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| Volume 52 Number 23, October 8, 2022 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
TUC London Enough Is Enough - Saturday June 18,
2022
In the context of the strike battles that are taking place, the potential for teachers and all educationalists uniquely stands as a beacon for a new direction for education. Throughout their long-persistent demands, they pose the future. In the struggle, it answers the question, "What kind of education do we want?".
The demands that cover the conditions of teachers, including pay, and the well-being of all are not considered, let alone the material and cultural requirements of the entire population. Demands such as posed by an out-of-date National Curriculum, appropriate teaching and learning, organisation of classes and tutorials, and independent learning, all are posing the alternative for society. A human-centred education, instead of capital-centred, is crucially posed and re-posed throughout recent history up to the present, where the demands have met an important zenith. Issues posed are those such as class sizes, the need to set the limits more than ever to cope with the individual and collective needs of students. Teachers need to be recruited to the proper levels to cover all circumstances with the appropriate support of auxiliary staff and assistants. Whether it is collective styles of teaching, traditional methods, layout and other forms of tuition that may be required, the teachers know the different scenarios, the teachers are the ones to control the running of the schools and the milieu in which the students receive that teaching. This is why prescriptive lessons cannot be the one-size-fits-all remedy. The teachers need to run the schools on behalf of the general population and not the state or private Academies and Trusts or other forms that have historically taken away the initiative and control by the people. The only aspect that authority, in the form of educational authority, should be required to supply is funding and advice through the experience of educators. As far as the curriculum is concerned, the people should decide on the basis of who it serves and that it is the needs and future of society itself which is the only consideration. Apart from this, there should be no special lobby attached. These questions of education being at the hub of a new society, organised on the basis of guaranteeing the rights of all, accompanying the material and cultural requirements of the masses and also workers being in control of their lives and livelihoods, all show education's unique relevance and the significance of its struggle. This is what poses itself for the future of a society based upon the human factor and social consciousness. Teachers and their unions are calling out Ofsted and that there should be no prescriptive teaching, no bureaucratic lesson planning that doesn't serve teaching and learning. Only with a human-centred education serving a humane society can the problems of discipline be tackled.
Today, the teachers, alongside parents, students, and other workers, are demanding "Enough is Enough". Society is reaching a crossroads in the state of affairs and educational demands, which are reaching their breaking point. The pressures are enormous: delivering results and exams, a diminishing staff, attacks on pensions, poor salaries that do not consider the difficulties and pressures laid upon teachers, as well as the rising cost of living - these are all factors. The running down of schools and colleges, the lack of resources and funding, and the slanderous behaviour towards them by media and Westminster politicians is a dangerous catastrophe in the making. The teachers are preparing the strategy and tactics of their struggle as the government and the elite prepare their attacks with destructive consequences. The teachers must be supported because they are dealing with the future of education right now. They are posing the alternative direction in which society must go.
Retired teacher