that left me humbled. I have known highly intelligent individuals, destined for top jobs, who were mean spirited and likely to create misery. My job was to bring out the best in both and my hope is that both types left school better equipped to make a positive contribution to society.

Education is a nebulous thing. We are building the future and the future is not only concerned with careers and wealth; it is also about families, societies, relationships and supporting those less fortunate. How to build a better world should be our curriculum. How we repair damaged children should be our imperative. How we foster positive human values should be our main aim. Teaching and learning, exam results and league tables are almost superfluous in the face of such paramount challenges.

This is why I believe the most important subject, and the most difficult to teach, is PSHE (Personal social and health education). All too often it is poorly delivered, pushed to the shadows and taught by reluctant exponents who happen to have some free space in their timetable. This is a travesty. PSHE is about life, about preparing students for a better world, dealing with the big issues of responsibility, respect, tolerance and empathy. PSHE, like the pastoral system, is about guidance, interaction and development of those qualities that raise the sensibilities. It should be given centre stage, pride of place and only taught by the very best of teachers with the most advanced skills. Anything less is short-changing the future. A school lacking a vibrant PSHE programme is like a robot with no heart. It is pointless.

A passion for Education – The story of a Headteacher eBook : Goodwin BSc (Hons) NPQH, Christopher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Anecdote – School – Start as you mean to go on – not the best of beginnings

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School – Start as you mean to go on.

Unusually I turned up at Secondary School looking immaculate. My mum had decked me out with brand new uniform – blazer, cap, shirt, tie, long socks and shoes. It was topped off with a hair-cut. I was neat, clean, tidy and pressed. All my creases were the right kind of creases. It couldn’t last.

My form room was the Technical drawing room. This was set out to do technical drawing. People needed sharp pencils for technical drawing. Mr Cox, our kind form teacher, had thoughtfully put out pieces of wood with sandpaper glued on them. You could bring your pencil to a diamond sharp point on the sandpaper. These pieces of wood were hung from nails.

I squeezed round the back of some boys to take my place and caught my blazer on the nail. It ripped a triangle out of the shoulder that hung down in a flap. Even I had to admit that it wasn’t the most stylish of arrangements.

Later that morning I had art. I liked art. Unfortunately there were not enough rooms so we had to do our art up on the stage behind the curtains. It wasn’t ideal. We had to bring everything that was required across from the art-room.

I was chosen to be one of the people to carry the materials back.

A little group of us went over to collect the paper, paint and brushes. I received the task of carrying trays of paint. We were to use Tempera Powder Paint. The powder had been poured out into baking trays. They were the sort that you cooked Yorkshire puddings in. There were big indentations full of powder.

I carried ten of these trays, one on top of the other.

Our little retinue carried our materials out of the art-block and up the road to the hall. We went in through the side door. I was very careful to negotiate the perils of the swing door. I did not want to spill any powder. Unfortunately I was so fixated on the door that I did not take account of the doormat. Inside the door was a sunken well with a bristly mat in it. I was not used to sunken mat wells. I tripped over it.

The trays of paint went flying up in the air. Then they clattered down. The powder paint formed a personal dust cloud that completely encompassed me. Then it settled.

The great clattering noise brought the whole class out.

I stood up and was completely covered with dust from head to foot. I looked a bit like a ghost. Then I started to cry. As the tears ran down my cheeks they created rivulets of rainbows.

My first day at school was quite eventful.

I cannot remember what my mum’s face was like when she set eyes on me. I was no longer the smart young man she had sent off. I was now a dirty, crumpled wreck with torn clothes and grime.

But hey – always start as you mean to go on.

If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings/dp/1519675631/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457515636&sr=1-3&keywords=opher+goodwin

Or a book of poetry and comment:

Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle

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My other books are here:

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Anecdote – Rebena’s little ploy – a true story about bullying and embezzlement

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Rebena’s little ploy

Rebena was not a nice lady. In fact I’m not sure that Rebena was a lady at all. She looked like an extra from Prisoner – Cell Block H and I’m sure she would never have made the Olympics, at least not in the female category. She probably had more testosterone that the rest of the boys in school.

Rebena must only have been fourteen but she looked like a grizzly bear with short brown hair. She ran a little gang of girls who, despite lacking the necessary musculature, all aspired to be like her. They had the swagger down and weren’t short of attitude.

For my first weeks in school it seemed like a game. Rebena’s ‘girls’ would chase us around all over the school. Every break-time was a game of chase. I enjoyed it.

Then it ceased to be a game. A bunch of them cornered me and frogmarched me off for a private conference with Rebena. There were a lot of arm twisting and tight grips with some pinching and punches. It was apparent that the young ladies had not found the enterprise as much fun as me. To them it was business. They did not like being given the run-around. It had certainly ceased to be quite so much fun for me.

They escorted me to Rebena’s ‘office’. She held court behind the bike sheds where it was nice and quiet.

Rebena had quite a persuasive way with her. She was very quiet and softly spoken, with a husky voice well beyond her years.

Rebena had a comb. It was quite an unnecessary implement for any practical use. Her hair was so short it hardly needed combing. It was one of those girls combs; an aluminium job with a handle. Rebena had modified it by sharpening that handle to a sharp point.

The Hench-ladies delivered me and two took the job of holding me still by forcing my arms behind my back and jamming me back against the wall. Rebena regarded me with a cool stare. She pushed my head up against the wall and put the point of her comb under my chine. I was soon standing on tip-toes as she raised the comb up to dig into my flesh.

When she had got me pinned, much to the amusement of the girls all gathered round, she began to make me that offer that was hard to refuse.

It seemed that Rebena had my best interests at heart. She knew that some of the older boys could turn nasty. She knew that some of my classmates could be trying. She had the answer to all my problems.

I tried to explain to Rebena that I really didn’t have any problems in school with anyone. That was hard to do with a sharp point jabbing into your throat. Rebena assured me that I did have problems. I was definitely in need of protection… I didn’t need telling twice. I could not only see the point but I could feel it too.

Rebena’s solution was quite simple. All I had to do was to make a reasonable contribution. Every morning I would pass half my dinner money to one of her girls. I could report anyone who was giving me a hard time and my problems would all melt away.

It certainly seemed a reasonable offer to me. I was getting fed up with arms being twisted and having pointed objects poked into my flesh. I readily agreed to this very sensible request.

I was expecting an instant release. That was not quite what happened. The arms were twisted a bit more and the comb raised a half inch.

Then Rebena explained very slowly just what would happen should I miss a payment. I was entering into a contract. If I failed to keep my side of the bargain there would be repercussions. There would be no nice, kindly interviews like this. As I was not finding this an either nice or kind interview I think I was beginning to catch on – if I did not give Rebena half my dinner money then she would beat the shit out of me.

There did not seem a lot of options. For the next couple of weeks I paid up and went hungry. I was one of many. Rebena was raking it in.

Fortunately this came to an end. I still do not know what happened but the last I saw of Rebena she was in the back of a police car being driven out of school. She never came back. I assumed that Rebena’s nefarious activities were not restricted to school playgrounds.

If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings/dp/1519675631/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457515636&sr=1-3&keywords=opher+goodwin

Or a book of poetry and comment:

Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhymes-Reason-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1516991184/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457515636&sr=1-4&keywords=opher+goodwin

My other books are here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent

Thank you and please leave a review.

 

Anecdote – School in the early sixties and various ‘crazes’.

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School in the early sixties and various crazes

When I look back at school in the early sixties I am amazed by the freedom we had. As far as I can see there was no supervision. At break and dinner-time we were free to do what we liked. The teachers went off to the staffroom to grab their coffee and natter and we ran riot.

The boys ran about like idiots while the girls stood around in groups or sat in the classrooms. Apart from all the usual games of football – either played on the big open fields in summer or on the hard tarmac enclosed tennis courts in winter – we went through a number of crazes.

When I first arrived at the school the craze was ‘kingy’. This was sometimes played in the tennis courts or in front of the old music rooms which were now used for storage. They had no windows to break and a concrete covered walkway with pillars coming down. You could hide behind the pillars. The game consisted of some older boys throwing a tennis ball at you as hard as they could. You could fend it off with fists and forearms but if they hit you on the body, above the knee, or the arm, above the elbow, or the head, you were out. We loved it. It was very popular and I used to go home with a variety of bruises from tennis balls that were breaking the sound barrier. The older boys also delighted in trying to inflict pain on the little first years.

It lasted a while then we moved on.

Rocket caps were fun. These were little metal rockets with fins. They had a metal plunger at the tip. You lifted the plunger up and were supposed to put a cap under it. These were little packs of gunpowder. You could buy them in long ribbons of fifty caps, which you tore off as required, or buy them in packs of round single caps. The single ones were more expensive but packed more of a punch. The object of the exercise was to throw the rocket up in the air. It would come down and as the plunger hit the ground the cap would go off with a bang. Of course we loaded them up with loads of caps to get a bigger explosion and threw at each other. When you were hit with a metal rocket it hurt.

That moved on to spud guns. Everyone had a couple of big potatoes in their pocket and we had these metal spud guns to fire plugs of potato. You could get quite a force on them. At one stage we had pitched battles at break and dinner in the old music room, building barricades out of the old desks.

Spud guns eventually became banned. I think the cleaners made a fuss over the amount of potato debris.

That enabled the pea-shooters to come into play. Everyone came to school with pockets full of dried peas which we gleefully fired at each other at every opportunity, including lessons. Floors were covered in peas.

After they were banned we moved on to the more surreptitious biro paper shooter. You chewed a wad of paper, pulled off a chunk and fashioned it into a pellet, took the workings out of your biro and fired the pellet at each other, the teacher or the blackboard. You quickly stuffed the workings back so that if accused you could show that you couldn’t possibly have done it. You could make the pellets gooey so that they stuck on the board or hard so they pinged off. That was part of the skill. Every time the teacher turned round to write on the board a hail of pellets hit him or the board. Some teachers ended up with blackboards plastered though there were others that you wouldn’t have dared.

We had a phase of firing rice through the biros. That was good because if you were proficient you could actually fire it like a machine gun.

Another craze was magnifying glasses. One summer it seemed that everyone had one in their pocket. We would direct the sun’s rays down on all things imaginable, burning holes through fabric, leaves, wood, plastic and each other. A favourite was the old tree stump out at the side of the field. You could cause them to smoulder for hours.

Eventually the Head put a stop to it. For some reason he took exception to the burn holes appearing in desks and furniture.

I tried to remember much about the actual lessons but nothing came to mind. They were hazy. It was the extraneous activities that have stuck.

They all came to a halt when we reached fourteen. You could not waste your time playing silly games. There were girls to impress.

Opher’s World – A cynical view of what the politicians are doing to education. Statistics, bureaucracy and strangulation by clip-board!

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Education – the perversion into mindless vacuity and statistics.

We teach the young to read and write; two tools that have unlimited power to expand the mind. At once all knowledge and wisdom is at their finger-tips – the greatest thoughts of the greatest men and women; the most wonderful poems, the most brilliant use of prose to paint pictures in the mind. All power resides in their hands to take the electricity in their minds and paint their own pictures to enthral, elucidate and educate others.

Reading and writing are the greatest pleasures in life. They excite and open doors to other universes.

We teach them to read so that they can read the adverts that sell rubbish they do not need, read the texts that indoctrinate and befuddle, read trivia that serves no other purpose than to titillate and pass the time, read the political pamphlets that lie and deceive and set in motion the mechanism of their own downfall.

Perhaps it is best they never learnt to read at all?

We teach them to write so that they might sign the cheques, agreements and mortgages that sell their souls, send the texts that talk of nothing and deliberately misspell and destroy the grammar so that all understanding of the beauty of language is negated.

Perhaps it would be better never to have learnt to write at all?

What we need is the education that creates the awe and wonder, reveals the beauty and discloses truth. An education that makes a joy of language and thrills and excites in a way that statistics cannot measure.

Education is the answer!!

Posted on by Opher

Education must surely be more than regurgitating facts.
Surely its main aims should be to make students think, question and become more human?
Surely it should encourage creativity and innovation?
Surely it must encompass the internet and computers?

Find out my view in my book written with complete honesty and openness: