One of the lovely things about the online teaching community is the sharing of resources. Teachers have an innate desire to help – not just their own pupils but other teachers too. Most are happy to share freely the resources they have created. We are at heart a collegial profession and the free sharing of resources is really one of our greatest strengths.
And whilst this is a good thing, it has also created a system where The Resource has achieved an elevated status in the currency of teaching.
The problem is that I think that the elevation of The Resource has obscured what should be the gold standard of teaching: subject knowledge.
I have worked in a department where the PowerPoint was king. In that department, all scheme of work planning had to be accompanied by a PowerPoint to share with the rest of the teachers. The premise being that teachers could just deliver your slides without having to spend the time thinking through the process of how they were put together. The Resource there not only trumped subject knowledge, I think it actively inhibited the development of it. It stopped teachers from having to think through the subject, build a bank of knowledge and sift through it to create a resource. But the knowledge that doesn’t make it onto a resource is vitally important: it sits beneath a resource like the larger, submerged part of an iceberg and gives it its power.
A few times I’ve had a go at teaching a lesson using a PowerPoint written by someone else. It’s almost always ended badly. It’s not that it was a badly written set of slides – I am certain that the person who wrote them knew exactly what they were doing and it was well thought through. But the problem is that I didn’t do the thinking. In the author’s hands, I bet the lesson flew. In my hands, it usually fell flat at some point. I had The Resource, but not the knowledge or thinking to teach it. I had, as they say, all the gear but no idea.
Today I saw a perfectly reasonable request on Twitter for help in challenging a class with high level questions and lessons on one of the GCSE Literature texts. Lots of lovely and well meaning teachers offered up resources. I’m not sure that this is the right answer to that request. To me, the best way to challenge a class with high level questions is to the know the text well. The answer to the request should be to improve your own knowledge of the text: read it, annotate it, study it – read critical essays on it. Don’t worry about resources, think about improving your own subject knowledge. Forget the gear, get the idea.
The Resource has achieved an elevated status in teaching. But it is a usurper. Subject knowledge is the rightful king. So excellent a king, that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr. And subject knowledge is your best bet in understanding that reference.
Back in the early 90s, my older brother managed to get me a second-hand Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It came with two games which, as I had no money to buy any others, occupied much of my time for months on end. One was the classic arcade game Kung Fu Master and the other was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Whilst Kung Fu Master didn’t take long to, er, master, TMNT was a different beast. It was impossibly difficult. It was so difficult that, along with a handful of other NES games, it contributed to the phrase ‘Nintendo hard’ entering the English language. Some of the levels were almost unplayable (I seriously think the one with the van was solely created just to crush the spirit of children), but what made the whole experience impossible was the fact that this was in an era when there was no ‘save game’ feature on consoles. So every time I lost the game, I had to start again at the beginning. I don’t want to work out the number of hours I threw away making barely perceptible progress on TMNT.
But as the saying goes, ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things’. Whilst anyone who even vaguely knows me would know that this obviously isn’t even slightly true of me, I have definitely moved on from wasting endless hours trying to overcome such frivolously difficult tasks – tasks where I ultimately get nowhere and have to start right back at the beginning again after each attempt. That is until I became an English teacher. Because, since I became an English teacher, I’ve had to take part in standardisation. Regularly.
Standardisation, to the uninitiated, is the act of moderating assessment with colleagues in order to establish a standardised level of accuracy in grading. Seems like a wholly appropriate thing for any English department to do, particularly in the days of coursework and controlled assessment. The problem is that standardisation, whilst well-intentioned and seemingly necessary, is a bit like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES.
Because moderating and standardising assessment, certainly in English, doesn’t mean we get standardised grades. Like TMNT, we seem to make progress whilst we are standardising: agreeing on grades and reaching some kind of harmony with our marking. But also like TMNT, the next time we come back to the marking, we have to start all over again: much of what we gained in the standardisation process is lost.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the Ofqual report, ‘Marking consistency metrics’, on the quality of marking in general qualifications. Bear in mind that examiners of GCSEs and A Levels undertake more rigorous standardisation than your regular classroom teacher, the findings of the report are pretty depressing. For their report, Ofqual put seeded papers (those that have been pre-marked and assigned definitive marks) out to be remarked by the team of employed examiners. Below is a table showing the probability of a candidate being award the definitive mark. For English Literature, it’s around 50%. History isn’t much better at around the 60% mark.
From the Ofqual report: ‘Boxplot of the probability of a candidate being awarded the definitive grade for a range of units. The mean probability for each subject is denoted by the white triangle.’
The elephant (or turtle) in the room when we standardise is that, when left to our own devices, much of what we gained in standardisation is lost – lost to unconscious bias, lost to the subjective nature of grade descriptors, lost to tiredness, lost to caprice, lost to the fact we might subconsciously compare against the previous piece of work we marked.
And yet we still seem to give up lots of time to standardisation.
The idea that, by practising assessing, and by moderating with colleagues, we are standardising our marking and getting more accurate is a tantalising one. And tantalising is the perfect word for the whole process, as its very etymology brings to mind another good analogy for the largely futile activity. For the word derives from the character in Greek myth, Tantalus, who was punished by his father, Zeus, in a rather spectacular way. Tantalus, a mortal, was invited to dine with the Gods on Mount Olympus. He wanted to test whether the Gods really did know everything, so (obviously) he decided to kill his own son, Pelops, chop him up, cook him and serve him up to see if they knew what they were eating. The Olympians immediately knew what had happened (except Demeter, who was probably looking at her phone and so wasn’t paying full attention). Zeus then dished out the most delicious punishment: Tantalus was made to spend eternity in a pool of water which sat beneath trees hanging with bounteous fruits just above his head. But every time he bent to drink the water, it would drain away so he couldn’t get to it, and every time he tried to reach the fruits above his head, they would rise up away from his grasp. Hence: tantalising – ‘tormenting or teasing with the sight or promise of something unobtainable’.
That’s the perfect analogy for standardisation: it torments and teases us with a promise of accuracy, something that is ultimately unobtainable. We should probably be cautious about investing too much time on it. Which is exactly what my mum kept telling me about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mums are always right.
(Yes, gamers, I know it was called ‘Teenage Mutant *Hero* Turtles in the UK; the original US title is used here to avoid quizzical responses from non-European readers.)
This is the second in a series of blogs on the key philosophers of education. Part 1 can be found here.
Michel de Montaigne
Whilst sounding like she might be a woman, Michel de Montaigne is actually a dead white man – a group who seem to dominate the philosophy of education throughout history, which is quite impressive given that they are all dead. Born to an incredibly wealthy family in 1533, Montaigne went on to become one of the most prominent and influential philosophers of the French Renaissance.
He is famous for inventing the essay, and as such is the scourge of students ever since. Before he invented the essay, all clever ideas had to be communicated via pictures, charades, or in singular messages of just 280 characters.
Montaigne’s own education was an interesting one. Soon after he was born, his father sent him from the family chateau to go and live with a peasant family in a local village for three years, to cultivate in him an empathy for the poor and to “draw the boy close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help”. It’s merely a coincidence that the infant Montaigne was shipped off to live with another family during the period of his life that involved night feeds, teething and ‘the terrible twos’.
When Montaigne returned to the family chateau at the age of three, his father insisted that he learn Latin as his native tongue, probably because “I done a poo” sounds much more sophisticated in Latin. He was sent to a prestigious boarding school from six years of age. When he had mastered the curriculum by the age of thirteen, he left the school to enter university. This seems impressive, but let’s not forget that Doogie Howser had managed to complete medical school and was a practising physician by the time he was 14, so Montaigne isn’t all that.
Whilst at boarding school, Montaigne studied a humanistic curriculum comprising of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy, built largely on a Classical model of education. Yet, despite benefiting from being taught an impressive body of knowledge himself, his own philosophy of education for others was rather different. Montaigne suggested that, “in true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.” This is perhaps the best argument I’ve ever seen against a knowledge-rich curriculum: Montaigne benefitted from one and yet still came out with the daft idea that “the blunder of a servant” is “as good as a book”.
Montaigne went on to be very critical of academics, once remarking that, “I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” Of course, Montaigne himself was very well educated so make of that reasoning what you will.
Elsewhere, Montaigne wrote in his essay, ‘On repenting’, that “I am not teaching, I am relating”, which is exactly the sort of annoying smart-arse slogan that you see in people’s Twitter bios right before you click ‘mute’.
John Dewey
Born as one of a set of triplets in 1859, Dewey went on to become more famous than his brothers Huey and Louie. He is now considered one of the most influential educational thinkers of the 20th century. To get a sense of his significance, he’s right up there alongside Johnny Ball and Mr. Belding.
Like many philosophers of education, Dewey began his career as a classroom teacher, spending two years teaching in a secondary school and one year teaching in a primary school. And like many education academics, he very soon decided that he’d much prefer telling people how to teach rather than being a teacher himself. However, with as many as three years of teaching under his belt before moving on, Dewey managed to inoculate himself against the kind of criticism that many Teach First candidates regularly have levelled at them for serving just two years in teaching.
During his career as an academic, he published over 700 articles and about 40 books, which, let’s be honest, is too many. But at least I know that you haven’t read everything that he wrote, so I can play fast and loose with the truth here. Among his many achievements, Dewey was in the original line-up of the Sugababes, as well as being the inventor of the Corby Trouser Press.
Most significantly, Dewey was a proponent of experiential and ‘hands-on’ learning. This means that he thought that people learn better by doing than by simply reading about things. You can learn all about Dewey’s theories of experiential learning and his many other teachings by simply reading some of the SEVEN HUNDRED ARTICLES AND FORTY BOOKS THAT HE WROTE.
Dewey famously said, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” But I tested this theory out and I don’t agree with his conclusion. I taught today’s students as I taught yesterday’s and it just meant I was able to have last night off as I was able to use the same planning. As such, I’ve rewritten Dewey’s aphorism: If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we get to binge-watch some Netflix/go to the gym/see family/have an early night.
On the purpose of education, Dewey wrote that: “Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible realisation of humanity as humanity.” This is absolutely spot on, so totally and utterly true, and should be the singular aim for every single school. But does anyone know which bucket ‘the realisation of humanity as humanity’ goes in to improve your Progress 8 score?
Paolo Freire
Freire is one of the leading philosophers and proponents of critical pedagogy, which is a teaching approach inspired by critical theory. Critical theory is a social theory that aims to change society rather than document it, and is largely derived from Emmanuelle Kant (a French erotic film from the 1970s) and Groucho Marx. Critical pedagogy also takes inspiration from radical philosophers, such as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Theodore Logan, who are considered most radical, dude.
Freire enrolled to study law at university in 1943 but rather than taking it up as a career, he became a school teacher instead. By 1946 – just three years after he entered university – he was appointed Director of Education and Culture for the entire state of Pernambuco, which is as speedy an ascendency into management as that really ambitious colleague of yours could possibly dream of achieving. You know the one I’m talking about.
In his seminal book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire criticised what he called the “banking model” of education, in which students were seen as empty accounts to be filled by teachers. I’m not sure that Freire has ever seen a teacher’s bank account.
He also proposed elsewhere that teachers should learn from their students. Assimilating this idea with the above banking model, Freire is suggesting that, instead of seeing students as empty accounts waiting to be filled, we should see them as overdrafts with which to dip into so we can spend money that isn’t actually there. Or something like that.
A focus of Freire’s philosophy was what he identified as “the teacher-student contradiction”. He suggested that education must begin “by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” Which reminds me of the time that I set half of my clocks and hour late and half an hour early and got stuck in a space-time continuum loop. Here are some of the ways in which you can overcome the teacher-student contradiction so that you can become simultaneously both a teacher and a student:
occasionally call your line manager “mum” or “dad” by accident
ask every individual pupil “what are we doing today?” as they enter your classroom
ask yourself if you can go to the toilet when you are bored of your own lesson
ask your pupils if you can do bubble writing when doing board work
P.E. teachers: get a note from your mum to get you out of teaching your lessons
Elsewhere in his work, Freire advocated for teachers to be political. In We Make the Road by Walking, he said that “the educator has the duty of not being neutral. The educator as an intellectual has to intervene. He cannot be a mere facilitator. He has to affirm to himself or herself.” What Freire’s followers will point out here, though, is the unspoken caveat: This is only applicable to teachers on the political left. Obviously, teachers on the political right have a duty to be completely politically neutral in the classroom.
Quotations from Freire are often cut and pasted into nice fonts inside colourful boxes and shared on the internet as a form of inspiration for teachers. Here is an example of one such quotation:
Such quotations continue to inspire educators around the world. For example, this particular quotation inspired Clark Kent to take a journalism course rather than study for a PGCE.
Freire is still very popular today, some twenty years after his death. In particular, he enjoys popularity amongst educators who like to think they are Joe Strummer because they don’t want to face the idea that, as a teacher, they are a part of the establishment that they’ve always railed against.
Perhaps Freire’s greatest legacy is his contribution to literacy teaching. In 1962, he taught 300 sugarcane harvesters to read and write in just 45 days. This model has been taken up by institutions all over the world. For example, many tabloid newspapers are staffed by ‘journalists’ who have clearly only been taught to read and write in the past 45 days.
The way that artists have portrayed education throughout history has been something of a fascination for me in recent years. Over a series of blog posts, I have explored how artists from various eras and artistic movements have cast their eyes, their brushes, their lenses and their, er, casts over the educational landscape before them. You can catch up with these blog posts by clicking on the links below.
In today’s post, I will be looking at the various artistic representations of the longest and darkest period of the academic year: the autumn term.
I’ll be begin by discussing one of the most famous paintings depicting the beginning of the autumn term: Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated ‘The First Seating Plan’ (1495-8).
‘The First Seating Plan’ (1495-8) by Leonardo da Vinci
In this painting, we can see the teacher surrounded by his pupils as they react to the seating plan that the teacher has placed them in. As da Vinci leads our eyes across the painting, we can see many students arguing that they don’t want to sit next to their designated partner, while others are still trying to work out where they actually sit from the simple diagram projected onto the whiteboard. But most striking is the teacher’s expression, which we can see in the detail below. His face simply says, “If getting them to sit in a seat is this hard, how on Earth am I going to teach them quadratic equations?”
Detail, ‘The First Seating Plan’ (1495-8) by Leonardo da Vinci
French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau also worked on this theme of the first seating plan in his 1718 work, ‘Get in! We’re sat together!’ (below), which focuses on the moment that a group of pupils show enthusiasm for the teacher’s random seating plan by hugging and dancing with each other. Of course, the moment that pupils show excitement at such serendipity is also the moment that the teacher’s heart sinks and they realise that they’ve really cocked up the seating plan by placing these pupils where they are obviously going to easily distract one another. She’ll give them a chance, but she’s pretty sure that the seating plan will have to be redone tomorrow.
‘Get in! We’re sat together!’ (1718) by Jean-Antoine Watteau
One of my favourite physical pieces of autumn term art is Tony Cragg’s sculpture, ‘All of the water bottles you’ve lost this term’ (1998).
‘All of the water bottles you’ve lost this term’ (1998) by Tony Cragg
In this piece, you can see the sheer volume of water bottles that a single teacher has brought into school during the autumn term, only to leave them somewhere and never get them back. You’ll notice plenty of common plastic mineral water bottles, as well as a number of flasks and fancy designer receptacles, including the expensive one that the teacher bought at the end of the summer holidays as a gift to themselves for the new term. They lost that one during inset on the first day back. The artist said of this piece, “If you think that the oceans are full of unwanted and left-behind plastic bottles, you should see school staffrooms.”
Whilst Cragg deals with the subject of drink, many artists turn their attention to teachers’ food during the autumn term. It is often striking in schools how little time it takes for cake to become a common sight in the staffroom, as teachers begin to ramp up their sugar intake in order to survive the autumn term. Below we can see Chris Killip’s 1977 photograph, ‘Teachers queuing outside the cake shop, two weeks into term’.
‘Teachers queuing outside the cake shop, two weeks into term’ (1977) by Chris Killip
Killip’s piece is an important piece of photojournalism, capturing the sugary reality of this first term.
But whilst cake becomes a common in the mise en scène of the staffroom, there’s alway someone who, with good intentions, brings fruit in for colleagues. This has, of course, famously been portrayed by Sir John Everett Millais in his 1849 painting, ‘Fruit? Are you ****ing joking mate?’, as seen below.
‘Fruit? Are you ****ing joking mate?’ (1849) by Sir John Everett Millais
Critics have heaped praised on this painting, as it captures the well-meaning teacher bring a bowl of oranges into the staffroom, only to enrage her colleague, who was expecting, at the very least, a family pack of Kit Kats to see him and his colleagues through the morning.
As the term progresses, teachers often face their heaviest marking load of the year, as baseline assessments and data drops build up and mock exam period is swiftly upon them. This creates a seemingly endless pile of marking.
‘When will this mock exam marking end?’ (c1760-70) by Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough’s late 18th century work, ‘When will this mock exam marking end?’ expertly captures the mood of teachers at this time. Note the heavy reams of paper, as well as the wistful look on the teacher’s face has he remembers the days when he could spend time with his family. Viewers are drawn to the small square of light in the top right hand corner, symbolising the fragments of hope that keep teachers going throughout this time.
On the subject of light, J.M.W. Turner’s masterpiece of chiaroscuro(below) addresses the dominating feature of the autumn term: its perpetual darkness.
‘Hello Darkness, My Old Friend’ (1809) by Joseph Mallord William Turner
‘Hello Darkness, My Old Friend’ (1890) depicts a teacher planning their lessons and marking books as the ubiquitous darkness of autumn term creeps in all around them. The lack of light plays heavy on the teacher’s mental state as their hand quivers near their face. Turner deliberately leaves any indicators of time out of the painting, suggesting that this could be 8 o’clock in the morning, 4pm, or midnight. Let’s face it, they were probably sat there at all three times.
As the term goes on, the darkness and workload take their toll on a teacher’s energy. You will all recognise Millais’ famous painting depicting this subject below.
‘Bath, not shower’ (1851-2) by Sir John Everett Millais
During the latter part of the term, teachers find they no longer have the energy to stand in the shower at the end of the day. In ‘Bath, not shower’ (1851-2), Millais shows us the teacher reverting to lying in a bath out of necessity, complete with Lush bath bomb, a weary look, and – in this extreme case – all her clothes on. It’s fine though – all her colleagues will be so tired that they won’t notice that she’s wearing the same dress for two days running, this time with added creases and still dripping dry. “You smell nice,” they might say.
Late in the term, the weather begins to turn and we get our first cold snap. Tired and in need of any extra time they can get to catch up with marking or sleep, teachers often see the possibility of a glimpse of respite in this cold weather.
‘Praying for Snow’ (1888) by Alphonse Legros
Alphonse Legros’ ‘Praying for Snow’ (1888) shows the moment when teachers desperately wish for a day to catch up contemplate the educational opportunities a day of snow will bring to the children they teach.
As Christmas approaches, there is an air of excitement in the school. Departments will often celebrate the season by organising a Secret Santa gift-giving amongst themselves. David Hockney’s painting below depicts the moment of the exchanging of gifts.
‘Oh good – a book about teaching’ (1977) by David Hockney
In ‘Oh good – a book about teaching’, the artist shows us the faux gratitude shown by the teacher (on the right) receiving the gift, as he receives a book that is guaranteed to mean that he has to think about work throughout the Christmas holidays too. The teacher on the left seems satisfied that she bought him this instead of the Borat-style mankini she originally thought about getting him. Clearly, he would have preferred the mankini.
The final week of lessons approach and teachers and pupils alike can see the end in sight.
‘Can we have a fun lesson?’ (1851) by Richard Redgrave
In the above painting, Richard Redgrave’s ‘Can we have a fun lesson?’ (1851), we can see the teacher responding angrily to the question that he has been asked 14 times already this week. There are still two days to go.
‘Can we watch a DVD?’ (c.1850) by Frederic George Stephens
On the final day of term, the question becomes even more deploring. Frederic George Stephens’ ‘Can we watch a DVD?’ shows a pupil begging to be allowed to watch the first half of a film before going to their next lesson to ask their next teacher if they can watch the first half of a completely different film, and so on for the rest of the day. It is arguable that such a day would actually have an educational benefit: it will serve as a good introduction to postmodernism and will ably prepare pupils to read James Joyce or Italo Calvino in the future. In Stephens’ painting, we can see the teacher wrestling over the decision to teach her planned lesson, watch an educational documentary or just give in completely and stick Elf on.
Once term is finished, teachers can really get into the seasonal festivities with their friends and family. Tom Hunter’s ‘Get the Party Started’ (2009) shows a teacher, back home after the long autumn term, really throwing themselves into all of the festive fun and cheer.
‘Get the Party Started’ (2009) by Tom Hunter
That’s it for this look at the art of the autumn term throughout history. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. See you next time!
Back in 1974, the musical innovator Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt produced a deck of 113 cards called ‘Oblique Strategies’. On each card was an instruction or guidance to encourage a musician or artist to be able to laterally think their way through a creative block. When faced with the pressure of producing, they would often find that this very pressure would steer them away from productive ways of thinking, so they created the cards to jog their mind back towards these more, well, oblique ways of thinking. Here’s Eno discussing them in 1980:
“The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you’re in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the best results. Of course, that often isn’t the case – it’s just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, ‘Don’t forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,’ or ‘Don’t forget you could adopt *that* attitude.'”
The cards were famously used by Eno and David Bowie on the latter’s Berlin trilogy of albums – Low, “Heroes” and Lodger, and have been used by a number of artists since –bands such as R.E.M. and Coldplay, for instance. You can see examples of some of the cards below:
It’s recently come to my attention that similar cards were produced by the National Strategies team back in the early noughties: whilst plenty of their resources were of good quality, they sometimes suffered creative blocks when coming up with initiatives and materials for schools, so they produced their own set of Oblique National Strategies cards to help them get through these blocks. And what’s more, I’ve managed to get hold of some of these cards. Rumour has it that these are still used by some agencies, organisations and MATs. I’ve attached some of the cards below so that you can use them if you have any creative block in policy making. Just click on a card at random and follow the strategy written on it.
Over the past few years, I have been exploring the art history of teaching on this blog, sharing some of my favourite pieces of artwork across various topics within education. You can view my past blogs on these topics here:
In this blog, I will be exploring another area that has proved a rich vein for artists throughout time: the inset day. Let’s take a look at how this topic has been approached by artists through the years.
‘I don’t have to teach tomorrow… I might as well finish the bottle tonight’ (1969) by Patrick Caulfield
One of my favourite modern pieces is Patrick Caulfield’s 1969 classic ‘I don’t have to teach tomorrow… I might as well finish the bottle tonight’, which depicts the preparation teachers might go through the evening before an inset day. Other works around this theme include Pauline Boty’s ‘So What if This Film Starts at 10pm? I’ve Got Inset Tomorrow’ (1963) and Andy Warhol’s ‘Lie-in!’ (1967).
This kind of preparation continues into the next morning, as teachers take the opportunity of staff inset to dress casually for the day. The work below is a diptych by August Sander in 1929, titled ‘Inset day outfits’.
‘Inset day outfits No. 1’ (1929) by August Sander
‘Inset day outfits No. 2’ (1929) by August Sander
These contrasting photographs are beautifully observed, the artist depicting both P.E. staff and classroom teachers from the school’s faculty. Sander plays with the assumptions of the layperson here – they might assume that the P.E. staff are on the left and the classroom teacher is on the right. Of course, as those in schools all know, inset day is the one day of the year where all the male classroom teachers wear shorts and the P.E. staff wear long trousers – both experiencing a sense of liberation that they crave every other day of the year.
Once the inset day begins, teachers might have the option to sit in groups of their choice, or they might face the prospect of being made to work in groups that have been selected for them.
‘This is the Group We Have Been Put In and We Are Really Happy About That’ (1989) by Thomas Struth
Thomas Struth’s 1989 photograph ‘This is the Group We Have Been Put In and We Are Really Happy About That’, shows an enthusiastic group of teachers really getting stuck in to working with the group into which they have been selected. This piece invites the viewer to really look at the faces of each of the group members to see their deep joy.
Once work begins within the group, staff will need to feed back their discussions and ideas on the subject matter of the training.
‘Write Your Ideas on a Post-it® and Stick Them it the Wall’ (1976-7) by Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly’s 1976-7 print ‘Write Your Ideas on a Post-it® and Stick Them it the Wall’ depicts the staple method of feedback used at all inset. The artist deliberately leaves the sticky notes blank, allowing the viewer to imagine their own feedback as they experience the painting. Critics note is that the central Post-it® note is black, and thus any writing on this note will be illegible to the reader: is the artist suggesting that your feedback won’t actually be read? Or is he suggesting that your true thoughts are hidden? What other interpretations might we make of this?
It may be that the inset training requires teachers to be creative in their feedback. Below are two examples portraying a common method of creative feedback from the past, in which teachers have been given some random objects to arrange in a way that represents their response to the subject matter. In Jean Tinguely’s 1970 sculpture ‘My Pedagogy’, the artist depicts a teacher who has been asked to present what pedagogy means to them. In this piece, there is a description alongside it that reads: “Pedagogy is a series of tools that are in balance but are also simultaneously in a state of chaos”. Below that, Bruce Lacey’s ‘This is What Teaching Means to Me’ (1966) also shows how easy it is for a teacher to put some random junk together and then come up with a post-hoc rationalisation that it represents something profound when asked. The description alongside this piece reads: “I dunno, summink about support and helping hands and that?”
“My Pedagogy’ (1970) by Jean Tinguely
‘This is What Teaching Means to Me’ (1966) by Bruce Lacey
An inset day may also require staff to get up out of their seat and do something interactive as it is often assumed by the trainer that teachers are all extroverts who wish to make public displays of themselves at all times. Liu Bolin’s work ‘Please, Please Don’t Make Me Do This’ (2018) portrays the a teacher in the moment they literally attempt to blend into the background so that they don’t have to get involved in something that makes them uncomfortable. If you look very carefully at the piece, you can actually see the teacher in the centre, hiding in plain sight from the trainer, who has just asked him to sing and clap along to a song, or make some form of physical contact with the person next to him, or perhaps even something as upsetting as standing up for a moment.
‘Please, Please Don’t Make Me Do This’ (2018) by Liu Bolin
Below we can see Eric Gill’s representation of the holy grail of inset: having an external speaker come in to present to the staff. You can see the reverence from the staff as they hang on every word of this guru, who they’ve followed on social media for ages and have finally got the chance to hear speak in person. Critics have noted how the teacher depicted at the far end of the second row has a slightly dipped head, reflecting their disappointment at the revelation that the guru’s social media profile picture is infinitely more flattering than they appear in person and was probably taken five years ago, before the mounting sleepless nights and all-you-can-eat buffet breakfasts in Travelodges started to show.
‘External Speaker’ (1918) by Eric Gill
One of my favourite pieces is Linder’s photomontage piece from 1976, ‘Oh good – that Ken Robinson video again’, a punk-era work that asks the viewer to think deeply about the media content we consume in schools.
‘Oh good – that Ken Robinson video again’ (1976) by Linder
During inset day there is often a free lunch put on for staff in the canteen at a set time of the day. Below, we can see Lady Butler’s 1881 painting, ‘The Charge of the Lunch Brigade’, which depicts the moment that one department decides to make their way to the canteen a bit earlier than the designated lunchtime in order to get served first, only to realise all of the other departments have done exactly the same thing. We can see the Head of Humanities, out in front in the centre of the painting, shouting “It’s fish and chips!” as he nears the canteen and gets his first glimpse of the food. Meanwhile, those behind try to hustle towards the front whilst simultaneously trying to maintain polite relations with their colleagues in other departments.
‘The Charge of the Lunch Brigade’ (1881) by Lady Butler
A legend often repeated with regards to staff training is that of inset bingo, a game in which staff members have individual bingo cards full of common buzzwords in education that they are supposed to mark off from their card if they are mentioned by the speaker. Perhaps the most famous painting of all time, below, is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Lotto di cazzate’ (Italian: “buzzword bingo”), which deals with the moment someone at the table has a winning card. Critics have often debated the sitter’s enigmatic smile and the reasons behind it, but art historians have recently uncovered diaries from da Vinci that tell us that “the teacher in question has just won the game of inset bingo and is trying to hide her delight and, at the same time, maintain a professional demeanour in front of the speaker and her line manager – this conflict results in her enigmatic smile, a seemingly insignificant feature of the painting which I’m pretty sure critics won’t pay much attention to in the years to come”.
‘Lotto di cazzate’ (1503-06) by Leonardo da Vinci
I hope you have enjoyed this little voyage through some of the artists who have depicted inset day throughout history. Until next time!
This is a piece I wrote for Teach Secondary in February. Click here and you can subscribe to see more articles like this from teachers.
“Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs Lancaster?”
“I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.”
Groundhog Day (1993)
Ah, the classic time-loop trope: a staple of stories and films, this simple device sees our hero or heroine being forced to experience the same period of time repeatedly.
Now, we all know that teaching isn’t like that in the day-to-day. In fact, the idea that ‘no two days are the same’ is often cited as a reason why we all love this job.
But in the long term, there is actually quite a lot of repetition in education. And unlike Mrs Lancaster – Bill Murray’s landlady in Groundhog Day – we don’t need to check with the kitchen for evidence of déjà vu. No, in schools we have our more experienced colleagues to remind us.
“I remember this intervention/trend/fad/torture the last time it came around.” We’ve all heard this said. Or we’ve said it ourselves. Because it is one of the universal truths of teaching: like Madonna or West Bromwich Albion, ideas disappear and then return a few years later, rehabilitated and revamped, with an almost predictable frequency.
Recurring nightmares
The time-loop trope in films is often used as a device of horror, or at the very least, grim frustration. And it can have the same effect in teaching.
I can’t even begin to tell you of the nightmares I’ve had about having to relive the hell that was APP again – an approach to assessment from the late noughties that involved lots of paper, huge amounts of priceless teacher time and yet still resulted in the same old subjective and inaccurate grades.
So why do I live in fear of someone bringing APP back from the dead? Surely we all know it was awful? Well, no, not all of us.
There will be people new to the profession who don’t remember the abominations of the past.
With good intentions, they will (re)invent this stuff and dump it into the laps of those who remember it the first time around, ignoring the defences from these battle-weary veterans of, “You don’t know, man! You weren’t there!”
Look back
So, how do we protect ourselves from this inevitable time loop? How can we prevent someone triggering our PTSD from a resuscitation of the PLTS? How might we avert a second attempt at a Brain Gym lobotomy? How do we avoid getting the shakes from VAK again?
The answer is to future-proof education. But I don’t mean by listening to the futurists – they’ve been playing guessing games, making guff up and getting it wrong for centuries.
(Incidentally, why do futurists never predict that in the future, people will look back at futurists’ ideas and laugh at how wrong they were? That would be a more prescient observation.)
No, I mean that we should – and can – future-proof education against the past. That’s where many of our most pernicious ideas come from (mea culpa: I don’t stand apart from these ideas – I’ve been complicit in many of them).
And that’s also where we have the evidence and experience to say with more accuracy: this idea is useful/of little use/downright damaging.
We can easily future-proof ourselves against these ghosts of the past, these reanimated corpses of past horrors, by reading widely around the ideas and making sure we know about the research and discourse that informs or refutes them.
Knowledge is power
There comes a point in all of these time loop narratives when the protagonist stops letting the grinding repetition get them down, when they stand up and take control of their own destiny; when they cry, as Bill Murray’s character declares in Groundhog Day, “I’m not going to live by their rules anymore.”
So when the APP gremlins multiply and take over thanks to some well-meaning yet oblivious individual feeding them after midnight, we should arm ourselves with the one thing that can protect against them: knowledge.
Know more about them than we are told. When we know more about the past, we are protected against the future. Only then can we be guided by the things that work. Then we won’t have to live by their rules again. And again. And again…
I’m happy to present to you the third post in a series of art histories of education. Previously, we have looked at how artists have depicted both school inspections and the back to school season, and this time I thought I’d explore the history of exam season as depicted through art.
A common subject for artists depicting this period of frenetic preparation is that of the variety of revision techniques that pupils use. We’ll begin by discussing three paintings that take on this subject.
‘Highlighting the Key Ideas in the Text’ (c.1950-2) by Mark Rothko
In ‘Highlighting the Key Ideas in the Text’ (c.1950-2) by Mark Rothko, the artist shows us how the pupil has smothered the entire text with his yellow highlighter, showing a lack of discernment between ‘the key ideas’ and ‘everything the writer has written’. You can see at the bottom of the page that the pen has actually run out of ink, much to the frustration of the teacher, who has only just bought this new set of highlighters out of their own pocket.
‘The Flash Card of the Teacher’ (1992-3) by Gillian Wearing OBE
Another subset of revision art focuses on the use of flash cards. In the 1990s, British artist Gillian Wearing turned our perception of these as merely a revision tool on its head and created a piece entitled ‘The Flash Card of the Teacher’ (1992-3). In the piece, instead of photographing pupils with flash cards, she asked teachers, in the week before the final exam, to use the flash cards to express exactly how they are feeling as they try to ensure their pupils achieve their target grades. In an interview, the artist has stated that the teacher’s line manager is just out of shot in this image, frantically gesticulating and waving around a piece of paper containing the teacher’s performance management targets.
‘A Mindmap of Everything I Know About the Hydrological Cycle’ (1952) by Jackson Pollock
‘A Mindmap of Everything I Know About the Hydrological Cycle’ (1952) by Jackson Pollock is a portrayal of a common revision tool: the mind map, or thought shower. In this piece, the pupil has attempted to write down everything they know about the hydrological cycle, only to throw a tantrum when they realise that they didn’t really know as much as they thought they knew. Legend has it that Pollock actually invented his famous style of ‘drip’ action painting in this exact way: he was mindmapping everything he was taught about classical art techniques at art school when he realised he hadn’t paid much attention, so ended up spoiling his canvas in a fit of rage. That particular ‘painting’ was later bought by Kanye West for $117m.
‘Predicting 9-1 Grades Just Before the Final Exams’ (1938) by Wyndham Lewis
As pupils find themselves on the precipice of exam leave, teachers are asked to give their 28th and final data drop of the year for their Year 11s. A major part of this data drop will include the need to predict their pupils’ GCSE grades. Whilst under previous specifications these predictions were fairly difficult, they have become an arcane act under the new 9-1 GCSEs. With 100% exam in many subjects, teachers no longer have any coursework grades as a basis, and combined with a lack of any direction as to how the raw marks will convert to actual grades, this has left teachers turning to the occult to make their predictions. In Wyndham Lewis’ ‘Predicting 9-1 Grades Just Before the Final Exams’ (1938), we see the teacher depicted calling on the help of the spirit world before drawing numbers randomly from a pack of cards prior to entering it into her prediction spreadsheet.
‘Extra Revision Lessons’ (1884) by John William Waterhouse
As the exams loom heavily over the class, the teacher finds themself offering extra lessons after school, at weekends and often during the Easter break. The painter John William Waterhouse captures such a moment in ‘Extra Revision Lessons’ (1884). There are a number of interesting details in this painting. Critics point out the look of frustration on the teacher’s face as she goes through something she has taught a few times already during regular lessons, remembering that some of the pupils in the room weren’t paying any attention then because they knew that their teacher would go back through it again in these extra lessons anyway. Another thought-provoking detail is the pupil with her head in her hands. Critics suggest that she is having a nap as she thinks that merely turning up to these extra lessons is sufficient for her pass her GCSE in the subject. It is likely that this pupil has also bought a revision guide which sits untouched but also carries a similar magical power.
‘After Four and a Half Years of Avoiding Work, It’s Finally Clicked for Bobby’ (1852) by Robert Braithwaite Martineau
As the exam rapidly approaches, a greater number of pupils begin to realise that they will have to start working harder. In ‘After Four and a Half Years of Avoiding Work, It’s Finally Clicked for Bobby’ (1852), the artist Robert Braithwaite Martineau shows the moment when a particular pupil who has lacked motivation for so long finally pays attention to the work he is being asked to complete. We can see the enigmatic look on his fellow pupil’s face as she peers over his shoulder, having endured many years of ‘Bobby’ distracting her and the rest of class. It is a look that has been interpreted in many ways by critics: from supportiveness and respect for his newfound work ethic to a smug ‘I told you so’ at his obvious struggle.
‘OMG Steph Told Me She Wrote Something Different For That Question and Now I’m Questioning My Entire Exam Paper’ (1937) by Pablo Picasso
Many artists have tried to depict the experience of the exams themselves. Arguably the most famous painting of the exam season is Pablo Picasso’s ‘OMG Steph Told Me She Wrote Something Different For That Question and Now I’m Questioning My Entire Exam Paper’ (1937). There is a strong moral message in this painting as Picasso warns the viewer of the dangers of discussing the paper with other pupils after they leave the exam hall and the consequent feeling of doubt that will naturally ensue from this. The lurid red juxtaposed against the bilious green and yellow represents the conflict in the pupil’s mind as they go over everything they wrote and decide all of it is invalid because her friend wrote something slightly different to her on one of the questions.
‘I decided to doodle this pattern instead of answering the question and then I wonder why I ran out of time in the exam’ (1975-6) by Jasper Johns
The abstract impressionist Jasper Johns offers this painting to the genre. Entitled ‘I decided to doodle this pattern instead of answering the question and then I wonder why I ran out of time in the exam’ (1975-6), it is a work that pulls the viewer’s eyes in many directions and forces the reader to ask a variety of questions of the artist, questions such as: ‘How long did this doodle take… I mean, it seems really intricate?’ and ‘You’ve even used three different colours – why the hell would you do this?’ and ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST TRY AND ANSWER THE EXAM QUESTION INSTEAD?’
‘Practising Leaping for the Local Paper’ (1972) by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi
Once exams are complete, pupils begin to think about results. This involves thinking about future plans – colleges, apprenticeships, careers. But more immediately, pupils must prepare for results day and how they will pose when a photographer from the local paper comes in to school. Pop artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi’s ‘Practising Leaping for the Local Paper’ (1972) depicts a pupil preparing for just this moment. The work concentrates on the difficulty in getting airborne whilst maintaining a sense of joy and grace, and he sets the image of the pupil against a propulsion airplane to effectively illustrate this eternal struggle of flight.
‘Arriving for Prom’ (1900) by Sir Frank Dicksee
Of course, whilst the exams are a worthy preamble, every pupil knows that the most important date during the exam season is the school prom. Whilst some pupils may spend lots of money and time and really throw themselves into the pomp and circumstance of the spectacle, Sir Frank Dicksee chooses one of the more understated and austere entrances for the subject of his painting ‘Arriving for Prom’ (1900).
This painting is a natural conclusion to some of my favourites on the subject of exam season. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Assessing Pupils’ Progress: in the 2000s, it was decided that formative assessment across the National Curriculum was not nearly time-consuming, convoluted, subjective or inaccurate enough, so the National Strategies developed APP in order to remedy this oversight.
c-word, the
/siː wəːd, ðə/
noun
referring to an expletive that causes great offence and concern to teachers and is often heard in the corridors of schools, this is a euphemistic way of saying ‘consultant’.
engagement ring
/ɪnˈɡeɪdʒm(ə)nt rɪŋ/
noun
a circle of teachers who will defend the right to teach the rise of the Third Reich with emojis.
exercise books
/ˈɛksəsʌɪz bʊks/
noun
material placed in the boot of a teacher’s car to act as ballast for the vehicle.
get-ups
/ˈget-ˌəps/
noun
technical term used as a compulsory replacement for the word days in all schools during the last 2 weeks of any term, e.g., “Only six more get-ups, everyone…”
Han Solo taxonomy
/ˈsəʊləʊ takˈsɒnəmi/
noun
a model that describes levels of increasing complexity in student’s understanding and knowledge of subjects; the model consists of five levels:
1. Never tell me the odds – pure ignorance
2. Fly casual – cursory understanding
3. Great kid, don’t get cocky – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
4. Laugh it up, fuzzball – solid knowledge
5. Make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs – boastful knowledge
hot seating
/hɒt ˈsiːtɪŋ/
noun
what is left behind after a particularly flatulent Year 7 pupil has left your room.
lunchtime
/ˈlʌn(t)ʃtʌɪm/
noun
a period of time during the school day in which teachers are able to attend meetings, hold detentions, receive observation feedback, respond to emails, and perform other administrative tasks; the name originates from an archaic idea that teachers once used this time to eat their lunch.
marksism
/ˈmɑːksɪz(ə)m/
noun
educational methodology which promotes pupils rising up and seizing the means of assessment.
mocksted
/mɒkstɛd/
noun
according to Dante, “the Ninth Circle of Hell is reserved for the undertaking of mocksted inspections”; not only an awful thing in and of itself but also, fittingly, the most ugly word in the English language.
music
/ˈmjuːzɪk/
noun
something that pupils are usually allowed to listen to by their regular class teacher, as mentioned in every single cover lesson that one has to take.
reading for pleasure
/ˈriːdɪŋ fɔː ˈplɛʒə/
noun
a noble aim in education, often enacted by telling children to sit and read for pleasure.
restorative justice
/rɪˈstɒrətɪv ˈdʒʌstɪs/
noun
an approach used in many schools to achieve a resolution for incidents ranging from name-calling to bullying or physical harm of others; a compound noun made up of the words justice, meaning ‘a fair outcome for everyone involved’, and restorative, meaning ‘unlikely chance of this resulting in’.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
/ruːˈsoʊ, ʒɑ̃-ʒɑɔ̯k/
noun
Genevan philosopher and, in a roundabout way, inventor of the fidget spinner: blame him.
verbal feedback stamp
/ˈvəːb(ə)l ˈfiːdbak stamp/
noun
initially rejected as “not solving any actual problem” on the BBC television programme Dragon’s Den, this product later found minor success as novelty prank gift alongside the pet rock, the DVD rewinder and shoe umbrellas; it is still unknown whether its subsequent introduction into schools was intended as a continuation of the joke or whether it was actually serious.
working memory
/ˈwəːkɪŋ ˈmɛm(ə)ri/
noun
the part of short-term memory that can hold between 5 and 9 items at any one time: specifically, it can remind pupils to bring to school their iPhone, headphones, makeup, fidget spinner, and a detailed knowledge of every football match from the previous weekend, but it will never contain enough space to remember to bring a pen.
So another World Teachers Day has come and gone. All the build-up, all the excitement, and it just seems to go by in a flash. One minute we’re all hanging our stockings up in the classroom ready to be filled with gifts from our generous pupils, the next minute we’re all sick of spending the week eating leftovers from the big World Teachers Day feasts laid on for us by our families and friends.
I love all of the traditions of World Teachers Day: chugging a yard of tea, the enormous full-sized teacher-shaped chocolate cake (bagsy the heart – it’s the biggest bit!), marking under the mistletoe, pinning the grade on the lesson observation (blindfolded, of course), being allowed to go the toilet, the Airing of Grievances, the singing of teacher carols (“Mark! The Herald Angels Sing”), the Returning of the Glue Sticks, and – the best bit – all the inspirational memes.
The memes range from the uplifting to the banal via the truthy, just the way we all love them. But some memes tap into a well-worn trope that does more damage than good: that of the teacher as self-immolating martyr. See exhibit A:
Quite often promoted by non-teachers, this trope says one thing: good teachers kill themselves for their jobs.
The valorisation of teaching as a form of ritual suicide is subtle but pervasive. Once you realise it, you begin to notice it all around. It appears when the Chartered College of Teaching platforms speakers telling us that “teaching is a way of being, not just a job.” And it’s in motivational posters telling us that we should “give meaningful feedback on students’ work even if [our] pile of books seems endless”.
What of those teachers who aren’t prepared to give their whole self over for their job? Those teachers who put their family first or who want to have energy left at the end of the day for other interests? Maybe they should just accept the fact that they aren’t good teachers? If they simply won’t consume themselves to light the way for others, should they feel guilty? Why aren’t they prepared to throw themselves on the funeral pyre like all the other good teachers around them?
The thing is that people don’t share these sorts of ideas because they want to attack teachers. The intentions are actually good; it’s just that such ideas are also completely unthinking. People assume that it flatters teachers: “anyone who is prepared to self-destruct just so that every child understands quadratic equations/oxbow lakes/pointillism is truly an angel.” But this kind of hagiography actually damages teachers. It allows the system to tell teachers they should always be doing more. It allows the system to say: this is what teaching is; this is what you have to live up to if you want to feel you are doing enough.
We really need to shift this narrative that teaching should be all-consuming and that self-destruction is part and parcel of our job. We can’t complain of workload issues at the same time as promoting this harmful shibboleth.
Perhaps years ago I might have seen the ‘candle’ meme above and not noticed the deleterious subtext. I might have seen it as a celebration of our job. But after years of full time teaching, I realise how unsustainable this attitude is, how damaging it is.
And this realisation means that I should probably throw away all of these old memes I made years ago when I thought I was celebrating teaching too. Silly, silly old me.
I'm just a teacher, standing in front of a class, asking them to be quiet and listen.
Othmar's Trombone 