In which your anonymous author imagines the unimaginable – a wee break from the classroom stress and educational garbage that accompanies the Scottish national curriculum.
Excellence Has a Day Off
children’s
names being substituted
for picnic
items, fizzy drinks,
sandwich
fillings and continental cheeses.
They are not
fazed by the switch.
One maths
lesson taught with
no reference
to targets
children
apparently fail to notice
its absence
– perhaps they don’t care?
Those who
finish early are tricked by,
not extra
work, but extra free choice!
Playtime
extended by ten minutes.
Milk and
story time doubled.
Language
lesson, no trick this time,
just a
promise; finish early and play.
Lunch over,
we go a walk in the woods
build a hut,
then race back, Last’s a silly sausage …..
Next,
Shakespeare verses parsed
from say,
Romeo and Juliet,
Act out the
same, for a laugh.
With love's light wings did
I o'er-perch these walls,
for stony limits cannot hold love out.
Project
proceeds without children
debating their
own protocols, nor
stating Q I
outcomes, they know already!
Teacher just
teaches, flying the lesson
on
experience. Somehow it lands okay.
The day
passes with no reference
to the
conveyer belt of pedagogic
balderdash that
clichés our lessons.
No fires, no
police, no children lost,
Excellence ends the day with a Beaujolais.
You know what, Boys and Girls, let’s do it again. But don’t
tell the head-teacher.
Talk about setting yourself up for a failure: The hubris of Scotland’s national curriculum, The Curriculum for Excellence, begs for divine correction. And, in a way, this is what has happened; with the educational system discredited, the profession demoralised and the pupils stressed and failed. The entire shekel plunder that is public education is deserving of mockery. And here I do my bit.
I have it on good authority that the sheer lack of
common modesty (and not least the hubristic challenge) of The Curriculum for
Excellence title was pointed out to the various government ministers,
educational ‘experts’ and tax farmers responsible for its introduction, but you
will not be surprised to know that these assorted imbeciles and dystopians followed their own
advice.
PS. This poem is from my Relentless: The Death March to Educational Excellence. This genuinely excellent (honestly) book is a multi-media approach to the well-deserved mockery of our state schools. Here is a picture of the front cover. It is available if you click the Big Ride link at top right.
