Sweet sanity from the midst of the coursework mosh pit

I haven't posted much lately - though I have a few drafts lurking. It's coursework hand-in time, that terrible season of teacher exhaustion and prostitution as we chase them round and ring them at home at the weekend in a desperate attempt to drag the work out of them. If you want to see the corrosive effect of league tables on modern education, just visit a teacher over the May Day weekend.

I will post more on this topic. But for now...

...last night I saw the last ten minutes of 'That'll teach 'em' - a series I avoided like the plague. (Obviously I am completely qualified to judge the entire series on this basis.) But the last ten minutes seemed to be all you needed to see: a bunch of 16-year old kids who had, apparantly, failed O-levels after 30 days of 'old-fashioned' teaching. Then they received their genuine GCSE results and - all had A's, B's and C's.!

I am too tired to rant about this so fill in the rest around these key words and phrases (A cloze blog, if you will...)

-------------------- different syllabus------------different subjects----------content------------one month-----------------editors-------------manipulation---------naturally --------------proves bugger all-------------re-inforce prejudice

Anyway, I went to the web site and found a rather nice piece in defence of modern schools by Joan Clancy. It raises some excellent and refreshingly different points and at no time whinges. She's my new mate.

Back to coursework.

PS The teacher wot I live with has made me a poster for my office which says this:

"You come to me all teary eyed and say 'why, oh why miss did I only get a grade E for this work' and I say 'You should have
RTFHO"

Apparantly I was talking in my feverish sleep...