leila Berg

Readers of my generation may remember Leila Berg's classic book "Risinghill, Death of a Comprehensive School"

I was sorting my book collection recently and I am so fond of this book that I decided to donate it to one of our local charity shops. If I have misremembered Author or title please let me know.

Anyway, when I was doing my Teacher Training Course we were required to read this book as a homework task. I read it and then in the next lesson got into an argument about it with the lecturer. it was my contention that the facts were interesting and worth discussion but Leila Berg had missed the point by making it into novel for dramatic effect and thereby missed many important points. It quickly became clear that I was the only one, apart from the lecturer perhaps, who had bothered to read the book. (Some may remember that I do not respond well to staff conferences, management training, Customer Service course etc. I feel some more posts coming on).

I am wondering now if someone should write "Rowley, Death of a sixth form college" - this is a challenge to Pete and Mike I. If I do retire and have sufficient control of my faculties I might do it myself. At one point my faculty included Mike Feist, Barry Davies, Geoff Keaton, Dan Crofts, Mike Ibrahim and John Russell and if I could control that lot then I should be OK.
Risinghill was very different. It had an imaginative, clever and creative Head teacher who was obstructed by his staff - how very different from Rowley.

Every Monday on the Training course we had a one hour lecture on Philosphy which was OK followed by 1 hour on psychology where the lecturer read out loud from his own book having coerced us all into buying a copy - this was hopeless. We then had one hour of something that still bemuses me. It seemed to involve writing words inside rectangles and then joining the rectangles with lines - it was an abuse of flow charts. At that time flow charts and OHPs occupied the space now occupied by Powwerpoint and White Boards. No one seems to have grasped that tedious claptrap is still tedious claptrap np matter how smartly you present it.
The fnal hour was a lecture on the importance of PE, Sport, tutorial work and other stuff that could be seen as peripheral. This lecturer was excellent, his material was fascinating and thought provoking. He made the mistake of starting by saying "this is for interest only, there will be no assignments or examination so no marks to contribute to your final grade". At that point 60% of the audience walked out, me and a few friends were the only ones who attended these weekly, excellent talks. I was very disappointed by my fellow nascent teachers. Why is it that so many teachers have so little interest in talking about education?