Teachers told to use TV show tactics in class
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Independent Minds
Teachers should liven up their lessons by bringing game shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? into the classroom to stop children being disruptive, according to the Government’s behaviour “tsar”.
Games based on shows like ITV’s Blockbuster and the Radio 4 panel game Just A Minute could be used to make learning more interesting, Sir Alan Steer says in the final report of a four-year government inquiry into behaviour. Other suggestions include introducing bingo sessions, where pupils mark their cards when the teacher speaks a particular word, and Taboo, which involves describing a word or concept without mentioning certain forbidden words.
Last night the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, said he accepted all the recommendations in Sir Alan’s report, saying: “Children can't learn if classes are disrupted by bad behaviour.”
Sir Alan, the former head of Seven Kings school in Redbridge, Essex, argues that high standards of teaching are essential to ensuring good behaviour in school. Every school, he says, must draw up a code of practice for delivering top-quality teaching.
He also wants schools to take more responsibility for pupils’ behaviour on their way to and from school.
Sir Alan’s report was unveiled at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers in Bournemouth yesterday
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Comments
If children are pandered to in this way they will become unemployable.
But before they get their 10% pay rise, teachers need to produce a 10% increase in the number of pupils who leave schools as useful members of society which can help build our economy rather than leach from it.
I have two teenagers that I have struggled to keep grounded and focussed because they are constantly being bombarded with this whole 'life is just one great big party and fun, fun, fun' attitude from the media and celebrity. When they do finally get a taste of real life it's a shock. Life is working hard, taking responsibility and providing for family, with good times & partying thrown in between when possible.
Please stop down dumbing our children, life is not a game of bingo, neither can it be lived in five minute slots. We need a middle ground of education being stimulating and enjoyable, but not to the point where it is all a game.
So bloody simple. Why, oh why, don't they do it?
Sir Alan, I should be doing your job, but then again, I'm not a politcally correct pygmie. End.
People say Governments are in the thrall of Big Oil and the states that produce it, but I reckon it's the paperclip, staple, lever-arch file, paper and ink producing companies that have Labour - I'm sorry, "New" Labour - in their pockets. How else do you explain this ongoing obsession with producing official consultation reports on EVERYTHING?
Oh, and melsykes - really? I mean, HONESTLY? You want to measure people on their "usefulness to society". Any ideas on how one goes about doing that? What does "useful to society" mean? Is a binman more or less "useful to society" than a postman? Or a doctor? Or an advertising executive? Or a journalist? Or a teacher?! And you imply that the production of said "useful members of society" is mainly if not entirely down to teachers. I think anyone can see that this is a bit hard on the teaching fraternity and lets parents, family and (big one for me, this) the children themselves off rather lightly. I get the sentiment, really I do - none of us want children to grow up as useless layabouts - but do you truly believe that the best way to achieve this is to punish teachers? Try working in a school ("good" or "bad") for a couple of years and see if you still think the same way.
Could it be, that they worry about the impact that people who know the value of effort, hard work, intelligence, culture and integrity, might have on the global, materialistic and inherently unfair world we live in?
We should not look to introduce, yet again, more mediocrity and crass initiatives in our schools, but instead teach politics to our children. Teach them that our democratic values are constantly erroded through the cult of fame and the pursuit of endless "fun" and unbridled consumption; this to the detriment of all. Millions fought for liberty and equality. In denigrating teachers and plying the youth with an ever flowing dose of inanity, we are putting in the foundations for a world where introspection and dissent are not even countenanced; where people abnegate their responsibilties and their rights; where people don't even notice any more,when they are enslaved and abused.
It is the ultimate victory of dictatorship. When people surrender their will and abandon their critical power and cheerfully embrace a state of moronic oblivion.
How long before we realise that we are being infantilised and in the process, stripped of dignity and the ability to be truly civilised? It is not the first time that histrionic pedagogy has been promoted as the panacea to cure the lack of intellectual interest or even sheer curiosity on the part of students.
However, woe-betide the individual who would dare raise an objection. In the climate of hysteria prevalent in schools, where Heads and their management cohort are enthralled by most governmental initiatives, without ever questioning their validity, objecting to their implementation is tantamount to heresy. Teachers are not consulted but expected to apply blindly any directive issued by the management. While teachers' expertise and knowledge are ignored, schools will continue to fail.
At best they can turn out products ready for the market place but incapable of independant thought and only concerned with an individualistic, grasping and self-serving view of the world.
Education should lead to the enlightenment not the trivialisation of human life.
As others here have pointed out, the concept has been in use by good teachers for generations.
Now let's suppose the teacher of today chooses The Apprentice format...
Ooops. that didn't help much, did it?
Survivor anyone?
Some years ago, before the 88 Act, I worked in a school in Birmingham where disruption was the norm, and children would not sit down, be quiet, and would attack some teachers. The teachers had to work together to establish control and discipline, making sure that the children did not run down corridors, or shout, but kept still, paid attention, etc.
Once this was achieved, we could then pursue lessons that interested and involved them. I developed geography as a local neighbourhood study where we all looked at the local area for history, development, industry. Finally, the school was peaceful and productive. But order and discipline had to come first. [www.kelvynrichards.com]