Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Whose side are they on?

Sometimes I wonder about teachers. You'd be forgiven for thinking, like I used to, that the reason most people get into teaching is that they are driven to help kids - but more and more I think this is unlikely.

Sure, there are still a few out there - probably the older ones - who still think that the point of education is to impart knowledge onto children, but the vast majority are driven by other impulses. Take, for instance, the case of the dinner lady sacked for revealing to the parents of a child that their daughter had been tied up then whipped while at school in an incident the school described as "an accident".

First of all, how can a group of kids accidentally tie another child up then whip her with a skipping rope? Secondly, given the implausibility of the first point, why would the school seek to deny that the incident was one of bullying - and an extreme case at that? And thirdly, why would the school then sack someone for telling the truth to the parents of the victim?

On the first point, it clearly was not an accident, but a deliberate and cruel act.

The reason the school wants to hush it up is because the head of the school does not want to deal with the problems of bullying that so plainly exist in their school - so they do whatever they can to deny that the problem even exists.

And on the third point, the truth teller is sacked rather than the liars and deceivers because the education system itself is controlled by liars and deceivers. They are well versed in lying and deceiving as they spend considerable amounts of time, effort and money working up various ways to convince the various bodies that their school is good - and one of those metrics is bullying so they can't have anything that looks like bullying.

So the schools dream up all sorts of processes which are not designed to solve the problem of bullying but actually designed to ensure that whenever am incident of bullying is discovered it is scrupulously investigated (according to procedures) and then found not to be bullying at all.

The question is why would they do this? Surely it is in the interests of both the parents and the school for these things to be dealt with properly. Well - yes, it would be if the purpose of the school was to provide education and nothing else - but that isn't what they are about these days.

Because the purpose of schools these days is to prove that education in a progressive state is successful and universal. Above all it is vital to prove that it is better than education in a conservative state - even when it quite plainly is not. The whole point of the targets and the processes and procedures is to provide demonstrable evidence that progressive state education is great for all - nobody fails, nobody misses out and nobody gets bullied.

Of course, they still have a long long way to go to achieve that deceit, but they are working on it year on year. Whose side are they on? The parents? The children?

Nope - neither. They are on the side of progressive ideology. THAT is the only thing that matters to schools these days - not you or your kids, but their precious ideology. Nothing - not the parents, not the kids and certainly not education - must be allowed to get in the way of that.

Incidentally, as yet another teacher is convicted of sexually abusing a child in their care one can't help wondering what sort of uproar there would be if teaching were a religion?

3 comments:

JuliaM said...

"...an incident the school described as "an accident"."

Yup, that was the bit that got me too. It was a crime...

Anonymous said...

They are on the side of progressive ideology. THAT is the only thing that matters to schools these days - not you or your kids, but their precious ideology.

I'm not sure that's right.

In the sense that progressivism is a movement towards socialism it has totally failed both practically and ideologically. The socialism that lingers is (like environmentalism) just a form of nihilism.

I think these people are wedded to the ideology of statism. That the state is both the best and the only solution to society's problems. These people are not protecting their ideology so much as protecting the bureaucracy.

Stan said...

For me, anon, progressivism and statism are one and the same thing. Whatever you call it it is still basically socialism - except in progressivisms case it is socialism with social liberalism. They are all branches of the same tree.

As for my point about protecting their precious ideology - you are absolutely correct to say that is has failed (and failed badly) BUT the point is that progressives will never ever admit that. They are not protecting the bureaucracy - the bureaucracy is a tool to protect the ideology. Actually, there is nothing new or ofiginal in that either - it has been used by conservatives and liberals (proper liberals) although never to the extent we see now. However, in those ideologies the bureaucracy was used to protect what were proven successful models.

Progressivism has used cultural marxism to break down those bureaucracies that protected successful parts of society such as the education system and then imposed new models which, having been exposed as complete failures, are now being protected by bureaucracy - and bureaucracy on an immense scale.

Progressives are gripped by this fatalistic belief that they are right even when all the evidence tells them their ideology is a crock of shit. No matter how bad things get, the progressive project must be protected - and that is done through bureaucracy.