Mugs and Jugs

Serenity by Rock-Well on Aviary

Teachers and schools are always in the news. Tomorrow, some teachers go on strike about changes to their pensions at a time when Michael Gove, Education Secretary, is calling for more teachers with first class degrees.

All this reminded me of  my grandmother who, when in her sixties, used to enjoy doing my Latin homework. She was quick and got full marks, so I let her.

The teachers in Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Carmarthen, which she attended, must have been good.  The formula was simple: they taught and she listened. More than that, she admired them.  Some could sing Nursery Rhymes in Latin, thereby making learning fun and it lodged in her mind and later, she taught, too.

Will more teachers with first class degrees mean better results? I wonder, I wonder and the reason I wonder is this. Knowledge of one's subject is vital. No one can teach what they don't know, obviously, but here's the other side of the coin:  many teachers don't like children and surprise, surprise, the children don't like them.

A teacher should have some empathy with children first of all, then the necessary knowledge needed to teach and to teach in an interesting way.

Dickens's Mr Gradgrind believed in the 'mug and jug' method of education. The teacher was the vessel of knowledge who filled up the empty mugs with information. There was no interaction with the pupils.

Sadly, this mechanistic view of education encouraged the 'scholars' to view themselves as nothing but cogs in an enormous wheel.

I have no advice to offer and I'll let you draw your own conclusions but I shall quote Freud, who usually gets it right.

According to Freud, adolescents have two developmental tasks to accomplish:  they must learn to love and they must learn to work. The rest is simple.