General strike/protest

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bruce Wayne said:
It's a funny one, as if you look around the world at countries that seem to do really well in terms of education, those such as South Korea, Finland, Poland etc. usually get a mention. The one thing that really binds them is that none have any real similarities at all in terms of what happens between 9-5 (or whatever hours they use). All three have quite different approaches to the actual schooling itself, but in all three countries there appears to be a real appreciation of the importance of education in their societies. I'd imagine it's pretty tough for any school to really succeed with a child who doesn't really want to learn when they arrive each morning.
Click to expand...
It is the same for us. We do things extremely differently, but the change is pretty obvious that it's going towards a business at this point.

Comparing what I've been studying and so on in school, we have a much more advanced education system than the UK. The one here is sluggish, way too inwards-focused, and just not "general" enough, so to say. Personally I find the idea of highers and advanced highers and stuff like that baffling - we have advanced higher in everything (and then university level subjects for a year in your speciality subject, i.e. maths, any sciences, politics, etc), hence a lot of people come to study here and find the thing they are passionate about to be fairly easy, as you have an expectation that university would be tougher than "high school" (or equivalent in UK overall, I know they're different in different places), which is already first year or so of university, level-wise.

I know that obviously no one is gonna consider us as this education-focused country that pumps out geniuses, but in terms of general knowledge we're quite ahead to a lot of countries, and we have people getting prizes in national competitions - a lad I know won the maths championship thing in Hong Kong a few years ago, nearly record points, and got offered to study mathematics in, I believe, Harvard by the uni itself, tuition paid and everything - and we have to study 2 foreign languages, and so on. On top of that we study the grammar of English (and German/Italian/Spanish/Russian/whatever you pick as your second foreign language) altogether more than people here do - my hand/keyboard-written English is better and with less typos than that of my UK-born classmates, and when I ask "How can you not know this and this rule" they just say they've never had to study it... Language is a beautiful thing ffs! :D A glaring example of that is my flatmate, who is an English student and can't, for her life, tell me some of the basic grammar rules and explain them. Odd thing tbh.

I know this is essentially a mini-rant at this point, and we have teachers on here who can and will rightfully disagree, as the system does work - all I'm saying is that it could work a lot better... lol
 
Bruce Wayne said:
It's a funny one, as if you look around the world at countries that seem to do really well in terms of education, those such as South Korea, Finland, Poland etc. usually get a mention. The one thing that really binds them is that none have any real similarities at all in terms of what happens between 9-5 (or whatever hours they use). All three have quite different approaches to the actual schooling itself, but in all three countries there appears to be a real appreciation of the importance of education in their societies. I'd imagine it's pretty tough for any school to really succeed with a child who doesn't really want to learn when they arrive each morning.
Click to expand...

An important point. If you look at the standard of students in the likes of Romania, which is dirt poor, the students have a far more rounded yet academic excellence compared to the UK with all it's available money..........strange one indeed...
 
peteblue said:
Then good luck with that. You will lose. You could strike for a year, but if the parents are not behind you it is pointless......and if you can't get the parents behind you, then it's not worth doing.......this is not politics, this is strategy....
Click to expand...

If the teachers lose, it will have nothing to do with not having the support of the parents. It will have everything to do with the government seeking to further privatise certain public sectors, and businesses pressuring the government to do so.

How you can't see that this is a very political issue is baffling.
 
Seanjd said:
They couldn't set up an academy, they could set up a free school. But then that would go against everything they are fighting for.
Click to expand...

I don't understand though really. Could the NUT (for sake of illustration) not then run the schools under its charge in the way they're fighting for? It wouldn't be all schools, but parents could certainly vote with their feet if those schools were really pulling up trees.
 
peteblue said:
Then good luck with that. You will lose. You could strike for a year, but if the parents are not behind you it is pointless......and if you can't get the parents behind you, then it's not worth doing.......this is not politics, this is strategy....
Click to expand...
You do know that as part of the academisation plan there will no longer be compulsory parent governors on governing bodies.

Parents are also extremely concerned about behaviour such as this.
http://schoolsweek.co.uk/perry-beec...-private-company-run-by-superhead-liam-nolan/
 
Bruce Wayne said:
I don't understand though really. Could the NUT (for sake of illustration) not then run the schools under its charge in the way they're fighting for? It wouldn't be all schools, but parents could certainly vote with their feet if those schools were really pulling up trees.
Click to expand...

Why would they do the thing they are fighting against though? They are fighting academisation.
 
bring the ghost on said:
If the teachers lose, it will have nothing to do with not having the support of the parents. It will have everything to do with the government seeking to further privatise certain public sectors, and businesses pressuring the government to do so.

How you can't see that this is a very political issue is baffling.
Click to expand...

Why, if teachers have no support from parents, would anyone bother to listen to them.....
 
FWIW Bulgaria had a teacher's strike a few years ago because of essentially the issue you guys have here, but for us it was more that they were getting paid next to nothing to actually do their job as well...

It was successful for us! lol
 
peteblue said:
Why, if teachers have no support from parents, would anyone bother to listen to them.....
Click to expand...

At the risk of repeating what has been said in this thread several times already - because they are professionals in the field.

It's like saying why would anyone listen to junior doctors if they don't have the support of the patients (although I recall that you are against junior doctors striking as well), or why would anyone listen to lawyers protesting legal aid cuts without the support of their clients.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Welcome

Join the Everton conversation today.
Fewer ads, full access, completely free.

→ Log in 🔑 Register
🛒 Visit Shop

Support Grand Old Team by checking out our latest Everton gear!
Back
Top