Summer reading

The summer break has arrived for teachers. For many, this will be a time to go to the beach, play sports, tidy the garden and visit friends. All good things for sure as some time of rest is vital. It is right that any hard-working and dedicated professional should feel tired at the end of a session. Given that teachers have longer holidays than other professionals, perhaps there should be some time earmarked for ‘serious’ reading designed to feed the mind and soul.

As we all know only too well, the educational world is awash with bullet-pointed policy statements and whirling presentations of action plans which often confuse as opposed to enlighten. Prolonged exposure to such media can leave one begging for mercy and in need of immediate intellectual sustenance. To counter this, we need to find a comfortable chair and feed our mind with some of the great books of the western canon. My own summer reading is the ‘Divine Comedy’ by Dante: much more meaningful to me now than when I first came across it as a teenage undergraduate studying Modern Languages. To return to these great sources of the western intellectual tradition can only be a moment of joy.

The teacher with the well-stocked mind  - whether in primary, secondary or tertiary education - is worth more than any number of bullet pointed action plans.

Teacher formation

It has been reported that Pope Benedict XVI will spend his summer holiday studying and writing. I wonder how many educators will dedicate some of their annual holiday to their ongoing formation. While many serving teachers rightly question the value of standard Continuous Professional Development (CPD) initiatives, it is necessary to separate this often meagre and unsatisfactory fare from the study of the great writers and thinkers on education and the history of ideas. It remains true that few teachers have been introduced to much educational thought beyond the standard promotion of writers of questionable value  (Piaget and Freire anyone?) yet there is so much awaiting those who are prepared to look beyond the hit-parade of the educational establishment.

How can this be done? One suggestion is for like -minded teachers to form small informal study groups which will share, discuss and, crucially, critique ideas from the history and philosophy of education. This approach is quite dissimilar to the 'performative' nature of much CPD and is but one small step on the journey to reclaim education from the narrow 'social science' influenced study of outcomes and locate it in its true home: the search for wisdom.