Learning Journal

I’m not sure if Michael Howard’s “I Believe” speech worked very well – the name of Saatchi is always something of a PR disaster in itself, since everyone knows he’s paid to lie. Also, Michael Howard is in many ways not quite ‘Michael Howard Luther King’. But if you replace select words, it might perhaps make something of a point about education, especially in FE. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t at all.


· I believe it is natural for students to want to learn to improve their present and their future
· I believe it is the duty of every teacher to serve the students by removing the obstacles in the way of these ambitions
· I believe students are most likely to be happy when they are masters of their own learning, when they are not nannied or over-governed
· I believe that the students should be big. That the college should be small (this one doesn’t make much sense. Whoops)
· I believe red tape, bureaucracy, regulations, inspectorates, commissions, quangos, 'czars', 'units' and 'targets' came to help and protect us, but now we need protection from them. Armies of interferers don't contribute to student happiness
· I believe that students must have every opportunity to fulfil their potential
· I believe there is no freedom without responsibility. It is our duty to look after those who cannot help themselves
· I believe in equality of opportunity. Injustice makes us angry
· I believe every parent wants their child to have a better education than they had
· I believe every student wants security for their parents in their old age (I’d dispute this one)
· I do not believe that one student’s poverty is caused by another's wealth (of course it might, a surfeit of riches is made primarily by removing wages from the worker’s pocket!)
· I do not believe that one student’s ignorance is caused by another's knowledge and education (unless the teacher, for an easier life, concentrates on the smart)
· I do not believe that one student’s sickness is made worse by another's health (?)
· I believe the British students are only happy when they are free (whereas the foreign ones can pay through the nose)
· I believe that Britain should defend her freedom at any time, against all comers, however mighty (I wish the education system had done this. Ha!)
· I believe that by good fortune, hard work, natural talent and rich diversity, these islands are home to a great people of students with a noble past and exciting future
I am happy to be their servant (teacher).


Obviously, this list was meant to be a set of mostly rather undeniable truisms that would sway the voter, but unfortunately any political party can say the same thing, no matter what they plan to do later.
As an educational set of I Believes, it raises some salient points. The learners SHOULD be interested in improvement by education, and the teachers should be making sure this happens. Controlling learning and the curriculum by direct political means is interfering with teachers, the question is whether you think this is a good thing. Students must have opportunity, they must be given better education than the previous generation. This is all true.
I might also add that I believe that teachers are educators, not instructors. I feel this sums up a lot. Learners are there to learn, not to have facts wrestled relentlessly into their struggling heads. Unfortunately, this will require allowing the students much more control over educational interactions, and I feel that in our current social and political climate the majority would be very unhappy to trust students. Students seem to often be little more than the sum of their outcomes, which is absolutely the wrong way to do anything.
Now all that remains are to come up with six pledges, such as “Your child: stronger, longer, softer”. Wouldn’t that be a lark!