Tuesday 15 March 2011

Staffroom Cliques

I wrote this in response to a comment on a Torygraph blog http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8377360/Teachers-set-tough-targets-in-Coalition-drive-on-standards.html

I have yet to touch on the dynamics of the staffroom/department and I'm glad you have. I have seen great teachers bullied, harassed, pushed out, suffered all sorts of horrors as a knock-on effect of the stresses occasioned by their caring 'colleagues'.
In a book called Advice to Clever Children by Celia Green, the point is made that much that appears as overt altruism is, in fact, hatred and more particularly, self-hatred. This is why these caring 'colleagues' band together in self-supporting and self-affirming groups. As such, great practitioners are a threat to them and must be eliminated.
I've often thought that survival in schools require you to have a constituency, since standing up to these groups needs support.
In workplace mobbing there are the inveterate mobbers and the inadvertent mobbers. The inadvertent mobbers see what is going on but stay distant, since they do not want the same treatment.
I have also noticed that the inveterate mobbers know all the talk, the jargon, acronyms et c., which tries to systemise the bleedin' obvious and claims that this is what they do to claim their implied assertion that they are great teachers - supported by their clique.
I came to teaching from a career in business as a positive choice and not due to redundancy or any other negative reason. This business background affords me the notion that the further away a worker is from the bottom line, the more likely they are to get involved in political and careerist machinations. Closer to the bottom line, one sees that the bottom line is affected negatively by such activity.
I was once told by a wise teacher that small minds discuss people, larger minds discuss ideas.
I think I am advocating the selection of teachers of greater maturity.

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