This is not your average education story:

A schoolmaster hailed as a selfless role model for French teachers after starring in a documentary about a year in his classroom is suing the film-makers, demanding £180,000 for his appearance.

The suit has given a sour taste to what had been one of French cinema's sweetest tales in years.

For 20 years, Georges Lopez taught in a one-room school deep in the Auvergne mountains. His only audience was his annual class of a dozen or so children, aged from three to 11, whom he taught English, maths, drawing and cooking.

But this year, the documentary Etre et Avoir (To Be and To Have), named after the two basic verbs in French, attracted two million people to cinemas in France and turned M Lopez into the nation's Mr Chips, the decent, under-appreciated backbone of the education system. The film was also shown by the BBC.

When there's money being made these Selfless Role Models want their share.

There is throwing out and there is throwing out, and this is throwing out:

RABAT, Morocco (Reuters) -- Two Moroccan schoolboys were injured Monday when their teacher threw them out of a first floor classroom window for being too noisy, an Education Ministry official said.

One of the pupils, aged nine, ended up in hospital with a fractured shoulder and serious injuries to his face and head while the other, age 10, suffered only slight injuries, the official from the ministry's delegation in Casablanca said.

He said the teacher had warned the pair she would throw them out if they were not quiet.

"They did not listen. They should have listened," he told Reuters by telephone. "She (the teacher) suffers depression."

Quite so. If your teacher suffers from depression, then you, the pupil, need to take this into account when you decide on your preferred classroom misbehaviour strategy. If you make her too depressed and she chucks you out of the window, you have only yourself to blame.

Has Dave Barry been told about this?

Sound familiar?:

"It's become a crisis," says Tom Carroll, executive director of the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future (NCTAF). "We have a bucket with huge holes in it. They're leaving as fast as we pour them in."

Last week, NCTAF hosted a conference on new teachers' experiences in Milwaukee. Participants discussed the ways a minority of school districts – such as Rochester, N.Y. and Columbus, Ohio – have dramatically improved teacher retention, saving money on hiring and retraining new teachers in the process.

But in much of the country, teacher attrition statistics remain downright shocking: Almost a third of teachers leave the field within their first three years and half before their fifth year, according to a NCTAF report.

In the 1990s, for the first time, the number of teachers leaving the profession exceeded the number entering.

It would be easy to sneer, and I do more than my share here, but one of the big stories here is that whereas teaching used to be one of the main avenues for social advancement for the lower middle class and upwardly mobile working class, now there are a zillion better paid jobs for pen pushers and number crunchers. The very economic forces that have made education ever more important in the job market have made the actual manning of educational institutions ever harder. As education gets more "relevant", it gets harder to organise, because those who can educate can now do so many other things. Those who once couldn't and could once only teach, now can do. Yes, the battlefield atmosphere of many classrooms is part of the problem, and the usual ways in which the educational whip is cracked only makes that worse, but don't forget the other half of the equation, which is how much more enticing the rest of the world has now become for the average potential teacher.

Daily contemplation of the world of education is no mere preparation for history, still less immune from history. On the contrary, history is yanking education around as never before. So when some particular thing goes wrong – like classroom discipline, or academic standards, or bullying, or literacy teaching, or kids being hypnotised for hours each day by their own individually owned TV sets, or, as in this case, teacher recruitment – it isn't good enough merely to snarl at the people whose misfortune it is to be standing right next to one of the millions of resulting accidents or misfortunes. Okay, many of these people may not be helping much, and Could Do Better, as teachers like to say. But we live in times when even exemplary conduct by a much increased number of the mere individuals involved wouldn't necessarily solve the problems.

Do I sound like a socialist? Yes. Part one of all socialist arguments says: Society Is To Blame, and that, tarted up, is what I just said. But that doesn't mean that the way to make Society shape up is to nationalise the means of production, distribution, exchange and education. Quite the opposite, I would say. Society, like motor manufacturing, is improved when disowned by governments.

If you hear no more from me before it gets underway, have a nice weekend.

Natalie Solent was kind enough to link to this piece here. I return the complement, as I fear that links from Blogger do not flag themselves up here automatically. Sample paragraph from Natalie's piece, about education in Poland. It used to be different under Communism, but …:

Nowadays it's different, but education bureaucrats design their systems as if they still have savage force to back them up. Poland's education system, like our own, is one of ineffective compulsion. It was said (I think by Macchiavelli but I can't find the quote) that there is nothing so dangerous as to harm a man enough to make him hate you, yet leave him the strength to get his revenge. That is exactly what imprisoning young men in school does.

Indeed.

There are other things at Natalie's which I also like. I've stolen one posting in its entirety and put it up at my other place.

… subtitled: "Brian copies his homework off the internet".

This is useful: "Decades of trying to get the balance right". It will be convenient for me – and for some of you? – to be able to link to from here. For a while anyway.

I was tempted to copy the whole thing, and duly surrendered to temptation:

1944: Butler's Education Act creates Ministry of Education, organises public education into primary, secondary and further stages, ends fee-paying in maintained schools and creates county colleges to provide education to age 18.

1947: School leaving age raised to 15.

1951: O-levels replace School Certificate and A-levels replace Higher School Certificate.

1959: Central Advisory Council report proposes 20-year programme to ensure half of pupils in full-time education until 18 by 1980.

1964: Department of Education and Science replaces Ministry of Education.

1965: Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) introduced for students at secondary modern schools.

1972: School leaving age raised to 16.

1976: Education Act compels local education authorities to introduce comprehensive education.

1979: Education Act repeals 1976 act on comprehensive schools.

1980: Education Act introduces assisted places at independent schools.

1983: Technical and Vocational Education Initiative for 14-18s.

1986: O-levels and CSEs abolished, replaced by General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). National Council for Vocational Qualifications established.

1988: National Curriculum and grant-maintained schools introduced under the Education Reform Act.

1989: Advanced Supplementary (AS) introduced, separate exam the equivalent of half an A-level.

1992: General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) introduced.

1992: Further and Higher Education Act removes sixth-form colleges from LEA control. Polytechnics granted full university status.

1995: Standard Attainment Tests (SATS) introduced for children at key stages 1, 2 and 3.

1997: Education Act scraps assisted places at independent schools.

1997: National Literacy Strategy introduced in primary schools.

2000: Curriculum 2000 changes AS qualification to Advanced Subsidiary, an exam taken after the first year of an A-level course.

And don't let's forget 2003: This, which John Clare really does think is quite important.

Last Friday I bought, because I feel that I should from time to time, a copy of the Times Educational Supplement (October 3 2003). It's a sort of giant Brian's Education Blog for centre-left to stupid-left teachers, done on paper. The economic basis of it is teaching job adverts.

The latest issue has (on page 5) what I've come to notice as a staple story for the TES, the one about the very smart person who becomes a starting out teacher, and who finds that it Isn't As Easy As She'd Thought It Would Be, and that she had to Work Very Hard.

This is the subheading of the story:

High-flyers are discovering that the teacher's daily grind is no cakewalk.

This story is about Laura Johnson, a 24-year-old Oxford graduate, who is doing a spell of teaching as part of the Teach First initiative. And she found it was very difficult, had to work from 7 am to midnight, blah blah blah.

The moral being: They Earn Their Money. Or to be more exact: We Earn Our Money And We Deserve A Stonking Pay Rise.

The more I think about these stories, and I've read plenty of them over the last few months, the more I find myself dissenting with extreme and indeed contemptuous vehemence from the usual version of what they are said to mean. They do not mean that Oxford graduates are less than very clever. Oxford graduates are, on the whole and give or take a few pomposities caused by ignorance of the world outside of Oxford which acquaintance with the world outside of Oxford will soon cure, pretty much as clever as they think they are. (It didn't take Laura Johnson long to realise how little she knew about what teachers did and how unrealistic were her first hopes of what she might immediately achieve as a teacher.) The thing that is stupid stupid stupid is the routine of flinging totally, and I do mean totally, inexperienced "teachers", on their own, into "classrooms" crammed with several dozen "pupils", and expecting non-insanity to be the result. The inverted commas in the previous sentence are there because "screws", "prisoners" and "jails" would make at least as much sense of what is going on here as does any talk of teachers and pupils. That kids get stuck in thumbscrews (see the previous story but one here), or otherwise get screamed at or assaulted, or that the kids retaliate in kind and assault their "teachers", is just the kind of Dickensian awfulness that one should expect from such a practice. The miracle is not that this happens. The miracle is that anything nicer ever does.

What would we say about the RAF if kids were plucked off the dole-queues and stuck in jet airplanes and expected to drive them straight away without crashing and burning? Of if they were "trained" for this absurd and destructive ordeal by doing nothing more than sitting about discussing and writing essays about the theory and the philosophy of flying for a few months or years?

The reason why teachers so often compare their lives to that of front line soldiers in wars is because that is indeed what their lives are like. And during the Second World War, the RAF did grab ignorant young men and stick them in complicated airplanes with woefully insufficient training, and hope for the best. That's the kind of cruel madness that happens in wars. But that's no excuse to do such things when there's no war being fought.

Brian School, will, to start with, have about one or two pupils, who can leave at any moment without explanation or justification if they don't like it, and there'll be me, and maybe one or two friends helping out, plus any concerned adults connected with the pupils who aren't sure what will happen with this arrangement and want to keep an earlly eye on it. At first there will be confusions and unpleasantnesses. Some kids won't like me or my friends and vice versa. Some adults won't approve of what is happening. But by and by, a small gang of consenting children and adults will coagulate, and slowly expand, learning all the time.

At which point, I fear, the government will shut the thing down on account of the adults not having had enough "training" (i.e. not having spent sufficient time writing essays about the philosophy of education), because we aren't helping enough with the government's latest truancy initiative and languages initiative, and because there's only one toilet. I'll say to The Government: but you aren't giving us any money, what business is it of yours? And The Government will reply: the fact that you refuse to accept any government money (fair comment – that will be the reality of the situation) means that you are a Private School and that only makes everything far, far worse.

If Brian School can ever get past those problems and get as huge as the average tiny "school" is now, new adult members will be inducted much as new younger members are. They won't be hurled into insane asylum/prisons and made to stay up half the night preparing make-work for their prisoners and then lie awake for the rest of the night worrying about how to subjugate their prisoners. They'll be welcomed, told a little of how the place is organised and how it works, and then asked to make themselves useful, doing something easy which they can easily do. Some will have been enticed there with a particular activity in mind for them to start in on.

Some will be confused and angry, and leave, which is fine – if they don't like it, they shouldn't hang about. Others will love it but be, in our opinion, unsuitable, and will be eased/intimidated out and if that fails, told to go. But some will be great and will see the point quickly, and will love it, and will stick around. It'll be the same as any other sane adult operation, in other words.

Many of these adults will (I fantasise) be ex-"teachers", who, for the privilege of actually doing some real teaching to consenting pupils, will be happy to do it for nothing.

Dream on Brian. That's what blogs are for. More realistically, if anyone is already running something like Brian School within easy-ish travelling distance of Brian (i.e. near-ish to London SW1) do please get in touch. I'd far rather not have to do all the organising myself. I'm better at just helping out.

There were a couple of interesting education-relevant comments over at Samizdata.net concerning the Arnold Schwarzenneger victory in the California governorship recall election.

Cydonia said, of the hope that Arnie might make substantial public spending cuts:

Sadly I doubt that anything will change.

According to the BBC, almost half of California's budget is spent on State "education". Any politician with the slightest libertarian leanings would hack away at that, but Arnie has (again according to the BBC) pledged not to touch the "education" budget.

And fnyser replied:

Cydonia; you're right but there is a ray of hope. One can provide vouchers and charter schools without decreasing "school funding." I don't think it's impossible.

CA passed total immersion English and threw out bilingual education. All the guilty white liberals were surprised when the biggest support for that measure came from Spanish speakers: they realized speaking Spanglish was a great way to get a career as a dishwasher. There's more and more support for alternatives to public school esp. in the "minority" community so … maybe a step in the right direction.

Hasta la vista. By the way, what does "hasta la vista" mean? I realise that I have no idea.

Here's a startling little story from the Guardian. A Victorian punishment device (wooden blocks for immobilising your fingers) found its way to a school, as a demonstration of how things used to be, and it apparently got used for real. The eight-year-old miscreant had destroyed a pencil. So how things used to be and how things are aren't so different after all.

This is a news item that could have been crafted by a front line novelist, and who knows? – maybe that's what the Mark Oliver of the Guardian will end up as. The final paragraph is particularly silence-inducing:

But the boy's stepfather told BBC Radio Newcastle: "I'm horrified that this could happen ... I'm a great believer in punishment, but not that kind of punishment."

Ouch. What fun it must be to have a stepfather who is a great believer in punishment.

Timesonline becomes Timesoffline for those outside the UK after a while, so it would be useful for non-UKers to get the full Q&A excellence of what Chris Woodhead said (thankyou Unexpected Liberation for the link) in the Sunday Times (and Timesonline) the 21st of last month. Better very late than never, I hope you agree. Woodhead is a big name, a former Chief Inspector of Schools, and a familiar media face and voice here in Britain. When he speaks or writes, many get angry, but many also listen.

Olivia Daly of Leeds said:

After two failed appeals two years ago, we were forced to send our daughter to a school we did not want. Despite support from us, our bright daughter is bored at school, and we can do nothing about falling standards and discipline issues. We now have a second child at the same school, and she is disliking it intensely. We cannot afford private school fees. All the better state schools are full. We feel we have nowhere to turn. We are aware we may be curtailing our children’s future if we leave them where they are. What can we do?

Woodhead's reply:

Sadly, you find yourselves in the position of many parents. You have no alternative – other than to educate your children at home. If you do not feel able to take this radical step there is nonetheless a great deal you can do to support your children.

Encourage them to read as much as possible, offer them varied educational experiences after school and in the holidays, and, if you can afford it, employ a private tutor. I appreciate this is a far from ideal solution but until standards in state schools are lifted nothing else is possible.

And M. W. Smith of Gwent said:

Can I teach my child at home if I am dissatisfied with state provision? I am a qualified teacher.

Woodhead's reply:

You do not have to be a qualified teacher to educate your child at home. Any parent dissatisfied with formal schooling can take responsibility for their child’s education, and growing numbers are. Education Otherwise, a parents’ group (education-otherwise.org, helpline 0870 730 0074), can offer advice on home schooling.

It is, however, only fair to add that in reply to another question about a strange and seemingly unfair result, Woodhead replied like this:

Mistakes in the marking of scripts are inevitable, but undergrading on this scale is unacceptable. Write to the exam board, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, your local MP, the education secretary Charles Clarke and Tony Blair. And, since he has given this year’s examinations a clean bill of health, Mike Tomlinson, the state’s unofficial exam watchdog. Let me know what they say.

We all know what they'll say: nothing, at great length. In other words, Woodhead is saying, as gently as he can: "You're f***ed."

Still, straws in the wind. This home ed meme is certainly getting around, exactly as I've been saying it would.

In an answer to another question, Woodhead also mentioned a group called Personal Tutors, mentioning also their website.

Once again the pattern is repeated. Politics is the land of bad news. If you want good news, make it yourself or buy it from a tradesman.

Last Wednesday, I think it was, maybe Thursday, the government announced the biggest shake-up in secondary education since the last biggest shake-up:

The biggest shake-up in secondary education for 60 years was announced yesterday by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

Yes, what I said, sixty years. Apparently there are going to be some different exams.

So how did I miss this? Well, I didn't. I read about it at CrozierVision, where I also read this:

No, it isn't; no, it hasn't. I haven't even read the story. Why not? Because I know it's garbage. How many times have we heard the words "shake-up" and "biggest" in the same sentence over the past 6 years? Zillions, I should think. It never is. It's just another PR puff to cover up the fact that the government hasn't the slightest idea what it is doing. And in the Telegraph of all things. Wake up guys!

Which sounded more like the real story to me. So I thought, this probably isn't that important, so that's why it's taken me so long to pass it on.

Lord preserve us, it seems that we now have a languages czar. Every primary school is to have a language specialist in it by the year 2010, and when that doesn't happen, the language czar can take all the blame, instead of him sharing it with the idiots who appointed himn and lumbered him with this impossible task.

As with most of the other bits of educational centralisation going on nowadays, this one is provoked by a good idea, in this case that learning foreign languages makes you, other things being equal, a better educated person.

But there is no good idea too good to turn bad if it is foisted on everybody, without anyone being allowed to say thanks but no thanks. I mean, presumably this czar is going to go around telling primary schools that they must pay for language specialists, right? Or maybe he'll give them money for their language specialists? But that will mean they have to fill in a ton of forms before they get that money, and if they don't they'll end up getting a de facto cut in their budgets. That, after all, is the pattern with all the other damn central initiatives that have flooded across the land out of London during the last decade or more. It's got so a school has to do lots of initiatives to just get its hands on a so-so budget, and about a quarter of its staff have to spend their entire days filling in all the forms.

How different from the home life of our own dear students.