Today I have withdrawn my labour in protest against Michael Gove and his plans to further alienate the teaching profession. The Secretary of State for Education seems to have the view that teachers are the enemy and that the education system must be destroyed. Unfortunately striking will achieve precisely nothing- but when asked to strike I believe we should.
I don't know who FK Club are but this song/remix package is ace, in an Asphodells and A Love From Outer Space vein. The original mix is fairly full on, drums and an up-in-the-mix hi hat, an insistent piano riff, a bassline like a rubber band being repeatedly twanged just inches from your earhole, nicely repetitive. Of the remixes Richard Sen's is the one for me, adding bongos and a new, whopping great big bassline, although the others are no slouches. The In Flagrante one is a free download, the rest were released on vinyl a little while ago.
My workplace has been cut. That doesn't mean I will be fired (at least I hope), but once again I don't know where I will be teaching next year. To tell the truth, that happened every year since I began teaching twelve years ago, even if I have a permanent contract with the Ministry of Education. Although I am now in my forties, I'm still one of the younger teachers regardless of which school I go to teach in, my colleagues are usually more than 50 years old, and our salaries are quite below the European average. I've never taught twice in a row in the same school, and I was never able, therefore, to carry out the training program I could, and wanted to, propose. My students usually are 14 to 20 years old: although I have always managed so far to create a good relationship with them, I am increasingly worried by the fact that many of them come to high school (what we in Italy call secondary school) in conditions of semi-illiteracy and almost total lack of education. I teach law and economics, and I often find it difficult to make understand to some students even the basic concept of rule and the need for having them. Don't get me wrong, some of them are more mature and responsible than I was at their age, but when it happens (and unfortunately it does happen sometimes) to see students entering the class when they please, and once inside they spend their time insulting the school staff and teasing their classmates, I almost end up losing faith in a job that I love to do anyway. In a way, I feel even guilty for them, these are the children of the first generation raised on television and we're throwing them into a world (of which we are responsible for) who does not even need them, judging by the huge amount of unemployment across Europe. That some of them still have the desire to study, it is already half a miracle.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the rant: I support your struggle.
Luca
Thanks Luca. Your problems in Italy don't seem too different from ours in England.
ReplyDeleteWe did our solidarity protest at our place. So we will not lose a day's pay. Many of my colleagues did not even join us in what was ultimately a futile protest. I had an interesting chat with my class today, two asked me what the protest was about. Some of the students were actually quite interested, especially the bit about protests.
ReplyDeletefor the last word I should have put Pensions (not proests).
ReplyDeleteThat's fucked up. Teachers need all the support and funding they can get. Government. Fuckers.
ReplyDelete