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November 22nd 2011
Published: November 22nd 2011
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Ironically, after contributing an article to the Dimbleby Cancer Care newsletter about how I've managed to create a new schedule out of my treatment lifestyle and how it has kept me busy and motivated, this week I've lost all my get up and go. After my last treatment on Friday I feel like a cat who has had a run in with a car fender at speed; I feel like a cardboard box with its sides unstuck and flattened out. I just can't be arsed. I've got no more freelance assignments in the to do list - the pitches I've put out there and chased have not come to any fruition - I've kept my diary free of anything fun or interesting until Friday, as I usually do to manage the risk of being too ill to get out and about. And I've not had to get dressed (our of pyjamas and into actual clothing) for two days now. I've only just pushed the curtains in the living room open now for the first time in three days, but I feel like a total shyster, a pathetic little shit, sat here watching the Leveson Inquiry on BBC News 24, in my boyfriend's socks and his dressing gown, and my stupid bobble hat. I have no direction and no purpose right now. I feel some pain, but ot enough to need any Tramadol, and my lungs are a bit sore. I'm feeling generally shattered, so I just don't really have the energy to do much. But that doesn't usually quell my interest in reading, writing or finding stuff out - after all, you can do all of that on the internet from your bed. I just can't be bothered.

So this blog might be a slightly shitter than the rest.

I woke up today to a Radio 4 piece about the quality of history teaching in British schools; I was only half awake so I might have not caught all the details, but the thrust was that a lot of people thought history teaching was reduced simply to rolling off dates or wars and the names of kings and queens, whereas many believed it needed to contain more idea on things like what led to wars, for example. They thought it was not inspiring teaching and that in fact, it was having an inspiring teacher that was most likely to lead to someone being inspired by the topic and even into following it as a career path of some kind. (I should mention that whoever was reporting on this also found a body of people saying that history teaching today was not enough about dates and names of kings and queens). It also found that often people remembered absolutely nothing from what they were taught in history class. It rings to tragically true. Thinking back to my days at comprehensive school, largely incessantly lonely and painfully slow, the only knowledge I've retained is that imparted to me by my English teachers, the five pillars of Islam taught to me by our truly fearful RE teacher, and a little bit about phototropism and viscous plant cell walls by our biology teacher. I'm fortunate (or am I?) to have experienced both state and private school, so I can compare my experience of teaching between the two worlds and honestly say that the single time I was hapy and learning at private school was in art class, when we were working on painting a picture of a label which incorporated our name (mine was a picture of a Caramel bar, given that it contained the name 'Mel'😉 - I don't know why, but I saw the pun and enjoyed the quiet time to paint and think. I cannot actually recall any of my history teacher's names or faces, let alone a single fact they attempted to teach me. From these years of schooling and through both those streams, I can think of one teacher who really imparted anything useful with any lasting effect: Miss Davies, my GCSE English teacher.

I remember very few conversations or assignments she gave, but I remember her approach, which was cheerful, slightly mad (she took to calling me 'Melonia' in front of the whole class, which incredibly didn't earn me a beating round the bike sheds), motivational, probing, and when needs be, authoritative. I recall a lot of positive praise, but more than a tick and a good grade - qualitative feedback, by way of a few scrawled flourishes at the bottom of my papers to the effect that this piece of work had genuinely brought some enjoyment, something to think about, and to keep going. God knows it takes a good teacher to get a classfull of teenagers interested in War and Peace.

If I think back, I can remember the names and faces of a few of my English teacher before Miss Davies, and with one exception they all strike me with hindsight as rather unusual characters, a little eccentric, with mad hair or those corduroy jackets with the elbow patches. Which may have been the foundation for me being able to connect with them, and them with me. I do think their personality and enthusiam were the qualities that engaged me, a painfully shy, navel gazing daydreamer, to knuckle down and put my back into the work they set me. Later, going into college on clearing into a pilot GNVQ media course, the more relaxed and self-motivating, adult environment of college really brought me out of my shell and of my tutors there, my journalism tutor was a lasting influence. I remember one assignment, which I've kept - it's typed up all left-justified and in 12-type size - to which the red-ink comments at the bottom of the page where positively glowing. But the criticisms and questions on the margins were equally good and useful in terms of developing the skill.

It is that sort of teaching that I think must have made a difference to me, the combination of Miss Davies and my journalism tutor. Sadly, identifying two out of possibly 50-60 teachers I've been taught by in my school career as having any impact is a poor indictment of the British education system, if we also believe that it is inspiring teacher that turn out the best pupils; not cash, not the best curriculum, not the kid's background.

In that vein, today I saw something on Ofsted. The head of Ofsted was on the news saying that it was the quality of leadership in schools that made a difference more than how much cash they have. It may well apply similarly to companies - as might the dearth of good quality leadership. If good teaching is about leading pupils, and by virtue of that leading a school, and a generation, then what is there to say about the quality of leadership among British schools of which apparently 800 are merely deemed 'satisfactory' by Ofsted? And if we learn our lifelong attitudes and skills in our school careers, could it then be suggested that that pattern of success and failure - or, worse, mediocrity and laxity - is repeated in adult, professional and political life?

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