The NUT are set to strike in Nottingham over plans to cut the school Summer holiday and lengthen the working day. In a resounding 90% vote members will take industrial action over plans to cut the Summer Holiday to four weeks and split the year into five separate terms. Other education Unions in the city may yet join them.
Nottingham Council have threatened to sack any teachers who oppose the move and offer them re-employment under the new conditions. An all too familiar tactic for Councils imposing brutal cuts on pay and conditions.
Michael Gove has said he supports cutting the Summer holiday. The man who destroyed the educational chances of a generation now wants to strip any last remaining joy from their childhood as well. He claims that children suffer ‘learning loss’, during the six week break. As if working class children are too stupid to have a holiday. Most private schools, like the one Gove went to, have ten week Summer breaks. The double standard is as clear as ever. This is nothing to do with the educational needs of our children. This is about squeezing yet more labour, for less money, from the people who actually do the real work in this country.
Growing up in the 80s, teacher’s strikes were a common occurrence. The NUT were heroes to Thatcher’s generation, not just because we hated the old witch, but because we got a day off. No-one normal liked school. Most people got out at the first opportunity when they reached 16 and many of us before then as schools practiced informal policies of exclusion after the age of about 14. Truancy was an acceptable solution for both kids and schools alike. We didn’t want to be there and the feeling was mutual.
The Summer holidays are often the good bits we all remember about childhood. Dicking about with our mates for days on end. It didn’t matter if some parents worked. The more of them out of the way the better to be honest.
But these long carefree days are set to come to an end as this Government set out to remove any possible pleasure from the lives of everyone but the rich. If you want a vision of the future imagine a human being stacking shelves in Tesco forever – for no pay.
The NUT have said that cutting school holidays is about saving money on childcare costs. It will no doubt also be used as cover for yet more DWP bullying of single parents who are not in work. Teachers are rightly resisting this attempt to lengthen their working hours for no extra pay. No-one, it appears, has thought to ask the kids what they think.
The people who fought out on the streets the hardest during the student protests in 2010 were by and large not university students or rock star’s kids. They were the EMA kids from the ‘slums of London’. A year later they really began to show their teeth. Their resistance may have been far from perfect. Burning working class people out of there homes is not on. Lessons must be learnt, and not in the classroom. But the riots didn’t reveal a generation happy with the future being inflicted on them. Even in my day everyone wanted Nike trainers. But we didn’t do that.
Social mobility, much like the benefits system, have both been an effective sticking plaster for working class rage. Let a few make it, usually in the world of sports or pop music, and the illusion of fairness is flimsily maintained. Work hard and you too could be Alan Sugar. In fact you’ve got more chance of winning the lottery. Chuck about a few middle class public sector jobs to bright and obedient working class kids and everyone thinks they might be Obama one day. Except now the people who ran the youth clubs and wrote ‘diversity strategies’ are stood in the dole queue along with the youth.
Pay people just about enough so they can keep a roof over their head and they might not murder you in your sleep. Giving elderly and disabled people decent benefits and healthcare means their children may not burn down police stations. Pay single parents a pittance and their kids might not go out and fight, burgle or mug yuppies for food.
These sticking plasters are now being ripped away by this Government of toffs. Naked class war lies beneath.
the void 
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