Here's my Hoof Print!

Today, I "signed-on" for the first time since becoming unemployed. Unless you live in the UK you won't understand what this means, but basically it's going to the Job Centre at a specific fortnightly time to sign to receive benefits. My signing-on time was 9am and I turned up only to wait with a couple other guys for about 10 minutes until someone deigned to unlock the doors. During this period many people passed by looking at us like we were the scum of the Earth, including a couple people I know unfortunately. Maybe they weren't looking at us like that, however, that's the way I was feeling. It was undignified and demeaning. There is still very much a social stigma here about being unemployed. The assumption would be that you don't want to work and that you're some sort of lowlife.

I don't even know if I'm going to get any money anyway. I just want a decent job. I went back to Uni in 2003 and spent four years there. I was Student Rep every year. I had the highest marks in every exam and in coursework. I achieved a distinction despite having no tutors for the last 6 months of my final year... and I can't get a proper job. I have talents, I have ideas. Nobody seems interested. I get the distinct impression from job interviews I've attended that they would far prefer for me to bullshit. They have no interest in my experience or knowledge. I honestly sit there thinking "They want to me to make up some nonsense about my life!" You might not know what I'm talking about, but anyone involved in Scottish education might have a good idea. Your ability to teach or subject knowledge is now secondary to your other talents. I have honestly been told that I would get a job no bother if I could juggle or do Martial Arts. I know why too. They now view teachers as child-minders tasked with entertaining children rather than educating them. Purely, because they've bought into all of these talent shows on the TV. "Those are popular. Let's make education like that! The children will love it!"

I know I came into education at the wrong time, but despite the recession, goverment cuts, local authority cuts and school cuts, what I've seen is rotten to the core. The new curriculum which is "going to put Scotland at the forefront of education"... if I were a parent of the first tranche, I would be livid. I've seen the pupils who are the "first to benefit" from the new curriculum and in more than one school. What I've seen frightens me. They will be a lost generation. Their entire education will be rendered meaningless. They have and are being failed. The goverment will no doubt blame the teachers, but they chose to implement this new curriculum when teachers said they weren't ready for it, without proper finances, when job cuts were looming and with a curriculum which is nothing more than a wishy-washy set of ambiguous and utopian statements of intent. You should know that there is no curriculum really. Teachers are being asked to make it up as they go along. Every school will be teaching different things in different ways. God help any child who moves to another school. They will be completely lost in the system.