Wednesday 3 March 2010

Idiots revisited....

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As you all know I wrote in praise of idiots a while ago pointing out that we should not condemn people for not “participating” or for being “apathetic”.

Yesterday someone told me about how she came to be a parent governor of a large secondary school. More for curiosity than eagerness for the task this woman had put her name in the hat for the upcoming election of parent governors. And you’ve guessed – only two names were submitted for four places on the governors.

The usual response to this occurance is the throwing up of hands in horror, Guardian-reader stype: “what have we become that just two from the parents of this school’s 1000 plus pupils put themselves forward!” Well I don’t agree – I think it shows a robust customer-supplier relationship. Parents at this school (which is oversubscribed and serves a reasonably well-off catchment) are probably pretty satisfied with the education their children are getting, they get to see teachers when they want, they read reports and know where to go if there’s a problem. Why on earth would they want to spend loads of their precious time sitting at governors’ meetings doubtless supplemented by sub-groups, training days and all the paraphernalia of modern bureaucracy.

So no, it just shows how our society is maturing. And anyway, why do we have boards of school governors?

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1 comment:

Racing Hippo said...

Why governors?
Well, think about this: if there wasn't a board of governors, who would ultimately be responsible for making decisions about the school: how it spends its money, policies on educational provision (beyond those of the LEA) etc?
Now look up "autocracy" in your dictionary.

I guess you're also going to say that the reason that the turn-outs for voting at elections being so crap is obviously because everyone's happy with the country running just as it is....?