{"id":436,"date":"2010-01-05T21:25:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T01:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=436"},"modified":"2010-01-05T21:25:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T01:25:19","slug":"teacher-colleges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=436","title":{"rendered":"Teacher Colleges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Zoe Heller&#8217;s vicious 2003 novel, <em>What Was She Thinking<\/em>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Such do-gooding fantasies are not uncommon in comprehensive schools these days.  Many of the younger teachers harbour secret hopes of &#8220;making a difference.&#8221;  They have all seen the American films in which lovely young women tame inner-city thugs with recitations of Dylan Thomas.  They, too, want to conquer their little charges&#8217; hearts with poetry and compassion.   When I was at teacher training college, there was none of this sort of thing.  My fellow students and I never thought of raising self-esteem or making dreams come true.  Our expectations did not go beyond guiding our prospective pupils thorugh the three Rs and providing them with some pointers on personal hygiene.  Perhaps we were lacking in idealism.  But, then, it strikes me as not coincidental that, in the same period that pedagogical ambitions have become so inflated and grandiose, the standards of basic literacy and numeracy have radically declined.  We might not have fretted much about our children&#8217;s souls in the old days, but we did send them out into the world knowing how to do long division.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Zoe Heller&#8217;s vicious 2003 novel, What Was She Thinking: Such do-gooding fantasies are not uncommon in comprehensive schools these days. Many of the younger teachers harbour secret hopes of &#8220;making a difference.&#8221; They have all seen the American films in which lovely young women tame inner-city thugs with recitations of Dylan Thomas. They, too, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=436\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Teacher Colleges<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-72","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}