An Inconvenient Profession?

Apologies for my lack of input to this blog lately. I have recently started a teacher training course, and the work and preparation for that has taken up a large amount of my time. There have been one or two things I've wanted to write entries on though, so hopefully I'll be able to get them up here over the weekend.

One thing I wanted to comment on is this story.

I was going to write something about this when I first read about the issue, but as it turns out it may work out better now that a follow-up story has been written.

For starters, I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, but I would like to see it to form my own opinion on it. I also didn't really think of the story with respect to how important the film was in telling schoolchildren about climate change and protecting the environment. What I see is yet another distrust of teachers, the authority they have potentially and that they are rarely allowed to use.

Stewart Dimmock didn't want the film to be shown in school because it contains "partisan political views" and "sentimental mush". If that is indeed the case, and if I was going to use that film as a teaching tool, those are two of the main things I'd try to get pupils to draw out of it. Not to just take it as 100% truth, but to interrogate the film they're watching. If the politics and sentiment are that overt then I'm sure many GCSE level pupils, maybe even those at the top end of Key Stage 3, would be able to work that out, perhaps with a little prompting to question.

To me, Mr. Dimmock is doing one of two things:

1. Not wanting teachers to teach children these kinds of skills, instead getting them to simply take everything they are exposed to at face value.
2. Not trusting teachers to be able to teach these kinds of skills, therefore calling for the removal of texts he deems unable to be taught in English schools.

Either way, he seems like the kind of ignorant person I'm likely to meet more often than I'd like throughout my potential career.