Bad Teachers, Part 7 of ∞ : The British Non-Solution

When it's the start of Spring Semester and the whole District, impending Standardized Testing, intransigent ossified, professionally desiccating school thing has you down, you might, perhaps, daydream of getting a teaching job in Berlin.

And to fuel the imaginative daydream fire, you might end up looking, as you perhaps do each year at about this time, through the Times Educational Supplement. It's a nice resource, and one reason it's nice is that you get to read about how screwed up other countries, other classrooms are around the world.

Here's a story about the "Greater Teaching Council for England" and the horrendous job it's done getting rid of "substandard staff" since 2001. If you like hearing stories of bureaucratic epic fail be sure to also check out the vituperative comments. All your base teachers are belong to us, whenever you are.

P.S.: And speaking of jolly old, bureaucratically incompetent England, Netflix now has the entire "Yes, Minister" series from the late 1970s on "instant viewing". I'm so stoked about this fact I think I already mentioned here some time back, but cannot seem to remember. Funny, I do remember entire stretches of dialogue between Sir Humphrey and Minister Hacker, a fact that scares me a bit while rewatching these great episodes.