Stressing Our Teachers To Breaking Point

[fish5133]

The Govt seem to come up regularly with wonderful new ideas that they want school teachers to implement. The latest being lets start teaching 7 year old Spanish. Well that by itself may not be that bad a idea but its not replacing any existing subjects just adding to them.
Ive watched my better half slowly get submerged in all the curriculum changes and beaurocracy, targets, sats, school inspections as well as a class of 33 consisting of "ordinary" kids to kids with dyslexia, aspergers, adhd, "demon possession" and kids who cant cope with seeing their gay father snogging his boyfriend and worse.
Replicate this across the country and just wait for the bubble to burst.

Just another way to keep the masses down

[IanFantom]

Do you have a link to the initiative on teaching 7-year-olds Spanish?

[fish5133]

[fish5133]

still more

[Stephen]

Fish, there are a lot more children with dyslexia than most relise, and thats were a lot of problems come from. the kids just think they are think and just play the fool or get embarased talking about there differculties. The dyslexic numbers are covered up or ignored.

[Pugwash]

Perhaps the national Curriculum for schools maybe interpreted as an infringement on freedoms. If so, it is a tentative link.

While it is recognised that some pupils may have less developed ability for literacy, others may have a less developed capacity for numeracy. The term dyslexia is not an exact medical condition (at what point of literate failure brands a child dyslectic?). This term is ONLY applied to scholars of the English Language. If a child cannot read or write they are illiterate. And, children that are illiterate are a problem to be dealt with. Too often dyslexia can be used as an excuse for not only the pupils themselves but also parents and teachers.

Having lived in Spain for a number of years, I consider that learning a modern language at an early age has some merit. Children of six and seven (who are immersed in a language) have no inhibitions in communications, the fact that they get words wrong is not a matter of embarrassment but an incentive to try again. Children of twelve upwards have a much harder time picking up the language.

Just a point on the English language, why is dyslexia difficult to spell, stutter start with a 'st' and lisp have a 'sp' ending.

[scubadiver]

I found out a couple of days ago my maths teacher at secondary school has had a mental breakdown.

When teachers have a passion for teaching, the last thing they want is loads of bureaucratic paperwork.

[IanFantom]

What is happening in the teaching profession seems to follow a similar general pattern to the one I flagged up for the current expenses frenzy in the Commons, except that instead of 'Regulation reduced' read 'Regulation increased':

[IanFantom]

On the teaching of Spanish, I think you are referring to the National Strategy for Languages in England. I followed this as it was going through the Lords, and was reporting on it in a newsletter ( http://www.esperanto.org/uk/eabnetnews/ ), and we started building up a programme for reintroducing Esperanto into schools.

The Esperanto activity was turned into a decoy, as the association went into melt-down, and I realised that it was a project destined to failure.

Then I realised that that could be true for the National Strategy for Languages itself. It was foreseeable that that programme would result in a collapse in language learning in secondary schools. Language teachers were crying out loud for the Government not to remove compulsory language teaching at Key Stage 4. The Government took no notice. There was no attempt to halt the subsequent melt-down.

Then I read Clare Short's book 'An Honorable Deception?' ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0743263928/ref=sr_1_2 ). She describes projects of hers which were 'destined to failure'. That, it seems, was quite normal under Tony Blair. My suspicions had become quite credible.

It seems, again, that we have a similar model: