I’ve been grumpy before. I’ve felt undervalued and concerned. But this time I’m mad as hell.
The Tories are abusing my children’s one shot at school to further their political aims. What will happen when my son who goes to school in September, comes home baffled, the wind taken out of his insatiable curiosity by modal auxiliary verbs? When my daughter, now 3, says she doesn’t like school any more because she failed a test my A Level English Language students found tough when I set it as a revision task?
I know what the Tories want when these things happen. They want me to look at my diminishing pay packet and consider whether I can afford to go private. If I can’t, they hope I might consider setting up a Free School. These are now the only ways my children could avoid the humiliation and disappointment, the drudgery and utter educational pointlessness of the new National Curriculum and its tests. And they’re both ways of dividing and ruling.
Or maybe they want me to go for a higher paid job in a private school where I am not a slave to such politicking with children’s futures? Or give up teaching altogether so I can earn more using my skills in another job? More divide and rule.
Well I can’t afford to go private, but more to the point my children can’t afford to live in a fractured society where some 7 year olds are told by the system to sink or swim and others get to avoid that system. I’m not going to play by Tory rules, I’m going to use my rights to stand up to their institutionalised child abuse. What else do you call it when grown ups use the misery of children as leverage to achieve their grown-up goals?
If you care about your children or grandchildren, or about the future of this country, please show your support for the teachers’ strike today, even if it has inconvenienced you, and keep supporting the profession until the government start trying to improve state education instead of destroying it by stealth and spin.