Monthly Archives: September 2018

Workshop Reflection – Structural Inequalities

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I wouldn’t be writing this blog today if I wasn’t nurtured through a good, high-achieving school with a strong family with a recent history of academic success. I grew up expecting to go to university. It was never a wish, or an aspiration. It wouldn’t be sensationalist to suggest that it’s something I thought would just fall into my lap. Is that pretentious? I don’t know. Is that an outcome of where and how I was brought up? Certainly. But here I am, at University studying to be a teacher. Arguably the education of children is the most important aspect of any society. It shapes the very make-up of society today. In this blog I will reflect on a workshop I attended last week where the role of the teacher in the classroom paralleled current social inequalities as a whole.

A quick Google search gives us a frightening statistic, by the time a pupil starts school (age 4 or 5), those from the most deprived areas in Scotland are on average a year behind those from the 10% of areas with the highest income. What’s more alarming is that the gap further widens as our children filter through our education system. This simply highlights the point that we as prospective educators are extremely important in the future of our country. I hope to look back in 10 years time and see a shift in these statistics.

These structural inequalities are not consigned to just the classroom. The workshop made me reflect on how this is just an example and the same trends apply to different aspects of our society today. I noticed how that with even the slightest bit of encouragement I became more creative, confident and oblivious to what other people are doing. Whereas the other groups who were not in as advantageous a position as I was had remarked that they felt like their confidence was considerably depleted and that they felt demotivated. This is unfair. However this prejudice plays itself out in real life, in 21st century Scotland.

These wrongs need to be put right, I am particularly looking forward to developing techniques which can counteract these social issues in the classroom; and in everyday life.  

Why Education? A Roundabout Journey.

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——Pass the parcel——

 

Guiltily, my initial choice to study Education in December 2017 was not built on the foundations they perhaps should have been. Integral values like a love for children or a desire to give something back to the community were not at the forefront of my mind. Instead, my UCAS application had began with browsing degrees that had a natural career pathway.

After studying Politics and Journalism, I was set in my mind that I didn’t want to indulge in another run-of-the-mill arts degree. I wanted to do something with a purpose; something with a drive. This is when I stumbled across Education (MA hons). I’ve always been confident, a good public speaker and I can even tolerate weans; it just wasn’t something I had thought of studying first time around. However, after working in the classroom and getting to know pupils day in day out to support my application, I began to realise that this was definitely something I wanted to pursue as a career. Nothing felt forced and it’s something that I really enjoyed. I had actually considered deferring for a year as I was living in Sydney, enjoying the lifestyle and making good money at the same time. Although, after much consideration I decided to start in 2018, I wanted to get back into learning and back into good habits. I have a desire to pass on the passion and expertise that many of my excellent teachers had passed onto me, a parcel of knowledge or a baton per se, if I had left it any longer the music was going to stop.