At the chalkface Psycho metrics
“Empathy, communication, and resilience.” The Big Three. That’s what you need. These are the three pedagogic essentials. You can’t teach without them. Who says? Cutting Edge University. Great sages have devised tests to measure all prospective teachers, psychometric tests. These will be rolled out by 2012. Our pupils already lead the world in illiteracy, innumeracy, misery, obesity, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, chlamydia and shouting. Now their teachers will be world-class 21st century empathists and whizzo communicators. Or else. Blow the psychometrics and you won’t be fit for purpose. But aren’t teachers
presently tested to destruction? Don’t they already need first class degrees, Duke of Edinbrugh awards, cub badges, A*s in citizenship, a beaming visage, a tufty thatch, a deep subject knowledge, phenomenal behaviour modification skills – and a certificate saying they’re not child molesters, members of the Mafia or barking mad? Well, that’s not good enough. The next generation of teachers – Gove’s Angels – will need to be measured even more rigorously in the Big Three. But how do you measure them? Can you measure empathy? I consult my friend Meg, a formidable Freudian psychoanalyst (hem-hem) about psychometrics. “Rubbish – and worse,” she mutters, darkly.
I conduct my own lengthy
neuroscientific research. I ponder Professor Giacomo Rizzolatti’s “empathy neurons” theory. This is probably way beyond any of you (hem-hem) and, trust me, any psychometrics. Some of the best teachers of my youth would have failed the lot. Most didn’t go in for empathy. Too much of that stuff and we pupils smelled blood. Sam Morgan of Geography had an empathy bypass. He dealt more in what Dr Johnson called “stark insensitivity”. His “communication” skills were akin to a Speak-
Your-Weight machine. He did a lot of the old resilience – 40 years of it. And we
did a lot of endurance. My Latin teacher never spoke to me in any language for five years and my maths teacher threw bits of wood at me
during equations. I got A*s in all these subjects. My generation of teachers were touchy feely –
empathy heavy and resilience lite. The present generation, despite
24/7 monitoring and 60-hour weeks, seem quite brilliant. The nation’s gold dust. Still, the next one must suffer those psychometrics. I smell rats. Is this all a cover for weeding out wrong ‘uns? Lefties? Loonies? Wibbly- wobbly types? For processing shiny, incurious drones who will deliver a dread curriculum with zero consciousness – or am I getting paranoid? A bit wibbly- wobbly? I’d probably fail the lot.
• Ian Whitwham is a former secondary school teacher.
News Trude’s story inspires PM by Daniel White
Prime minister David Cameron this week met with Holocaust survivor Trude Levi to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and to underline the continuing importance of education about the genocide. The meeting took place
at 10 Downing Street when Mr Cameron also signed the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment, which is a pledge to fight all forms of prejudice and hatred. Holocaust Memorial Day
(HMD) took place last Thursday (January 27), and marked the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concen- tration and extermination camp in Poland. Schools across the country took
part in memorial events to mark the day, supported by the HET and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT). Mr Cameron praised the work
of the Trust for promoting the importance of educating about an event “that we must never forget”. He added: “For some the pass-
ing of years and the fact there are now fewer survivors left means this is less significant – it is in fact more important than ever that we recall what happened and the terrible con- sequences. “As well as recalling the dread-
ful suffering and murder in the ghettos and camps we must also remember the genocide and hatred in our world today. From learning
Commitment: Prime minister David Cameron speaks to Holocaust survivor Trude Levi She said: “I have always felt
our history we must pledge that it should not be repeated.” The theme of HMD this year
was “Untold Stories”, which has focused on the individual stories of the Holocaust and survival. Trude was born and brought up
in a provincial town on the Austrian border in Hungary. In May 1944, she and her mother were marched to a concentration camp, before then being taken to Auschwitz.
it was so important to relate what happened to me in the Holocaust in the hope it will make future genera- tions think about the consequences of prejudice and discrimination and help prevent it happening again. “We are all individuals with
feelings and sensibilities and we should treasure those differences and respect each other for them.” The HMDT provides support
for schools surrounding the day and events take place throughout the year. The HET works in schools to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust, providing teacher training, an outreach programme for schools, teaching aids and resource materials. For more information, visit
www.het.org.uk and to read Trude’s story of survival, see
www.hmd.
org.uk/resources/survivor-stories
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