I'm a fan of schoolteachers - OK, so I admit it, I was one for a number of years in England so I'm biased but ...
Polish schoolteachers are being stuffed by govt after govt.
The syllabus is being dumbed down and made more "interactive". Open-ended exercises give the 3 bad kids in the class a golden opportunity to misbehave, as does extra teacher-pupil interaction (yep, I refuse to call schoolchildren "students" - they're not "young adults" either!).
Children used to have books handed down from older siblings or bought second-hand, knowing that they could sell them on afterwards. The education ministry is now regularly bribed by publishing houses to ensure this doesn't happen - exercises to answer in the textbook, inconsequential changes from year to year. There's money to be made this way.
While teachers still wield limited power through the mark given at the end of semester (from 1 to 6, six being the highest), pressure is placed on teachers by management to engage in the propaganda of success. This happens at primary and middle school levels, with the grammar schools left to pick up the pieces in a mad rush to matura in 3 years (16-19).
Middle schools are a waste of time (as they were in England years back). Disruptive kids are not excluded, as they have a right to go to their local school.
The ultimate weapon - keeping a kid down a year - is never used nowadays. It's not PC.
Pay is a joke. Despite that, teachers' light timetabling (18 hours a week) used to compensate. That's being edged up slowly but surely, and more admin is being added to do in their own time. Perhaps most perniciously, their esprit de corps is bing eroded, as it was so successfully in 1980s Britain.
And the surest sign of a politically-motivated campaign is when parents start making sneering comments openly - just like in 1980s Britain. Strangely, it was from a Labour voter that I first heard the terrible slogan of the moron "Those that can, do, those that can't, teach." The UK Conservatives were just as bad ... until now, that is.
I pity teachers here in Poland - they can see what's coming and they can't do a thing to change it.
Polish schoolteachers are being stuffed by govt after govt.
The syllabus is being dumbed down and made more "interactive". Open-ended exercises give the 3 bad kids in the class a golden opportunity to misbehave, as does extra teacher-pupil interaction (yep, I refuse to call schoolchildren "students" - they're not "young adults" either!).
Children used to have books handed down from older siblings or bought second-hand, knowing that they could sell them on afterwards. The education ministry is now regularly bribed by publishing houses to ensure this doesn't happen - exercises to answer in the textbook, inconsequential changes from year to year. There's money to be made this way.
While teachers still wield limited power through the mark given at the end of semester (from 1 to 6, six being the highest), pressure is placed on teachers by management to engage in the propaganda of success. This happens at primary and middle school levels, with the grammar schools left to pick up the pieces in a mad rush to matura in 3 years (16-19).
Middle schools are a waste of time (as they were in England years back). Disruptive kids are not excluded, as they have a right to go to their local school.
The ultimate weapon - keeping a kid down a year - is never used nowadays. It's not PC.
Pay is a joke. Despite that, teachers' light timetabling (18 hours a week) used to compensate. That's being edged up slowly but surely, and more admin is being added to do in their own time. Perhaps most perniciously, their esprit de corps is bing eroded, as it was so successfully in 1980s Britain.
And the surest sign of a politically-motivated campaign is when parents start making sneering comments openly - just like in 1980s Britain. Strangely, it was from a Labour voter that I first heard the terrible slogan of the moron "Those that can, do, those that can't, teach." The UK Conservatives were just as bad ... until now, that is.
I pity teachers here in Poland - they can see what's coming and they can't do a thing to change it.