In the news - An alternative take on the week's media
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Would newly unemployed city bankers make good teachers? This was the question that occupied many writing about a new fast-track training scheme announced by the government, which would mean new recruits could qualify in six months. City high flyers were among those that ministers appeared keen to attract.
Ross Brewster, columnist for the Carlisle News & Star, summed up what a lot of people were saying. "Would you trust a failed financier with your child's maths?" he asked. "Some of the fat cats might be able to instruct the nation's young in the art of losing billions while coming up smelling of roses. But they are the last people to hold up as role models."
Never mind the bankers. Is six months long enough for anyone to get into teaching? Not really, said Nansi Ellis, head of education policy and research at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. "The success of this programme will be measured by the numbers who continue to teach and improve," she wrote on The Guardian's Mortarboard blog. "Otherwise, this is a costly exercise in demoralising the teaching profession."
Oenone Crossley-Holland, also writing on Mortarboard, took part in the fast-track Teach First scheme and trained in six weeks. She asked her old mentor what he thought of the six-month plan. "If you're a halfwit you need 20 years of training," he reflected. "And then it takes 20 years to get them out of the profession."
Alexandra Frean in The Times was in favour, flagging up a Bristol University study that found having a good teacher outweighed the effects of attending a good or poor school. "They are entirely in keeping with the findings of the Bristol study which tells us that teachers either have 'it' or they don't," she wrote. "But unfortunately it does not tell us what 'it' is. For this we must turn to children themselves, who have an unerring knack of sniffing out the incompetent teacher a mile off."
There were more cheerless headlines for children's service heads to digest. "Children's directors 'have job from hell' " shouted The Guardian, reporting on comments by John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
Meanwhile, the expansion of directors of children's services training was greeted with headlines like "Social service chiefs sent back to school in Baby P shake-up".
It was refreshing, therefore, to read Gina Davidson's column in the Edinburgh Evening News. She pointed out that tragic cases like Baby P are the public face of failings in the social work system. "What we never normally hear about are those children who have been rescued from a lifetime of misery, or even an early death, by the actions of staff," she wrote.
"Parents can get their children to eat vegetables by giving them 'cool' names like 'dinosaur broccoli trees' or 'power peas'," revealed The Daily Telegraph.
The paper was reporting on a US study that found children given carrots for their lunch ate nearly twice as many when they were renamed "X-ray vision carrots".
The paper quoted none other than research author Dr Brian Wansink. "Cool names can make for cool foods," he said, coolly. He must know with such a wacky name himself.
