IN THE wonderfully uplifting film, The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins escapes the hell of life in prison and sets up home on the coast of Mexico. A few years later, his best friend, Morgan Freeman, violates the conditions of his recent release fro
m prison by crossing the US-Mexican border to reunite with Robbins.
A few weeks ago, my colleague, Les, retired aged 60. As I write he is probably sat in a rowing boat, bobbing up and down on a loch, reeling in a fish for supper. He is Tim Robbins to my Morgan Freeman. In three years I will be eligible for parole through the actuarially reduced pension scheme. I'm looking forward to being in the same boat as Les.
Call it burn-out, or grumpy old man syndrome but trying to teach in a constantly changing world of education is taking its toll on my physical and mental health. It seems every week there is a new 'journey', a fresh 'challenge', a groundbreaking 'vision' to implement. Of course, for those of us cursed with possessing critical faculties, the reality is there is little new under the sun.
I am not averse to change if it promotes better teaching and learning. For example, schools are much more relaxed institutions these days.. There is no longer a suffocating dress code that demands Sir sports a neck-tie, a futile fashion accessory derided by the Arab world as a symbol of Western imperialism. When it comes to tying a thin piece of ill-shaped cloth in a knot around my neck, I'm with Ahmadinejad and his mullahs. Women teachers feel liberated enough to wear trousers, a strident show of feminist power that would have caused apoplexy in the chauvinistic men who dominated schools management just two decades ago. Indeed, the same fogies would be reaching for defibrillators today at the sight of brazen young (and not so young) school mistresses walking the corridors in de rigueur décolleté dresses and tops.
Not everyone is a cheerleader for this change. Traditional types hanker for formal, hierarchical structures that demanded flapping academic gowns and regulation patent black shiny shoes to put 'distance' between practitioner and pupil. In my opinion, only those with insecurities about their skills needed to don dark robes to validate their status.
The more relaxed ambience is evident in the increasingly prevalent practice of classroom teachers being encouraged by headteachers and deputes to address them by their first names. Initially, for someone of my vintage, this felt a tad uncomfortable. After all, when I started teaching, my first school manager did not even have a surname; he was simply 'headmaster.' I'm sure the Man With No Name sincerely believed running a secondary school on the principle of Divine Rule had its advantages, but bottom-up initiatives were certainly not one of them. Teachers were afraid to mention even the mildest criticism of school policies, a situation that stifled debate and progress. In schools across the country, tyrants thrived and the best a school staff could hope for was a benign dictator, a Mussolini to make the weans run on time.
Today, pupils and teachers enjoy a better relationship than ever. There is greater informality, more acceptance of humour in the classroom, more banter and youngsters are not afraid to ask Sir awkward questions. That's not to say we are the kids' mates, swapping mobile numbers and MySpace sites (The General Teaching Council takes a dim view of those who do). Most youngsters under my tutelage know my Christian name is Hugh (though no-one knows my middle name is Walter). When I were a lad, knowledge of a teacher's first name was considered a contravention of The Official Secrets Act. In my classroom, I'm happy to be simply Mr Reilly, not Sir. 'Sir' jars with me, especially when I overhear some oddball-no-personality superior insisting a recalcitrant vassal calls him by his , feudal title.
There has been a change for the worse in pupil behaviour but only at the margins. To listen to some teachers, once upon a time there was a Golden Age of Teaching when teenagers pricked up their ears and listened intently to pearls of wisdom falling from the lips of the Master. Spookily, even though I'm the same age as those colleagues, the Golden Age they speak of passed me by. Back in the early 80s, I was offered a 'square go' in the classroom (which I accepted – the principal teacher cancelled the bout, much to the disappointment of the pumped-up protagonists). Three decades ago, kids talked and misbehaved because they were, erm, kids. Of course, the so-called Golden Age that nostalgic geriatrics refer to is the era when they cowed classes by dishing out six of the best to any lad or lassie bored by the sadist's disorganised and unimaginative lesson.
I admit to being disappointed in elements of the modern ways schools deal with indiscipline. Managing bad behaviour needs resources most schools appear to lack. Logging companies raping native Brazilian tribes of their traditional Amazonian habitat cannot work quickly enough to replace the quantity of paper needed to stock schools with referral forms, demerit slips, praise cards, latecoming cards, pupil contracts, letters to parents and detention notices. Schools are drowning in Byzantine behaviour bureaucracies that have no impact whatsoever in changing the negative attitude of hardcore recidivists.
Twenty years ago, a teacher could compile a list of offences that would lead to automatic suspension. Nowadays, that list would be smaller than a Book of Great Speeches Made By Wendy Alexander. Keeping kids in the classroom is the be-all and end-all.
Bad behaviour is not, however, the bane of a teacher's life. That award goes to (drum roll) initiatives promulgated by those who fled the classroom and reinvented themselves as educational experts. Formative Assessment, if you believe the hype, is the panacea for low attainment. With formative assessment, a child's work is not graded – instead, a teacher praises the good sections and offers ways to improve the piece of classwork. Older staff recognise this 'new' initiative as a reincarnation of what was taught to aspiring teachers by Colleges of Education in the 70s. Empowering children by giving them ownership of their learning is the latest wheeze; children become responsible for their own learning by dint of the teacher morphing into a facilitator who provides appropriate coursework materials. This is 1980's Resource Based Learning (RBL) in a different guise. And I am supposed to be impressed by the best of Scottish education's thinkers?
More change is coming my way. A few weeks ago, Education Minister Fiona Hyslop announced the death of Standard Grade. I am ambivalent about its passing but there is heavy irony that those who evangelised the concepts and rationale behind Standard Grade, who breathed life into these national examinations, are the same people who have repeatedly stabbed it in the back in recent times. When Standard Grade began, promotion hopefuls fell over themselves at interviews to hail the end of the pass/fail nature of discredited 'O' grades. With the implementation of Standard Grade, they parroted, kids would no longer fail but, rather, enjoy different levels of success. Ensconced as headteachers, some of these promoted people recently abandoned Standard Grade and replaced it with – you've guessed it – pass/fail Intermediate Exams. Tony Blair apologised for slavery. Could at least one serving head have the guts to apologise for eulogising Standard Grade in the 90s, only to ditch it when handed the reins of power?
Coming up on the rails fast in the race to change schools is the Curriculum for Excellence, a dark horse that nobody seems to know much about, other than it coming under starter's orders very soon. As a concerned commentator, I've read the blurb and I am at one with those behind this programme who tell us Scottish children, who hitherto have had no idea of citizenship, who lacked confidence, who couldn't write a sentence or add up a bill at ASDA, will be transformed into stalwart lieges with a thirst for lifelong learning. Unfortunately, it looked markedly different when I took off my Scottish Government-issue rose-tinted spectacles.
Perhaps the biggest change is that schools have bought into a checklist, tick-box mentality. The management Koran (let's be multicultural here) is How Good Is Our School?, a lunatic document that appears to be a summary of the ramblings of a long-bearded man unjustly incarcerated in solitary confinement for 50 years with only his cockroach friends for conversation. Hitler gave book-burning something of a bad press but if there is one tome that deserves a place atop a bonfire, it's this arid audit manual.
To stop myself going stir crazy, I've started to make preparations for my timely exit. Already, a Rita Hayworth poster is blue-tacked to my classroom wall. Wait for me Les, I'm coming.
• Hugh Reilly is a modern studies teacher at a Glasgow secondary school.
