Skip to main content

More Grit Needed?

Last week, I spotted quite a bit of online condemnation of the current Secretary of State for Education, so I decided to investigate. I wanted to see if the criticism was justified or politically motivated.

Although she was in the media following an announcement of increased funding and support to tackle the mental health crisis in young people, the focus seems to be on her use of the word 'grit'. She used the word in the context of young people needing to show more grit, which she qualified as meaning the same as resilience. 

Whilst anyone who has worked in education cannot argue that our children and young people need to be supported to become more resilient, the press have jumped on the use of the word 'grit', and I can see why. The word really does not sit comfortably within our enlightened vocabulary and definitely harks back to a different age, where we were all taught to 'suck it up and get on with our lives'. If you really listen to what she was saying, it was clear that she didn't intend the word to be taken that way, and I suspect that the (deliberate) misinterpretation by the press was at least partly due to her straight-talking northern ways.

I should qualify all this as I don't want to fall into the trap myself of being too political, that having worked in education for nearly thirty years I remain sceptical about what the Secretary of State was promising to support mental health work in schools, and I will believe it when I see it, but on paper it sounds like a good step forward.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Things I have learned since leaving the classroom.

I know in my first post I set out a grand plan for what I am going to write about, but I want to slip this one in first. Here are some things I have learned since leaving the classroom. Parents are right when they complain about school traffic. It is as bad as they say it is. I have found that there are times of day that it is wise to stay off the roads if you live within, or want to get to somewhere within a mile of a school. Its not just primary schools, as I have been caught out visiting a supermarket close to a secondary school at home time. It seems that the children (sorry, young people) are too cool to have mum (or dad!) pick them up at the school gate but not too cool that they mind being collected from the Sainsbury's car park next door. The flip side of this is that, if you time it just right, the supermarkets are almost completely deserted if you can find one that is not too close to a secondary school and get there at about 2:55pm. Mums (or dads!) will be otherwise enga...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is 'teacher mode'?

The inspiration for today's post came recently during a walk around the town in which I live. I have spent the past two decades residing in what could loosely be described as a small but popular resort town, the type that only has a low-cost supermarkets in its centre. I was entering one of these recently when I came across a family who were clearly having an off-season break, probably in one of our many holiday-focused establishments. They didn’t actually say as much, but their 'city ways' certainly screamed this to all the locals present. The parents were obviously keen to pay for their purchases, but the children had not finished looking at sweets, so they did not follow them towards the till. As a result, the clearly annoyed mum turned and yelled to the children to get a move, using that old trick of using first and middle names as an indication of how serious they are about what they are asking. I don’t remember the name of the boy, but the girl was definitely called ‘...
Post a Comment
Read more

How did I get here?

After 30 years in education, first as a class teacher, then as a deputy head and finally as a head, I am now an ex-head teacher.  Why is that? I hear you ask. Well, the answer can be summed up in two words, burn out (or is it one word, 'burnout'). I will have to check that. Having lead a small village primary school for over a decade, through covid and through the proceeding collapse in society, I realised that needed a serious break for my own mental health. Initially I thought it might be a permanent break from the profession, but I soon realised that this was not going to be the case, although I think it will be a permanent break from the classroom. So, over the last few months I have been sat in my home office writing my book (as yet unpublished), currently called 'How to be a Head Teacher', which I hope will become a bible for the modern school leader, one which might just prolong a few careers! I have described it in the introduction as the book I wish I had acces...
Post a Comment
Read more