If anything demonstrates just how out of touch and anachronistic the Unions are today, it will be the argument being staged on the front pages where Union Barons want to stop teachers going back to work amid the spurious argument that their Members won’t be safe from Coronavirus if they do.
The Daily Mail carries the headline ‘Let our Teachers be heroes’ which sounds great.
But as the whole Lockdown is being perpetuated on the back of myths the Government and its Behavioural Insights Unit created, it really would be good for everyone if Teachers focused on being the nations educators again.
They could begin by doing everything right now to help children of all ages learn as they can and should.
Parents shouldn’t have to wait for the Schools to return or for a discussion about when it will happen for this headline to be used.
To do so suggests the only thing that makes any employee a hero is if they leave their home and become exposed to the perceived increased risk of catching Coronavirus in a job that pays them and which they applied for at some point by choice.
Oddly, many of the people who would like to be heroes right now don’t have the opportunity that teachers have done since the start of the Lockdown and still do.
Technology like FaceTime and Zoom will allow and facilitate contact between teachers and children to be taught on a level not far short of a universal basis.
Oddly, Private schools are already filling this gap and in many cases offering a complete alternative timetable as they do. But State education is not.
Instead, parents of children in ‘free education’ who should today be in schools across the UK have had to manage the fallout of bored and disengaged children who want to do nothing because the people who need to motivate their academic studies are not available to them even in a basic coaching form.
Their teachers have instead relied on pages of dreary worksheets made available through clever portals that they tell us are a workable replacement for the work and the learning they would receive if they were physically in school.
Yes, some of our kids are motivated to utilise whats on offer to them however weak it might be. Like many other parents, I have one child who is and one who is not.
This damaging replacement for schooling that the Government and media have systematically overlooked doesn’t allow for the significant number of disengaged kids nor those that sit somewhere in-between.
The counter argument is likely be that as there are children (or parents) that don’t have access to the internet or to smartphones, schools cannot give to one or any number if they cannot be certain that they can give to all.
This is a sad, regrettable reality where rights and inclusion have been twisted by activists who have nothing to lose like our children do and have assumed the responsibly to police the workplace and every perceived misdemeanour that is involved.
The outcome is it is always the lowest common denominator in standards or achievements that inevitably comes out on top.
Parents who are desperately doing all they can to keep their jobs whilst working from home are not responsible for changing what any healthy child’s perception of their home vs. the school environment should be.
Home is home. School is school.
The only way to find a happy median in the shitty circumstances this Government created is for teachers to make the best of the situation and get actively involved.
Adam Tugwell 