Stricken not Struck

You may be aware of my views on striking. I am a big believer in people trying their best to do their jobs as well as they can, and I'm a big believer in management protecting and guiding their employees to do their jobs as well as they can. When management falls short of the mark, you cannot solve it by having the people under them work harder; the guys on top have to do their share. If management will not do its share, and will not amend or improve things, then lower level employees have a duty to remind management that they have a job to do, and this may well involve striking.

I have said before that I don't believe striking is lazy or antagonistic - in a unionised workforce there are checks and balances in place to make sure people can't just storm off to the pub at the drop of a hat. Does it inconvenience society? Yes, and it should - it's a reminder that these people are doing jobs that matter and without them doing these jobs, our immediate world would not be a better place. Does it affect productivity? Yes - but not as much as poor management, low morale or a high turnover of staff who cannot stomach inadequate working conditions.

I could well be wrong, but I do believe that our current government has an agenda to attack the teaching profession, of which I am a member. Why? There are many possible reasons, depending on the level of your cynicism and whether or not you are given to belief in conspiracy theories. Judging by the way they similarly go after the NHS, my own best guess is that they want to dismantle and privatise as much of the education system as possible - in short, they're after ways to make money, which would seem a depressingly common ailment in those who wield power.

Striking is tricky as a teacher. You don't want to f**k over the kids, especially those who are taking important exams. You don't want to cause bad feeling among parents by leaving them at a loose end for childcare. You don't want to disrupt the work ethic you try so hard to instil in every class you take. And there's also the fact that, no matter how much we attempt to justify ourselves, people vilify us, waving our 'long holidays' and 'short hours' in our faces. I won't lie - it can be pretty depressing to have such accusations waved at you when you know you have done your damnedest to secure some kind of progress, some kind of success, some kind of future for the children of the people who actively criticse your efforts.

And yet, I can't help but feel sometimes: what kind of teacher am I if I don't show children what it means to have a backbone, to work hard and demand respect for it, and to try to take an active role in political decisions that affect you in a very real way?

I mention all this because today the National Union of Teachers sent back the results of the executive vote on strike action - 20 for, 22 against. There was ambiguity in the vote however - confusion over favoured dates for possible strike action seems to have muddled the results as sent back to us and there is talk of it possibly being recast. The thing I find hard to stomach is the almost literal divide this shows in an institution that is supposed to foster unity.

No one in the union (nor probably in the whole teaching profession) denies things have got worse and seem to be set to get worse still with Gove in charge, and yet it seems many of us are paralysed when it comes to taking action. Are they scared of failing the kids? Of losing a day's pay? Of incurring the wrath of the Daily Mail? I understand the trepidation... but when they vote to not strike, they aren't just saying they can stomach what's happening - they're saying we all can. That we all should put up and shut up. That striking is pointless and we are helpless and we might as well send Gove a card saying 'Please be nice to us' and see what happens.

I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm not afraid of people not agreeing with me. But if we don't stand up for ourselves and demand respect I think we generally deserve, I am afraid we're all done for.

What started it all...

Hello. Chances are you don't know me, but if you did, you'd know I'm just a smidge argumentative.

Mostly it's fine and I vent my bent for arguing in small ways, like presenting five compelling reasons we should order a pizza or debating whether dogs are better than cats. Sometimes, however, the small fry cannot sufficiently sate my hunger for strong discourse, and I have to move on to meatier topics.

I am not always fully informed. I am not always strictly within the confines of reason. I do try to be fair though, and to have the merest idea of what I'm on about.

A couple of weeks ago, I was spending an uncharacteristically sunny November weekend afternoon at my desk, working. This was not a problem - I am no massive fan of sunshine, and I always have a lot of work to do because I'm a teacher. During the course of my marking, planning and emailing, however, the radio made me aware of the fact that a government minister by the name of Francis Maude was putting forth the idea that, well, if the little people felt they HAD to go on strike at all, they should consider doing so for fifteen minutes, thereby saving everyone jolly huge amounts of bother all round and preserving their day's wages into the bargain.

I remember staring at a Year 7 essay for a few moments, not really seeing the punctuation errors, not making any marks with my pen. I couldn't really move, and it was chiefly due to the fact that I felt briefly stunned at the idea of a fully grown man in a position of some responsibility saying such a stupid thing, out loud, on purpose.

I tried to settle back to work, but I couldn't. I felt all vexed and shouty, and Francis Maude was nowhere within shouting distance. It was all deeply unsatisfactory, and disruptive to the productive day I had planned.

So, as I sometimes do when I can't quite bring myself to work, I turned to Facebook. And for once, instead of merely writing a status update about my being cross with Mr Maude and possibly casting aspersions on his intelligence, I wrote a long rant about the reasons I would certainly be going on strike on 30th November if things continued as they were.

This was where it all started, you see. I went back to my marking and my randomly shuffled playlist feeling a bit better, and didn't look back til later. Lots of my friends - who are all incredibly lovely, you must understand - had read the piece and clicked the 'Like' button. A few had written comments of the 'Well said!' variety. One or two has shared it on their own pages. How nice, I thought.

And it carried on. People suggested I send it to the local paper. Other people scoffed at that and demanded I submit it to a national publication. I sent a few 'Shucks, thanks, you guys!' type responses and thought how good it felt to have people agree with and support what I had to say.

When I got home from school the next day, I had two emails from the local paper. A very lovely friend had sent my unwieldy rant to them, and they were interested in publishing it in the comments section but needed my permission. I scrambled to call them back, thinking 'Bloody hell! This is exciting! I hope I'm not too late!'. I wasn't, and in it went. When it came out, I went to the shop and bought a copy to keep and a copy to send to my mum and thought, wow, that was pretty cool.

But it didn't stop there. There were more shares on Facebook. Lovely people I didn't know and had never met sent me messages saying they were glad I'd written it. Friends got in touch to refer me to the supportive comments their friends had left when they shared it on their own Facebook pages.

And then the Guardian got in touch saying they'd like to put an edited version on Comment is Free. It generated twelve pages of comments, some of which were even worth reading. My dad, a massive fan of Father Ted, was utterly delighted to notice that Graham Linehan linked to the article on his Twitter (that was kind of a personal highlight as well, I have to say). BBC Breakfast called me on the morning of the strike and I sat at my kitchen table being interviewed over the phone on my reasons for striking; I physically shook all the way through and for a good fifteen minutes after and I still can't remember what I said.

All this, from one rant that sort of got away from me.

And while it's all very flattering and a little embarrassing and incredibly touching and very heartening, the main thing I felt was bemusement. To me, everything I said seemed like pure common sense, but it generated this ridiculously far-reaching response. Yes - I used some of the persuasive techniques that I teach to my Year 9 class in their speech-writing module, certainly, but I don't think the piece was especially well crafted or a beacon of polemicism or anything. It was just a kind of list of things I do, a few caculations and some reasons why going on strike isn't a bad thing to do.

It dawned on me after the radio interview that, whatever I'd said, it hadn't felt like the things I really wanted to say. Having time to put stuff on paper, or rather on screen, felt better. It trimmed my rambling and cut my tangents to an acceptable size, and I wasn't in danger of slipping in a swear word by accident.

It's a combination of the fact that I like to argue and the fact I think I argue better in print that has led to me starting this blog. I have no idea how often I will update it, or if any of it will be worth reading, or if I will ever reach the dizzying heights of a phone-in on BBC Sussex ever again, but I feel like the urge to rant has further to run and I'd like to let it off its leash for a bit.

Hope it's worth any time you put into reading it. Oh, and if you feel the need to rant back, please feel free to come and find me - I'll be the one in the pub.