Deadbeat Yoda

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@JamesAFurey It does. It do it every day. It’s my job. It works just fine. I’ve seen students achieve loads more with just a few changes to the work to make it accessible to them.

[. @jdpoc]

A reminder that Clarkson, who was involved in protest action today, stated that such people who are involved in such action should be 'taken outside and executed in front of their families'.

[Poetry By Heart @poetrybyheart]

Not long now! Celebrate & encourage a love of #poetry on #MichaelRosenDay! Join in with the free virtual event, featuring Michael Rosen and MC Grammar, and download your free event pack here: https://t.co/d0Qe46I9Q6

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@KlausSchwabX @JonathanPieNews You mean the one where Pie says if Huw has done something illegal he should be punished? No, I don’t. But then I am capable of hearing a point about appalling press behaviour even if it concerns a nasty piece of work. Is that a bit nuanced for you?

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@LiamPol_ @JonathanPieNews You don’t speak for anyone but yourself. Certainly not for me.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@KlausSchwabX @JonathanPieNews His boy Huw? How did that thought process go? ‘I know, I’ll say some awful character is his friend, that’ll be really clever and well funny’. Something like that? Oh dear.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@ghost_wales @JonathanPieNews I think you misunderstand the meaning of democracy. It means that the majority vote must be upheld, not that everyone has to pretend to like the result. Never mind, keep trying , Champ, you’ll get there soon.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

Cracking down on uniform in schools is the go-to control measure of mediocre, middle-aged men who lack the empathy to understand the pupils whose individuality they seek to suppress. Nor do they have the wit to understand that it causes more problems than they seek to solve.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@Headteacherchat A few weeks? Anyone who knows their subject in any depth does not take a few weeks per presentation. That would only be for something of a once a year event. That is disingenuous. Such hyperbole harms the public perception of teacher capability, it doesn’t garner sympathy.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@BBCr4today why would you present the budget cost as £18 per week per household? You know well how simplistic that representation is. It implies that each household will be that amount out of pocket. It’s misleading. Wilfully so.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@SCynic1 Hideous hypocrisy as clearly demonstrated by Michael Rosen. This really doesn’t help the cause of tolerance.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@robkellytweets @RogersHistory These are all things that schools apply to their pupils and punish them if they can’t adhere to them. Maybe we need to look at the people running the schools for a solution.

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

I was talking to a grandmother last week about schooling. ‘I can see the difference’ she said. ‘When my children were young, primary school was relaxed. If the weather was good, they went outside and ran around. If they were sick, they stayed at home. Now with my grandchildren they are seated in desks for more of the day and if they are ill, they are worried that they’ll lose their 100% attendance for the term. The pressure is on to pass their phonics test when they are six and then to learn their times tables at speed by the time they are nine. They feel it and their parents feel it too’.

There’s lots of talk about SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) at the moment, and how increasing numbers of children are being identified as SEND. It’s less common to ask questions about what SEND really means, and whether the education system creates more children ‘with SEND’ as it becomes more pressured and rigid.

For what SEND really means is that a child cannot learn in the way which mainstream education expects. They cannot keep up with expectations, either for academic work or for behaviour. SEND is something which happens in the interaction between a child and the education system. In a system where no 6-year-old is expected to sit still and learn to write their name, then a 6-year-old who just wants to run around outside isn't a problem. In a system where everyone is meant to be able to read by age 6, then they are.

We know from research that if a child is young in their year, they are more likely to be identified as ‘having SEND’. We know that summer born boys are far more likely to be identified as ‘having SEND’ than autumn born girls. We know that the impact of this immaturity resonates through the years, with the youngest in the year doing less well at GCSE. We know that the number of children ‘with SEND’ is going up year on year.

It's not really plausible that more children each year have difficulties in learning, nor that being born in August makes you more likely to have learning problems than if you are born a few weeks later in September.

It’s far more likely that in the push to ‘drive up standards’ the education system is becomes less, not more, suited to how children develop and learn. It’s more likely that the system is penalising immaturity – and children are inherently immature. That isn’t a lack or a defect, it’s a defining part of childhood.

As the education system becomes more rigid and pressured, we’d expect more children not to be able to manage without adaptations. This is exactly what we see. Those children are holding up the flag for all the others, saying that this system is not child-friendly and doesn’t take account of developmental needs and differences.

What if, instead of having higher expectations of the children, we had higher expectations of the education system? What if those expectations were of flexibility, reducing pressure and prioritising lifelong learning and wellbeing instead of short-term testing?

What if we saw the increasing number of children ‘with SEND’ as a sign that the system isn’t working for the many ways in which children develop, rather than a sign that more and more children have learning difficulties? We’ll never sort the ‘SEND crisis’ until we start looking at SEND as an interaction between children and the education system. The more rigid the system is, the more children it will fail.

Illustration by @_MissingTheMark from the book A Different Way to Learn.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@adamboxer1 You’re not doing it right then. I have seen it used to great effect. One lad wouldn’t shut up about the astronomy facts he had learned for the rest of the term. Another student proudly wheeled out her zoological research at every opportunity.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@i_iratus The most brazen of charlatans know their audience is without reason or logic. They don’t care that the rest of us are incredulous at their blatant lies, it doesn’t matter, their punters are hooked.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@sage_stage No. There are too many subject specific anxieties driven by the narrow system of measuring success in school children.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@RogersHistory That’s got to be be of the few tweets of yours I wholeheartedly agree with.

[Deadbeat Yoda @mikklehaha]

@T33_Dub @BladeoftheS It’s you’re & affecting, btw. Using ‘retarded’ as an insult is a very ugly thing to do, making two stonking errors in the same tweet is just embarrassing.

[Sorcha Ní Nia @Luiseach]

FUCK. OFF. CALL THE BANNERS etc etc