'Lumpen' Trade Unionists
Part of the problem with getting more out of our public services - is the 'bean counting' mentality that prevails in certain areas - where 'lumpen' trade unionists have too much influence.
Take the McCormac Review on teaching standards - which recommends that outside 'experts' with special skills in sports, languages, the arts and music - should be allowed to take lessons in Scottish schools - instead of teachers.
What a great idea!
In fact I remember discussing this very subject with other colleagues on the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) - of which I was a member for four years between 2000 and 2004.
I could envisage my neighbour at the time - who was a well-known professional folk musician - going in my daughters' local school and enthusing about his own instrument - the fiddle - and talking more generally about his life in the music industry.
For reasons I still don't understand to this day - most of the teacher members of the GTCS were firmly against the idea - rules were rules after all.
And the rules stated - that only a qualified 'teacher' could take a class.
'That's ridiculous', I replied 'Why would you have a teacher sitting in on the class - supervising every single detail - when someone with years of professional experience has been brought along specially - to do the job?'
My teacher colleagues were arguing that non-teacher - a world-class athlete or a successful business person for example - could not be left on their own and that a teacher had to be present from the first minute to the last.
Demarcation gone mad - was my view then - and now.
I can understand a teacher introducing and overseeing such lessons - but to say that another person with outstanding skills can't take a class - is madness pure and simple.
No one - not least the McCormac Review - is proposing to turn lessons over to people who just walk in off the streets - and anyone who characterises the argument that way is just a 'lumpen' trade unionist.
I do hope the teaching unions in Scotland calm down - they are making such fools of themselves over this issue.
The McCormac Review is about quality and standards in our schools - and the educational experience of young people - and artificial demarcation lines have no place in that debate.
I can just hear my old GTCS colleagues now:
'Tell that Mark Zuckerberg he can't take our 5th year class in modern communication skills - because he doesn't have a teaching qualification!'
What a ridiculous example - to set eager young minds.
Take the McCormac Review on teaching standards - which recommends that outside 'experts' with special skills in sports, languages, the arts and music - should be allowed to take lessons in Scottish schools - instead of teachers.
What a great idea!
In fact I remember discussing this very subject with other colleagues on the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) - of which I was a member for four years between 2000 and 2004.
I could envisage my neighbour at the time - who was a well-known professional folk musician - going in my daughters' local school and enthusing about his own instrument - the fiddle - and talking more generally about his life in the music industry.
For reasons I still don't understand to this day - most of the teacher members of the GTCS were firmly against the idea - rules were rules after all.
And the rules stated - that only a qualified 'teacher' could take a class.
'That's ridiculous', I replied 'Why would you have a teacher sitting in on the class - supervising every single detail - when someone with years of professional experience has been brought along specially - to do the job?'
My teacher colleagues were arguing that non-teacher - a world-class athlete or a successful business person for example - could not be left on their own and that a teacher had to be present from the first minute to the last.
Demarcation gone mad - was my view then - and now.
I can understand a teacher introducing and overseeing such lessons - but to say that another person with outstanding skills can't take a class - is madness pure and simple.
No one - not least the McCormac Review - is proposing to turn lessons over to people who just walk in off the streets - and anyone who characterises the argument that way is just a 'lumpen' trade unionist.
I do hope the teaching unions in Scotland calm down - they are making such fools of themselves over this issue.
The McCormac Review is about quality and standards in our schools - and the educational experience of young people - and artificial demarcation lines have no place in that debate.
I can just hear my old GTCS colleagues now:
'Tell that Mark Zuckerberg he can't take our 5th year class in modern communication skills - because he doesn't have a teaching qualification!'
What a ridiculous example - to set eager young minds.
