The rise of beurocracy

Awaiting me on my desk is a list of blog posts I have been meaning to write. Rather than gradually work my way thrrew them the list has grown by the day. I would love to say this is a result of a fervent imagination, unable to keep pace with the ideas which pour out of my head. It isn't. Instead I have been delayed by the paperwork which comes with my lecturing role.

I understand and appreciate the need for paperwork of this kind. It enables the teacher to plan ahead, the students and college to be aware of what you have planned and for wider institutional accountablity. All very well in theory.

Yet the purpose of such activities should be to support and enrich the quality of lecturing and, therefore, learning. Yet it seems to have arrived at a point where it is doing the exact opposite. Hours are dedicated to the painstaking details, political correctness, codified and structured nature of the mass of forms. Schemes of work, Lesson Plans, Project Briefs...all more anal in format than a monkeys arse.

I make no bones about the fact that I see this as a direct result of governmental over managemenet. The last ten years has seen us move towards what at times feels a near Orwellian state. Such scaremonggering terminology might sound Daily Mailish, but the reality is just as stark. This government seem obsessed with over controlling the individuals, organisations and instiutions below them. Its a near dictatorial approach to management.

This fails becasue it leaves politicians (who lets face it are normaly people who have failed at something else) to structure systems they know nothing about. Power is centralised and those who understand their profession are left powerless.

The knock on effect is that people are not in a position to dedicate their time and energy to the fundamental aspects of their job. As a lecturer I find myself having to spend as much time on functionless paperwork as I do on actual preperation and delivery of the lectures. The later is surely what I am paid to do. Yet those at the very top (the government) are obsessed with being able to measure our acheivements.

The irony is two fold.

1) The form of measurment is invlaid on a number of counts. Firstly as the very systems themselves seem flawed and the mode of analysising the infomration tends to be statisitical. Statisitcs are, I believe, flawed by their very nature.

2) So much time is taken up by the paperwork which provides the foundation for assesment that eventually no one will be doing the very thing they are meant to be being assesed for. We will be measuring nothing and using statistics to say how well we did that nothing. Brilliant.


End note: as a more specific example to my general rant I would like to reference the form I have to fill in for lesson plans. I think it should be essential to have lesson plans but the format and structure of them should almost entirely be left up to the teacher. Inrea lity I almost have my whole lecture planned for me. Ten Minutes at the start to recap from last week. Five minutes after to tell them what they can acheive today. You then need to split that into three levels for the range of ability in the class. They are even specific about how to display the information. At the end of the lesson you have to recap what you have just learnt, again with clear guidelines of how to do this. Its as patronising to everyone invovled as those programs on telly which insist on telling you before and after every ad break what you have seen or are about to see.In the end the seeing takes up about five percent of the hour.

What happened to trust? What happened to autonomy? WHat happened to variety and flexibility? What happened to the idocincratic approach? If you insist on your lectureres becoming machines or monkeys, with no ability to think for themselves, then it is only logicazl that the students will become a weak reflection of this depressing vision.

Progress? Don't make me laugh.