A true institution of learning lies
Upon the banks of the Cam
Where great minds let ideas fly
Unlike that place on the River Tham
You know the place presumptious
Where the Oxy-Morons they do grow
Dark blueis the hue they do wear
Not the light blue of us in the know
Padre
It was that moment: the culmination of a dream
School was finally over
And it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed
Padre
Holly and Tim booted up their laptop and prepared for another day of online phonics and fractions. As the computer came to life, there was something unusual on the school’s Google Classroom links. As they went through each of their lesson slots they saw that the connection was down. It seems the entire server had crashed – the Covid lockdown equivalent of a “snow day.”
Padre
Gigi assembled her planners, her calendars, her pens, pouches, and post-its before her on the desk and stood over them like a general surveying maps. Useless, she thought to herself. If she were indeed a general she would have called a retreat. What good was all this stationery in a world of e-Learning?
Pushing it all to one side, she opened her laptop and scrolled to find the tutorials for Google Classroom and Google Forms. She also cleared away some clutter from behind her desk to give a more professional background to Monday’s upcoming “live” lesson. It was going to be a long weekend, and General Gigi now knew how Napoleon must have felt at Waterloo.
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Padre
Distance learning done at home
A world of knowledge to discover
Though you study alone
Padre
It’s time to value your education
Take every opportunity to learn
Remember that things like reading
Are not activities to spurn
For knowledge leads to wisdom
And wisdom helps you to grow
And there will always those around you
That will value the things you know
Remember too that employers
Hold the clever in high demand
And with a little education
You can hold whole worlds in your hand
Padre
Thousands of classrooms empty
For ministers – scientific advice did spurn
Now there aren’t enough older teachers left
To help the nation’s students learn
Padre
This book today is a mystery
Known by all too few;
Gone are the days when it could be assumed
That its contents people knew.
Noah perchance, with his two by two
And the original rainbow theme;
Might spark recognition for some out there,
But they still won’t know – what it does mean.
The names of Elijah or Obadiah, will be met with empty stares.
They will claim it has nothing to do with them.
Has nothing to do with their cares.
And so I walk the lonely road,
As theology I dare to teach.
And I pray every day – that by God’s grace
At least some of them – I will reach.
Padre
Photo by Tobias Bjørkli from Pexels
They were coming. It was as simple as that, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Six weeks of preparation, the amassing of supplies, and contingency plan after contingency plan made and then scrutinised, made the reality of the situation no less real. They were coming, like a biblical plague of locusts they would arrive just as the promise of Autumn beauty was taking hold.
Katherine sucked it up, and shuffled the pile of papers on her desk, and glanced around her room at the pristine displays and wondered how long would this sanctuary remain unchanged. Yes, Year Nine was coming.
Padre
I was on a webinar sponsored by the National Education Union today. The first panelist was the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. He made several interesting points in his address. He noted that the Black Lives Matters movement is more than just a policing issue. Other panelists included Kevin Courtney, and the MP Diane Abbott.
Reverend Jackson noted that the police are the guards at the gates. He stated that “what is behind the gate is the real issue.” He said it is the system that needs changing. Jackson, on a few occasions reiterated that the police patrol the community, they don’t control it. They are the “skin” of the community, but the problem is “bone deep.” The underlying inequality is the bigger issue. People need to see that the “lack of barbarity” is not the same thing as freedom. Even if every policeman was kind, it wouldn’t erase the issue of embedded racism and inequality in social outlooks. Reverend Jackson closed with the reminder that his colleague Dr King had focused on as well. “We are all God’s children. We need to learn to live together as civilised people.”
Kevin Courtney, the Joint General Secretary of the NEU called for the decolonialising of the curriculum as an instrument in getting to Reverend Jackson’s “bone” of the problem of racism and inequality. In Mr Courtney’s words, we need to challenge the “soft violence” of inequality. Education can make a real change in the underlying assumptions that manifest themselves as structural racism.
For those wondering what structural racism is, Ms Abbott gave a great example. When she was a young student, she was challenged by her English teacher, and accused of plagiarism. Her teacher wanted to know where she had copied her story from, because it was assumed that a Black girl, couldn’t have written one that good on her own. Reverend Jackson, had addressed this myth of Black intellectual inferiority earlier in the webinar.
All in all it was a thought provoking and challenging opportunity to see where we as educators can go to truly make “All lives matter.”
Padre
Padre's Ramblings 