At the chalkface April fools
“WEWON!” says the daughter over the phone – “2-1” Eh? We are QPR. We beat Arsenal 2-1. Of course we did. “We were all over them!” Of
course we were. The doomed Hoops beat the flying Gooners! Of course we did. I put the phone down. It is April Fool’s day. These April
Fools seem to have been going on for the whole month. Especially in education, which, as any fule kno, is controlled by Confederacy of Dunces. No wheeze can be too daft, no scheme too bonkers. You can’t tell if they’re joking anymore. I open the
Guardian. Shaun Ryder – PHD in All Known Drugs – is to become David Cameron’s Spin Doctor. Of course he is. I turn on Radio 4. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Dirty Harry of Offhead, is worried about literacy. There’s not enough of it – or love of reading or imagination or creativity. There’s too much teaching to the text. Is this the comedy spot? Didn’t the government shut down the libraries? Didn’t Management ransack my school library? Imagination? Creativity? Didn’t they kill them? Didn’t we get sacked for doing that stuff? And testing? Testing? We’ve been ranting against this for the last trillion years. Perhaps it’s another joke? Who kno eh?
And literacy? We can’t teach
it properly, says the Dark Knight. Balderdash! I seek elucidation in the Daily Mail. It explains the latest government literacy scheme. Half a million tots will be compelled to read “made up words” like “jound”, “terg”, “fape” and “snemp”. Why? It will render them literate. Of course it will. Sir Michael pops up
again in the Evening Standard. He’s much concerned thatOffhead inspections might “inhibit
teachers from teaching”! More April Foolery? Turn the page! What’s this? Here come da Gove!Noddy himself!
Joker incarnate. Up there with the great Ministers of Education – with Sir Keith “Mad Monk” Joseph and his cuts! And John
Selwyn Gummer force-feeding toxic offal to his four-year-old daughter. Sublime comedic art! Up there with WC Fields! What’s Nod got for us this week? Shut down staffrooms! Dadah! It’s the way he tells them. And shut down A levels! Why? They’re rubbish! Why? Modules and targets and tick-box
answers.Nurse! The screens! We KNOW! We used to have fantastic, demanding A levels. Then the government barged in and we were forced into the dread Tick Box Culture. Things like – was Macbeth a) a nutter, b) a midfield enforcer, c) a turnip, or d) a cage-wrestler? My class failed. They must have thought it was just another April Fool...
• Ian Whitwham is a former secondary school teacher.
By Emma Lee-Potter
A group of 25 teachers from across the UK visited Berlin this month to expand their historical knowledge and share practical ideas on how to teach pupils about the Holocaust. Organised by the Holocaust
Educational Trust, the four-day trip was the latest in a series of advanced CPD courses for teachers. “Teachers rightly regard the
Holocaust as an important and challenging subject,” said Alex Maws, head of education at the Holocaust Educational Trust, “and the Holocaust Educational Trust aims to equip them with the tools they need to teach about it in an effective way.” As well as meeting experts from
the German Historical Museum and the House of the Wannsee Conference, where the Final Solution was rubber-stamped, the group also visited places like the Jewish Museum Berlin and the
Museum of Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind. Tanya Long, an RE teacher at
Gowerton School in Swansea, said the visit had not only deepened her knowledge of the Holocaust but had given her a host of ideas about how to teach it to her students. “I hadn’t been to Berlin before
and it gave me a real insight into the personal stories of the Berlin Jews and what their lives were like,” she told SecEd. “From a teaching point of view, the personal stories of people who spoke out and protected others make it all the more real.” Morris Charlton, headteacher
of Netherside Hall School in Threshfield, north Yorkshire, said the trip would inform his teaching for many years to come. “This is such an important topic, but such a challenging one to teach,” he said. “I’d recommend that as many teachers as possible take part in this sort of training so that they are as prepared as they can be to teach about the Holocaust.”
The Holocaust Educational
Trust was set up in 1988 to educate young people from every ethnic background about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today. Its activities include teacher training, an outreach programme enabling students to
hear and talk to survivors, and the Lessons from Auschwitz Project, which gives two young people from every school and college in the country the chance to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. For more information, visit
www.het.org.uk
News Teachers inspired by Berlin trip
Reflection: Teachers visit Berlin’s HolocaustMemorial during their CPD trip to the German captial (main image). They also sawthe House of theWannsee Conference (above)
WARMUP FOR THEGAMES
The Olympic and Paralympic Games are coming this summer. As the countdown commences, British Council Schools Online can help your school Warm up for the Games.
Visit our Warm up for the Games pages to: • get inspiration for projects • use our discussion forum • find project templates • get your school involved in events such as Big Dance.
The Warm up for the Games resources are available from British Council Schools Online, which is the website for international collaboration for schools. Find international partner schools, join professional development courses and access funding for international projects.
www.britishcouncil.org/schoolsonline-2012 16 SecEd • April 19 2012
© Mat Wright
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