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    Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning
    Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning
    Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning
    Ebook180 pages1 hour

    Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning

    By Tait Coles and Ian Gilbert

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    About this ebook

    So what is Punk Learning? It details the importance of why all students should be allowed complete control of their learning. In Never Mind the Inspectors Tait justifies why we need Punk Learning, explains the philosophy behind the box ticking lessons that teachers are advised to deliver to appease Ofsted and how we should not be doing anything because the 'inspectors will like it', but because it's the right thing to do in a 21st century classroom to get the best out of all our students. Tait helps you discover how to create Punk Learning, offers ideas on how teachers can creatively inspire students to become self-regulating Punk Learners that take complete control of their learning, making it relative and memorable, so that it matters to them. For anybody with an interest in learning, teaching and doing things differently!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Thinking Press
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9781781351642
    Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning
    Author

    Tait Coles

    Tait Coles is a teacher, Vice Principal in a Bradford Academy and an educational speaker. He is a classroom maverick and a respected radical of modern teaching.Previously, Tait has been Assistant Head Teacher at a comprehensive school in Leeds and was Head of Science in one of the many challenging schools in Bradford.Tait is the creator of Punk Learning; a manifesto that challenges the orthodoxy and complacency of teaching and allows students to be central to a critical educational culture where they learn how to become individuals and social agents rather than merely disengaged spectators who have their 'part to play' in the Neoliberal ideology of modern schooling.

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      Book preview

      Never Mind the Inspectors - Tait Coles

      DON’T BE TOLD WHAT YOU WANT;

      DON’T BE TOLD WHAT YOU NEED*

      The Clash are of ten referred to as ‘the only band that matters’. Punk learning should be described as ‘the only learning that matters’. Learning that is memorable, self-regulated, completely controlled by the students and real.

      Punk learning is authentically defiant and wildly inventive. We should be planning learning with and for the students. And we shouldn’t settle for marginal impact in lessons – we should demand magnificence!

      And while we’re at it, there isn’t an aesthetically pleasing proforma that will enable you to plan a punk learning lesson in five minutes. How can teachers even consider that something planned in five minutes is going to be worthwhile? What can you actually plan in five minutes? Making toast? When and where to have a dump?

      It won’t fit into a nice little cycle for you to trawl out at a whole staff CPD event either. When Danny Baker, at the time a writer for the fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, was asked to define punk, he responded with this brilliant reply, which is recounted in his autobiography, Going to Sea in a Sieve:

      We don’t know and we don’t care what pickling jar you want to identify us via. As far as I’m concerned, the less information we give, the more we can keep the establishment on the back foot. Has it ever occurred to you that this might be something you’ve not come across? That won’t be pinned down like some fucking butterfly in a museum of politics? This is something new. The old terms are handy, but we know what we really mean and confusion is all part of that. Fuck it. YOU figure it out.

      * God Save the Queen, Sex Pistols.

      AN’ EVERYBODY’S DOING JUST WHAT THEY’RE TOLD TO*

      If you’ve just bought this book, or perhaps the book is the spoil of a successful shoplifting venture, then thanks, but please think carefully before you read any further. If you are under the deluded impression that this book will help you ‘pass’ an Ofsted inspection or will assist you in designing and planning lessons that will tick the boxes of an observation, then I’m afraid you will be sadly disappointed.

      In fact, I’m not afraid at all. The philosophy of creating learning that enables a visitor to your classroom to deem it ‘good’, ‘outstanding’ or, heaven forbid, much worse, is fundamentally wrong. I’m deliberately being fairly tame at this point – I don’t want to scare you off … or perhaps I do? I’ll go into much more detail later about why the ‘informed’ judgement of a lesson based on the appearance of a stranger in your classroom is not only morally wrong but also pedagogically abhorrent. As Joe Strummer said:

      ‘Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn’t have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed.’

      If you want your lessons to be deemed ‘successful’, based solely on the opinion of someone who hasn’t taught in a very long while, who doesn’t understand your school and who hasn’t a clue about how your students act, behave, fail, succeed and learn, then this isn’t the book for you. There is a plethora of books purposely written on this subject which are available at all good booksellers. But this ain’t it, so find the receipt quickly or pass it on to a colleague who wants to truly understand about learning. Steve Jones the guitarist in the Sex Pistols famously said: ‘Actually we’re not into music. We’re into chaos.’ And that’s exactly what this book is about, causing chaos – and as much of it as possible.

      And if you haven’t purchased the book, kindly remove it from where it was secreted and put it back on the shelf – or just keep walking.

      Now, where were we?

      * White Riot, The Clash.

      I WANNA SEE SOME HISTORY*

      Pay attention, this is the only history lesson you will ever need.

      There is a fair amount of argument about when and where punk music first originated. The US critic Dave Marsh first penned the term punk in CREEM magazine in 1971. Caroline Coon, writing in Melody Maker, appropriated the word punk about the emergence of bands led by the Sex Pistols and The Clash in the UK in 1976. She explained that the term punk was ‘coined to describe the American rock bands of 1965–68 who sprung up as a result of hearing The Yardbirds, The Who, Them and The Stones’.

      Some would agree and say the creation of punk music began in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s with bands such as The Stooges, MC5 and later the New York Dolls, the Ramones and Television. Others would argue that punk music first exploded in the UK in 1976 with the Svengali-style figure Malcolm McLaren, who created his manufactured band, the Sex Pistols, which inspired the likes of The Clash, the Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned and many others.

      There is also a camp that will disagree with both of these opinions and actually say that punk can be traced back as far as you like, with every generation having its own youth subculture that shocked the established order. Some say even Elvis was a punk. Author John Robb suggests that punk has ‘always been with us, that wild spirit, that outsider cry. It’s only recently it’s been with electricity – and louder and wilder.’

      Whichever theory you subscribe to, it’s important to remember that punk was, and still is, a frame of mind rather than a particular genre of music.

      Arguably, punk has been the most important social culture in terms of its influence and legacy, encouraging kids in the suburbs, with little or no musical training, to take up instruments. In 1976, Tony Moon added a hand-drawn picture to the first issue of his punk fanzine, Sideburns. The now iconic image displays three chord structures. It reads: ‘This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band.’

      This was at a time when the majority of music aficionados were listening to the likes of Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer and other ‘progressive’ rock acts. These predominantly male musical virtuosos performing twenty-minute long guitar solos were about as far removed from young people’s lives as was feasibly possible. And for many, the mere idea of becoming a musician was a near-impossible thought. Tony Wilson, the future head of Factory Records, sums up this period of time brilliantly in John Robb’s excellent Punk Rock: An Oral History: ‘Those years were unbelievably awful. First of all you watched heroes from the 1960s grow fat, limp and pointless. And the people who were happening were this pompous, sententious fucking crap. People forget how bad it all was. Two words: Rick Wakeman.’

      But now young people had the opportunity to dance on the graves of the old guard.

      The zeitgeist of punk made this possible for everyone and anyone. It represented a do-it-yourself ethos and a shake-up of the old-established order. It was a change. Mickey Foote, friend and roadie to The Clash, explained: ‘I don’t think the kids were doing anything; they were just hanging about slagging people off. But everyone was waiting for something, even though they had no idea what it was.’

      The DIY culture of punk is something that still holds today – think fashion, art, design, film, journalism and music or, indeed, a way of life. If you want to do something, then what’s stopping you? Take risks, do things differently, think for yourself and succeed. As Michael Bracewell suggests in John Robb’s Punk Rock: ‘Punk’s role was to catalyse and accelerate – to turn things upside down, and, by doing so, enable new perspectives.’

      * Holidays in the Sun, Sex Pistols.

      ACTION TIME VISION*

      If the explosion of UK punk in 1977 enabled young people to reconsider their place in their world, to look at things differently, to take risks, be creative, have ownership and create, then why can’t this be possible in the world of education? This is obviously a hypothetical question. I wouldn’t be writing a book about punk learning if it wasn’t tried and tested and didn’t work. So, let’s use the philosophy of the true meaning of punk and adapt it for learning.

      The zeitgeist of punk learning makes all this possible for everyone and anyone. It represents a do-it-yourself ethos and a shake-up of the old-established order. It is a change. And god, do we need a change in this current educational landscape.

      There were and are many reasons why I created punk learning. These reflections and experiences stimulated me to develop my own personal vision and to commit to teach differently.

      For example, in a previous school I was once ‘reminded’ that I needed to fulfil a departmental obligation to produce thirty-two lessons’ worth of PowerPoint presentations for a biology scheme of work. I declined the kind offer. Why? Because I think it’s fundamentally wrong to have the audacity to choose or even to guess how we want our students to learn. Producing slide after slide which tell our students what we expect them to do is basically wrong. Not only does it limit the agility and fluidity of teaching and learning, but it also constrains creativity and prevents the exciting escapades of learning that can only happen with the freedom that is created by the

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