School Uniform
The dejection, the pallid sickness, the wan distant stare... I may as well give up now because there is no future for me. I have nothing. ..They ask for the most you can give and leave you with a basket of broken eggs.
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"The Broken Eggs"
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"Broken Eggs" - Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1756 -Metropolitan Gallery, New York
School Uniform
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School days - "The best days of our lives."
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Really?
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Perhaps for some, they are... Days filled with opportunity, exposure to new and exciting things, a joy of learning cultivated in a warm and encouraging environment. Exams passed, grades achieved, dreams realised.
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While others live a wholly different experience. Discouraged, bullied, unheard, struggling, persecuted, blamed and belittled. Exams failed, defined by grades and failure for years to follow, dreams - lost.
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What is its purpose? Who does it serve? How is it best delivered? - Questions posed by Aristotle c.340BCE
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Had the answers to these questions, originally posed by the early philosophers of ancient Greece, been found amongst the pillars of temples, artfully fired onto vases or scribed onto manuscripts; or, at any point over the intervening millennia, collated and bound into ledgers of tanned hide; or filed and stored in digital clouds, we might be able, today, to look fondly upon our current education system.
We might gaze upon it with pride, our faces alight with affection and our hearts warmed with the glow of satisfaction. We might view it with a constructive eye, noticing its minor imperfections though recognizing them not as faults but as unique idiosyncrasies. Where we see a faded scar, it might whisper to us that it had once fallen but had picked itself up and run across the years, fit and well.
Had the answers to these questions been found, each stakeholder in the system, whether parent, teacher, student or pupil would have been certain in their direction and mission. They would continue to be content, driven and supported. They would thrive and achieve their personal goals, relative to their specific abilities and talents. A strong and centred society would flourish based on the intrinsic values of a diverse community, and the education system would be responsive and flexible, bending like soft grass to the breeze of change and the breath of advancement.
Instead, those questions, which have sparked discussion and disagreement for centuries, still continue to do so today. Whatever thoughts and theories drive the methodology and pedagogy in classrooms, with the lower than ever attendance and emotional wellbeing figures and the higher than ever SEND requirements and permanent exclusions; with the debates over curriculums and the crises of high numbers of post-16s leaving school without the basic qualifications, what can be agreed upon is that the education system is broken.
Despite numerous government administrations, conferences and quangos, investigative think tanks and reform bodies continuing to meet, discuss, present findings and publish articles, the key questions still remain unanswered. What is its purpose? Who does it serve? How is it best delivered?
Poetry, prose and potential
School Uniform is a collection of poetry prose and short stories. It is a series of musings on a variety of topics, those which form the triangle between school, home and the wider environment. It references the current challenges faced by both the education system, and the diverse needs of the young people which it serves, together with their families and the wider society, all struggling to understand and keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
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It looks to the past in the questions raised by Aristotle, The First Teacher, but also turns an eye to the future. To potential changes that could occur which might harness and embrace the shape of the new world rather than trying to bend it to the current form.
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Indeed, it is in its uniformity, that inflexibility is found. Might it not be like a piece of clay, in the hands of a sculptor, moulded to the form of the individual rather than the individual to the cast stone?
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I don't know. I don't have the answers, only more questions. I only hope that learning can continue to be something that brings joy; that discovery retains a sense of wonder, and that education listens, rather than speaks, to the words of its children.
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Hope you enjoy