heh, heh.....ANOTHER reason for teachers to love Harry Potter! (spoilers, duh)

[tclouie]

Anyone who teaches in California, and especially in the Los Angeles area, knows that our profession is suffering from declining morale and prestige.

This is amazing. J. K. Rowling so understands what we're going through! Her last teaching experience was over ten years ago and in another country, and yet she has captured our troubles to a T in her latest Harry Potter adventure.

Ms. Rowling unmercifully satirizes "standards" mania, testing mania, government-imposed curriculum fads, scripted programs and even Stull evaluations!!!!!!

Ms. Rowling's latest villain is a bureaucrat sent by the government to be "High Inquisitor" (or, as we would call her, "outside evaluator" or "accountability expert") at Hogwarts School. While on her mission of intimidation, she subjects the faculty to humiliating and intrusive inspections, rules by decrees imposed virtually at whim, tramples on academic freedom, fires Headmaster Dumbledore, "reconstitutes" the school, completely loses the respect of the students, and generally drives the whole place over the edge into chaos. Sound familiar?

Oh, and it should be mentioned that she herself can't teach worth a lick, disrespects experience in favor of programs imposed by non-teachers, and would rather flunk a student than help him or her. (The students end up having to teach themselves.) Does that also sound familiar?

Those who care to check out what I'm talking about should refer to pages 211-214, pages 239-244, and especially Chapter 15, pages 306-329. You will give a hearty guffaw of recognition.

I mean, I know that some problems are the same everywhere. But how did Ms. Rowling know about what's happening over here??

It's truly magical.

[raygirvan]

Well, she's describing a situation that has been very much the same in the UK. My wife was a teacher - now happily retired - when the previous government brought in a National Curriculum to standardise what was taught in schools. The implementation involved ridiculous paperwork, teachers being required to keep records that were usually not even used, and the whole scheme was constantly being revised. However, I sit on the fence over the general moans about inspections and outsiders: from what my wife reported, I think teachers often object to reasonable expectations that the quality of their work should be monitored.

[tclouie]

Well, I also sent this commentary to my brother, who's a geology professor in Nevada. Now he can't wait to get the copies he ordered from Scholastic, because he says it's similar to what's going on in the universities. (Of course, he is also the father of two very literate young children......)

P.S. Nobody objects to reasonable standards and evaluations. Emphasis on the word "reasonable." And there is nothing at all reasonable about the pendulum-swinging of educational fads!!!!!

[raygirvan]

Yes, it was definitiely unreasonable. Among other things, Clare had to keep 'representative samples' of children's work and various colour-coded reports on each child's performance, which theoretically were supposed to be read by their next year's teacher and eventually their next school (and never were).

There were various itemised categories - Key Stages, etc - of topics that had to be covered under the National Curriculum. In the first implementation, these were so numerous that there was no time to teach them individually. Therefore, she had to contrive lessons to cover as many as possible simultaneously. For instance, doing a lesson on calculating the height of a pyramid from its shadow, with a brief aside about ancient Egypt and where it was, would get her off the hook for some of the History, Geography, Mathematics and Science topics.