Governo britânico pretende afastar a cultura de medo

Michael Gove condemns charities’ ‘don’t touch’ warning to teachers

The education secretary said telling teachers to avoid physical contact with students was ‘playing to a culture of fear’

Education secretary Michael Gove today condemned children’s charities for telling teachers to stop touching pupils during lessons.

Music organisations and the NSPCC have jointly posted a series of videos online called Keeping Children Safe in Music. They are aimed at music teachers and warn them that “it isn’t necessary to touch a student during a demonstration [of how to play an instrument]”.

Gove has written to the organisations arguing that they are “playing to a culture of fear among both adults and children” and “sending out completely the wrong message”. He said he wanted to “restore common sense” to the issue of teachers touching pupils and that it was “proper and necessary” for adults to touch children when they demonstrated how to play an instrument, play sport, break up violence or comfort a child.

In his letter to the organisations, which include the Musicians’ Union and the charity Youth Music, Gove writes that the videos “reinforce the message that any adult who touches a child is somehow guilty of inappropriate contact”. “We must move away from this presumption.”

The Department for Education will issue guidance on the matter shortly, Gove said.

“If we stigmatise and seek to restrict all physical contact between responsible adults and children, we will only undermine healthy relations between the generations”, Gove said. “If you play to the assumption that any physical contact is somehow suspect then we will make children more suspicious of adults and adults more nervous and confused about their role in our society.”

Gove said banning teachers from touching pupils would “drive good people away from teaching for fear of crossing some arbitrary line”.

“Our children will lose out as fewer and fewer adults feel comfortable working with young people.”

Gove said as part of his election pledge that he wanted teachers who are accused of committing a criminal offence against a pupil to remain anonymous until a charge is made.

► The Guardian

Quando a Escola exige demasiado dos seus actores

For many people the highlight of 2008 has been the Beijing Olympics, where the athletic elite of this country competed against the rest of the world and succeeded magnificently. It certainly impressed me, particularly as I reached my athletic peak at the age of 11 and have not really progressed much further since then.

Luckily most people accept that each person has an upper limit of achievement in sports and are quite content to allow them to continue to enjoy taking part at whatever level suits them - no one pushes a pub footballer to play in the Premier League. But unfortunately the same sort of thinking does not apply when it comes to academic achievement. The idea that some people are not capable of achieving A levels or degrees is deemed to be not just incorrect but also morally wrong. Anyone who says this is held to be elitist, a viewpoint that would be laughable if expressed in the context of professional sport. Such views are spreading downwards from ministers through the education system. Many school heads and deputies are beginning to follow this misguided philosophy.

The comprehensive secondary school in which I work serves as an example of the effect that this thinking is having. There, the education of the students is being twisted in order to hit preconceived targets that bear little resemblance to reality.

Fonte:

STANDPOINT

Escola estatal brilha mais do que rivais privadas

It is a shining example of where there is a will there is a way and confounds critics who say the doors of elite higher education institutions are closed to the likes of folk from ordinary homes.
One reason for its success is that it insists on stretching its pupils. Chris Dias, the head of maths at the school and a former pupil, said: "Most schools talk of the top 5 to 10 per cent when it comes to identifying gifted and talented pupils. We talk of the top 30 per cent."
It is the only school (state or private) in the country to start its pupils on complex A-level concepts from age 12. They also sit their maths AS-level a year early. Government advisers have suggested teachers use everyday activities such as shopping in maths lessons to increase the take-up of the subject, but Mr Dias said he wasn't looking to make maths easier or more relevant. "I'm very happy for it to be all about academic rigour and abstract concepts rather than say 'how does it relate to the real world?'"
Andrew Adonis, the former schools minister, has used the school as an example of how others should approach teaching maths. "If they can do it, why can't anybody else?" he said.

Fonte:
The Independent