Revision

This is our education system. I heard myself say to a class studying poetry, 'You don't have to feel it, just write it' and horrified myself. The old me just wanted them to read a poem and enjoy it - not fear it or fear their opinions being 'wrong'. Nowadays they have to diccest it to within an inch of its life just to get marks. Destroy the beauty. Rant over - a poised poem with carefully placed vocabulary.

That's a haunting piece of poetry.  

I don't know who is the more distressed, the students or the teacher.  It cuts.  Both ways.  I love it; that pull between what is and what should be.  Very good.  Well done Philip.

This is great! I can immediately connect to it having spent the last two weeks trying to make WW1 poetry as appealing as possible to 8th grade English language learners and if truth be told failing at it. 

I'm hoping to retake life some day. I blew the practical first time around

"...they breathe out in unison..."   when Michael Gove walked into the room.

A man that is an advocate of capital murder.

I think the anx you touch on goes beyond literary courses. I studied sciences and we had similar problems really. As you say, you know the formulas, but you have to prove you understand how they are useful, explaining that is the hardest part. One never really knows what the examiner wants. I imagine in literature it's more difficult since it's less black and white than atoms (although they have a lot of grey areas too)

Excellent piece about the problems of advanced education.

A good'n!

Ed

Unnervingly true. Gave me the panic flap in my chest. Teaching's such a hard job and you convey that beautifully through the student's fear.

I LOVE what you do with the ending. Retake culture, though being 'banned' by the anti-market capitalists in government came about through demand and the desperation that young people feel about succeeding in this unequal (and becoming more so) Britain. Similarly the fear of being wrong, in a society where the consequences of failure are seen as, and are, serious (except for the economically priveleged of course), freedom of thought and expression is inhibitted when failure is seen as directly affecting the worth of the individual. And when the government talks about Britain falling down league tables of educational performance, it's clear to me that the answer lies not in education, but in the stagnating inequalities of the economic context.

Rant caused by issues raised in poem and therefore counts as a legitimate response.

Good work Brother.

Hi Helen

What a good lot of comments you have had on this. I have bad memories of trying to write poetry at school and failing miserably. You do it so well, and so apparently effortlessly.

Jean

Thinking, openness, honesty not encouraged, no time to teach such it seems? My husband groans over maths being taught 'by rote' rather than understanding of principles. I remember helping with a visit of primary school children to Singleton open air museum, and feeling the whole time seemed to be writing in answers on clipboards rather than looking and seeing the old buildings. Rhiannon