#oneaday Day 527: Doing a Bum-Sex

As you may have surmised from some of the earlier entries in this blog, my experiences working as a classroom teacher were genuinely traumatic at the time, on many occasions causing me considerable amounts of stress, depression, panic attacks, you name it.

In retrospect, now I don’t have to deal with the little scrotes on a daily basis, some of the things were quite amusing. These things weren’t amusing at the time (and when you think about it, are often quite tragic) but now I take a perverse satisfaction in the fact that these little horrors who once made my life such a misery will surely find themselves in difficult positions in the future, unless they discover a way to stop being such a twat.

Let’s take the cast of Fat Barry, so named because his name was Barry and he was fat. This may sound a bit harsh, but this is a child who, among other things, decided that rather than engaging with Music lessons, he would place a cymbal on his head and wander around pretending to be a racial stereotype of a Chinese peasant in a school with a not-inconsiderable population of ethnic minorities, so in my mind he deserves all the abuse in the world.

I didn’t just take Fat Barry for Music lessons. I also had the pleasure of his company in a subject known mysteriously as “Key Skills”, a lesson which I didn’t learn until after I’d started at the school was basically “the spaz class”, where all the children too stupid (or, more often, badly behaved) to achieve anything whatsoever got the opportunity to sit around and learn how to use washing machines and read.

On one memorable occasion, the Year 8 Key Skills class was tasked with researching famous people, living or dead, that they might like to invite to a dinner party. (I hasten to add I had nothing to do with the planning of these units, so their vapid nature wasn’t my choice — although it’s not as if we could have got anything more intellectually stimulating out of most of them.) As befits a research task, we had relocated out of our stuffy classroom (which on one memorable occasion, I was locked in while the children found it hilarious to climb out of the window, but that’s another story) into the school library.

For once, most of the kids were sitting down actually looking at books — being given the opportunity to look up things they were actually interested in rather than being forced into set topics in English, Maths, Science and all the rest meant that they were, thank the stars, engaged and quiet.

All except for two, who were conspicuously absent. Fat Barry and his friend Shane, whose defining characteristic was the fact that he habitually wore trousers slightly too short for him coupled with prominent Burberry-pattern socks. (I’m not sure Burberry actually make socks.) I could hear giggling from behind some of the shelves, so while the rest of the class were engrossed in their picture books I went to investigate.

I wasn’t quite prepared for what I found. Shane was lying face-down on the floor, with Fat Barry straddling him. (Fortunately, both were fully clothed, although I’m surprised Shane could breathe.) Fat Barry was gyrating somewhat suggestively atop his friend, and I foolishly said the first thing that popped into my head.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re doing a bum-sex, sir!” replied Fat Barry.

In retrospect, what I should have done at that point is open the library door and yell down the echoey school corridors “What’s that, Barry? You’re doing a bum-sex? That’s a bit gay, isn’t it?” because, as everyone knows, accusations of being gay are like the worst things ever at secondary school, leading to the whole problem where genuinely gay teenagers feel that they can’t come out for fear of being ridiculed. I was aware of this problem, which is perhaps why I chose not to do it.

Fat Barry wasn’t gay, incidentally. He had a Grandad with a shotgun that he thoughtfully brought along to one of the rehearsals of the school play — a mildly terrifying moment — and would probably have been on the receiving end of some redneck punishment if he had come out as gay. So his proclamation of the fact he was supposedly delivering anal pleasure to his best friend on the floor of the library occurred for one reason only — to shock and appal.

It worked.

#oneaday Day 522: Addressing the Audience’s Demands

So in an attempt to better understand my audience, such as you are, I’ve been delving once again into the top search terms for my blog. I’m going to take the top ten search terms from the last year and address each and every one of them individually so that hopefully if you’ve been in attendance on this page at some point in the past and found it to be wanting for further information on the topic you searched for, you’ll feel better and more satisfied in your choice of Google links that you clicked on.

Divine Divinity (303 hits)

Divine Divinity is an action-RPG from Larian Studios which bears more than a passing resemblance to Blizzard’s Diablo series. The difference is that the world is not randomly generated and there is a more robust quest and interaction system more akin to something like the Baldur’s Gate series. The entire world is available to explore from the get-go and aside from some appalling voice acting of the very worst kind, it’s a great game. Pity its sequels aren’t up to much. You can grab it from Good Old Games.

I’m Not Doctor Who (81 hits)

That’s the name of this site, because my name is Peter Davison, though I usually go by “Pete” because I prefer it. Peter Davison, as you may know, was the stage name for Peter Moffett, who played the Doctor in Doctor Who between 1982 and 1984. I am not him, therefore I am not Doctor Who.

Offensive GIFs (73 hits)

Here’s one.

Teaching Sucks (65 hits)

Teaching does indeed suck. I’ve worked as a classroom teacher on two separate occasions in my life and on both occasions it nearly killed me. In the first instance, I stuck it out for three years in the secondary school music classroom — my first year in a run-down school half a million quid in the red where I was threatened with being knifed on a regular basis, and my second in an ostensibly “nicer” area but which still reduced me to a literally gibbering wreck by the end of my time there.

The reasons why it sucks? Poor behaviour and teachers’ lack of power to do anything about it. Ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy. The fact that one person is expected to do what, in any other job, a team of at least four or five people would take on between them.

If you can stick it out, fair play to you. It’s not for me.

“Mandatory Sex Party” (35 hits)

This was a term coined by Allie Brosh, who at one point wasn’t sure whether or not it was an actual thing that happened. I’m still not sure, but there’s certainly a lot more than one Google hit for it now.

Persona 4 (35 hits)

Persona 4 is one of my favourite games of all time. Featuring a hugely lengthy quest, genuinely loveable characters, a gripping (if crazy) plot and a love-it-or-hate-it catchy soundtrack, Persona 4 is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time and I will fight you if you disagree.

Fatal Labyrinth (34 hits)

Fatal Labyrinth is a graphical roguelike for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You can play it as part of the Sega Mega Drive Collection on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but I bet you haven’t.

“Get Rich or Die Gaming” (27 hits)

Get Rich or Die Gaming is an absolutely terrible Xbox Live Indie Game with artwork that looks like it was put together in Microsoft Paint, voice acting that would make a school play’s director blush and designs on being a point-and-click adventure. Fair play to them for actually releasing it, but it really is not very good.

NSFW GIFs (26 hits)

Here’s one.

Memes GIF (25 hits)

(Click to embiggen. Some NSFW. Some NSF anybody. Apparently this character is called “optimized GIF dude” and is something of a meme. I’d never heard of him, actually.)

So there we are. I hope you feel suitably satisfied now. If not, go and have a sandwich and a wank.

#oneaday Day 135: Patience is a Virtue

I’ve often been complimented on what is possibly my best virtue — my patience. I’ve developed this over many long and arduous years, and I attribute my possession of it as a virtue to two things in particular: video games and music.

Music’s contribution is obviously (possibly) from the amount of practice necessary to get to a good stage with your instrument playing, composition, singing or whatever. While I don’t do as much practice as I did when I was growing up — no exams or anything to aim for at the moment, for one thing — I can still sit down and actually work on something until I get it right if necessary. Sure, it might be frustrating for anyone sitting nearby to listen to the same few bars over and over at gradually-increasing tempi, but that’s why God invented electric pianos and headphones.

Video games’ contribution is, interestingly, almost the exact same reason — practice. I was playing my evergreen favourite game Trackmania United earlier today and it occurred to me that I was quite happy to sit there and repeatedly attempt each level until I got a result with which I was satisfied. It helps, of course, that Trackmania carries little to no penalty to failure, much like the notorious Super Meat Boy. Hit the “restart” button and, unlike many racing games out there, you’re immediately back on the start line, ready to go. The fact it’s so easy to restart and try again makes the whole thing a lot more conducive to repeated attempts. And the more repeated attempts you make without your head exploding or a string of expletives erupting forth from your mouth, the more your patience builds up.

Patience has come in useful in many life situations. When I worked as a teacher, I had to make use of it pretty much every day as the more unpleasant children out there have a habit of trying to “push” their teachers as far as possible until they snap. Sure, I did “snap” once or twice, including the time that drove me out of secondary teaching for good and left me on sick leave for over six weeks — I’m only human, after all — but for the most part, I managed to maintain composure even in the face of extreme adversity — including one time when a 14-year old kid threatened to knife me because I’d asked him (politely) to stop talking. Nice, huh?

It’s not just teaching where patience comes in useful, though. Waiting in a post office queue is a situation that practically demands patience (and judging by the amount of tutting and sighing that generally goes on in such a queue, not many people have taken the time to hone their skills) and so is attempting to explain to an elderly person how to use a computer. And there are many more situations in which it becomes useful. Mostly, though, if you’re patient about things, when the thing you’ve been patiently waiting for finally comes along, it’s worth the wait because you haven’t got yourself all wound up beforehand.

So chill out, relax, have a juice. That thing you’re waiting for is just around the corner. (Unless it’s a taxi, in which case you all know what “just around the corner” really means.)

#oneaday, Day 120: Education, Edducaytion, Eddyukayshun

Schools are “failing our children”. So say various government watchdogs, quangos, hypocrites, rhinoceroses and jabberwockies. But aforementioned bodies (some of which I may have made up a little bit) don’t take into account that it’s their fault in the first place that schools are “failing our children”. Not to mention the fact that there’s also a lot of blame to lay at the feet of both the parents and the kids themselves before you start pointing the Finger of Justice™ at the hard-working teachers and other school staff who are trying very much to make the best of a bad lot.

I quit being a full-time teacher. Twice, in fact. I’m not going to make that mistake a third time. Fool me once and all that. Currently, to pay the bills, I am enjoying the life of a supply teacher. This means that I can choose whether or not to sleep in every morning or maybe be woken at the crack of dawn by a phone call saying some festering scumhole school in the very armpit of Southampton is short of a teacher for today and could I possibly go along with a chair, a whip and a net and see if I can do anything with them? There are two very simple equations to bear in mind here.

1. sb = 0(£) + 100(j) where sb is “staying in bed”, £ is money and j is joy.

2. nsbapcdtvfssvas = muchos(£) – 5000(j) where nsbapcdtvfssvas is “not staying in bed, answering phone at crack of dawn, visiting festering scumhole school in very armpit of Southampton”, £ is money and j is joy.

So while equation 1 leads to a gain in joy, it does not lead to a gain in money. Indirectly, in fact, it tends to lead to a decrease in money, as staying at home often leads to wandering out in search of coffee. However, while equation 2 leads to an increase in money it leads to a substantial hit in the joy department. And no, that’s not a euphemism for your dangly parts.

But I digress in talk of made-up maths. I was about to tell you what is so very wrong with education. Particularly primary-level education, as that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time recently. So let’s do another list, shall we? Good. I know how you like lists, particularly if they’re illustrated.

1. Overcomplicating everything.

I remember when I was at primary school. A tick meant “correct” and a cross meant “wrong”. If you were lucky, you got a brief comment, like “Good.” or “Lazy work.” depending on whether you’d done good or lazy work.

In the school I was working in today, they had a “marking key” on the wall. A squiggly line meant “look at this”. A straight line with a “sp” meant “spelling mistake”. A circled letter meant “you should have used a capital letter”. A circled empty space meant “you have missed some punctuation”. A caret meant “you’ve missed a word out”. And then and only then did the key reveal that, yes, tick means “correct” and cross (or dot, now) means “wrong”.

Seriously? These are eight- and nine-year olds we’re dealing with here. Some of them can barely read, and you expect them to decipher that babble? Not only that, but then every book is expected to have a comment in there which, at the very least, says something inane like “Well done! You have shown me you are able to use connectives to join sentences together!” or “Congratulations! You successfully subtracted two things using the written method!” or “Super! You were able to recreate the entire Nutcracker Suite through the medium of rectal flatulence!”

Which brings us nicely on to…

2. Using unnecessarily high-level language.

Remember: eight- and nine-year olds. Do they really need to know terminology like “learning objective” and “success criteria”? I am yet to meet a child who actually knows why they write down the learning objective and success criteria other than “it’s the stuff we copy at the start of the work, innit”. The sole purpose for it is so when the inspectors come to play that the teachers can point proudly at the various learning objectives and say “Look! They’ve done this!”.

Bollocks.

3. Making unnecessary work.

Oh silly me. I made a mistake. The children shouldn’t be copying the learning objective and success criteria. The teacher should have prepared them all in advance, trimmed them to size and stuck them in the children’s books for them. Bear in mind at this point that a typical class has about 30 kids in it, each with at least five books (literacy, numeracy, “topic”, science, art) and each day typically has four or five different things going on throughout the course of it. So hey, with all that to plan, what’s a little extra cutting and sticking into ninety different books?

4. Dumb-ass theories that make no sense.

There are too many of these to count. Phonics is one. Anything involving behaviour management is another. Take a quick detour and go and watch this, including the stupid interactive part. The first shot of the class and the obnoxious children in it is the most accurate depiction of what it’s actually like to be in a classroom. However, the supposed “strategies” for dealing with the class are complete bollocks. Giving the teen who thinks talking about fucking his classmate’s mother a “positive note” if he sits down and gets on with his work? Don’t make me laugh.

5. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

I was talking to someone the other day – I think it may have been Rhiarti – and talking about how the imagination of young people is stifled these days. UPDATE: Yes, it was definitely Rhiarti, right here, in fact. So yes – the imagination of young people is stifled by the fact that they’re expected to learn all these million-and-one different techniques which there’s no way in hell are going to stay in their tiny heads. I remember “writing” at primary school being all about writing stories. Now, they’re expected to write Reports, Explanation Texts, Instruction Texts, Recounts, Narratives and all manner of other things (all inevitably capitalised, too) rather than, you know, just being able to sit down and write to express themselves. Even when they do get the rare opportunity to write a story, it’s inevitably got such a long list of completely arbitrary success criteria for them to fulfil that any semblance of creativity has been battered out of them by the end of their school career. Which is sad.

All this is the tip of the iceberg. Don’t even get me started on the “three stage lesson”, on “thinking skills”, “thinking hats”, Bloom’s Taxonomy, starters, plenaries and all manner of other shit.

So, in summary, a lot needs to change. But unfortunately, all of the things above, which are quite obviously and clearly dumb and stupid, are the sorts of things which men in suits with clipboards think “get results” and “show progress”. Well hooray for progress. Somehow we managed without it for a long time. Why can’t we go back to those days, for the kids’ sake and for the sake of the poor, anxious teachers constantly on the verge of nervous breakdowns?

#oneaday, Day 72: Taking Stock

Okay, so I’m back in the UK. Now what? I kind of haven’t come down off the high from the last few days yet, but I probably should start making some sort of plan to sort out that “future” thing. I hear it helps.

So here’s where I am now. I am going to run down these things in writing in public to see if that helps to take stock of my current situation and give me an idea of where the hell I’m going.

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Writing for Kombo.com. Writing for dailyjoypad.co.uk. Two music pupils, possible third.

EMPLOYMENT ANALYSIS: Not enough to pay rent. Need either a) more pupils b) more writing jobs that pay big bucks (hah!) c) computer pupils as well as music pupils or d) few days of supply teaching per week. I’d rather not have to do d) but it may be a necessity, for a little while at least. Over the next couple of days I am going to set up a new website advertising my computer tuition services and I shall be counting on you (yes, you!) to be part of the pimping process for that. My pupils have found me through the directory on musicteachers.co.uk thus far, but I’m not sure if there’s an equivalent for computer tuition. I guess some research is in order.

CURRENT HEALTH STATUS: Mild sore throat. Unfit. Fat.

HEALTH ANALYSIS: Recommence Operation Gym and Operation Run Without Dying. iPhone is already loaded with an appropriate soundtrack, featuring tunes from Bayonetta, Persona 3, Persona 4, OutRun, Space Channel 5, Trauma Center and various Final Fantasy titles. Get into routine of actually going to gym as opposed to routine of not going to gym.

CURRENT SELF-ESTEEM STATUS: Actually not bad right now. Several days with “my people” has helped with this, specifically with the whole “Hey, you’re not such a freak after all – and even if you are, there are at least 59,999 people just like you in the world, probably more” thing.

SELF-ESTEEM ANALYSIS: Maintain by doing stuff that makes me feel positive. Avoid doing things that make me feel negative. See aforementioned gym routine thing.

CURRENT MISSION OBJECTIVES:

Make enough money to pay rent (OPTIONAL: Make enough money to pay rent AND have Fun Stuff)
Recruit more music pupils
Design computer tuition website
Recruit computer tuition pupils
Do more writing for Kombo, DailyJoypad and BitMob
Hassle other sites for writing gigs
Attempt to make use of contacts made at PAX
Get into a situation where I can keep the necessity of doing supply teaching to a minimum

First one and the last one are the biggies, I guess. Everything else will contribute to those two. If I can get to a stage where I never have to step inside a classroom again, and I am working entirely on my own terms and feeling good about myself, that’s the goal. That’s the dream. And it’s frickin’ well going to happen.

Also, I’ve totally managed 72 days of blogging without a gap. That’s pretty good going, right? I’ll have a party on post 100 or something.

#oneaday, Day 49: End of the Week

Hello! Short entry tonight as I have, despite spending most of the day thinking “I should write my blog”, ended up in bed. Oh well.

This weekend I have: tidied up, washed up, completed Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney and finally got around to watching a DVD from New Zealand that my parents got me a while back.

The DVD is worthy of further attention. It’s called Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby and is a comedy-drama about the titular supply teacher coming in to a rather difficult school and finding his traditional views are rather at odds with the touchy-feely nature of modern education.

Gormsby is a wonderful character, and frequently comes out with some of the most offensive things I’ve ever heard, which seem even worse in the high school context. My favourite has to be his nonplussed attitude after finding a drawing of himself on his blackboard with the slogan “Mr Gormsby takes it up the arse”.

“I would like the boy who did this,” he says, “to come forward and take his punishment like a man. I’m not going to give you detention and I’ve been forbidden to use the cane, so the one who is responsible for this defamation… I am going to fuck. And this won’t be that namby-pamby buggery you’d get from your music teacher. No, boys, no-one who gets rogered by Gormsby comes back for seconds.”

The humour is incredibly rude throughout – so much so that I’m not surprised I’ve never seen it over here. But it is hilarious and, in the words of my wife, “they should show it on teacher training courses”.

There. Done. Good night!

One A Day, Day 34: Progress Update

Well, I have to say, this is going well so far. Doubly so given that the original proponent of the whole “oneaday” thing has given up. It’s fair enough, really – committing yourself to writing something every single day, even if it’s complete crap and doesn’t mean anything to anyone but yourself can be a bind, but I’ve made sure (so far) to ensure that I don’t get behind – even if that means frantically typing something on my iPhone while lying in bed, or typing something at 3 in the morning while pissed up on gin and tonic.

So the blogging’s going well, at least. I’m approaching the end of my week off now, though, and my body is starting to let me know this fact. I hadn’t been directly thinking about my return to work, but still I’ve developed a cough and a horrible nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomac

[The remainder of this post disappeared into WordPress oblivion – only noticed today. Apologies!]

One A Day, Day 21: Fantasy Feedback

So, that was the weekend. It went by far too quickly for my liking, but at least it was calm, relaxing and completely stress-free. If only things could be like that all the time, it would be lovely.

Of course, I haven’t “achieved” very much this weekend (unless you count my promotion to Lieutenant Commander in Star Trek Online) but sometimes it’s nice to not think about whether or not you should be doing something more important. There is plenty of time for stress in the week, because believe me, it always finds you.

I have one more week until the week-long half-term vacation from school. After that, it really is counting down the weeks and days until my escape. Once I get to that point, I will be past caring. If the school inspectors turn up to judge me inadequate during those last few weeks, they will get a piece of my mind.

They probably won’t, of course, because I’m far too much of a pussy to stand up to people in most cases, but it’s the thought that counts.

Or maybe I should say something. As I’ve said in a number of previous entries, teachers suffer in silence all the time. They nod and smile when another item is put on their personal “To-Do” lists without their permission, they grin and bear it when new “initiatives” are launched (and inevitably prove to be completely useless), they fill out their stupid pointless paperwork and then they go and moan in the staffroom. It’s the way of things. But I find myself wondering exactly what would happen if someone were to break that barrier and answer back to an OfSTED inspector.

Maybe it might go something like this:

INSPECTOR: Would you like some feedback from that lesson?

TEACHER: No. No I wouldn’t. Goodbye.

INSPECTOR: I really think you should have some feedback from that lesson.

TEACHER: I, on the other hand, do not. Don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

INSPECTOR: Your starter was satisfactory and had the children enga-

TEACHER: Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said no.

INSPECTOR: …the children were engaged. However, during your input-

TEACHER: Oh, we’re going to do this, are we? All right then. Input? It’s called “teaching”. Or even “talking”. Have you forgotten?

INSPECTOR: During your input, I would have liked to see more being taught.

TEACHER: Oh. Sorry. There I was thinking I was singing a song. Not… what’s that word for that thing I do when I’m standing at the front… Oh right, teaching.

INSPECTOR: However, there was a lot of you talking. It would have been nice to-

TEACHER: So I didn’t teach enough, but I talked too much. Right. Do carry on. This is fascinating.

INSPECTOR: It would have been nice to see the children say a little more on the subject.

TEACHER: They don’t know anything about the subject. That’s why I said it was a “new topic”. They seemed to understand that. Didn’t you?

INSPECTOR: As a result, the children didn’t make enough progress in that lesson.

TEACHER: Not enough progress? All right. How are you measuring that? Where is your magic “progress-o-meter” that measures how far the children progressed in the twenty minutes out of the hour you came and observed? I bet you have one. I bet it produces charts and graphs and syncs with Microsoft Excel, doesn’t it? Mmmm, Excel. You love Excel, don’t you? With its charts and its numbers and its ABJECT FUCKING TEDIUM. Just like you really.

INSPECTOR: So therefore, I am going to have to rate that lesson as inadequate.

TEACHER: Will it still be inadequate if I punch you in the neck?

INSPECTOR: What? Yes!

TEACHER: Well, it doesn’t matter, then. (punches Inspector in the neck) This is my most inadequate punch, bitch! You wouldn’t want to see my Outstanding one, or even my Good one!

Oh, what a wonderful experience that would be.

The sad thing about that fantasy exchange is that the things I quoted the Inspector as saying are the exact things they do say. Utter nonsense, non?

One A Day, Day 18: Another Education Rant

Today I was told by someone I’d never met before that I was “inadequate”. Of course, this is nothing unusual to me, as my romantic history prior to meeting my wife will attest, but for someone to come in, watch you doing your job for twenty minutes and then make a summary judgement about your competence (or lack thereof) smacks of… well, bollocks, frankly.

This is one of the (many) things that is wrong with the education system. Ticklists of criteria that need to be followed. Nonsense feedback that doesn’t help in the slightest (I “didn’t teach enough” but I “talked too much”, apparently – gee, thanks, that really clears that up). The fact that you are deemed to be a terrible person if you forget to give the children a formulaic ticklist of their own to copy into their books on the board.

Today’s lesson was the first session of a new topic on poetry. The children hadn’t done much on poetry previously, and what little they had done was some time ago. So the plan which the Year 4 team (two other teachers and me) had come up with was to give them an opportunity to look at a poem and give their immediate responses, and demonstrate those responses through drawings, movement and drama. Bullshit, I know, but apparently reading a poem and talking about the language in it isn’t enough for children these days. Or maybe it is, given that not only I, but also my colleague who taught the same lesson at the same time was also judged to be “inadequate”.

Still, fuck those ratings. Doubly so because just a month or so back I was judged as “satisfactory with some good elements”. Don’t let that faint praise hit you in the ass on the way out, Ms Inspector.

I can’t have changed that much in that time. I’ll tell you what can change, though – the behaviour of children. I briefed the kids before the observer arrived today that I was expecting their best behaviour and they still decided to be little fucks and whinge and moan and complain even when trying to do the simplest possible thing.

As always, there was absolutely no helpful advice given whatsoever to deal with this sort of thing. The usual advice is “you need to develop some strategies”. Thanks. Those would be…? “Develop some strategies. Build an action plan.” Fuck off.

I may be ranting about this, but I’m actually less pissed off about this than I would have been before I’d put in my resignation. Now I know that these sort of ridiculous judgements don’t mean anything to me I can shrug them off. It doesn’t make the education system any better, however, because these same judgements are applied to all schools, whether they’re the posh school in the country village that is filled with nothing but children who have been able to read, write and add up since the age of 3, or a school with a largely transient population like where I am now. You can’t compare the two things. You can’t compare the amount of progress an upper-middle class child with a perfect home life and parental support makes with that of a Nepalese immigrant whose parent(s) don’t speak English, or that of the kid whose Dad beats the crap out of his Mum on a regular basis.

These backgrounds don’t excuse behaviour, as I’ve said previously, but they do affect how good their work is going to be. Kids develop with parental support. It’s not just the teachers’ job to instill knowledge and discipline in them – lots of that needs to come from the parents, too – and it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, guess who gets blamed? That’s right, the teachers.

So fuck teaching. If you’re considering going into it, just don’t, unless you particularly enjoy someone you’ve never met calling you “inadequate” to your face and expecting you not to punch them very hard in the neck.

One A Day, Day 12: It’s pronounced B-O-LL-O-CK-S.

Good evening! Since my wife’s viewing of televisual car crash Popstar to Opera Star precludes my playing of Mass Effect and its sequel on the TV, and Star Trek Online has decided to update itself with a patch that will take 5 hours to download on Steam (despite the fact I was playing it earlier with no problems), now’s as good a time as any to get today’s entry done.

Today I would like to rant about phonics, since I had a long, boring, pointless and patronising training day on this very subject today.

For the uninitiated, phonics is the theory which suggests that children should learn reading by sounding out individual phonemes in words, then learn how to “blend” them together where appropriate. It also suggests that it’s sensible to teach six-year olds the words “morpheme“, “phoneme“, “grapheme“, “digraph” and “trigraph” – words which I didn’t come across until I studied English Language at A-level (age 16-18) and again at university.

The flaw, in case you haven’t spotted it, is that English isn’t a phonetic language. We have so many different ways of pronouncing each letter in our alphabet that using phonics to teach reading quickly becomes useless – and in the meantime, it fucks up spelling ability.

As if to emphasise this point, the official materials for teaching phonics from the government include an appendix of the most “high-frequency” words in the English language. Out of the thirty most-used words in the English language, fourteen of them are designated “tricky” words, which means that the phonics rules don’t apply to them. Well, if the phonics rules don’t apply to almost half of the most common words in the language, exactly what use is it to anyone?

The funny thing is, I can’t remember how I learned to read. I imagine that’s not an uncommon thought – childhood memories fade over time, after all – but I’m pretty sure it didn’t involve phonics at any point. I can tell this because I can spell, and don’t think that because “rough” is pronounced “r-u-ff” that it should be spelled that way too, which is what I see kids doing on a daily basis.

It’s difficult to know what to suggest, though. Phonics is fashionable. Someone somewhere said it was “good” and it stuck. As with most fashions, this is nothing to do with how good it is. It is simply the “in” thing at the time.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the leader of today’s training day was a patronising, aggressive middle-aged harpy who clearly had a chip on her shoulder about something. Her holier-than-thou attitude towards phonics and teaching reading and her steadfast refusal to consider any alternatives (even doing an arrogant “shaking head” movement whenever anyone raised a point she didn’t agree with) made everyone resent the process even more than its inherent stupidity already did.

This video pretty much sums up the problem:

(Thanks to Jeff Parsons for bringing this to my attention.)

Here’s a poem, too. Don’t say I’m not good to you.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

Quoted by Vivian Cook and Melvin Bragg 2004,
by Richard Krogh, in D Bolinger & D A Sears, Aspects of Language, 1981,
and in Spelling Progress Bulletin March 1961, Brush up on your English.