Education

Snooty or what?

Oct 14th 2004 From The Economist print edition

Inverted snobbery prevents good teachers going where they’re needed

A clever man wants to do a good thing, but the wicked government stops him. That is the scandalous-sounding story of the difficulties encountered by Tristram Jones-Parry, head of fee-paying Westminster School, one of the best in the country. He retires next year and wants to help teach maths in a state school.

Was he welcomed with open arms? No. He was told, he complains, that he would need retraining for the state system. It was a similar story for David Wolfe, a retired American physics professor who teaches in a British state school. He said this week that the authorities told him to sit the GCSEmaths exam normally taken by 16-year-olds if he wanted to continue.

The system is not quite as insane as this might suggest. The rules that require state-school teachers to be formally qualified do have exceptions. The Teacher Training Agency insists that Mr Jones-Parry could gain his ticket in just a day, by having an assessor from the state system observe his work at Westminster (a requirement scarcely less ludicrous than the supposed demand for retraining). Mr Wolfe’s American PhD would count as an equivalent to the GCSE maths pass normally required. So he would scrape by as well. The General Teaching Council, another quango, has now apologised to Mr Jones-Parry for giving him the wrong information at first, and then leaving his follow-up letter unanswered for six weeks.

The real story is the gulf between the two kinds of school. Heads like Mr Jones-Parry hire teachers with good academic credentials but not necessarily with state qualifications. State-school hiring is closely regulated; their teachers need to be expert form-fillers and jargon-wielders, and are much less likely to have good degrees: indeed only 38% of state-school maths teachers have a degree in the subject; in independent schools, 63% do.

So it’s not surprising that private-school teachers think even the most nominal barriers to their teaching in state schools are offensive and silly. The other side responds in kind: teaching unions this week said snidely that Mr Jones-Parry might be good at teaching advanced maths to well-behaved bright kids, but would not necessarily know how to teach simple sums to rowdy, dim ones. Perhaps. But many state-school parents desperately seeking better maths teaching for their children might consider that risk rather small.

1、聪明人要做件好事，可恶的政府却阻止他。这就是对Tristram Jones-Parry遭遇难题的经历进行的深入探究得出的结论。他是全国最好的学校之一、收费学校Westminster School的校长，将于明年退休，想要在一家公立学校帮忙教数学。

他受到人们敞开怀抱的欢迎了吗?没有。他抱怨说，他被告知根据国家教育体制规定，他需要进行再培训。同样的事情也发生在英国公立学校教书的一位退休的美国物理学教授David Wolfe的身上。他说，本周权威机构告诉他，如果他还想继续教书，就要参加一个通常由16岁的孩子们参加的、名为GCSE(General Certificate of Secondary Education)的数学考试

这一制度也不像前面提到的这么愚蠢之至。要求公立学校老师要得到正式资格认定的有关条款也是有例外的。The Teacher Training Agency教师培训机构坚持认为，Mr. Jones-Parry只要一天就可以获得入场券，就是让一名评估人员依据国家制度来观察并评价他在Westminster学校的工作表现就可以了。(简直是和必须要求再培训一样愚蠢可笑的一项要求)Mr.Wolfe的美国博士学位将会作为相当于GCSE数学考试通过的一般要求考虑在内。所以他倒是可以勉强通过。另一家半官方机构，The General Teaching Council，已经向Mr. Jones-Parry就最初向他提供了错误信息、以及尔后对他的后续信件置之不理达6周之久而道歉。

真正的问题是两种学校之间的差异鸿沟。像Mr. Jones-Parry这样的校长们聘用教师时注重的是学术上的优良信誉、而不是必须要经过国家资格认证。公立学校雇佣教师几乎是被管着的;那里的老师们必须要做个专业填表人和行话专家，并且好像很少拥有较高的学位：实际上仅仅38%的公立学校数学教师拥有专业学位;而在自主的私立学校，则有63%。

因此，不足为奇，私立学校的教师们会认为他们到公立学校教书的那些即使是最表面的阻碍也是讨厌而又愚蠢的。还有类似的其他片面回应：教学协会本周就虚伪地声称，Mr. Jones-Parry可能很擅长教授表现好的聪明孩子高等数学，不过不一定知道怎么给粗鲁的笨蛋们讲讲简单的加法。或许是吧。但是很多公立学校的学生家长们拼命给孩子寻求更好的数学教育时，可能认为那种风险是相当小的。