job plus education rant

I didn't get it.

In case you were wondering.

Also, the real life vortex goes on hence my absenteeism. But I've been missing you lot!

Real life has been pretty much it for the past two weeks or so, and looks set to stay it for some time longer. Still, the fantasy life springs eternal. Well, with me, anyway. There were a few days where the slashy-slashy was undermost in my mind but sure enough, it resurfaced. (It always does.) Anyway, there has been a major dramatic reversal in the denouément of the HP opus but alas, so far only one sixth of it has actually been committed to paper.

And what about homo floresiensis, eh? I find the thought of two species of human utterly confuddling and bamboggling.

Apart from that:

Schools!
Interviews!
Recruitment!
Publications!
Academic career: chariot to the future or quagmire???!!!

At the moment, we are veering towards private education for t'son. This goes against all my principles but recent weeks have rubbed my face in the turd of reality so ideology had to go out the window. Also, money has to go out the window, it seems. Money we ain't got, for f's sake! And this is a school that had assisted places until 1997. *has minor fit in face of the LABOUR GOVERNMENT's wonderful commitment to EDUCATION* *has brief vomiting spurt in the direction of Blunkett who presumably presided over this piece of shit legislation*

It has indeed been an enlightening if disheartening excursion into the land of State Schooling. The best, and I mean the best of the state schools, still falls short by a mile of the private school and of anything I find acceptable for secondary education. And everyone knows that standards have fallen. It's not enough for a school to boast about their not-even-all-that-marvellous percentage of pupils who get A-C at GCSE. Who cares about a C? Or a B? Even today's As, even today's starred As, still fall short of what I consider to be a satisfactory standard. So an A is the least that pupils should be striving for. The f'ing least! And then the so-called best state school in our city offers one (yes, you heard me: one) foreign language. And instead of making resources available for another one, you can do media studies. Well, I teach f'ing Film Studies and it's not something I think my son should be doing if he could be learning another language!! (Yes, and I want to rant about this at you, badgermonkey!)

Now we're drilling t'son every morning at breakfast to pass the exam for that stupid school that's going to drive us to an early grave finance-wise. Ten thousand pounds per year!!! *would do a 'falls over' but falling over doesn't even begin to cover it*

It's been an interesting learning curve. Not only have I learned a lot about the school system but also a lot about my own views of education. One nice side effect has been the total way that t'hus and I converge in this matter. I have discovered that I am entirely old-fashioned; I want a school that sparks their pupils, that teaches traditional subjects in separate departments, that is: history and geography and classics NOT 'humanities' where these are all mashed together, where you do at least three languages, and preferably Latin, and where the school uniform does not permit trainer-type shoes. I want them to be stretched and challenged, and I don't need my son to be doing 'media studies'.

I would also love for him to go to an arty school. There's a wonderful school here but it's too far away from where we live and it also has 'humanities' but it offers six languages, incl. Japanese, and has wonderful art and art history and music and performance. He's not at all that way inclined but it would be nice to be in an environment that values these things. The private school isn't so good on art. But then I'm thinking that this other arty school is possibly the school I would like to go to and not necessarily t'son... Because, surprisingly, he's really into the private school.

*sighs*

Um. End of rant. Anybody not au fait with the secondary school system of England will be sorely puzzled.