Learning Journal

Well, it seems that Labour got in. Compared to the Conservatives on issues both educational and otherwise, I would have to opine that this is a good thing.
But what does it mean for education? I can only sum it up as a mixed bag. New Labour's stance on "education, education, education" has been covered extensively from 1997-on, so it's hard to really pick up a connecting theme. But it would be safe to say that in this climate of globalisation and neo-liberal thinking that what will occur is the increasing consumerisation of education and a discourse of learning that privileges 'skills' and 'training'.
Compared to this, my classrooms are little enclaves of peace. Recently I have been affected by illness, and have missed some lessons. On returning, I suddenly remembered the best things about teaching - the students responding to you, enjoying the lesson, and learning. I suspect these are things that are too often forgotten nowadays.
The only thing that really drives me as a teacher is attempting to improve my teaching so that the learners can do well. There's no point teaching if you don't want the learners to be benefitting. Now that this course is finishing, I think that my only aim is to find a job and to continue improving, while finding out more about the education system as we go. It's such an important part of the world - education, in fact, creates the world, by informing citizens about their identity and place in it - that it must not be neglected. I have a tendency to think that education is, in fact, the most important thing possible. All the hazy notions I have of an improved human race come back to the central point of having to improve the education of people so that they can have the chance to take on new positions within the world and transform it.
Foucault wrote memorably of his educational experiences, trespassing through the school years, always being told that the 'truth' lay somewhere ahead - next term, next year, once you get your degree. But he found that he had completed a doctorate thesis and was still ignorant, scared, and without sure basis for thinking. I think that the education must inculcate some sort of feeling of powerlessness for it to be worthwhile. People must leave education without thinking that "this is all I need to know". We can be trained to fulfil a job role, but not a human role. Our education as people and into people never ends. We don't just need a learning society, we need an educated society. Only then will the democratic systems we have in place truly work.